Category Archives: Birganj

Located on the Nepal-India border, Birganj (also Birgunj) is a quintessential Terai town and where I spent my Peace Corps experience.

Last words from Birganj

It's early still, but the warmth of my bedroom wakes me not long after the sun has risen. I roll out of bed, walk over to the kitchen, and begin making coffee. I turn on my shortwave to the BBC and listen as I pour my coffee, stopping to rub the sleep out of my eyes. As I sip, I look through my window to the wreckage of the abandoned dry port of Nepal. I can hear someone singing in a temple through a loudspeaker. The sites and the sounds make this place beautiful.
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Finishing touches

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 to tell them, Ma yad garchhu, I remember.
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Haiku composed upon recent developments

This morning as I left my flat to head out into Birganj, I discovered something very troublesome. On many levels. I paused, then composed a haiku.
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Characters, part 2

Previously I wrote about some of the unique people I'd met in Jhapa district, namely Sunjay the Islamic Extremists and a child named Time Pass. I'd now like to write about some of the odd Birganj-wallahs that have crossed my path since coming to this town.
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Burning candles, Tihar

I remember where I was last Tihar, a year ago. A year ago? A year ago I'd gone to Kathmandu to hang out at the Spice deraa, my old co-owned flat in Kathmandu, with some of the folks there. Pardon me while I wax nostalgic.
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    The contents and opinions expressed in this blog, The Peace Corps Experience of Scott Allan Wallick, do not represent official positions, views, intentions, et cetera, of the United States Peace Corps nor the government of the United States.