Day-to-Days

It's been two months since I arrived at my permanent site. This heralds the common question: what am I doing, now that I've settled in? What does work look like? And what is my average day-to-day at site?

Well, Dear Reader, the answer is not as clear as you may expect it to be. Should you seek it, you may find what you wish within the murky and meandering depths of this blog post. Foray past the jump break if you dare...

So here's the thing: I don't really have an average day to day.

Will I ever? I wonder. Here are some snapshots of the recent days I've had.

October 19th. Today I walked down the village to my local government office to have a chat with the ward chairman. He wasn't in (it's a few days before the equivalent of Christmas break), so for a while I hung out and drank tea at the office. Then I went to the chairman's house, which is where he was, reportedly, and no one was home... so I decided to walk up the hill and then had another tea and a long conversation with the president of the farmer's group. A nice bonus was a conversation with the tailor who works on her property, whom I had been meaning to talk to about his bees and bee experience. And yesterday I helped my family harvest their rice paddies. That took most of the day.

My cousin-in-law, Esa, delivering one of the last bundles of rice of the day to be threshed.

 

October 26th. Today I ventured to the tailor's house early in the morning with my visiting host sister. He lives about 35 minutes up the hill from our house. I left with the purpose of observing his bee hives and gathering information. With the help of my host sister, who speaks fluent English, it was a very productive visit and I felt great about it. We explored his village a bit, then came home for lunch. After lunch I headed to the house of the president of the farmer's group, because I had caught wind that they were harvesting some of their honey combs with the tailor's help; but they had already finished the work by the time I got there, so I ended up hanging around instead, chatting, and picked some hot peppers in one of their vegetable tunnels. Later in the evening one of our goats was having trouble kidding... and after some assistance from family members, we added 3 kids to the family!

Examining tailor Tara dai's beehives together - a man of many enterprises.

 

November 4th. Today an earthquake woke me out of bed at midnight. It was short-lived, and I went back to sleep until 5am, when my host mother and I embarked on a potato seed-fetching quest to a village about an hour and a half up the hill. Admittedly, it was a beautiful sunrise and walk, but my shoes were wet and I was a little grumpy. I'm not used to carrying loads with a namlo, so on the way down with our potato sacks in tow, I had to take frequent breaks. Any time we stopped my arms were stuck in a T-rex pose until I gingerly persuaded them straight. We were late returning around 10:30/11, ate, and then I was set to make a compost pile with my host father. Shortly into the project, it began to rain... so we retreated and had our afternoon snack. It was still raining after we ate, so I fell asleep on the floor of my room, and woke up a few hours later...

Dawn breaks over the hills as my host mom and I get a bit lost on the way to the potato seller.

 

November 8th. Today I did not do much of anything. I spent the day recovering from a cold, as I had done yesterday. By late afternoon I felt good enough to go about for a walk, and ideally have some productive conversations with villagers. As I was heading out the door, my host mother returned from the field and insisted that I wait to leave until after having my afternoon snack. "It's khaajaa time," she said. "Sit down." I sat down. Then my host father returned and saw my backpack in the frame of the door. "Where are you going?" he asked sharply. "Out," I said, with some hesitance. "...For a walk." "With your face this way and your voice that way, you shouldn't be going anywhere," he retorted. Right. Well... thanks, dad.

Here in our village we have no day-to-day structure, so we have to build that up ourselves. I'm finding it difficult to have directed conversations with villagers, and I'm working on that. Somehow tasks that sound simple at surface level are not simple to execute. It feels like in a video game when you have a lot of quests with multiple steps but none of them are in progress because you keep getting distracted by exploring, and other things in the world, and other NPCs that pop up. And when you're finally thinking you're on to one of your quests, you discover that it wasn't specific enough and you went to the wrong place, or the right place at the wrong time, or misunderstood the instructions so you have to try again later.

Maalaa (garlands of flowers, often marigolds) piled up on a desk at the village health post in anticipation of a visiting NGO.

When I'm out of the house, there's a lot of getting stopped and talking to neighbors or attending community events and meetings. One day I was invited to a community health volunteer meeting at the village health post, where a dental hygiene workshop was taking place. Thanks to some visuals and serendipitous slides in English I understood a fair amount. The mother/farmers' group meetings that I attend I understand significantly less -- it's more about being present (and trying to understand things) than getting anything done. At least that's what I try to tell myself until villagers put me on the spot.

The first few months here are very slow and most of our expectations are of "integration," which is basically existing, familiarizing with the village and people, and assessing resources, rather than any technical work. I have been told that volunteers usually start being "productive" at the 6 month mark at the earliest, and more success is found in the second year than the first. Many of us struggle with feelings of unproductivity, which is normal. I try not to stress too much about it.

***

As agriculture volunteers, we do have primary project foci for our community development. These are:

• Beekeeping
• Fruit tree farming
• Ginger and turmeric farming
• Mushroom cultivation
• Nutrition/health
• Income generation/business management

The compost pile I built with my host-father, comprised of straw, green leaves, manure, and water. After a few days it started to produce heat. I was thrilled. In Peace Corps, you get good at reveling in the small things.

Since the dominant rural demographic is women, and because of some gender inequalities and disproportionate power dynamics, we have been directed to work with women as much as possible in these regards (specifically, women of reproductive age -- WRA). Empowering women empowers their lives, the lives of their families, children, of their future children's children, and of their community. And although our community members eagerly expect that we have arrived to educate and train, our intentions are less top-down. The more local collaboration we can muster, the better.

For example: in my village, there are many households that were granted bees and beehives as part of a government-subsidized program--but none of the hive owners have any training for bee management. A problem, especially since many supplies that were considered essential in training tend to be missing when I conduct inspections. So I needed some local knowledge to understand how that worked. That came in the form of tailor Tara dai, who, as I discovered, has considerable beekeeping experience. He helped resolve a lot of confusion that I had and has proved to be a helpful resource. Although he has kept a lot of bees, he is lacking queening knowledge, however, and expressed a desire to learn. So I hope to work with him to provide beekeeping support to my community while helping him in the process. Beekeeping has prohibitively (or at least deterrently) expensive starting costs that dissuade villagers from engaging in it. They don't have many resources after all -- the two most expensive startup costs are queens (colonies) and modern beehives (houses), costing about 5000 Nepali rupees each. I'm thinking perhaps I can work out a deal where I provide Tara with queen management training, and in turn he can provide queens at low-cost to my villagers, thus making beekeeping more accessible. This is just an idea -- I have not discussed it with him yet; but hopefully this illustrates the nature of how our work can look.

As illustrated by the above, I am (we are) by no means experts: we don't have the experience and we don't have many answers, despite the high expectations we sometimes encounter from villagers. We do try to be as intentional and sustainable as possible, though. Aside from some small grant projects, efforts are pointedly determined and conducted through local resources: labor, materials, and money. Soliciting funds from any source outside of the country is forbidden, for example.

Ultimately, though, we are here for the community, and have flexibility on what projects we can undertake as long as we don't completely abandon our primary objectives. We are expected to discuss the community's needs and see what we can do. I want to start doing a weekly litter cleanup, which is very simple. And if it works out, maybe eventually start a girls' group at school where we can talk about health, diet, menstruation, and other educational things.

Despite it all, it's been emphasized that our impact as volunteers will probably be pretty small. I'm okay with that.

Overlooking the clear sky and the valleys from a village on the way to Tara dai's house.

***

The weather is starting to get cold in the mornings and evenings. I am not really looking forward to the winter season, nor the short, dark days that come with it and perpetually cold feet that keep me up at night. I can feel winter's steely fingers inching along the extensions of my body and mind, grasping at me.

For now, though, the sun is still warm and bright in the day. I try to be content with building connections, talking to people, drinking tea, reading, and living life here, even if the pace is quite slow. 

Smoke from a wood-fired oven rises from the side of a house in a Magar village high up the hill.