NEPAL BLOG #10 – It has been raining for the past two nights. The weather forecast had said that the monsoon is still over a week, possibly more, away. However, both nights the rain had become a sheet, a wall, pouring down as if there was no tomorrow. Right now I am in the “wishing for rain” mode, as in the village of Rampa where food is scarce, the corn crops are failing, just as elsewhere in the country. After corn it is paddy (rice) that is planted, which needs to be done soon you already see the Day-Glo lime green shoots in small patches, which will then be transplanted into the fields one by one.

Today is heritage day for me, so my wishes may just change. I had heard of precious artworks in Swayambhunath under threat of the rains, which is where I am headed today.
There was a small tremor this morning, just a gentle nudge-nudge-I-am-still-here kind of a thang, after which all say just as I feel – well, that was it. It is now winding down. I meet Diego, old friend from Chile, who has been studying thangka painting for the past six years. He tells me about the day of the first earthquake. They had been with friends in a small restaurant when it had all started. They raced out. It was the sound that was scariest, rumble form below and then the shaking of the houses. He said it was very difficult to just stand, so the four of them held hands and stood in a circle, and just wishing it would go away.

In Swayambhu the devastation is like stepping into an Armageddon, as you walk over rubble and household items. Swayambhu is a place dripping with art, layers and layers of centuries as you approach the focal point of all that worship. When the stupa comes into view, as the gold draws you eyes to the serene-yet-powerful eyes, I gasp. It is that powerful.

By a monastery, which is half-reduced to rubble, all askant and askew angles, a little dog… on a brick pedestal, barely breathing, looking at us through eyes coated with mucus. It doesn’t get more… touching than this. For a blink we both hope that “hey, here is someone we can finally save” from the mayhem. How epic that would be. A little dog in Swayambhu on his pedestal, an offering. We both smile at that. We offer him some water, he takes a few gulps, then just suffers on. The caretaker of the gompa (monastery) comes along, and says that a doctor had been to see the puppy twice, he had gotten medicine, but was not getting better. So we decide to leave.

Next, it is Dwarika’s to interview Ambica Shrestha, and as I step in, Ambica is sitting in the foyer with a foreigner, and she glances over her shoulder, and I catch the same quick, sharp-yet-warm eyes that I know so well. At 87, she is, it is safe to say, the grande dame of heritage conservation in Nepal. Not only is it in her blood, and vein, but she is the president of the Nepal Heritage Trust – something I had only found out on this trip. Her home, Dwarika’s Hotel, the only recipient of the UN Heritage Award in the country, is an astounding story of one couple, Dwarika and Ambica Shrestha, who, after buying up all the old carvings that were being discarded, burnt, invaluable pieces from the 13th and 14th century on, had decided to build a hotel around it.

As I step in, I see Ambica and Wendy, an ex Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, who had befriended the family nearly twenty years ago. They are talking about their joint project, a camp they had set up for a displaced village. Wendy and Ambica glance at me – how much time do you need -, and I say half an hour, and when I see that’s bad, I say, scrap the interview, hey, let’s go. A baby had just been born in Camp Hope, and we are going to visit him.

Though she is an old friend and we have talked several times in the past decade or so, always memorable, I do some research before meeting her. On Dwarika’s webpage, I click on the “Earthquake Blog” section, and see staggering number of aid that had been distributed by the hotel (basically the Shrestha family) to villages. 4000 kilos of rice… 3450 kilos… and it goes on and on. I suddenly feel myself breaking down and for the second time on this trip I weep like a baby. Behind every 25 kilos of rice is a family, totally destitute… Huh. Sometimes it takes one story, one glance to drive the message of destruction home, that truth behind the statistics, but sometimes, as in this case, just sheer numbers.

– We are to go in the truck – Ambica giggles as she drinks her green tea, and as we wait. Her staff, upon learning this, is appalled – no, Madam, wait for the car – but Ambica is adamant as she flicks the idea of propriety away impatiently with her hand. This is a woman who had ridden, sixty years ago, on the back of her husband’s motorbike, sari flying as a young bride and the neighbourhood watched in shock…

We are still waiting for Sofia, from Trinidad, to join us, so I take a look at some of the carved windows. There is an especially intricate one, so I ask Ambica about it. Of course, she knows the story. It is from the fifteenth century, form a house that belonged to two brothers, who, upon dividing the house between themselves, had cut this window into two pieces. The hotel managed to purchase first the one half, and then, years later, the other one. Ambica also tells me that the first building they ever built on the premises, the one that her husband had built decades ago, has minimal damage to it. German (German!) engineers and architects marvelled after the earthquake at it: just how did they do it? We agree that some of the old masters just had such a feeling for building houses, that it is by eye and feeling they worked.

By the time we are all ready to go, another small car of the hotel arrives, so sadly, it is not the truck we take. Beyond Pashupathinath Temple we stop. There is a camp there, ten or so large tents on an elevated ground and with trenches dug around. Dal had explained to me in Jalwire how important this is, to let the water flow away. We all go our own ways, Mrs Shrestha into the main tent where her daughter Sangeeta is waiting, I take a tour around. I meet two volunteers, Lya and Andrew from Mexico and the Czech Republic, they are distributing pencilcases to children, one by one, following a register. Each one they have to stop : “say thank you!” – for the kids are not used to it. They all come from a village near the Tibet border which is so in danger of landslides that the whole village had to be evacuated to Kathmandu. The camp is, essentially, one village.

I talk to Heiko, from Germany, also here, who works for Shanti Sewa Griha, where I had started out as a volunteer years ago, so in a way, this camp is Shanti, a leprosy center, meeting Dwarika’s, Nepal’s most exclusive hotel. Dwarika’s had been buying the organic eggs produced in Shanti’s village in Buddhanilkantha, just showing how they give a hoot about caste (lepers are instantly untouchable). They are taking the careful and creative Shanti approach to the camp – having received huge clothes from Europe (anything above size M is hopeless for the hillpeople of Nepal), they cut them up so the women can thread strips of fabric for stools or cushion covers. They also take discarded bamboo and make it into knitting needles – I watch the women splitting bamboo than sandpapering it. Shanti is providing vocational training for these ladies from the village.

Heiko and co have just returned yesterday from the village. He shows me photos – shocking ones. Cracks of a meter or so width in terraced fields adjoining the village, destruction, rockfalls – the group even had to run through one yesterday. Once again the pendulum swings and I wish for the rains to be delayed. He shows me an app he had downloaded. It shows all tremors in the country. I am taken aback. Just yesterday three shocks of magnitude 4 on the Richter. (OK, one thing – the Richter is made in the following way: the jump of one in the scale (from 4 to 5, say) means a jump in force of tenfold. So a 5 is ten times stronger than a 4. So these are no major thangs by all means, yet, a 3,4 earthquake was on the headline of every paper in the UK when it struck off the coast of England.

Going around the camp, it is the kids that struck me as especially healthy, boisterous. Hell, I can’t interview Heiko, ’cause a volleyball comes our way every ten seconds. The camp is extremely well kept, clean; there is a medical tent with a doctor on call, a well-organised kitchen with the timings written on the entrance, play areas for the kids, toys, clean toilets. Just as I make my way towards the corner where a child had been born a few days earlier, I bump into Ambica.

We enter the tent together. In the corner, a quiet space. A girl of about sixteen, her mother and, behind a blue mosquito net, her newborn, asleep. We talk to the young mother. The boy – for it is a he – has already been given a name. Nyingma Dorje. He cries a lot, but eats well. Ambica enquires about how they are and whether the mother is getting special nutrition. Before leaving, Ambica blesses the boy by laying some money on his forehead and scattering some coins around.

She comes out and we are joined by Binita, a boisterous and searingly clever girl of about 9, who speaks English like a dream. Since Ambica walks over a trench with some care, she takes her hand – You are old, no? – she asks. Ambica laughs up, the two walking together holding hands by now, and answers something I don’t quite hear.

We got the tent where Sangeeta and Heiko have their headquarters. A little dog walks in with a swagger. – No, it doesn’t have swagger, Heiko says – probably influenced by the fact that the puppy had been ill – but I have seen what I have seen. A swagger there is. He goes past everyone to take water from its bowl. Yeah, sure, his hind legs are somewhat thinner than normal, and the hair has not grown back yet (there had been a fungal infection). He had actually joined these people in nearby Boudhanath, at a mass camp. When the village shifted to this empty field near the river, he had followed them, sick, on foot.

We are off. Binita is chirpy, and tells me that she plans on becoming a doctor. To help the people of her country. However, there is name I will hear a lot that night, Rinchen, seven or eight, who is dragging his best friend along. In Dwarika’s they gasp. – She, this one smookes – Rinchen says, seeing Sangeeta pulling on a cigarette in the courtyard. Sangeeta unleashes a hearty laugh. You can tell that she and her mother are women used to getting their way, however, they can erupt in laughter at any time, piercing notions of propriety, shattering walls.

They walk in and jaws drop. They have never seen anything like this, they say. We are given a tour, the kids marvelling at the stone water spouts; and at the buildings but it is of course the pool that takes all their attention when they see it. They had never, in their life seen one of the absolute pinnacles of their country’s art, and are, touchingly “proud to be Nepali” that night, in Binita’s words.

And dinner. Rinchen orders two drinks and spends the night like a lord, two glasses in hand . We all joke about him. Rinchen is like, would he have ten hands like Kali, the final one would still be reaching out to the waiters to pour a whiskey, just for the taste of it. It is all one big family. It is very heartening to see the kids so put together. They say their minds, feet dangling from the wrough iron chairs, are not cowed by the surroundings or the waiters.

Lya and Andrew tell me how they had been travelling in Asia and decided to come over here to help. They happened upon Camp Hope, and were taken in by Dwarika’s in return. After dinner we are sitting there, the kids going haywire in the pool. Every second word that we hear is “Rinchen”, as Sangeeta and Ambica, Wendy and Sofi roll from laughter at his exploits. They only have one set of clothes with them so there is a palpable mother’s worry for the kids not to get wet from Wendy’s, Abmica’s and Sangeeta’s side, Lya and Andrew being a bit less concerned. So a deal is struck: the next morning they are to all learn to swim in the pool.

It is only later, after leaving that it dawns on me what I had stumbled on: a whole village displaced, hippies finding shelter in Dwarika’s, pool teeming with village children… and this incredible story, again, of transgression, of a country coming to terms with itself, reinventing mores and ideas. Tradition, caste, social classes, geography – the country’s tectonic plates are still shifting, and the stronger and braver ones go with it, just do, even in places you would least expect it.

While there, I had not been able to fully allow them into my sphere, there was still a bit of tension in me. I had hoped to do an interview with Ambica on the heritage of the country. It was the only blog that I had planned, that was ready in my head, hell, I even had the photo to go with it. And then this.

Oh, yeah, I had wanted to write that article by introducing her as Ambika, whose name means mother and how, when I was a volunteer surviving on daal bhat she used to make sure I always leave with a loaf of steaming bread and biscuits from the kitchen.

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.