I am writing this blog during a blackout in an evening in Kathmandu. The power here is out, around 5 to up to 8 PM, every evening. Having been here for a few days, I now tried to adjust my lifestyle to live in the blackout. Yesterday, I was walking in Thamel, the downtown of Kathmandu until it’s getting too dark to walk alone.
Today, I showered the dark and I tried to recharge the battery of my laptop whenever I could to make sure that I would be able to use my laptop during the blackout time. Electricity is a luxury here. But Americans or even Thais who enjoy incessant supply of power often take things for granted.
Not only power supply but the availability of international phone lines is also limited. A friend of mine still could not phone me from Thailand. Another friend of mine managed to phone me from America after his fourth try. The voice nonetheless was cut off many times, though. We had to say “hello? Are you still with me” many times in our conversation.
I am not saying this to make you shade tears for me. Instead, I learn to appreciate simple things like the continuity of power supply. Life is not so bad without light. I could spend time looking out the window to see Kathmandu’s sky. After the first night in a tiny room, I decided to move into bigger (and more expensive) room with lots of window.
In spite of the light and etc, I think I made the right choice to come to Kathmandu. First, the city and people are very friendly. After a few days living here, I got to know many people around this downtown area because the neighborhood is so density-population and small that we bumped into each other every day. (FYI: I haven’t really got to know my neighbours at my Little Rock apartment). A seller of handicraft shop close to my guest house would walk to me and talk to me every day whenever I stopped at a nearby shop in front of my guest house for a bottle of cold Fanta. (My room does not have a refrigerator). The rickshaw who drove me only once would ask me whenever I came down from the guest house if I wanted to use his service again.
Coming from Bangkok where some red shirts just burned infrastructure and buildings for nothing, I appreciate Nepali spirit. They are generally happy, even though their infrastructure is poor. Several roads are tiny with one lane and only few of them have sidewalks. Now I started to master the art of pulling my laptop trolley to avoid accident while I was walking and sharing the road with the cars and motorbikes (which can come from every direction!). Thus, every evening when I arrived the guest house after this exciting journey on the road, I would give myself a reward by buying a cold Fanta, drinking it, while watching people passing by. I would sit outside and let my sweat dried a lit before entering the guest house.
READ Nepal’s people here are idealistic and passionate about their work. They are like a family and they treat me like I am one of them. I love the atmosphere during the lunchtime when the staff, around 10, will have lunch together. A staff will cook the same food for all of us every day. Now, I don’t have a heart to leave anything on my plate. On the first day, the cook asked me if there’s anything wrong with her food when she saw the leftover on my plate. Our lunch menu consisted of dried rice and soy bean nuts which I was not familiar with. But now, I enjoy everything she cooked for us because she made it with her generosity. Apart from enjoying free lunch, of course, I love to listen to READ Nepal’s staff discussing interesting issues such as why some of Nepali in the rural area married at very young age, say 10years old, and the new feminist movement in Nepal.
I will be also travelling with READ staff to visit a library in a few hours. This weekend, READ Nepal will organize a two-day workshop for rural people at Jhuwani which is around 5 hours driving from the capital. People here were apologetic about the weather and they reminded me many times that Jhuwani would be very hot. And I would have to remind them that I am from a tropical country of Thailand.
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