Hello all!
I hope you, your family, and your friends are doing well given the circumstances and staying as happy and healthy as possible.
Here's a short update from me. Though nothing exciting has happened in the past month, I thought I'd pull together some thoughts.
I'm still in Nepal living at my grandma's. I didn't take one of the many evacuating flights for foreigners, partially because I feel safer here but also partially because it seems almost sick to be able to "flee" while millions of people here don't have that option. Sometimes I think I made the wrong choice but I reassure myself... it really is safer here. Only some 50 cases or so and a very strict lockdown thats been set for a month now. Of course that doesn't mean I'm in a safe pocket here; I think quite the opposite: it has the potential to be catastrophic. Poor health system, few funds, corruption, inaction, lack of PPE, few hospital staff, other infectious diseases brought by mosquitoes and the coming sweltering summer adding to the burden, etc etc etc yada yada yada. Mostly though the bigger threat seems to be starvation or at least horrid food insecurity-people will riot if the lockdown keeps being extended.... I just hope the situation won't get that bad and I hope (a bit selfishly) that I'll be able to get out of here before it gets that bad.
There's so much pain everywhere, big and small. I feel like we are living through a nightmarishly long movie! When can we wake up?
Corona has unexpectedly put an end to a beautiful gap year that I really enjoyed... It hasn't technically ended but nothing has started per se either.... so it's a strange limbo period I'm in with lots of unfinished endings and mixed conflicting emotions. Sometimes it can all feel too much.... I'm sure other people feel that too.
Besides occasionally being jolted back into the reality that a pandemic is raging, I am actually doing quite well and staying really busy to fill my days. In the absence of any schoolwork (yay gap year) I've been reading lots of great short stories and novels (my favorite ones so far have been "Toba Tek Singh" and "Behind the Beautiful Forevers"), asking friends in the US to send me their favorite readings from classes, watching lots of good Netflix documentaries and new shows (I watched a really chilling one called "Caliphate" about how ISIS recruits vulnerable teens from Europe... highly recommend), catching up with friends over Zoom, drawing, writing, and taking meditation classes with my Buddhist aunt and through an online meditation community. I picked up gardening too and have been tending to all sorts of vegetables and flowers in my grandma's yard. To prepare for college in Holland I'm taking Dutch Duolingo classes (its a really weird kind of ugly language- like a strange hybrid of German and English) My dream however is to master Devanagari and Hindi so I'm diligently practicing the Sanskrit alphabet and learning Hindi over Duolingo and wayyyy too many cheesy Bollywood films. I'm proud to say I can now follow along conversations... though speaking is another matter lol. I'm also taking a really interesting online course offered by Stanford on International Human Rights and Women's Health. It was a shock to have to write essays and take tests again HAHA but I'm enjoying it and have learned lots of facts I wish were not true! (I highly recommend if you're interested in getting the $5 kindle version of "From Outrage to Courage-The Unjust and Unhealthy Situation of Women in Poorer Countries and What They Are Doing About It") And lastly and perhaps most excitingly, I've been interning with a local rural empowerment non profit and have been fully immersed in their work. They entrusted their website with me and asked me to update some things.... and I almost deleted the whole site (shh) before I quickly realized what I was doing! They've been incredibly trusting of me and open to my ideas (I think that stems from the fact I haven't shared my age hah) and very kind. Right now, I'm helping put together a girls empowerment project for Far-Western Nepal where poverty has taken a much tighter grip on people's lives. I've been reflecting a lot on what it means to be an "empowered" person and an "empowered girl" and what steps/tools you need to get there. What needs to happen to assure a girl living in a violently patriarchal society that she is worthy and appreciated? How do you teach girls that menstruation is not a bad thing or that education is the key to their potential???? Mostly, working on the project has allowed me to reflect on myself and how I went from a really shy, insecure, and AWKWARD person to someone much more confident, connected with myself, and a bit less awkward. What happened along the way? What people have helped "empower" me? What opportunities did I get that really changed my way of being? How can you "teach" others to be empowered?
Along with keeping myself busy busy, I find myself circling back subconsciously to the last few days in my village before I abruptly evacuated to Kathmandu. Why didn't I take up that offer for tea or dinner from my friends? Why didn't I have more conversations with people? Why didn't I go on that last hike up the mountain? Why was I on such a bad mood that last day? I couldn't have known the magical but difficult time I had spent in a pocket of rural Nepal would come to a screeching halt! I keep replaying the moment my aunt called me and essentially commanded me to return to Kathmandu. And mostly my mind keeps swirling around the surreal memory of hopping on the rickety bus, bags in tow, heading through the village down the mountain as I waved bye to people and friends promising I'd be back in a few weeks once coronavirus was over. LOL that was optimistic of me. I fear that was the last time I see many of my students, peers, and friends... at least for a while until I finish college and can come back :) I still have some $1000 from my fundraiser that I need to spend on books and supplies for the school and I was really hoping to help sponsor a few kids from a broken and violent family to escape their situation and attend a private boarding school in Kathmandu. But all these wishes and plans are on pause for now...Unfinished business really doesn't feel good. I just hope I can accomplish these in the future when I can come back at a safer time :)
I do really regret not being with one of my friends during a particularly tough time. Just two days after I left one of my closest friends gave birth to a wonderful cute but ill boy... I wish I had been there with her to help during a highly anticipated and stressful time.... And I do feel really bad that one of my co-teachers and good good friends can't carry through with her planned marriage! She fell in love with a man of a different caste (big big no no in this society) and had these elaborate plans she told me of to run away and elope. I was supposed to be a part of the plan, receiving them in Kathmandu for a few days! None of that now... corona is killing all the love in the air LOL.
Today I went on a nice long walk, the first one of its kind in 5 weeks! Here are some photos I shot along the way :)
Stay well and healthy! Miss you all! Thank you for being a part of my life and reading along.
Manju
