NEPAL BLOG #4 – Just be here – that was the message of today. Yet another day delayed, but in the end, another one gained.

Yesterday I woke up in Boudha at around six. The sky was overcast, but it seemed different then before; the clouds rolled into the Valley from the East this time. At seven, the rain started. As agreed, I called Magaly, the lady I met who is building a community shelter / school in Sindupalchowk, Nepal’s worst-hit district. We will leave the next day because of the rain – is the message.

Move to Sorakutte, a green and very pleasant new tourist place near Thamel for the night. Thamel seems to be picking up a bit. They guys at Nirvana Guest House are cool, they are also doing what they can; there are neckbraces and bags of medicine. Seesam comes to meet me, she is trying to source medicine from various sources, and I also will call a few people. If that cost is lifted, most of the funds for the health camp can go to food and supplies.

Went for a dinner to Magaly, where a sweet chaos rules – her daughter Rosa and various guests: Oli from Germany, Peter from Italy and local force Padam are organising, chilling or just checking facebook accounts. Oli and Peter both had come back from India after travelling in Nepal to do what they can. Peter is producing a documentary, Oli and Padam have gotten training in building temporary shelters.

It turns out that we need permission from the local government is needed, which we can only get around 12 the next day. Until then: wait. The stories are worse, government body searching all foreigners arriving with aid, not letting them through. A late dinner, then, a hot and frustrated night in the guesthouse.

Wake like shit the next day. Then, as I leave, I notice how the guys at the guesthouse are much sweeter than usually, when they whip out their sulky, smileless selves. This is later confirmed by Peter, who says the same (for the first time, Nepalis and tourists are working as a team, organising relief). He also says that tourists are gathering at Sarangi Restaurant in Thamel near the legendary Kathmandu Guest House to arrange relief or rebuilding operations. http://www.sarangi.co/

At twelve it turns out that we can go to Jalwire, but it is too late in the day to do so. Later, in the evening, when everything had found its place, we walk with Padam and agree that it is a strange and exhausting state of mind: restlessness, wanting do things, being aware of the need out there in the villages, yet anxiety of what is to come. All day during the day the practice is to let that go – what good does it do? But it kind of exhausts you – that, and the heat and the dust and the state of the city.

My only shorts are getting dirty, everything is dirty but this is the end of May – beginning of June in Kathmandu, and no-one can withstand getting dirty, and everybody knows that. So you do your best, as the Nepalis do, to embrace it. So sink in the soft powder that you walk in your flip flops or shoes, not minding it when your feet sink in it, or pull your finger along a dusty windowpane and not cringe. But it’s hard. You breathe it in, that’s the worst.  During swimming my lung was hurting for the first time, and respiratory diseases are pretty high up on the list of Kathmandu ills ‘n’ ailments.

Then of course, the monsoon comes and the city luxuriates in it. It is best in those old Newari courtyards, indescribably beautiful, inlaid with moss, and when I think of them, Bhaktapur springs immediately to mind. Haven’t gone there yet, that’s a huge project, and it is pretty far from Kathmandu, will have to sleep there too.

I go for a swim to a public swimming pool. There I nearly hit a guy, for the first time since fifth grade, when the lane they made available to those who train and swim, he does not respect that, so I keep bumping into him, then he follows me to imitate me. When I bump into him for the third time, and the fourth, him acting that he hadn’t seen me, I seethe with anger. I want to give it to him real good: yeah you can laugh, but look at the crazy development your country is having! No system, like here, you can make fun of me for trying to do that, but look! Look outside. Later I realise it’s the country I wanted to grab by the throat, that I wanted to hit. So many stories – like ours – of aid being hindered due to sheer stupidity.

Of course, that makes up Nepal’s charm, and it is, like India, an immense teacher. It is also a different approach. But I let that fly on the wind. Arriving and taking a taxi, shocked at the quality of a road. – Nepali massage – says the driver. It was on this road exactly that I had the same minor revelation – if you let your body go, and let the bus throw you left and right then it is a great massage.  Normally I would most likely laugh with him.  However, not now, when the desperation is double.

Then, at Manaly’s house – we will all sleep there and leave early in the morning – at the end of the day I sit to write my blog. The conversation with Padam had helped:it’ OK to feel like that, relax. Just be here, open up, maybe you can at least write about something.

A few seconds later, and I am already listening to a conversation as Magaly’s neighbour, a respected sculptor tells Peter and Oli about his visit to the Kumari, to whom he is uncle. The Kumari is a living goddess that is unique to the Kathmandu Valley – there are several ones, the most important being the Royal Kumari, without whose blessing the king could not rule. They have to be virgins from the Shakya caste (that of the Buddha), and during a ceremony it is decided who will be the next girl whose untainted body the bloodthirsty goddess, Durga will inhabit. Then she is secluded, cut off from the rest of the world and she  is an important part of ceremonies, etc. If she cuts herself or menstruates for the first time, the goddess will leave her body and the search for the next Kumari officially starts.

He had been there today, in Bungamati, just outside KTM, an old city which was 60% destroyed. The local Kumari’s house house collapsed. She is sleeping in a tent.-  All she asked for was a statue and a doll – he says, breaking up. He wants to show us what he had made for her, so we follow him. In his studio, we are shown stunning art, some of which has been broken in the quake – we are at a sculptor/potter’s house. His son is an artist too, a very sweet kid, who takes us around this true museum of modern art, and a great one at that. We are all three (Peter, Oli, myself) blown away. The sculptor, however, is broken, sitting on the mat with head bent. There are huge silences between us. All that art, gone and now his niece, a goddess, has to sleep in a tent. She is so sweet – he says, tearing up. – Do you think this will be the rebirth of a craft? That the rebuilding will mean a renaissance in wood- and stone carving and pottery?  – I ask. Until now, that had been a big hope of mine. However, he, echoes Surendra Shrestha’s words: the patience, the depth is gone, – I am not sure, he says, head falling. – It is gone. All gone.

They show us pictures of his visit to Bungamati,him with the Kumari, and a girl of impressive inner strength is revealed. Then I offer him a choice of a bunny, a bear and a small fairy in pink with a crown – some toys I had brought along – for her. All her toys were lost. He chooses the last one, we laugh and smile (a fairy with a magic , wand and a crown! just like Kumari, I say) but he is holding the doll in his hands, twirling the edge of its skirt with his fingers, and starts crying.

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.