Dramas…!

Well sort of.

Unfortunately the government here in Nepal has just self-destructed due to the Maoist leader Prachandra’s resignation on Monday.

As I understand it from speaking to people here and reading the paper, he was trying to get rid of the top level of the army in order to bring his own people in.  The Maoists have still not dispanded what are called their ‘cadres’, which are mostly the young hot-heads who formed their army against the government during the bloody 13 year civil war here.  I’m not given to being that political in this Blog but this situation I know has local people pretty frustrated and concerned and it is definitely worth trying to understand he background to the whole thing.

The general perception is that the Maoists actually had little intention (or ability) in making a democratic government work and rather than governing by concensus in the coalition government, tried to push their own policies through (which having some of the army on their side would have assisted with enormously, obviously).  This meant that when Prachandra didn’t get his way on the generals retiring, he resigned rather than discuss matters, or compromise.

For the Tibetans living here in Nepal, a people already horribly displaced by the events of the 20th century in the name of communism, this is a really worrying time.  Reading between the lines of what Tibetans are saying, they fear a repeat of what they saw and know of from before in Tibet, where as one person put it; ‘They smile at you and even appear to agree with you, and then shoot you dead.”  For the Nepalis I have spoken to, they feel so let down after having had the excitement of their first election (Nepal having been ruled by the royal family previously) and then to see it come to this.

It might be that the remaining parties will be able to form a second coalition, but no one knows what the Maoists will now do.  Will they plunge the country into civil war again?  Will Prachandra be heading out into the hills again to take his cadres back to battle?  And to what ends?  And what are the roles of the alleged other players in this country, i.e. China and India?

For their part, the expats here are keeping their ear to the ground.  Old hands pointed out on Monday that the country didn’t have a government before the elections, but as someone else said, ‘That was when they had the hope of the elections to come.  Now they have tried it and have had it fall apart so soon, people are naturally going to be much more pessimisitic, and that might lead to trouble’.  Bandhs, or strikes, are quite common here as really the only way ordinary people have of expressing their opinions and they can get quite heated and occasionally violent.  Friends who have wanted to travel to and from India by bus recently have either had to wait for the troubles near the Nepal-India border to subside, or to change their plans and fly over the protests in the Terai, in the south of Nepal, instead.

I don’t know.  Life in Boudhanath here can seem a bit of a bubble at times: predominantly Buddhist, peaceful and somewhat (though not completely) isolated from the turmoils of these strikes and the large Maoist rallies this week.  But I will be keeping an eye on the political situation, keeping on listening and talking to people, and checking regularly with the Foreign Office website for updates on the situation from an expat’s point of view just in case:

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travelling-and-living-overseas/travel-advice-by-country/asia-oceania/nepal

And I would recommend anyine thinking of coming here to do the same.  I wouls say its not something to panic over but also not something its safe to sweep under the carpet and forget about either.
So that’s been the macro drama here this week.

On the micro level a friend had a drama the other day which is a good illustration of how tough life can be for the animals here, especially in this case, the street dogs.  My friend’s daughter came home about 10 days ago with an abandoned and adorable puppy about a month old.  At first the little mite seemed to be fine, lapping up the food they gave her, but it turns out she was infested with worms which are very prevalent here, especially for animals who have to eat whatever they can find on the street.  OK.  [Those of a nervous disposition skip to the next paragraph!]  Anyway, we called a local animal rescue charity vet who arrived from Kathmandu on his friend’s motorbike about 40 minutes later.  By this stage the little dog was lying on her side panting and unable to get up.  It turns out that she had a very badly established case of worms, because she’s been infected with adult worms while still in her mother’s womb… Ugh…!   And double ugh.  Now she was puking and pooing out worms because her poor little system couldn’t eat anough to feed them and her.  And she was critically dehydrated.

[OK -start reading again here!]  But the good news is, after an emergency intravenous drip to make her stronger and some special re-hydration tablets (incidentally the same that humans can use), she has made a fast recovery from what looked like death’s door (it all happened so fast my friend was really taken aback, I just happened to arrive as this was unfolding).  And the puppy should have had the worm medicine today (Saturday) to begin elminate the critters from her system.  She will also be administered with her jabs to help prevent her getting ill again.  The vet was very kind.

So.  A week of dramatic events which have shaken me out of my post-exam reverie to say the least.  I will aim to keep you updated on events on both the macro political and micro puppy level in the coming weeks.

Namaste!

Praying mantises, prayer flags and peaches.

This morning as I was hanging out my usual Sunday washing some rather unusual things happened.
First, a small, poised and very green praying mantis began to make its way somewhat precariously across my washing line to the safety of the tree at the far end. Like the Frenchman who walked between the twin towers, this little creature utilised a superior and careful sense of balance, its back arched in a perfect curve and large spiky hands poised in the manner of a Venus fly-trap in front of it. Unlike Philippe Petit however, it did so hanging upside down, it’s many and several legs gripping deftly and greenly to the light grey plastic. In my haste to clear the sodden T-shirts out of the way to ease its passage I nearly dislodged it several times, sending the line bouncing and dodging in all directions, and I certainly forgot to fetch my camera as this micro-drama unfolded.  (See illustration below )
The encounter brought back memories of a summer childhood and being startled by (what seemed) a much bigger version of one of these entities in a middle-English garden under the shade of my favourite tree. Of course then, it was at eye level, regarding me implacably with giant eyes from a rose-leaf, its hands in prayer position like the local priest in a dark green cassock blessing his congregation. I was terrified. Whether that was indeed a praying mantis, or as seems rather more likely, a simple grasshopper, I will never be sure.
Either way, this time my much smaller friend deftly and determinedly made its way past me quite some distance above my head (someone’s raised the washing-line again), and in fact did switch to upright mode once it realised that I had decided the last t-shirt was too risky to move at such a delicate stage in proceedings. Praying mantis green against the bright orange t-shirt was a vibrant and startling clash of colours, in marked contrast to the grace and decorum with which the little creature continued on its way. Dignified, cute and an efficient killer of small insects is quite an interesting combination to think about on a Saturday morning and in such a small package. Everything is relative of course; to the mantis I am huge, slow, clumsy and stumbling but still, the thought is there (and perhaps to many of my friends I am also this, who knows! ).
I describe this in some detail because I recognise it quite clearly as the moment at which I raised my head for the first time from what has been the past few months (years?) of a keep-going, head-down work ethic. We finished our exams a week ago yesterday and though I have enjoyed my studies tremendously, the last few weeks have been especially tough; involving essays, exam revision and ongoing homework. (All of which more later possibly in another post).

No sooner had I recovered from this wonderfully refreshing shock of wildlife green making its way across dye-manufactured orange when something else unusual happened: Prayer flags in bundles began to fall from the sky.

Every Tibetan home here in Nepal (and almost certainly everywhere within the Tibetan Diaspora where regulations permit), has prayer flags of the five elemental colours strung from the rooftops down to trees or lower structures. These prayer flags are inscribed with various prayers for peace and are designed to flutter in the wind, sending their prayers out into the universe for the benefit of all sentient beings – praying mantises (manti?), and students like me – included. In fact you will find them everywhere Tibetans are or have been; on mountain cairns, beside sacred lakes, festooning the trees around saint’s caves, even in the gardens of restaurants and cafes, and most certainly around the Stupas here and elsewhere.

Looking and listening around, I realised that the family in whose home I am staying had replaced all of the flags in the garden and that someone was chanting mantras in a low voice somewhere high up on the roof three or four stories up. No sooner had I taken this fact in than a second much larger bunch of old prayer flags thumped onto the lawn in front of me, closely followed by a third and a fourth.
If prayer flags are one constant of Tibetan culture, spiritual practice and thought, both in visual and aural terms as they blow in the breeze, mantras are another. Tibetans do nearly everything, it seems, surrounded by mantras. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition no act is seen as fully complete unless it is preceded by Taking Refuge (the equivalent of Baptism in the Christian tradition and yet also a prayer one can say several or many times a day) and followed by Dedication (which is where one dedicates the merits of one’s practice for the benefit of everyone, all sentient beings everywhere).
What this means in practice is that whether walking to the shops, going around the Stupa or indeed replacing prayer flags, the murmur of mantras is almost always there, especially amongst older Tibetans. Most commonly it is the Om Mani Peme Hum mantra of the Buddha of Compassion Lord Avalokiteshvara, (called Lord Chenrezig in Tibetan), but people can and do recite any number of chants and practices as they go about their daily lives. Last night the Boudhanath Stupa, which is at the centre of this Buddhist community, was lit up on several of its layers by thousands of fairy lights, so I imagine there must be some special festival going on at the moment, hence the prayer flag replacement and its mantra. Of course it might just be coincidence. I will try and find out in the next few days.
A third sign that I am emerging from my many-month’s long work-schedule was the peaches.

I came home the other day to find a medium-sized carrier bag of what I assumed were unusually-coloured red, yellow and green apricots hanging on my front door handle. This was soon added to as my Tibetan landlady, seeing me arrive home, smilingly brought another double handful of these fruits to me. They smelled fabulous. Di-tso ming kare re? I asked her in my faltering Tibetan: ‘What are these called’? And she answered in Tibetan a name I have forgotten (my ability to forget Tibetan vocabulary almost instantly has been the bane of the first year of my degree here. Oh well ).
The landlady and I agreed that they smelled amazing, a sort of piquant sweetness, rounded but sharp somehow, almost like perfumed fruit. Certainly a smell and taste I have never experienced before. After making sure I understood that I needed to wash them very thoroughly, Mrs Tsering left me with the full bag and I have been eating my way through them and distributing them to other people ever since.
“Oh wow. Peaches!”, said the first person to whom I offered some the next day. Which put paid to my ‘whole new species of delicious apricots discovered in Nepal’ theory. Never mind, they taste great.

So this morning, as I looked across the newly arrived clumps of last year’s prayer flags settling on the lawn, to the row of small trees which mark the boundary to the wilder part of the garden, I saw something unusual. It wasn’t far away from me. The small lawn forms a very pleasant cultivated section right next to my window on the ground floor, which is nice. Yet still I hadn’t noticed this before.
There, marking the boundary between kempt and unkempt was this small peach tree, the tree, absolutely groaning with the vastest number of fruits I have ever seen on one tree. As a child back home, I used to help my family pick the plums, apples and damsons in our garden in late summer, so I know that little amount about fruit trees, enough to recognise a bumper-crop when I see it. Thing is, it seems like only a few days ago to me, a week at the absolute most, that I was admiring the purple and white blossoms on the tree and saying to myself ‘I really must take a picture’, which of course I never did as I was too busy. So either Nepal has a really hyper-accelerated growing season, (which I can half believe looking at the lush deep pink flowers growing as tall as a house on the wall of the Gompa (monastery) where I study), OR I have simply had my head down and not been able to look around properly at these things for several months. Which is good in one way but actually rather scary.
Today, mindful of the possibility of getting beaned on the head by more displaced prayer flags, I have also forgone the photo, at least until later on (done it now – as you can see… )  But the image will stay in my memory: that little tree weighed down with those perfect fruits, the taste and smell of them SO much more delicious than the large overblown peaches we get back home.
Nepal is this it seems to me. A land of contrasts. Of incredible beauty separated from difficult circumstances, grime and poverty by a fence, a brick wall, or the turn of someone’s gaze. A place where even if one knew where to start, there would always be more to do. Which is where things on a more abstract or general level, like the prayer flags, or giving people peaches, come in.
With all this comes the pleasant realisation that I have somehow emerged instantly from a Nepali spring into a Nepali summer, having made my way, very much like the praying mantis, precariously and determinedly across the past few workday weeks of the world.
Namaste!

Two weeks to go

Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks… then (loved the studying though I have), I will be freeeee!

Have so much material for the blog, can’t tell you. So am looking forward to posting what I can from here and the rest from dear old Blighty. Return to the UK end of June – so am staying around in Boudhanath for a while after school – which is great!

Anyways – Two weeks and counting…

Now = for that Philosophy essay (On the Way of the Bodhisattva Chapter 9). “Cover me, I’m going in!”

Namaste!

Hello again & HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! :) :) :)

OK.               So.                                                       Deep breath in…

1.  We had a whole week of Final Exams and another essay due just before that.

2.  I was also ill with a Kathmandu Valley pollution-cough which was bad enough to put me back out.

3.  Then my computer and the internet had a hissy-fit and stopped talking to each other for 10 whole days (and that was the bit that really hurt! )

4.  Now the powercuts (Load Shedding) here in the Kathmandu Valley have gone up to 12 hours per day, with the on-hours frequently in the wee small hours of the night and oh…

5.  I have been majorly catching up on some sleep.

In that order – okay? 

And now I am going half way up Shivapuri mountain to do a retreat at Nagi Gompa, the nunnery and retreat centre where I took the picture on the banner above.  Lovely. 

So I suppose that means:  Apologies for the (ongoing) blog radio silence…

Rest assured I have been taking pictures and having interesting experiences and these WILL make their way onto the blog sometime soon.

Which means:  Normal service will be resumed!

Meanwhiles:  ALL BEST WISHES for a Hale and Hearty (rest of) Festive Season and a Peaceful and as Prosperous as possible NEW YEAR 2009!

See you on the other side

& lots of Best Wishes to my fellow STA Explorers , wherever you are around the world as well (& Hello Molly! )

Namaste! 

A Major Event… Post 2

Hello again,

Here are some more pictures of the Enthronement of Tulku Urgyen Yangsi Rinpoche, the major event which I mentioned in my previous post below.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit since last week’s events: Some journeys are outwards I’ve realized, some are inwards and some both. For me, coming to Nepal has so far been the best of both. Encountering Tibetan culture within Nepali culture and studying Buddhism every week-day has already been very interesting and beneficial for me. Here we are studying in the monastery grounds and we have the Stupa and other encouragements to be inspired by.

And then encountering an event like this, the Enthronement of Tulku Urgyen Yangsi, as I said in the previous post – a once in a lifetime thing, enables me to learn from other people how to behave, how to be, and this is quite something else. Just looking at my few simple pictures, despite the busyness of the day, I can read in the people’s faces how important it is for them and their love and devotion. As I said, people came from all over the world and from all over the valley to be there. And as a tentative explanation I would say my reaction seems infused with a different quality to how I might have reacted even a few scant months ago. I feel extremely lucky to have been here.  This is not to say that I understand that much more or have advanced more, just that I feel different. Which is the purpose of travel after all…

There is definitely something different about Tibetan Lamas (Rinpoches, teachers). A certain quality that I could not possibly define, but which many other foreign folks have noted as well. Perhaps it is the years of meditation, perhaps the practices or both. Either way, it seems from their clear insight, compassion, calmness and way of being, that Tibetan Buddhism (as other forms I am sure), does work, can change our lives.

I’ll keep you posted (to the best of my limited ability! )

Anyway, the above images are from the first two days of the Enthronement, which were held at the White Gompa, Ka Nying Shedrub Ling, here in Boudha. I was volunteering on the back gate, so my pictures here are mainly from there and are therefore quite ‘behind the scenes’.

See

www.shedrub.org

for a gallery of pictures by the professional photographers inside the Gompa, and

http://blazing-splendor.blogspot.com/

for more pictures and also information about Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche) .

On that amazing first day of the four, Yangsi Rinpoche arrived by car from where he was staying at about 8.30 am. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people had lined the route, or gathered at the main gate of the Gompa (Monastery) to great him. From my place on the back gate I didn’t see hm arrive, or the crowds, until everyone came streaming up the road to the back gate for a seat under the large canopies behind the Gompa.

As part of the preparations for his arrival, the monastery had put up several greeting arches at different points along the route with a greeting in Tibetan and English for him and what must have been hundreds of metres of bunting. The entire Gompa had been painted and spruced up and was covered in fairy lights (of which more in a future post).

I knew when Rinpoche had arrived because the accompanying motorcycles with Buddhist 5-colour flags on them raced past us on the back gate (too fast for me to get a picture), and also because the uniquely Tibetan sacred sound of crashing cymbals, vast trumpets and drums started up. It must have been quite some greeting and even from the distance of the back gate, it was very moving to think that this was Rinpoche returning to his monastery after a gap of some 12 years, and in a new body, as a new person, but also somehow the same. Despite being relatively comfortable with the idea of re-incarnation, this still gives me shivers to think about. Very powerful stuff indeed.

[Perhaps I will know enough one day to write a post here about how the Tibetan Lamas are recognised in their new lives, but for now I know that the film 'Kundun', which is about H.H. The Dalai Lama, shows this process for His Holiness quite well.]

And then the Enthronement ceremony began. The many Rinpoches inside the Gompa were chanting, led by Trulshik Rinpoche, a very highly respected master. There was also what I can only call a Eulogy to Rinpoche of apparently 40 A4 pages, written and delivered from a single roll of paper, by the Khenpo (teacher-monk) who teaches us our Philosophy class.

One of the things which also happens when an Enthronement or other major event like this takes place, is that people come from all over the world to make Mandala Offerings to the Rinpoche concerned. In the case of Tulku Urgyen Yangsi, this meant vast amounts of offerings in the form of Buddhist texts, stacks of rice (called Mandalas I think), statues of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and other symbols of Tibetan Buddhism. You can see some pictures of these being carried into the Gompa in the gallery.

From my place on the gate I watched what I believe to be one whole set of Tibetan Buddhist texts, called the Kanjur (100 volumes) and the Tenjur (some 250 volumes), arriving in the arms of monks from an affiliated monastery as an offering. Sacred Tibetan texts are called Pecha and are printed on loose leaf paper, which is horizontal, oblong. These texts are then carefully bound in yellow or red cloth. You will see some pictures of the monks carrying these oblong Pecha texts in the gallery above too.

This group alone consisted of I would guess about 40 – 60 monks all dressed in their best robes. It is difficult to convey the scale of this in pictures, especially as my main purpose was to be one of the folks on the gate greeting visitors, but still… hopefully you get the idea.

The ceremony itself was broadcast on several large (and smaller) screens. So I have also included some pictures of people craning to get a view of events. As said above, people’s devotion to Rinpoche is very strong and I hope this comes across from the attentive way they are listening to and watching the screens (while sipping their tea!).

Finally, on a more prosaic level, you will find some pictures of the massive catering efforts which went on behind the scenes, which fed everyone lunch and gave them hot salty Tibetan butter tea! This includes the largest saucepans I have ever seen, boiling tea over wood-fires.

There was even the equivalent of the W.I. there, in the form of tea-ladies , delivering food and tea to the crowds. Some of these people had apparently traveled all the way from Nagchen in Tibet to help out.

Quite some event then…

And I still feel different in ways I can’t explain, except to say that I am now doing Khora, practice walks, around the Boudhanath Stupa more often and with more conviction (or perhaps less self-conscious embarrassment) than before. This is just one little thing but still, it marks a different approach to life here and ongoing.

There is more to say, but this will probably have to wait until after my exams and next essay in the next couple of weeks.

I will however share some pictures of the Gompa lit up at night for the event as soon as possible. The most fairy lights I have ever seen in one place, I think. Magnificent!

Namaste & Tashi Delek!

A MAJOR Event…!

Hello… 

It has been an extraordinary few days here in Boudhanath and I am going to try to convey some sense of this in pictures and words over the next few day’s to week’s posts and pages.

This past week, from the 19th – 22nd of November ’08, we have seen the 4 day celebration of the Enthronement of Tulku Urgyen Yangsi Rinpoche.  The actual Enthronement ceremony was on the first morning, followed by a day and a half of continous offerings and other events at the White Monastery in Boudha, Ka Nying Shedrub Ling, which is the major seat of his lineage.  Then on the third day, Rinpoche travelled to Swayambunath, another major monastery in the area.  On the fourth day, the celebration travelled 2500 metres up into the mountains at the north of the Kathmandu valley, to Nagi Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, which is also under his care.

Tulku Urgyen Yangsi is 7 years old at the moment.  He is the fully recognised re-incarnation of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who built the monastery where I am studying, and in fact the other places in the valley that I have mentioned above as well.  And this was his first return to his monasteries since his previous incarnation passed away in February 1996.

As such, it was an event of HUGE proportions for the existing masters of the lineage, Rinpoche’s students and the general Buddhist population here in the Kathmandu Valley, where Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche was well loved and greatly respected.  In fact people travelled from all over the world and from all over the valley to be there.  It was an extraordinary mixture of high ceremony, symbolism and a festival, blended with the strong faith and devotion of ordinary people.  Either way it was all celebration; a once in a lifetime moment, attended by (I think) 15 high Buddhist masters or Rinpoches, and by thousands of ordinary people who queued for hours in the sun to watch the video screens or to make offerings.

As for me, although I am billed by those nice STA Explorer people as ‘The Budding Buddhist in Nepal’, I have until now somewhat resisted going on about the inner aspect of what is happening out here in my own life.  It doesn’t seem my place, as a beginner in Tibetan Buddhism, to try to convey the sheer profundity of these teachings, some of which are millennia old.  Teachings in fact that a Khenpo (teacher-monk) will train for 13 years plus to be qualified to pass on to others.  However, the power of events in the past few days is inescapable and I have to say that I feel myself to be a different person from the one who wrote the last blog here on wordpress about the Himalayan Mountains.  Although I couldn’t articulate how…

This is going to take quite some time to settle in as an experience for me, but suffice to say that I am more convinced than ever that this is absolutely the right place for me to be and the right time for me to be here.  And I consider myself VERY lucky to have been here for this event. 

OK.  Enough ‘waffle’.  Above are some pictures from the day before yesterday’s events at Nagi Gompa, which mainly feature the crowd, as the Gompa was far too small for everyone to be inside (me included.   In fact, you can see pictures of people peering through the windows to see what is happening inside).

For more information and a growing archive of pictures taken by professional photographers over the past few days see:  www.shedrub.org  and follow the link on the right of the page.

Namaste… & Lots of love…

Mountains!

Quick post as it’s getting late, about 8.30pm and am getting cold for the first time sitting in a cafe here.  Suddenly gone a bit more autumnal yesterday and today.  Have such a backlog of material to send to the blog, can’t tell you!  The bandwidth here isn’t up to much, pics and vids especially, take AGES to upload.  Still, have managed to put a few more Tihar Festival pics n vids over on PhotoBucket at:

http://s529.photobucket.com/albums/dd331/isojonesnepal/

Let me know if you can’t find or see ‘em.

Have also got some media from a lovely visit during reading week two weeks ago to a place called Namo Buddha.  Tell you more later but the main point for now is – The Mountains!   As in THE Mountains!!!! 

Will add one small video clip onto the Photobucket page asap, URL as above.

It seems that I might have scanned past Mount Everest when I filmed the Himalaya from a ridge on the way up to Namo Buddha!  WOW!  The view was stunning & my friends and I just had to stop the car to look back out to those snowy mountains.  You can probably hear us wowing about it on the footage.  And to think I didn’t even know Everest might have been among them!  Don’t laugh, I only ever did social Geography in bloomin’ South America in Geography at school.  I can tell you ALL about how to tap a rubber tree, but how to recognise the world’s tallest peak from afar.  Nope.  Nothin’ useful like that…  It was a great school, just they were more into social geography at the time than things like the world’s tallest mountains.  Oh well! 

Note that if there, Everest won’t the tallest peak in the vid as is further away than some of the others.  Still…  WOW!

So it MIGHT be there (and if anyone knows for sure, please tell me!).

Himalayan Mountains from Namo Buddha - Lovely!

In the next few weeks am planning a trip to Nagarkot to see more mountains and most likely Pokhara over the Christmas break too, so expect more pictures of and ravings about mountains from me.  Oh yes!

Festivals and Essays. Part Two :)

Festivals and Essays. Intro:

Hello. The main part of this blog below about the festival was written during last week, as was the previous one. Not posted until now due to the usual leccy difficulties and also a rather urgent deadline for my history paper. The system at our Uni is based on the American one, where paper means essay. But I prefer essay meself and flew the flag for dear ole Blighty by calling it so in the essay itself. I’ll let you know if I fail! Anyways by staying up all night on the red-eye I got the thing in. I have another one due in about 3 weeks for the Philosophy class and this time I will take better account of the electricity outage schedule! Lesson learned. Again.

In addition to ordering an extra 5 hour battery for my computer from the UK, I am also trying to weigh up the relative merits of getting a UPS, an Uninterrupted Power Supply, which is really basically a car battery you plug into the mains. This would mean I could run my computer and maybe also a fridge, maye. So in the interests of research I am planning to go to a few places like shops which have these and find out how much they cost. Expect a post soon, with pictures. Oooooh!

Anyways, here’s the post from last week, on a rather more pleasant festival here in Nepal which is called Tihar. Fireworks, firecrackers, Nepali Ska-punk and Hindi raves…. oh yes!

Festivals and Essays. Part Two.

As I type this I am sitting in a rather nice Italianate cafe called “Flavor’s” which is around Boudhanath stupa.  Don’t ask me exactly where, as since the path around the Stupa is round, I always lose my way finding particular places and have been known to go around several times looking for a certain shop or cafe (and to think my Buddhist friends thought I was being very devout and doing lots of ‘Khora’, Buddhist practice walks, around the Stupa ).

Anyways, outside the cafe right now is the sound of firecrackers and fireworks, no doubt attended by the uplifted faces of little kiddies who look all angelic and in awe with their faces lit by the firework’s glow until it finishes (awwwww), whereupon the fastest little angel always rushes to kick the remains, laughing maniacally as she / he does so. This is a good way to get some fun out of the last embers of the firework, but woe betide anyone nearby wearing turn-ups (not that I do, y’understand! LOL )

And another word to the wise, bring earplugs with you if you go out during Tihar, as the same little darlings and their teenage counterparts love to set off MASSIVELY loud strings of firecrackers right next to poor unsuspecting Yingies (tourists) at every opportunity. Scallies….

There’s yet another festival sometime early next year where people throw bags of red and yellow-coloured powder at each other and yes, the Yingies get targeted quite a bit then as well, but all in a good-natured way I am told.  I’ll let you know when the time comes…

Still, like kiddies everywhere, I love the sparkle and flashing lights of the fireworks at least and I did live to tell the tale, albeit with a certain ringing in my ears for a while afterwards… 

Today is the 3^rd day of the festival and is called Tika. This is the day when brothers and sisters exchange a Tika on each other’s forehead. This is in the form of a small spot of usually red-coloured paste, or a small jewel just above the eyebrow line, on what I think you might call the third eye. They also give each other gifts and sweets.  Actually, specifically, the girls are there to honour the boys, which is something my feminist self could get huffy about, if I let it.  Here in Nepal someone was telling me, it seems that families are happy when a girl is the first born because then her brothers, whom the family hope will follow, will have someone to bless them at Tika.  Hmmmmm! (Grumble grumble mutter mutter

Another day as part of the 5 day festival was Tihar itself. Tihar is the Nepali Diwali.  Lots of pretty fairy lights, candles, fireworks and the aforementioned firecrackers (Grrrrr. ) everywhere.

See pictures for some sights around the Stupa, although I seem to have missed the best of it by thinking it was at 7-8 when it was earlier. Bovver. Still, one advantage of staying somewhere for a while is there’s always next year.

I did also get to see a local band in action on the back of a pickup truck around the Stupa. For some reason (possibly the length of their electricity cable I conjectured), these guys were very close to one of the shops, so it was difficult to film them and their pogo-ing drunk-uncle audience, but still I had a go. It was all very Camden; the singer with his immaculately tousled hair, a bit longer than everyone else’s, the guitarist and bassist trying not to knock each other off-stage (well, truck) with their guitars and the drummer, who wasn’t half bad actually, having a good old tap. Some of it was pretty inventive, some of it was Ska-punk (not a bad thing in itself you understand, just nothing new… ) Although the lead singer did blot his copy-book by doing that classic lead-singer thing of getting them to play a new song before it was ready, so that number was a bit shambolic. (If I had a quid for every time that’s happened to me…) Anyways, see him, lyric sheet in hand, on PhotoBucket hopefully….

http://s529.photobucket.com/albums/dd331/isojonesnepal/?action=view&current=SANY0046-1.flv

I have also been experiencing the delights of a full-on Hindi rave going on right next to where I am staying every night for the last four nights.

No problem the first night, there was some good music and I even danced around a bit on the porch to some pretty decent Hindi / Nepali Hip-Hop. And, not tooooo bad the second night, but last night it was VASTLY loud. And by this I mean it was even louder than the lads near where I used to live in North London with their car sound-systems fully cranked up at three in the morning.

Louder and almost fully distorted.

Tonight we have had some particularly over-amplified choons, and a DJ with a short attention-span which doesn’t help me love it.  Oh well.  Still, there’s always a decent cafe like this one to come to up until about 9pm., which brings me back to where I started.

All part of life’s very rich pattern here.

BTW – regarding the Hindi rave, I never thought I’d be actually wishing for a power-cut, especially with an essay to finish, but there you go!

As folks say around here, ‘What to do?’

Namaste .

Festivals and Essays – Part One.

In a brief moment of respite from frenzied essay-writing while also trying to fix my laptop which keeps crashing (ahhhh the lazy lazy life of a student eh?), I watched the Nepal Tourist Board CD we were given in our information pack when we enrolled.
It was replete with very pretty pictures which I have to confess did make me stare out of the window into the pleasant garden at the place I’m staying, and dream of spending my enitre budget in one big mega-trek to the Himalayan mountains and lakes, or to the southern jungles and rivers.  But after reality dawned, one particular slide from the slide-show stuck in my mind:

“More festivals than there are days in the year”, it said over a picture of a square filled with people celebrating something, somewhere in Nepal.

And you know what, it might well be right…

I once lived in a city, Brighton, in the UK, which claimed a church for every week of the year, and a pub for every day (priorities people) but nothing in my experience comes close to Nepal.

We’ve had a festival this month (so far), Tihar, which lasts 5 days (more on this one later). Then last month we had a festival called Dasain, which went on for about 10 days (and there was power ALL day EVERY day – yey!). And I think there’s more to come.  Phew! 

Although I have to confess I largely avoided the Dasain festival as one day in particular involves massive goat-death in the forms of sacrifices to the Goddess Kali. In fact, I think only the cows are safe because if a family can’t afford a goat they buy a chicken, which then is killed in the goat’s stead. For several weeks before and certainly the immediate days before the sacrificial day, there were little conglomerations (is that the collective noun for goats? Somehow I doubt it, its probably more like ‘bleats of goats’ – of which more later) of adult goats on the roadsides, huddled at the end of 2 – 3 meter tethers, chewing surprisingly calmly on the grass nearby. Perhaps they were unaware of their fate. I certainly hope so.

And I did think I had avoided all of the carnage by carefully walking the long way around to home and etc. But when I came back home from Uni one day and set my bag down with a sigh to get on with some quiet reading, the houses next door beyond the garden wall revealed themselves to be occupied by people celebrating Dasain, because what I heard next was the plaintive bleating of what sounded like one quite young and very lonely goat.

Blaaaaaaaaah.    Bleeeeaaaah.      Bleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaahhh!     Blaaaaeeeeeeeh…

All afternoon and into the night.  Oh dear.

‘ Course, next day, nothing.  Just a very sad silence.

I had a few moments of hatching a madcap scheme to rescue the little creature and set it loose in my landlord’s garden but, apart from the former owners, I would have my landlord’s irate missus to deal with. She works really hard on the garden, and as we know, goats eat everything…. Ah le, what to do?

So I did the only thing I could do and joined people at the monastery who did an all day Puja (prayer ceremony, for want of a better word), for the departing animals that they not suffer too much and achieve good rebirths.

This could be said to be a perfect example of the symbiosis between Hindus and Buddhists here in Boudhanath. While on the one side, the Dasain festival, an indelible part of the national psyche, was being celebrated in part to provide protection for people by sacrificing lots of animals; across town in all the Buddhist monasteries that day you had Buddhist ordained and lay people praying that these same animals had as little suffering as possible in the ending of this life, and also in the next.

Difficult. And please, note that it is NOT for me to judge anyone here, at all, it’s just how things are, sometimes.

I do wish I could have rescued just that one little goat though.

Namaste….

How to be an STA Explorer in the dark!

The first single I ever bought, on 45 Vinyl no less, was a track called Electricity by a band called Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark.  This is a great song by a great band by the way, I realise I must add them to my Facebook page.  Anyways, I remember vividly walking home with this record, bought with my own pocket money.  Only part way home, the thing slipped out of its sleeve and began rolling back down the hill.  No damage done as it turned out as I ran and caught it before it went down a drain or rolled all the way back to the shop but still a vivid memory.

Living in Nepal is not 100% unlike this experience.  The Electrcity is dodgy and many of the things one does here on an everyday level can feel like Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark.  You also seem to have to chance after the ordninary on a quite regular basis as it behaves unexpectedly and somehow gets away from you.  Sigh. 

What am I on about?  Well, I have been promising for some time to post about the powercuts (called ‘Load Shedding’ here, a nice euphanism), and how they have been influencing my use of digital media in general and the Internet in particular.

Before leaving the UK I signed up to being an STA Explorer for STA Travel and very happily, as they are a great company.  They book travel, insurance and etc for the under 26′s and full-time students (which is how I snuck in).  You may well have heard of them but if you haven’t check out their website (http://www.statravel.co.uk/) for more info.

Anyways, STA Travel set me up with my flights and insurance and advised me how to save money while doing so, (which was refreshing to say the least).  They also gave me the clearest advice I have ever had before setting out on a journey.  They pride themselves on having agents who are knowledgeable about the different regions the people in their target audience travel to and from my experience it would seem this is so.  I realise this is unashamed plug, but I give praise where it is due and its definitely due here.

So I signed up to be an STA Explorer.  Being a bit of a geek I thought it would be interesting to access a wider range of online media than I have to date and also to do so in foreign climes.  I also am keen to explore ways of keeping in touch with people back home too, so win-win.

However, though I knew about the powercuts before I got here, they escalated in number and duration about a week after I arrived.  And therin lies the problem.  The people here are currently working to run shops, schools, banks, resturants and other businesses, not to mention their homes and family lives, with around 35+ hours of powercuts per week, most often in the evenings but at other times of day as well.

There is a schedule issued and the ‘Load Shedding’ mainly seems to stick to this but I personally have seen a restuarant owner nearly in tears at her empty restaurant because tourists don’t like eating or sitting in a place lit only by candlelight and therefore simply don’t turn up. This lady was Tibetan, one of the many Tibetans who live here in Boudha because of the Stupa and Monasteries, but this effects everyone in the country.  3 or so years ago, there weren’t the powercuts this lady said, but now more and more and ‘what to do?’

In this, I realise I am part of the problem.  Though I live here now, I am an Yingie (tourist/foreigner) and I myself use a lot of power.  I type on my laptop, expect to run my water boiler (all 6 litres of it), my rice cooker, charge camera batteries and etc etc every single day.  With the current capacity of Nepal’s electricity generation this just isn’t sustainable and its getting worse.  Increasing urbanisination means that all of us here are becoming more power-hungry all the time, as elsewhere.

The West might get there again you know, if we keep designing new and more powerful gadgets all the time…

So let’s be clear I am not finger-pointing here, unless it is at myself, but the situation is far ideal.  And of course, the Internet is nowhere with no power.  Interesting that and true.

A local Internet Cafe I go to at the Stupa (Cosmos Cyber, nice people and good steady, fast connection for Nepal), runs about eight to ten truck batteries in a system called a UPS – an Uninterrupted Power Supply, which mostly works but requires a wiring system 1960′s Nasa would be proud of.  Plus, somehow, sitting there in the dark, lit by only our computer screens and faced with the pospect of a torch-lit walk home, the Internet seems slower, less important and far less appealing trust me…

The other everning we were sitting in our meditation class and the power went out.  It was scheduled but still one forgets when one is busy…  And so we just sat there in the dark listening to the Lopon (a teaching monk who has studied for 13 years but is still qualifying for another 3 years to be a full Khenpo).  We were barely able to see each other, never mind the teacher, and were left scrambling for torches to read the text.

It’s tricky.

You have to plan ahead.  So I boil my water boiler when I know there’s power so that I have safe drinking water for the next few hours or the next day.

The power also has regular dips and spikes when it is on.  So, if you come here, DON’T plug your laptop or any expensive, irreplaceable equipment directly into the mains.  One student here did that and overnight a power-surge fried a brand-new $500 laptop.  Not good!    You need to get a voltage regulator instead, a little box about the size of a small car battery, which keeps the power steady (and don’t pay more than about 1000-2000 Nepali rupees for one as I did!  Ooops, oh well…

I have heard many quite involved and intense conversations here among students and faculty about how to set up a UPS at home.  It seems that with one truck battery (which is roughly the size of one drawer of a filing cabinet), you would be able to run 1 computer and 3 light bulbs, or a fridge.

Hmmmmm.  To eat cold food or write your essay.  Now that’s a tricky one!

People generally are pretty calm really even though it does get in the way considerably.  I am just about old enough (ahem), to remember the powercuts and the three day week in the UK in the mid-seventies and people then really kicked up a stink.  So…

But there is now one light in all this (pardon the pun)!  Our little outdoor cafe here at the Shedra has gone wireless (thanks guys) and the speed aint half bad, so… perhaps you might hear more from me in future and not all about the powercuts either! 

Wooooh!

Better go – have to meet my Tibetan language tutor in 5 minutes.

Namaste!