My first full day in community.

I was awoken at 7am by the sound of baby goats charging past my window and the smell of chiya tea. The morning was mostly spent sitting around as Raj chatted to the family, with me smiling politely when they looked my way. I definitely should have spent more time learning the language. Thankfully, I was saved by John, Jess and their Nepali counterparts who came to take me on a tour of the village.

Our first stop was John and Sudhakar’s host home, the village leaders house. We were greeted by a particulary derpy looking buffalo and a toddler holding a baby goat. The toddler’s mother, the village leader’s wife, spoke a little English and taught us all of the different Nepali words for goats. All I can remember is that ‘Bahkra’ is a male goat. Or maybe it’s a female…

The rest of our tour was pretty short lived as we had to be back to our host homes for breakfast. However, we did get to see a kaleidoscope of butterflies (that’s the official name for a group of them, like a parliament of owls) and got a proper grasp of how steep a hill the village was built on. With the team leader’s house at the bottom, and my host home at the top, there was no way I wasn’t getting fit.

After another delicous breakfast of curry and rice, the whole of NC5 (This was the assigned name of our group. It stands for Nepal Community 5. There was 8 groups in total, 4 on WASH) went on a hike to search for a likely place to shower. We were the only group that had a river within walking distance of our village, but whilst we could hear it, we couldn’t find a safe way down. By late afternoon everyone was fed up and decided to head back, with the exception of John, Jess and myself.

With the health and safety concious leaders out of the way, we quickly found the perfect waterfall. Granted getting to it involved scooting down a steep bank on our bums, like children going down the stairs, but the promise of being clean was definitely worth it. With no shower curtain available, the three of us stripped down to our underwear and took turns bracing the icy water. I like to think I’m some sort of a gentleman, but I fully admit to giving Jess’ body a quick glance. She later admitted to doing the same, so it’s not creepy. Right?

On our walk back we decided to keep the whole thing a secret from the others. We thought the addition of a tarpauline to the waterfall would ruin how freeing it felt. Luckily, they had bigger news to share, so it was easy to cover up. As it turned out, that night was the festival of Shiva (something about a new moon and the arrival of summer apparently) so we would be having a bonfire to celebrate.

We sat around the fire chatting, looking at the stars and, in my case, stubbornly refusing to give into peer pressure and dance. A great way to round off a pretty great day.

Dads and Dogs

Our second day in Archale marked the choosing of commitees for the various tasks we would be involve in. Everyone would have an input on everything, but in general the people on the committees would be in charge of organising those particular tasks. To choose from there were: Infrastructure, Development, Training and Awareness Raising. You were meant to put your name down for a couple you were interested in, but since the thing that had drawn me to the WASH programme was the practicality of it, I only put my name down for Infrastructure. No one seemed mind and I quickly found myself on a commitee of myself, Raj and Jess. We were in charge of organising the digging the pipeline and building the toilets and hand-wash stations.

With the boring stuff out of the way, we spent the rest of the day wandering around the village again. Only this time, we found a dog. As you can see from the photos, it was some kind of mutt, looking like across between a Shiba Inu and a Collie. The Raleigh rule of no touching stray dogs, for fear of rabies, lasted all of 5 minutes and he loved the attention. Even the team laeders were joining in. We named him Ago, meaning fire in Nepali, due to his almost fox-like appearance.

After snacks of yams and popcorn at Jess’ host home, and another bonfire, we went our separate ways, with Ago following me home. At first, my host family didn’t seem to mind, but as night came they tried to shoo him away. It turned out the reason why there weren’t other dogs in the village was because tigers in the surrounded jungle would come in and eat them. I wouldn’t want a tiger near my house either.

Not long later, there came the sound of music and laughter from the house just below. I was told that the people down there were having a pre-drinks before they went on a night hunt for wild hen, armed only with slingshots. Bearing in mind that they would be hunting in the same jungle that the tigers lived in, I decided they were bloody mental.

One last highlight of the day was my host Dad bringing out a conch shell, that had been fashioned into a horn. God knows where he’d gotten it from, considering Nepal is entirely landlocked, but we all had a good laugh trying to get as good a note out of it as he did. This somehow led to my host family, with Raj acting as translator, asking what religion and caste my family are. A bit weird but at least I felt part of the conversation for the first time.