I find it really hard to put into words just how special it is to be included into the life of a village and impossible to express the joy that comes from loving and being loved by these people.
10 April – 21 April. Kathmandu and Mayattari

A week in the village.

In 2006 I made contact with Sudip Aryal, a passionate and driven young man who is feverishly working to bring about improvement in the quality of life for people living in rural areas in Nepal. After exchanging a few emails I decided I would come for a few weeks and stay with his family in Mayatari, a village of about 100-150 people, 45 km south of Pokhara.

During that time I did some English teaching in the schools and community centers nearby and some planning and scheming on how best Sudip could carry out his plans.

A month and a bit living in the village is where I learned most of my Nepali language and met most of my friends in Nepal.

I find it really hard to put into words just how special it is to be included into the life of a village and impossible to express the joy that comes from loving and being loved by these people.

Often as tourists in third world nations we are treated differently, looked at as a source of finance rather than a person, and it is hard to know what is a genuine expression of friendship, or welcome, and what is just another money hungry suck-up. Even though I've spent a couple of months in Mayatari over the years there is still the occasional person that thinks I am the town philanthropist. This can be a bit frustrating, but one thing that makes me certain that I have past the “tourist” stage here is the children.

I find it easier to spend time playing and working with the young children because not only is it great fun, but the language they use is much simpler and they are good and patient teachers. When the children on the street start yelling “Cam has come, Cam has come!” as I walk down the path from my house and then grab me by the hand to go for a wander, I know that it is genuine affection, free of any of the regular pitfalls of being a tourist..

When they say that it is time to go cutting grass, and that I should come, I know that I'm getting the best guided tour of village life that there is.

When they rush to the bushes by the creek and come back with handfuls of fresh picked berries, just for me, any of my rules of washing my hands before I eat, only eating fruit that's been washed in purified water and not eating things that others have touched, go out the window.

When they discover that I like a certain type of lolly from the shop and start buying packets of them for me most days it is humbling.

When we walk through the corn fields and they insist that I have to practice dancing the Nepali way I can't resist their eager pleas and we all end up rolling around in laughter.

When one of them, who hardly speaks a word of English, becomes my interpreter because she knows when I have understood and when I haven't, and can mime just about anything for me, I cherish the special connection.

I was lucky that it was school holidays when I arrived :)

Here in the village a typical day may look like this:

6am – Begrudgingly wake up because it's gotten cold in just a sheet, pull a blanket through the mosquito net and try to catch another couple of hours sleep, even though it would be better to get into the habit of getting up with the sun and going to bed with the sun.

8am – Roll out of bed in time to catch a small breakfast. The endless stream of steaming hot tea or coffee, grown and roasted here on the property, begins. “Nasta ke khaani?” (breakfast what eat?), “je paincha, tyo khaani” (whatever is available, I'll eat that”). So out comes a plate with fresh cooked roti (flat bread) smothered in butter or honey, including the honeycomb, grown here on the property.

What else? Banana maybe. Yes yes eat banana. Also grown here on the property.

9am - I like to take a shower in the slight chill of morning and let myself dry in the warm morning sun. The shower is an obstacle here and I'm not quite sure how they get fully clean, but I basically strip to the underwear, shower in it, then sneak to a hidden corner and dry off to put on clean clothes.

After showering it's nice to roll out the mat on the mandir (raised platform) and either nap a little more, read from my novel or bible, or just stare into the trees and hills and ponder life. It's impossible to go more than a couple of minutes before Mum or Dad or the house help comes over with cushions or pillows to make my stay more comfortable, despite my best efforts to convince them not to worry about me.

10:30ish – time to do some kind of activity for the day

Day 1 – off to the street to meet all the children from my previous trips.
Day 2 – visit to a newly built community centre to see the progress and sit through a tediously long meeting before I couldn't handle it anymore, understanding only a little of what was being said, and went outside to play with the kids.
Day 3 – a “short” ride along a “not so good” road to visit a newly built computer room in a school. I have deduced that I should multiply any estimate of time, distance, or road quality by at least two, and in Sudip's case, by five. If the ride up wasn't bad enough, we brought a broken computer out with us, wedged between myself and my passenger. Aagh!
Day 4 – up to the top of our land to dream about building a small house/office or guesthouse in the future, with a view across the rice fields to the himalayas. Maybe it could be used to bring small groups of people to teach in the schools and community centres. I laid out some logs to show the walls in my design.

Day 5 – climbing to Beklachhar, the hill opposite our house. After spending about two months in Mayatari over the last few years, looking out at the big hill on the other side of the valley saying that one day I would go to the top of it, I finally got my act together and headed up the hill with Torb. It nearly killed me – easily the most exercise I've done in months! But the views and the solitude were worth it.

Day 6 – a short ride to a nearby village where mum's older sister lives. Have tea with the older sister while Mum sneakily goes shopping to buy me gifts. That's ok, I thought she was arranging to have some girl brought here to introduce me to – a prospective wife. I think I'll take the gift.

And so on.

1pm – Back home for daal bhaat tarkari (lentils, rice and vegetables)

2pm – more reading or lazing around the house

4pm – down to the village to “gumnu” - wonder around. I like to grab a couple of kids and make the rounds of the houses clustered along the street, saying hi and reminding myself who everyone is and how they are connected and, of course, drinking tea.

Then I come back to my favourites, my three little sisters (their older brother has gone to work as a ticket boy on a bus and doesn't come back much anymore), and sit and play and talk.

Whatever we do I usually come home with a few more words in my repertoir and I'm tired enough to have dinner and lie down to look at the stars and sleep.

While being here I've also researched the coffee industry in Syangja district and the possibility of importing to Australia. Not an easy task, I imagine, but perhaps it could be an activity that stretches me and helps improve the economy of the area... as well as giving me an excuse to come back every so often to check up on things.

At any one time there are just so many things going on in the village. Here are some of the things that make the world go round, so to speak:
Old men sewing clothes with their pedal sewing machines.

People grinding all their own spices from fresh produce grown in the village.

Young men cutting branches from the tops of trees while holding on with just their feet.

Dinner being cooked by firelight because of constant power outages.

Me carrying loads of... nothing... in my Dhoko

Me attempting to separate the chaff from the pods.

An 11 year old working on the family home brew.

A mad rush to buy the best of the banana tree roots that have just been brought into town.

Here's some funny names for relatives:
My nephews and nieces call me “Mumma”

My mother calls here dad's younger sister “poopoo”

I call my mother's older sister “thulo uma”, literally “Big mother” - I hide a chuckle.

And just some other photos