During training, one of the hardest and seemingly most necessary things I wanted to communicate to my host family was that I missed home. I missed home. I missed my friends. I missed pizza and beer as dark as the nights in my new, lightless neighborhood.
But the best that I could do after two months of Peace Corps’ astounding language training was tell them, Ma yad garchhu, I remember.
And what do I remember now? Have I changed after to years in the wonderful and flawed organization? Am I better? Did I climb Mount Everest? Did I build a bridge with cave-dwelling, sun-fearing villagers? Wasn’t I supposed to be sick all the time? And what about the States?
Aren’t I supposed to realize that, at heart, I am a cave-dwelling, sun-fearing villager who could never live like I had before?
I thought I was a PCV. I thought I was the alpha male, able to adapt to anything, pick up a language on the way, and figure out how to be successful in seemingly ’strange’ circumstances.
Sounds a lot like I’m going to be a PCV twice. Once in Nepal and then again in the US. Hopefully it’ll be as much fun the second time around.
I’m trying to figure out exactly how right the Peace Corps’ shrinks will be at forecasting hard times. They told me I’d be sick, which I really wasn’t. I mean, not any more than I would have been if I’d stayed in the States.
Yes, I did have diarrhea, but I’d had that in the States before. I didn’t need Nepal to get indigestion. Plus, I never got ill enough to really complain about it. Except that one time during the monsoon when it was well over 110°F and the power went out for over a day.
Which was awful.
While I can’t really start to look back at my Peace Corps experience and the very strange and interesting culture that surrounds it quite yet, I can say that for me, my life was completely unlike anything that I had preconceived.
In a country of mud huts with thatch roofs, I never lived in one.
In a country of sprawling rice fields, I never commuted through one.
In a country of extreme poverty, I never really experienced it.
Sure I saw it. I passed pale corpses dead from the previous night’s freeze. I watched one morning as a set of tractors demolished shanties I could see from my kitchen. I fingered bullet holes in the waiting room of the airport. I heard bombs. I saw the flashes from rifle muzzles in the distance before going to bed. I taught shoeless children and paid half-naked rickshaw drivers. I was mugged and robbed.
But I never really experienced the things that gave Birganj its edge. I was always safe, far from the things that really change people.
Even when I rode in the backseat of an army captain’s car while he had a Browning 9 mm shoved down the front of his pants, explaining how not a month ago the Maoists had attack him at this very spot and killed several of his men, I was safe.
And I can’t think why.
I’m in Dharan. I’m finishing the training that the ANNISU-R said I couldn’t finish because they were trying to keep eastern Nepal closed for some reason, to prove some point, to someone somewhere.
I’m here and I’m thinking about where I’m going to be, what I’m going to be doing, at some point in time. Sometimes I think about April, when I finish as a Peace Corps volunteer. Others I think about two years ahead. Future hazy, check back later.
The one thing that I want to do, though, is have one last breath of what I loved about Nepal, outside of what I can get in Birganj. I want to see Birtamod and remember all the crazy people that flock to Andrew who lives there.
I want to walk the quiet, dying streets of Rajbiraj and remember dogs, Christmases, paan. I want to pass along the quieter parts of the East-West Highway, remembering that all the trees haven’t been cut.
I want to jump off the bus as it pulls into the Birganj bus park with rickshaws swarming about, remembering that in such a place, I can be happy.
I remember Moser’s songs about unrequited love. I remember Andrew’s long hair, which looked awful. I remember Liz being shy, even though we were close and I guarded one of her secrets.
I remember being on Laurel and Kara’s patio, drinking coffee and eating André’s dry biscuits. I remember waking up in Yvette’s living room before the sun has risen, then making that dusty, cold walk to catch a bus going somewhere.
I remember the apples in Mustang, drinking hot chocolate with Beth in a place she (for some strange reason) thought was nice.
I remember drinking jar at 8 AM with my host family in Gaidankot, then telling my language teachers I was drunk in Nepali, which they always thought was a joke since it was 8 AM and I was speaking Nepali.
And I remember that damn boat sinking in Fewa Lake, laughing all the while.
I remember the first walk through the Birganj bazaar, not sure if I was in an Indiana Jones or a Mad Max movie, but knowing I was going to be ok.
I remember my first night in Birganj, staying in such a bad hotel that I even surprised myself. I remember being woken numerous times in a shady hotel in Thailand by roaches crawling over my body. And that had become a vacation.
I need to go to Jhapa and see the green, lowland tea fields one more time. I need to stay a night in Rajbiraj one last time, because I didn’t know that my last visit there was going to be my last visit there.
I need one more cold Coke from a wet glass bottle on a hot, sticky day in the Itahari bus park.
I want more foggy mornings spent over coffee and newspapers at Himanchal Cabin in Birganj.
I have to see more smiling faces of eager students—and teachers.
I have to experience everything again, so I can remember.
And yet there’s no time.
