Stories We Haven't Told You - Part 2 — Paul

Here are some more stories we have not yet shared. 

1. Too Much Onion

Despite carefully monitoring our water sources and doing our best to keep our hands clean we knew that, at some point, it was likely that one of us would get sick. I won the race - just 14 days in! Debbie graciously went out of her way to get fish and chips on our last night. It was good (and included deep fried Mars bars), however, immediately after we ate I felt “it”. I made up an excuse to go for a walk and barfed it all up. You can’t see it on my face, but during that picture with Debbie I had just been up with diarrhea most of the night. We’re not fully sure, however, the only thing we can attribute this to is an onion intolerance because no one else was sick. We’d eaten French onion soup the previous night. It was an unpleasant travel day (bus, train, and car). Gatorade is amazing.

2. The Rat Shack

You will have read about our night in sleeping in the car in Hawaii. Finding a place to park and sleep in peace was difficult - so we elected to stay in the entrance of our closed campsite - figuring we’d play the pity card - “we showed up and the place was closed”. At about 11:30 we got the “knock” - “sir, you can’t sleep here”. We got no pity. Driving a few minutes down the road we landed in a church parking lot that was across from a beach that had bathrooms. I awoke in the early morning and went to pee. On the way I saw the rats running around the vents of the bathroom. When I went in, there were people - yes, more than one - living in the stalls! 

3. Safety First?

The work that I have been able to do on this trip has, in some cases, stretched the extent of the safety equipment available. We did not have a ladder when building the tractor shed at Debbies. That roof was put on twice! And perhaps it was a little risky to be using a chain saw while up on a ladder at The Food Farm. I’ve been learning to use a sickle - I promise to be safe!

4. Darcy

During our stay at The Food Farm, the family was dog-sitting Darcy for a few days. She was a good, but very active German Shorthaired Terrier. She easily jumped a 4 foot fence and had to be tracked down the road after escaping at least once. One afternoon the family had to head out, so Nick tied her to the picnic table as the dogs know how to let themselves in and out of the house. Within minutes Darcy was tangled and began whining. I moved her so that she’d be closer to us and she began to turn into a real suck progressively get closer to me - eventually ending up like this.

 

5. It’s a Shitty Job

Farms use compost. One of the key ingredients in compost is manure. We had a cool experience on The Food Farm where we followed a specific recipe to create compost that required several buckets of “poop soup” with paddies retrieved by us in the pasture. Fresh ones only! At our second Nepal farm the method was much more “hands on”.  Bolram demonstrated how we were to dig a 30 cm hole, retrieve a tray of manure from the pile, use our hands to break it up and mix it with soil in the hole! Seemed pretty inefficient (and gross) to me so I got a shovel and we mixed a big pile!

Wrapping Up Nepal

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in Nepal for a month and it is already time to leave. We have had a series of wonderful experiences while we’ve been here - mostly thanks to the families that have opened their homes and hearts to us. While everyday has been a new adventure in one way or another, here are some highlights (in no particular order):

• Meeting so many wonderful people who went out of their way to make us feel comfortable and at home while helping us to understand the language and the culture of Nepal.
  
  
  
• Playing and inventing dice games with Anush, Anusha and Hari. (At one point, Maya was getting a headache from the noisy dice, so she tossed a tea towel for us to roll on onto the able in the middle of the game!)
• Walking together after “work” or on weekends to explore the neighbourhoods, get snacks, find a tower, discover the non-tourist side of the cities or just enjoy being outside.                                                                                                    
• Working on the farms to leave a legacy - especially replacing the poles in a greenhouse, creating trenches to prepare for the rainy season, upgrade the soil with compost, and installing an irrigation system.                                                                                  
• Playing frisbee with everyone - including our second “Amma” and random people on the street.                                                          

• Drinking black tea and tasting everyone’s different ways of preparing it. (Ginger and mint are popular additives!
• Learning to go "slowly, slowly" and "take rest",  two things we’re not particularly good at!

If you ever come to Nepal, we strongly recommend that you include a home-stay of a least a couple of days. Home-stay opportunities are abundant and you will not regret it.

Our Work In Sarangkot

During a recent video chat with family, our niece asked what a typical day looks like, and this blog idea was born. Thanks Meg!

A Typical Day

5:45 - 6:00  Wake up to birds chirping and the sun filling the hazy sky. Thankfully, there is no rooster here at the moment!

6:00 - 7:00  Lounge, check social media, catch up on emails.

7:00 - 7:30  Enjoy breakfast. Anisa makes a mean scrambled egg and toast, with black tea of course.

8:00 - 12:00  Do some farming. See below for details on what we've been lucky enough to dig our hands into. Water break included.

12:00 - 12:30  Lunch time. Bring on the dal baht.

12:45 - 1:00  Walk down the stairs to the orphanage and find Lila, the farm manager.

1:00 - 3:30  Help Lila with various projects. Staking bean plants, carrying bamboo, swapping old bamboo poles for new in greenhouse, resting, drinking tea

4:00 - 5:00  Shower (BRR!) and do laundry if needed. Ok, laundry is always needed, so it is more like if we're feeling up for laundry.

5:00 - 5:15  Snack time! Tea and puffed rice or popcorn is popular.

5:15 - 7:30  Somedays we walk 15 minutes to town and search for hidden gems. Found bananas, jam, coconut cookies, and chocolate cake! Other days we read, blog, do sudoku or crossword puzzles.

7:45 - 8:30  Supper time. Repeat of lunch - bring on the dal bhat.

8:30 - 8:45  Wordle / Quordle

8:45 Watch Netflix show and crash out.  This farming stuff is hard work!

Farming Projects at Sarangkot Homestay

• Pulling weeds from plants in greenhouse
• Prepping soil with cow and chicken manure
• Planting tomato seedlings
• Installing drip irrigation system for tomatoes 
• Building rock retaining walls on side of greenhouse to prevent soil run off
• Digging drainage ditches outside of greenhouses
• Attaching the netting to the greenhouses
• Picking rocks from the gardens and the surrounding grounds
• Untangling and coiling oodles of strands of wire
• Chasing monkeys away (one day)

Shelter In Place

Over the weekend we’d been invited to travel back to our first home-stay to visit the family and stay overnight. We made our way there by walking down the mountain to Pokhara and taking the bus. Turns out that the “bus” stories we’ve told you are quite normal - although it hasn’t gotten old yet!

Our plan on Sunday was to do the reverse and head back up to Sarangkot. We enjoyed a little time and some lunch (not dal baht) while in Pokhara and began our trek at about 2:30.  As we left, we noticed the sky was getting a little darker - but this has happened many afternoons without any consequence. We arrived at the stairs at 3:15 and began the steady climb - which we expected would take about an hour. The clouds started to rumble. We joked to one another that we had purposely made a decision not to bring rain gear as the weather forecast showed no sign of rain.

Proceeding upward the frequency of lightning flashes increased and when the rain started we sought shelter in between some stands of bamboo. This provided protection from the light rain as the storm moved through.  

After about 20 minutes the lightning and thunder had abated so we decided to go ahead. Looking at the map, we could see that there were houses not far, so we could stand under an awning if necessary. As soon as we reached the clearing the wind picked up suddenly and the rain was pelting us hard, so we butted up against one of the houses and covered our eyes to protect from the swirling dust. 

An elderly woman came out to check on something and noticed us, and she motioned for us to come in - although her signal was more of a “sit down” than a “come here”. We entered the home, grateful to be out of the weather and feeling anxious because we still had our shoes on. The lady proceeded to lock the doors and motioned for us to come up stairs. At this point we were very uncomfortable. So, we took off our shoes and headed up.

We followed to a room at the front of the house where she cleared a space on a small couch for us that was uncomfortably close to where an elderly man was presumably napping. We realized very quickly that this women spoke little English and communicating would be a problem. We used our favourite 3 Nepali words - Mero Nam insert name Ho - to tell them our names and tried to make the most of Google translate!

To set the scene a little - the two of us are seated on this couch, there is a bed jammed up to it with a man and kind elderly lady named Devi both on the bed. This is a big house and we are all sitting within a 2 m sq.  The wind is blowing like crazy and it’s raining a little and Devi offers us tea. We say “no” as resources are limited in most Nepali homes. She insisted, so we accepted. We were grateful for the shelter and the opportunity to meet new people, however, the situation continued to be very awkward due to the language difficulties and some other cultural differences. Here are some of the things that unfolded in the next 20 or so minutes: (the actual order is blurry in our minds)

• Gayle showed a picture of our home stay family to try to make a connection. Immediately, Devi insisted that she and Gayle take a selfie - remember we just met this woman!

• We told the couple we were from Canada and their excited facial expressions and untranslated utterances lead us to believe they thought Canada was just this side of Heaven. We used the translator to ask about that and she said - “I don’t know anything about Canada.” Oops!
• The man lying on the bed offered us cigarettes.
• Devi learned that we were grandparents and pull up a chair right in front of Paul and began rubbing his leg. Soon after she switched and gave Gayle the same attention.
• A 15 year old came home from school and joined the party. She told us that Devi was her mother. (We think probably grandmother. We’ve seen the term “Aama” used interchangeably.) Luckily she spoke some English. She immediately showed us her TikToks and asked for our Facebook and Instagram contacts. Spider senses were tingling and we did not share them.
• And then, the girl, translating for her mother, said to us, “You are staying here for the night.” Notice that there is no question mark. It was beyond kind, however, we took no time to respond with, “No, no. Our home stay is expecting us”.

A quick glance out the window revealed that the rain and wind had subsided enough. We made quick eye contact and Paul said, “Ok, Danyabaad, We should go while it’s clear.” Without a further pause, we hastily made our retreat, unescorted. Almost running out the front door, we paused for a small wave to say thank you and set a faster than normal pace up the hill - speechless.

When you enter a home unexpectedly in a country halfway around the world, you should expect to be uncomfortable. Thankfully, the rest of the walk was way less eventful.

Becoming Comfortable

Living in a foreign country can at times be challenging. After three weeks here in Nepal, we've come to the following conclusions about how to survive.

Be Comfortable With...

1) Being A Little Dirty (not that kind of “dirty”): We've spent most of our volunteer days working in gardens or fields. This has resulted in dirt, and alot of it. On our legs, under our nails, in our shirts, and worst of all up our noses. We've definitely embraced the dirt, and even wear dirty clothes for 3 or 4 days in a row. In case you've not done it, washing clothes by hand is a lot of work!

2) Cold Showers: You know that at the end of a hard day's work there is nothing like a good hot shower. Let's just say there is nothing like a good cold shower too! And I mean nothing.

3) Eating the Same Thing Every Day: We've learned that the Nepali people are creatures of habit when it comes to food, and that food is dal bhat, baby. They love it so much that they eat it twice a day. A typical dal bhat consists of lentil soup, rice, and usually a curry, made of whatever vegetables are in the garden. Thank gosh we still like it, and it would make meal planning easier. Funny though, just yesterday we were given candies and were told they were chocolates. Excitedly we tore open the wrapper, popped them into our mouthes. Within seconds the flavours of dal diffused into our taste buds. Disappointing to say the least.

4) Hazy Days: Quite literally today is the first day in twelve that we've seen blue sky, stars at night and mountain views. We've been living in a valley that fills up with smog, mainly from cooking fires, grass fires, garbage fires, and vehicles. Most homes keep a fire burning throughout the day to heat water and make ghee. The smell and sight of the smog has been hard to get used to, especially since the air in Canada is so clean.

4) Not Knowing What Is Being Said: Stepping into homestays has been such a rich experience. We see what is happening, but very rarely understand what is being said. I wouldn't say we've become experts a reading body language and interpreting tone, but boy we've made up some creative stories. 

5) Saying The Same Three Words A Lot: We've quickly learned that when you don't know a language, you need a few key words in your pocket to enhance the flashy smiles and precision head nods. We've certainly been relying on the following. Namaste (hello), said with hands in a prayer position, comes in very handy to greet strangers on the street, say good morning, or when we're introduced to new people. Dhan'yavāda (thank you). Nuff said. Mitu (yummy). We find ourselves saying this to show our appreciation for all of the delicious, and maybe less than delicious, food were are served. 

6) Resting: As you may know, we like to be busy (understatement perhaps?). So the concept of "take rest" has taken a lot to wrap our heads around. For example, we arrived at the orphanage farm yesterday at about 12:45, gung-ho to get to work, and Lila greeted us by pointing to the chairs, saying "rest - tea time". We laughed and said "But we haven't done anything yet". We finished tea at 1:30, put in a solid 30 minutes of planting a mystery root vegetable, and Lila then said "work done". We shared some laughs over Facebook posts, and then trundled home to do what, rest.

Sunglasses Update

It was just a matter of time, I guess.  They fell off my hat at just the wrong moment in a dark hallway and got stepped on. They’re scratched, but they’ll last until we get back to Kathmandu.

If you don’t get it, read this.

A New Place, A New Routine

A few weeks ago we wrote about how important routines are to us in our every day lives. We relocated to a new farm last Saturday, so we once again, established a new routine. As we continue our journey, each of our many transitions reveals more about what makes us tick.

Where’s My Stuff? Since all of our stuff is packed into 4 backpacks, every time we move, we have to pack it all up again. Space is tight so everything has a place - mostly. The real challenge comes when we start to unpack in our each new home and we’re often asking, “where’s my…”.  This was a challenge at Debbie’s farm where we really didn’t want anything to touch the floor! Organization was super tough when we moved into the tight quarters of a van as well. Honestly, this was stressful. Each night the inside converted to a bed so it took a couple of days to get the routine down - then it got cold so having 2 or three changes of clothes every day made for some messy van days. On Thursday, after our current farm stay, our packs will be a little lighter as we will be able to lose some work clothes - especially our boots!

Where do We Sleep? Ok - bottom line - it turns out that beds matter to us!  We have slept in 20 different beds, one airplane and one car.  (On at least one of those nights we might have contravened a law or two.)  We have experienced everything from a luxury pillow top with way nicer sheets than anything we have at home to a simple and extremely hard 3 inch foam mattress with a see-through sheet and a comforter. As we arrive in each different stay, we always check the bed! (The upcoming overnights trips in the jungle of Madagascar will be not counted as beds.)

When’s Lunch? The schedule and time of meals has been remarkably revealing on our trip. Many of our hosts have had a typical breakfast-lunch-dinner plan, however some folks take their big meal at lunch, others, like here in Nepal, only typically eat two meals - and they are the same thing - everyday. It can be an awkward dance at each new location to figure out the meal schedule when the culture is different. Mostly we just like to be TOLD the plan and we will “follow the crowd at chow time”.

 

What’s the Work? Our trip has been all about helping out and sometimes the work that’s required is on a list and well communicated, and other times it’s not. As most readers will know, standing around waiting is not one of Paul’s strengths! Just today we were very excited to help at a new farm and after the 10 minute walk to get there we just stood around waiting - then had a tea break! The reality is that we’re learning to be patient and to find things that need to be done. At each of our farms, at least one “secret” task has been completed.

This adventure is giving us a great opportunity to learn about ourselves as well as others. We are forever grateful to those who have taken us into their lives and homes!

Stories We Haven't Told You - Part 1 — Gayle

In looking back at our photos, we've noticed that we haven't shared some of our best stories, for one reason or another. Enjoy these untold stories.

1) Hawaii - We slept in the car (and it was horrible). After learning that our campground accommodation had fallen through, we decided one night of sleeping in our Fiat rental car wouldn't kill us. Well, it almost did, but we are still laughing about it. PS: This happened on the second night of our five month journey, and we didn't share it earlier because we didn't want anyone worrying.

2) New Zealand - Upon our arrival at our second wwoof, The Cornerstone Cafe, Phillippa quickly informed us they were having an issue with snails eating their veggies. She said we would go ahead and kill them, as it was "not a snail sanctuary". In the first two hours I killed 32 snails, but who's counting! It was gross, but I got used to it. Kinda.

3) New Zealand - We picked up a hitchhiker, and boy was it a bad idea. Here's how it shook down. We were about an hour from Te Anau, and we cruised past this solo hitchhiker. We looked at each other, said "Seems pretty safe,  we have plenty of room in the Jucy, and it would be a nice thing to do", so we peeled around and picked up Jamie from England. Turned out Jamie had been hiking from the north to the south of New Zealand over the last three months. He was an interesting cat, but man did he SMELL. Windows were lowered, fans were turned on, and we took three days to air out Jucy. Lesson: No more hitchhikers for us!

4) Nepal - Sarangkot Sunrise. For this to make sense, you need to know a little of our local geography. Our first volunteer homestay was located about 16 km from Pokhara, a fairly major city in Nepal. Overlooking Pokhara is a small "touristy" town called Sarangkot. The thing to do while here is to see sunrise over the Annapurna Mountain Range from Sarangkot. So our first weekend we jumped on the local bus, hiked two hours up nonstop stairs to Sarangkot, and stayed in a local hotel for $17, which included breakfast and hot showers! Sunday morning we got up at 5:45. We were not going to miss our sunrise view! Well, our perfect Himalayan mountain view was not to be. Locals called it cloudy, but we know it was smog that had infiltrated and settled in, clouding our mountain view. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise with a faint mountain backdrop.

5) Nepal - Rolling the Dice. Whenever we travel, we throw in a deck of cards and dice for some friendly, good natured competition. One evening after supper we brought out the dice at Hari and Maya's. Everyone got right into it. The kids were having so much fun that we found dice in Pokhara for them. A few nights, and several games later, Anush even made his own dice game for us to play. Even though it was just for fun, I won twice in a row! 😉

It’s different here…

The immersive nature of our experiences so far have given us insight into the many ways that “this is not Canada”. Here are some of the most interesting differences we’ve found in Nepal:

• Mostly everyone wears flip-flops - even construction workers! Shoes are not worn inside - except when going to the bathroom.  There are flip-flops to wear at every bathroom door - even in the hotels!
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• Speaking of bathrooms, showers are not separated from the rest of the bathroom - in any way. Toilet paper is not normally used and squat toilets are found regularly. Western toilets have a low and high volume flush option. 
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• Lawns are mostly nonexistent. Every bit of space is used for gardens or crops. In the countryside, fences are rare - animals are generally tethered.
• Cooking on a wood fire is common. Propane is used, but is very expensive compared to gathering firewood. 
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• It’s quite normal for food preparation and eating to be done while seated on the floor. (And dishes too!)
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• As for meals, breakfast and supper consist of dal (lentil soup), bhat (rice) and cabbage curry everyday. We've been fed a more Western diet of toast and egg for breakfast, Mr. noodles for lunch, and the traditional dal bhat & curry for supper. There is little variety from day to day.
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• Manual labour is required for many things that are done by machines in Canada. As I am writing this a tractor pulling a trailer full of gravel (probably 6 cu. yards) drove by. It was loaded and will be unloaded by hand. We’ve seen road base construction which means placing rocks individually by hand after breaking them with a sledgehammer.
• Motorbikes and scooters outnumber cars by a lot and the narrow roads are shared by all vehicles, pedestrians and animals.
• Bricks, grass, sticks, propane tanks, virtually everything is carried in large “backpack” baskets that are strapped to the carrier’s forehead. Everyday we see many people returning from the mountains with baskets loaded. 
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• Power outages are common, expected and accepted.

School is different too! This has been a holiday time (two weeks) for the younger students and they’ll return this Sunday. They only have Saturday off each week. Tuesday was a big day here because the students (all elementary) got their exam results. Everyone writes exams an each student’s score is listed and ranked on website for everyone to see. Our home stay “kids”, Anush (G7) and Anusha (G3), were both top in their respective classes!  Last Sunday, when we were in Pokhara, school bus loads of older students could be heard singing and cheering. (We are sure that one song was a Christmas song!) Turns out it was their last day before a three month break and they were very happy!

What’s noticeably not different? Easy - The friendly and welcoming nature of the people of Nepal. Everyone greets us. “Namaste”. Often we are asked where we are from, what are names are and curiously, where are we going. (Admittedly we do stand out a little, so a lot of people want to make sure we are not lost as we walk up some random road in rural Nepal!)