Dasain! ("Dah sine")

Happy Dasain! It is the middle of a 15-day festival here, the biggest one of the year, so families are getting together with relatives coming from as far away as America. On the eighth day of the festival, every family bought a goat for about $60 US and sacrificed it by cutting its head off with hopefully one blow of a kind of heavy knife (an "aussi" or whatever is the biggest chunk of metal you can find). Pretty much every part of the goat is saved for eating except the hair and skin, with the exception of the head, which is torched/BBQ'ed with the hair on. Due to the ease of cooking, the lungs are eaten as an appetizer, served in boiled goat blood. For the main course, my family and I finished off the rest of the respiratory system and connecting parts. We've had goat curry with our rice for the past 5 meals, and not all pieces of meat are equally enjoyable. Some of it just seems to be pure bone, and being that things are not very well lit at night, I'm sure I've downed some goat scalp, goat hair, bone bits, and odd parts of the digestive system at some point (yep, everything from esophagus to colon is eaten). It's really not all the bad. I only complain about the goat fat that solidifies all over your fingers since the Nepali spoon is nothing but your hand. Everybody washes it all off, but still.

Day 9 is fairly relaxed. If you have not built a massive swing by now, today is the day. Every village builds at least one swing (called "ping" - ironic for all u golfers). Depending on your resources, it consists of 4 huge bamboo poles set up fairly vertically and a crossbar bamboo pole to tie the rope to that makes the swing. From crossbar to ground is usually about 30 ft, so it may be said that they don't mess around. It's done by standing on the swing instead of sitting, which can make an American or any foreigner for that matter look fairly uncoordinated. There's really not much concern for safety in their minds, making me and them a lot alike. They often swing to about 90 degrees and sometimes with 2 people at a time. I saw an older lady give it a go. She was definitely older than sixty, but with no fear, she gave it an ambitious effort but lost control, gripping the rope as her heels smacked and dragged along the dirt. She kind of went unconscious for some moments, but she turned out alright.

Day 10 was sweet. It kind of felt like Christmas Eve the night before with Silina and Pramila chanting Bholi Dasain ("Tomorrow Dasain"), so waking up that morning had a lot of holiday excitement. The porch was being set up with sliced apples and bananas, roti/bread rings, pink rice (as you see in the picture) for giving tikkas on the forehead, money, jamara leaves, spitual water, and of course, more rice. Children receive tikkas from the adults in the family, receiving wishes and blessings for long life, good friends, great joy, and good health. They then get a money bill and some food and move on to the next house. Some children get very much into it, going to as many as fifty houses, so it kind of felt like a mix between Halloween and Christmas. I went to about five cause I was having too much fun at the Ping. At one point the grandfather put holy cow manure over my door and on a post in my room. It's still there.



P.S. - I am uploading more photos to my google account because it takes forever to load to my blog, and they can be viewed at http://picasaweb.google.com/Richard.Rigby.Jr.

Ode to the Himalayas

So I just got back from the ABC trek in the Himalayas. It was sweet, but man there were a lot of stairs. Every night was staying in a 'hotel' - room and bed and tea and meals. If they get you in the mood, you might even do the Haka for them or commence a karaoke party with all nationalities involved, both of which I succombed to. Still a good way to enjoy the Himalayas no matter how much you want to simply focus on nature.


I kinda blew out my right knee (I know I know, there's always some sort of something wrong with me all the time, but there were so many stairs. Like, they could not just build a trail that followed the river. It had to go 2,000 stairs up to one village to give them business, then 2,000 stairs down to the river (it always had a sweet bridge though) then 2,000 stairs up to the next village to give them business and so on), so I'll do less trekking after volunteering and more kayaking, elephant riding and bungee jumping, maybe.


Life on the trail was sweet though. Pretty much half the people were Nepali porters carrying tons of anything from coke bottles to computer monitors on their back between the villages wearing nothing but flip flops and sometimes just in their bare feet. It's also pretty amazing what kind of food you might get... pizza, macaroni, spaghetti, omelettes, dhal baat of course, the mind-blowing snickers spring roll, and the soon-to-be-world-famous gurung (or tibetan) bread. I learned how to make that and the snickers spring roll, and holy shnikes you are in for a trip if i get to make it for u.


I saw a yak 30 minutes before it was 'sacrificed'. They said the meat was really tasty. There were also goats everywhere since every family needs one for the ongoing festival which involves a goat sacrifice tomorrow. More on that to come. Sorry only one pic. It just takes forever.

Richardisation

(This might considered a ridiculous post by many of you.)

Globalisation is the term scholars and street junkies use to describe the intermingling of cultures that serves to almost homogenise the ways of life in the world, if not to at least result in the influence of some cultures on many others. Because of America's influence in the world, many think that globalisation is really just Americanisation. And with its often negative implications, it it sometimes referred to as McDonaldisation. Well, it seems that I've been an influence in the world as well, and whether it be intentionally or unintentionally, I will leave up to the rabbits to decide (Why? because they have rabbit feet, and supposedly they have some magical power). Anyways, this entry is about Richardisation, and I use the "s" for a literary purpose and because a certain country I am very fond of uses it insted of "z/zed" for many things.

My village, Sarangkot, just finished up "Sarangkot Idol" (Indian Idol is very popular over here especially since a Nepalese dude just won it). They had me, as the guest of honor, sing a song at the end. I chose "Hold my Hand" by Hootie and the Blowfish since already kind of popular among stories told about me in trips abroad, but there was no 40 yr old kiwi lady serenaded to this time. More importantly, a girl named Laxmi won a bunch of CocaCola flavoured candies and gave me one. As a side note, they performed this at 8am on a Saturday morning. That does not fit very well with my American expectations of when a singing contest should be performed. But, they children have to spend the rest of the day cutting grass for their family's buffalo to eat and to get, yes get, their weekly shower, which I've adopted as a routine as well. The first 3-4 days of going without a shower get kind of annoying, but after that, you feel like you could go for weeks comfortably without a shower. Thus showering has become somewhat bittersweet for me. There's more on my hygeine that I could get into, but I'll spare you.

There is also, of course, the random, "What the heck is Richard doing?", and I guess that is how this village man ended up wearing my sunglasses in that pic. Nice guy though. I like his family, too. They have a daughter named Radika and a son Barat. It's too bad though the pic with my sideways hat on him did not turn out.

Yesterday, I performed the Haka about 8 times in the past 24 hrs and still kind of lightheaded from it. Locations ranged from classrooms to village roads and forests. The kids and open-minded adults love it. I've been teaching my classes with a "Camp Ozark Morning Show" kind of structure, which includes themes like pull-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks (using only 2 fingers, of course); International Food; Country of the Day; Famous People; and bien sur, Sports and Inspiration. Every title is yelled by me in some sort of funky, or what Superdaved would think to be harmonic, rhythm, and they must repeat (dohoryaunus). They also ask for a song, and the best one I can recite by heart is Fresh Prince of Bellaire by Will Smith. It does not occur here without some sort of ghetto-ing of the outfit of course. I must use earphones to perform Yellow by Coldplay, which I'll perform for you upon request if you really want. It's as good as the Chowmein in China. Around the World is another sort of favorite among the schoolchildren, and the last time it was performed, I used a boy's forearm as a microphone. He nearly lost all circulation by the end of it all. I really got into it.

When I call role, I like to have the students at my fingertips. Instead of replying with "Here," "Present," or "Gifted" (as Travis Handerson loved to do in 6th grade Choir and I think once or twice in 6th grade English). No, instead they gladly recite whatever I put on the board, which has included "Go the All Blacks," "Go 'stros," and "Go Caddo." If you have any requests, send them to me, and I will try to serve them before my time is up here. I sometimes get video footage of it, too.

That's honestly all I can think of right now in terms of Richardisation. There's probably more, but they just don't come to mind right now or completely evade my awareness. I cannot complete this post without also mentioning that I am not without my own influences, thus influencing others at the mercy of Richardisation, but it starts to hurt if you think about the matter too much. That dude who wrote Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller, who I would like to later write an entry about after all this Nepal stuff is said and done. Well, it may never be all said, but, you know the phrase. I am reading The Three Musketeers right now, and I certainly cannot say that is not influencing me right now. Alexander Dumas certainly has captivated me on this one. The Count of Monte Cristo was kind of cool, but at the time I read it, I just wanted to settle for the cliffnotes. But this, The Three Musketeers, is really good. I'll confess to this world wide web that I even write down some of the phrases Alex has some of the musketeers say, and don't be surprised if I pull one out on you when I get back. Furthermore, I've always thought of myself as a Renaissance/Bohemian guy (I know Bohemiam can have some very negative connotation with it, so you may want further explanation from me at another time and place). So I thought it was this Renaissance side that was pulling me towards this novel, but even though the setting of the story is in the Renaissance period, it was written during the period of Romanticism. I really did not think that the Romantic side of it was getting me, but then yesterday, one of the schoolboys called me a Romantic. I did not ask for further explanation, so it is left as an ambiguous comment, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to say that I am influenced by Bohemia, Renaissance Land, and a little bit by Romanticville. This is getting out of hand. Nepal is influencing me, too, and vice-versa, so we'll call it even on that matter.

*I really wish I could put up more photos for you guys, but it honestly takes about 30 minutes for me to load one photo on these computers. Maybe I'll just go nuts when I get back. It's holiday time now, so school is out of session, and I am going on a 7 day trek into the mountains with my host dad and another volunteer. Hopefully, I be able to show you as least 3 pics from it. Cheers!