A Grand Day Out

Suddenly, I found myself alone with the custody of 9 children.

I had arrived at a villager’s house. Days before I had been invited for a day out by a village kid after we spent an afternoon roaming together. The place we planned to journey to had been described as “big”, “fun”, and “very nice” by several people. One of my host sisters said that tourists used to use it as a campground, and other than it being “30 minutes or an hour” uphill, I didn’t know much else about it. Truth be told, I was tired after having hiked a lot in the preceding days – but I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to see a new place, so after morning daal bhaat I walked up the village to his house as I had promised.

My understanding had been that this family was going there for some reason – there was an event happening, or they had planned to visit someone. As I soon found out, however, nothing was happening. The son had simply invited me to go with him for fun on this particular day. Perhaps because it was Saturday -- a school-free day. As for his family? They weren't going anywhere and were staying home to take care of the household like any other day.

By the time I reached this house, I had accrued a posse of 8 other children who had committed themselves to the cause by self-recruitment. Villagers looked on with amusement from their houses, hands on their hips, beholding the mob of children with a foreigner at its center, its extensions in constant flux like an amoeba on the move. I looked down across at the villagers, then looked to the road at my gamboling companions. This wasn’t what I had envisioned for the day. On the other hand, I didn’t really see a way out of this situation. So, after rounding up the village kids, off we started up the rocky mountain paths. There was a lot of running and yelling. I wondered if I had made a mistake.

Setting off from the village. Spirits are high, and there is a lot of yelling.

Despite my best efforts to keep tabs on my young bhai and bahini, this was virtually impossible, especially when their names and faces weren’t committed to memory. I soon gave up. Some of them would stop for a while or get distracted and linger behind the group; then other wandering children from passing houses and villages would join and leave our group at will. There were typically at least 7 children in sight. I considered the venture akin to herding cattle, trusting that our core group would reconverge eventually.

In all, the journey to our destination probably took an hour and a half, including the stops along the way. We serpentined dirt, grass, rock, and stone step paths alike. Green and yellow paddies of rice cascaded like waterfalls down stairstepping terraces. Villagers we passed asked us what we were doing. (I let the kids answer for me, since I could somehow never remember the name of our destination.) We met a family from our village which was working in its rice field.

Anish Nepali threshes rice by hand with his aunt, Sumitra Nepali. Rice is cut, then dried in the field for several days beforehand.

There were a lot of stops and starts. And many more shouts of “Didju, jum!” (Sister, come!), which sometimes came from several directions at once, when any (or many) of the children decided it was time to move on. Passing activities included:

• Playing ball at a volleyball court
• Catching fish in the roadside ponds and streams (3x)
• Fleeing from two (2) water buffalo
• Tiptoeing past a large black dog sleeping on a porch

One of two water buffalo which cantered and capered along the road toward us, tossing their heads. When encountering buffalo or cows on the road, old and young alike scramble away as far and quickly as possible.

Eventually, we made it. We crested the final hill and a large, flat expanse of grass emerged before us. (I say “crested”, but this is something of a misnomer; the mountain never seems to end.) A small herd of water buffalo grazed on the edges of the field. The kids ran onto it with abandon, whooping, yelling and waving their arms.

Here we spent the next couple of hours. The children jumped, yelled, and rolled around in the grass. For some time, they were intent on hunting for deer, looking into the jungles, fields, and over the edges of cliffs for signs. When no deer appeared, we played a variety of games: soccer, tag, and “Water and Ice”. Occasionally one of them would shout when they found a leech.

After a while they decided they wanted to continue up the mountain, towards the jungle, and ran across to the edge of the playfield. I yelled at them. While I wouldn’t have minded going into the jungle on my own, I wasn’t keen to journey into prime leopard territory with 9 capricious kids prone to wandering off.

The playfield, with a group of bhai playing volleyball.

“But we don’t have to go home yet,” complained one of the boys from my family. “Auntie said that we could leave here at 3 or 4pm.”

“Yeah, and she told you not to go into the jungle, either, right?” I responded, having been witness to her stern and hurried admonishments in front of my house that morning. He fell silent.

So instead they subjected themselves to some more playing on the grass, which lasted for a little while until they got restless again. At this time the clouds were looking dark, and I was ready to go home; but they wanted to explore a little more and insisted on continuing around the mountain. “Didju, jum!” they urged, wandered away once again across the hill. I watched them reluctantly from a lookout for several minutes, squinting to make out their tiny figures among the rocks. I hoped that some of them would wander back.

None of them did.

Rolling down grassy hills: an ancient and secular pastime.

“Come on!” they yelled.

“Where??” I yelled back.

“Over here!”

“Why??” I yelled again.

“We’re hungry! There’s guava!”

“It’s going to be far!”

“No it’s not!” came the response.

I considered my options. I didn’t want to continue wandering into unknown territory when it would take another hour and a half to get home. At the same time, any powers of persuasion I may have possessed meant little when the majority of my audience was almost out of earshot. 

I ceded. “Okay. We’ll go on for ten minutes and then head home for the village. Okay?”

Bright eyes twinkled. “Okay!”

Satisfied enough, I followed. We rounded the bend of a house and traipsed through a narrow and uneven path riddled with pockets of mud and rocks. Along this stretch of ground the kids found a small house down the way, almost hidden in the tall grass. No one was home except for a couple of cows, and the kids shared some laughs as one of the boys sat on one of them and pretended that the place belonged to his uncle.

A view of the playfield from a higher vantage. No guava or deer today.

A family from our village passes by on its way home after an afternoon of cutting grass for its livestock.

After exploring the small, empty house, we started heading home. As it turned out, the path we were on circled back to the trail leading down to our village.

Soon enough I got stopped by some English-speaking 20- or 30- somethings and spent some time talking to them. While this occurred, the girls of the group got bored and left for the village on their own without comment. Then at the volleyball court, the boys began playing soccer with someone else from the village.

It started to rain.

I decided to walk home with the family who had been threshing rice before – they had finished their work in the paddies and began trudging slowly over the slickening rocks and mud with their heavy bundles of rice and straw.

I let the boys know I was departing and left them to play soccer, and then followed the family back to their house. I talked with them for a while, was briefly featured in one of the nephew's live Tiktok streams, and enjoyed some afternoon snacks. Then I said goodbye, feeling tired, and ended the day at my house.

While not the day I had initially expected, it turned out to be a grand day out.

The 8 year old: a small and fickle creature. After several failed attempts at a group photo, I managed this one on a large rock overlooking the hill, where we had gathered to admire the view.