Day 66 - Chovar and Kirtipur, Nepal

Day 66 – Hers.

We had a bit of a lie in today as there is no school on a Saturday.  We went upstairs to the balcony around 9:00 to find a village girl helping Camilla prepare a mountain of some kale-like vegetable for the festival that they had foraged from the woods around the village.  The girl spoke very good English – she was the first person in Nepal to notice that my accent is American rather than English. 

Previously when we have volunteered, we have had to leave the host family’s house for the weekend to give them some peace so, even though we weren’t told to do so, we had decided to all three go out for the day to let Camilla and the family recover a bit from our invasion.  There was some sort of miscommunication about breakfast – it seemed that Camilla thought we were eating elsewhere since we were going out for the day.  She made us coffee but still hadn’t offered anything else by 10:00, so we packed up some of the fig and date biscuits and some water and set off.  I spread out my scarf under a large tree down the hill a ways from the village and we had an impromptu picnic to give us the energy to walk the rest of the way into Kirtipur.  Forty-five minutes later, we stopped at a garden cafe in town for coffee and momos.  We then went shopping for silly things – hair conditioner for me, coloured pencils and plastic cutlery for school (I am giving a lesson on how to eat Western-style.), biscuits and coffee for Camilla, a football and shower gel for Steve and a haircut and some electrical bits for Rob.  Steve was convinced by some young local boys to christen the football whilst we waited for Rob to have his haircut.  I sat on the steps of a little corner shop and attracted quite a bit of attention from passers by.  One young man who was doing a Master’s degree in English literature at the local university sat and chatted for a while – asking me if I thought his English was good enough to study for a PhD in England.  How on earth should I know?????

We wandered back to Chobar, had another cup of coffee in Sanju’s brother’s cafe and arrived home at about 3:30.  We still felt the family needed a bit of space so we went to our respective rooms at that point until we were called upstairs for yet another coffee.  Camilla was cooking a dish of buffalo meat, tomatoes and spices that smelled delicious. She asked me if I was going to eat – and I said yes, thinking she meant at dinner time.  She then brought out huge plates of wheat chips, the buffalo stew and grilled buffalo for both Rob and me – Yemen came in and asked if we were enjoying our ‘snack’.  Snack? Oh no – that meant we still had to have another plate with rice later on.  I think I am putting back on all the weight I lost on the trek.  It is very difficult not to eat too much here.

Sanju came over for a while – I think he gets bored when he’s not assisting volunteers and helped me to read the Nepali maths book from which I am preparing Monday’s lesson.  I practised my English table manners lesson on Camilla – with Sanju looking on like a mother hen – and, as darkness fell, we forced down the second portion of buffalo stew and then did the washing up.  The family seem amused at our insistence to help with chores – we quite often have a tussle over the plates.  But Camilla has enough to do – and it all adds to the cultural experience – squatting on the back balcony, swishing uneaten rice into the drain with a little broom made of straw.....

 

Day 66 – His

 

It’s always a shame when you meet people who try to cheat you. It’s not too bad when they try to cheat you and don’t get away with it but pretty dreadful when they cheat you and succeed. As it happens the guy who tried to cheat me didn’t get away with it and I think he was pretty embarrassed by the whole affair. The man I am talking about is a hairdresser in Kirtipur. As we had a day with – to be honest – not that much to do I decided to get my hair cut. Having a haircut in a foreign country is a fraught experience. For a start you have to explain what you want – no mean task when you don’t speak the language. Then, you have to be able to put up with whatever hairstyle you get. That bit is not so difficult if you have two months left to travel as whatever cut you get will be grown out by the time you get home. So, with these thoughts in mind i stepped into a local barber’s in the village and had a haircut. It was pretty much as I expected – definitely a fraught experience - with the guy telling me all the time that i looked 60 and needed to colour my hair or have a facial scrub – he actually pulled out a bottle of apri facial scrub – i nearly burst out laughing. For most of my life I have looked younger than I am and people have asked me how come i looked so young and I have always replied ‘ a nectarine every day and apri facial scrub.’

So, having this barber in the arse end of nowhere pull out a bottle of the stuff and wave it front of me felt a bit like I was being haunted by my old jokes. Luckily I am British, a man and over school age. What this means is that when I go to the barber’s what i want is some surly old guy to run a set of clippers over my head, snip a few of the long hairs from my nostrils, grunt and stick his hand out for the tenner this usually costs. Oddly enough 50 years of that had prepared me quite well for the Nepali barber who wanted to wax my head and massage my eyebrows. After I shook of his attempts at hair colour, massage, facial, shave and god knows what else – i think he would have sucked my toes clean if i had asked him – I managed to get off the chair and ask him how much. Now, those who are more worldly wise than I was this afternoon will already have noticed the mistake. I should have asked him how much before I sat down.

But I didn’t and I paid the price. 500 rupees he said. I looked him straight in the eye and said – no, that’s not right and you know it isn’t.

After some argument we settled on 150 rupees – i figured the facial he half gave me was worth the extra so paid and left a sadder but wiser man.

Such a shame.

Outside I found Patti chatting to a would be doctor and Steve playing football with a bunch of street kids. We gathered ourselves together and walked back to the village.