NEPAL BLOG #7 – So we are in full swing by now and everyone had found her or his place. For the little ones, the it will be collecting stones today.

It had been touching, in KTM to watch the camaraderie between Padam, 27, cautious, innocent, and Oli, a passionate soul, three years younger yet more experienced, how they were getting ready for the big trip. The morning we had left, we had a small scuffle with Oli – all of us tired, stressed – about the lack of communication (I had gone to bed in Magaly’s house before leaving not even knowing what we are going to build) and later that morning, as we walk towards the bus I suddenly find myself by his side. I feel, I know that he is going to put his head against my chest in affection, a way of making amends, and that is exactly what he does. We are all tired, stressed, and we are in this together. There is a sweetness to that and it is slowly growing stronger each day. Padam I would catch smiling or laughing to himself as I crack Nepali jokes with the locals or we belt out a rock song together.

Magaly, at 59 is a force to be reckoned with, her spine-chilling shouts over the hillside, calling after Rosa who is off playing with the kids, Sarita and the boys, a testament to that. She would also do a mock-faint when we were all out there sweatin’ “bodies, bodies, male bodies” She had needed that passion, that energy: for the last few years she had been fighting the Nepalese government to let her adopt Rosa, an abandoned girl, 8, from orphanage. Rosa is a beautiful girl, but somewhat spoilt, which is especially striking in this environment. Tomás is off meditating each morning and in the evenings, and brings that serious concentrated energy into the finetuning of construction.

This morning, however, we leave with Mingaile to Ambica’s village. She had been a psychology student back at home and we talk about the possibility of bringing together spirituality and Western psychology. She mentions that she is planning to join a course in Vilnius on that.

We meet Sanjay, Ambica’s son, and friend Khaji at the foot of the mountain we are about to climb. We have a tea and some samosas. They are two improbably kind souls, always laughing, but serious if need be. From the exhaustion of yesterday, I am still tired and it is freakin’ hot, already, at eight. Before we start to climb the steep hillside, we drop off my laptop at the hydroelectricity plant. Sanjay’s uncle is a boss there, and we had been charging our drillers’, etc. batteries there overnight already. It is full of villagers who we had observed with Mingaile coming down that morning to the district headquarter here, in Jalwire, waiting to be inscribed into the government lists as to whose house had collapsed an thus will receive aid. They, men in faded black wests, beige pants and the Nepali topi on their head told a different story; they carried about them the empty look of those who live in half wildness: much more innocent than our villagers here who had hindthoughts and agendas most of the time. Lines are being transgressed, the hydro plant, otherwise inaccessible, becoming this camp; a place for us to charge our equipment, this being a country half at war.

Halfway up the road and we are lucky; a truck comes along and we can jump on it. The road had just been re-opened after landslides and rockfalls triggered by the earthquake had blocked it. As we go up there, immense fall under us, amongst huge rock faces, I see the road is barely hanging on; there are immense boulders with cracks, leaning outside, just above us. A bit of rain and it will go.
Somehow, this is what the country had always seemed to me to be like: on the edge of a precipice, with immense cracks in it. Don’t look, don’t worry is the mantra here, and (since quantum physics proved how subatomic particles react to mere attention), this had been proven by modern science too. The earthquake has pushed the country just one inch nearer the edge but it is definitely there, kind of working, holding on. But you just go f.ck…. The road will definitely be blocked come the monsoon. It’s kind of hopeless, but as I write this, just now, Padam starts singing along to “Yesterday” playing on my laptop. Yes, this is a country of great singers, women and men; a lot they sing from the heart; this is something I had also made a mental note of – to mention. Anyways, right, we are back again at hoping for the rains to come late. Aid and relief teams still need to secure more villages, even though I believe there is no really dire need any more, maybe in some cut-off villages, but the helicopters are busy ferrying aid to all parts of the country.

(And now, writing this, the kids going haywire around me with the earphone, listening to Magical Mystery Tour. Sarita says “beauty, beauty”, and Krishna, in his newly acquired sunglasses does such a suave move, taking them off like in the movies, flashing that smile, knowing that he has our full attention, that it makes my jaw drop.)

Up at the school, a sad sight awaits.

Yet, of course, we shake it off, we are here to dispel that on the back of a heap of toys and games. I am still a bit uuuh from yesterday, so luckily Mingaile takes over and we form circles to play games. First of all, a ball is thrown and the person who has to catch it must say how he or she feels. Well, I know that in Nepal whatever you say as example will be repeated a hundred times before someone else thinks of something and all the others say that. So we have fifteen “having fun”s, five “i am thirsty”, six “it is hot”s (the last two having been suggested by Mingaile). It is quite tiring, really to smile through it, so I don’t and tell them to come up with something else. Nope. Then we do more games.

The schools are running for only three hours a day since a few days ago, as the government says the kids are traumatised. We ask Ambica whether they had talked about the earthquakes with the children… “not yet” is the answer. This school had lost its principal and one student. There is absolutely no way to deal with psychological traumas in Nepal, the country even lack to vocabulary for that. Pressing our cook on our first night’s trip to buy vegetables, pressing him about his feelings, we get no reply.

So this: just another excruciatingly stupid order by the government, when group games, group therapy would be necessary. It seems that this dinosaur of a government, which took five days to issue a statement, and in its stupid adherence to bureaucracy taxed and stopped many aid from arriving, just keeps digging its own pits deeper. All the funds, even given by Western sources, have to go through the PM’s relief fund, no transparency there, and this is of course, done again to secure re-election. That’s why we had to come separately from the trucks which carried our stuff – we are not allowed to distribute aid. A concentrated effort could work better, yes, but this is extremely far from being the case: a week after the first quake, with people hungry, soldiers had to fight off angry villagers from taking the supplies of food piled up at various headquarters: the soldiers simply hadn’t received orders to distribute them. And, of course, the people are ignorant: they think they had received it from the PM himself.

Then Mingaile gets out her folk instrument, a zither-like thang. She tells them to close their eyes, and just think of whatever. Then they dance for us, two girls, to the tune of clapping and a madal drum that had been cracked in the quake – another laugh-or-cry moment that we just smile at. We had also brought a ceramic Christmas decoration, donated by someone, but decide against handing it over – there is no place in the whole school to put it. No teacher’s table, no windowsill.

Then comes the big moment, the distribution of toys. We had made the mistake of taking whistles also, so the next half hour is a chaos of jumping-running, and whistles.

We then depart. Are given food by Ambica – her house, just like most others are gone. Again, it is crazy hot under the tarp there. The boys then – it is the middle of the day, after the 30-minute trek down the steep hillside – take us to a pool. We jump in this deep place in the river, swim around. It is heaven. We pick up the batteries and the laptop at the hydropower station. Villagers are still there. Later we see the distribution of aid, mainly rice, in the village where no rubble has been cleaned away yet. It is also this that the villagers had come for.

As we arrive near camp J, we hear a bit of shouting from the left. Next to a tarpaulin is a family, an old man lying in the sun, obviously drunk out of his wits. The young girl next to him shouts: Bhuiyjalo ayo! Utnuna! – earthquake is here, get up! – and they laugh.

Back at camp, all are under the tree, chilling, stunned by the heat. Oli and Dal are at the river, swimming. We then start digging places for poles – two or three bamboo poles are already standing – taking over from the women. The men are there infuriatingly, sitting around and talking. Those who work all want something, it later turns out, also about the women. A teaching job, or they ask us to build a house for them. But that ain’t gonna happen. Magaly is set: this is to be an area for children and/or a community shelter. We are not here to build houses for people.

That night, just after I say that there seems to a problem, I don’t think the locals are aware of what we are making, it turns out to be true. Padam talks to the man who is our cook, and he reveals they had thought we are building an orphanage. Magaly has her mind set a bit too hard, and this also means a lack of communication at times, but they arrange for a meeting with the locals. The old man says- oh, OK, in this case, we will bring workers. Padam is very happy – this may be a new beginning, he says.

I know how it is here – the locals don’t understand something they just nod, and mistranslate, or leave out vital parts. Even if they understand, this happens. That is why everything needs to be asked and checked a hundred times. Even then, the project will face unimaginable hurdles. We had been surprised by the lack of help from the locals. There are, however, a few feisty and funny ladies, who joke a lot and their children, most notably Krishna and Narayan, two brothers. As I dig and level the ground, Mingaile organises games on the ground, so that the kids running around on it thump it down. There is singing and dancing, I drop in Chittiyan Kalaaiyan into the fold, which is becoming a guilty pleasure of a song of mine, which we went crazy to during a certain wedding in Delhi. Rosa and Sarita and the boys struts their stuff, Sarita belting out “shopping gara he” ( I went shopping), and me thinking for a split second, no, baby, you may never know the meaning of that expression, but then am snapped back to the sheer joy that overtakes the hillside. Hell, I join in the dance too.

Later as I climb with two of the boys up a hill – the Internet stick is not working in the valley, and the blog has to be sent off – and we walk through their houses-that-once-were, I ask them: but how did you manage? To buy pots, pans, etc. “We took a loan” – they say proudly, in a sing-song voice that belies the tragedy of the situation. Loans here are terrible things: inhumanely high interest and dependence from the money lender hold many families in shackles.

Digging holes we discover many shared passions with Oli, for songs, for gangsta talk and writing. We also talked about how difficult it is to say anything and say it really – the Nepalis are peaceful? Yes. Nepal – Never Ending Peace And Love – goes the motto. The hippie Nirvana. Yet: No – they are the world’s fiercest mercenaries if need be (the legendary Gurkha regiment), and had just come out of Nepalis are lazy? Yes, especially the men. But they are amongs the sturdiest, and hardest-working people known to man, no-one can doubt that.

So which one, mister?

On information on how to support the village health camp, please write to nepalrelief@ozorianprophet.eu. We will be following their efforts in the weeks to come.

Blaze’s trip was made partly possible through the generous help of Qatar Airways, as well as O.Z.O.R.A. Festival.