On many levels.

I paused, then composed a haiku.

   I gave this country
     education for the poor,
       and they stole my bike.

So there it is. Nothing else. Moving along, moving ahead.

I’d now like to write about some of the odd Birganj-wallahs that have crossed my path since coming to this town. These folks are recurring points of conversation with my other Birganj friends.

Here are some of my favorites.

Burning Man

He was the first blatantly mentally troubled person I crossed paths with in Birganj. He’s hard to miss. He always wears shorts, the ones with the fake dollar bill sewn onto a pocket, and has a stripped polo shirt that is, oddly, moderately clean.

Sometimes, fires must be lit.

He’s the guy who digs in the garbage and takes out the things that other people throw away. Like pieces of cardboard or posterboard.

What he does then is take some charcoal from a nearby garbage fire that’s cooled and draws some sort of symmetrical design on it. I’ve seen one and it looked like arrangements of the crop circles people in the US are familiar with.

Come to your own conclusions. He draws and scribbles and draws and erases and finally produces something of an odd design. He then produces and cigarette, which he smokes with much satisfaction, as he burns his drawing the street. And the moves on.

One time I asked a local from Birganj, a friend, what the guy’s story was.

Oh, him? He is crazy, he told me while twirling his finger around his ear to further drive the point.

No one seems to know anything about him. I’ve never seen him going into the local shops asking for money. Instead I see him sitting quite quietly outside of the Ganesh temple doing a whole lot of nothing.

And then he’s off . . . to burn something.

Burning Man is really the quintessential lunatic. He’s non-violent and does things that are interesting but that don’t in any way disturb others. Contrary to what you may think, setting fires street-side downtown is not odd.

I’ve never seen Burning Man yell or scream or make any sudden movements. I’ve occasionally caught him sitting outside of the shops that sell TVs watching whatever happens to be broadcasting, but no one seems to mind. Or notice. Or care.

What I’ve learned from Burning Man is that Birganj is like the Phoenix. It is rising from the ashes of the fire consuming it. During the monsoon it does feel like the place is on fire.

And with so much sun baking my brain, Burning Man’s antics seem a lot more . . . significant. He constantly smokes cigarettes, too, just to burn something, I imagine.

Screaming Man

The anti-Burning Man character of Birganj is Screaming Man. Screaming Man is violent and very, very threatening. But not in a dangerous way, if that makes sense.

His presence is unnerving, yet inviting because he is so completely unaware of a world outside of him. He’s gotten his name because, well, he screams a lot. He also collects sticks that he carries with him.

Birganj main street alive with people.

Once there was a small program including a debate-off being held downtown on sanitation and a community’s responsibilities. The boring speeches had finished and the debates had begun.

The debaters were all students from local schools, both private and public. A girl won from one of my feeder schools. I was pleased. Anyhow, while the students were debating I did a little walking around to take some photographs.

At the other end of the platform where the students were speaking, Screaming Man was there. He was also wearing the new Birganj youth club T-shirt. God knows how he got that.

Anyhow, he was standing there, facing the debaters and screaming and screaming and screaming and having a bundle of sticks and screaming.

There was the girl, berating the audience about their duty not to throw trash in the street, and there was Screaming Man, wearing the damn YCC T-shirt, yelling about the color green.

The first time I met Screaming Man was quite, well, personal. I had just walked outside of Himanchal Cabin when I came face-to-face with Screaming Man. He was screaming. He was also wearing one of those short lungees, which he lifted up to expose himself.

He then began wagging his penis around with his hands on his hips as if he was doing something resembling the jitterbug. He’d placed his bundle of sticks on the ground next to him.

Birganj, all of it.

And then one time I saw him standing in the middle of Ghantaghar. He was screaming. He had a bundle of sticks. He was standing with a bundle of sticks and screaming in the busiest intersection in town.

A rickshaw was trying to ply the traffic when he bumped Screaming Man, who, if he not already been screaming, would have started.

Actually what he did was stop screaming and grab on of his sticks out of his bundle. He took three steps back and then suddenly lunged forward throwing the stick javelin-style at the rickshaw wallah.

His aim was true and the stick struck the rickshaw driver in the middle of his back, which seemed quite painful, because the rickshaw wallah then fell of his rickshaw and writhed around on the ground for a bit.

Screaming Man began screaming.

The Master

The Master is extraordinary. A dumb thing to say, but still, there are too few superlatives that I can use with a man with as much skill, poise, and incomprehensibility as The Master. Besides just calling him ‘The Master.’

The clocktower lit up one night in Birganj.

The Master is a barber. No. That’s not right. That’s not enough. The Master is an artist. Wait. Not enough. The Master is a genius. Not right. It’s an insult to the man, to the man who takes an hour and a half to give a normal shave and trim to a guy like me.

Most barbers can sit you down, give you a shave, trim your eyebrows, and pummel your head and shoulders (usually referred to as a ‘massage’) within 20 minutes. The Master takes just under two hours.

Knowledge of The Master was given to me by Luke Shors, who is dead.

(He’s not really dead but when he left Birganj in April 2002, we began using past tenses when speaking of him that suggested he had died. Luke would have liked that, I told Ashish one time, seeing a star chart he’d found at the Peace Corps library. Yeah, I know, but he’s in a better place now, Ashish said, comforting me.)

Anyhow, dead Luke Shors once told me of The Master. I went. I saw. The Master’s hands touched my face and afterwards, somehow, I was a better person.

His razor graced my face with the precision of a stealth bomber’s sub-atomic warhead gracefully wafting through the window of a family’s mud hut in Afghanistan. It was so astounding that it was frightening.

Suddenly, Birganj didn’t seem so bad.

This hell of a city had given me something wonderful. The beauty of it made me compose haiku and even reconsider ugly, like the pigs near my house feasting on the semi-decomposed carcass of a street dog. Its wonderment made me write a haiku after seeing the family of pigs feasting on that semi-decomposed street dog carcass:

   This little piggy
     finally had a hot breakfast—
       of some dead street dog

   Snap crackle and pop,
     its pungent carcass eyeless
       yet looking at me.

If The Master started a cult I would join—just for the shaves. If you’ve never had an elderly Nepali man shave you, at that a shave that takes one and a half hours, then you have no idea what I’m talking about.

For the sake of science, I will explain, in order, exactly what happens when you go for an appointment with The Master:

1. You approach the door and The Master looks at you, silently
2. The Master tells you where to sit (You cannot sit before this since there are six chairs and you just don’t know which one)
3. The Master remains seated, watching 1960s Hindi movies on a black and white TV that you helped pay for (You pay 50% more than others)
4. The Master takes a sheet, which he begins wildly whipping (You didn’t expect such virility and strength in The Master since he looks over 60, but he is wearing a muscle T-shirt)
5. The Master puts the sheet over you, tucks in your collar, which takes 10 minutes to perfect He pauses, watching the commercials
6. The Master then collects a variety of odd, steel instruments (You do not question)
7. As if he is also a ninja master, suddenly he grabs your head from behind and slams it against the headrest of the chair, nearly decapitating you (Yet you are still relaxed, maybe from the incense, maybe from the half-naked pin-up of Hindi star that you are now gazing at)
8. The Master looks you in the eyes and further into your soul, but only through the mirror you face, of course
9. He asks you, Everything good? (You have been there 20 minutes thusfar)
10. You answer, Everything’s good
11. He then takes a handful of water into his palm and slaps you across the face, which turns into something of a massage
12. He takes the brush and lotion and begins lathering your face
13. He stops and walks outside, spitting up what sounds to be the largest throatal phlegm known to man
14. He finishes lathering—Again, he looks into your soul and ask, What do you want?
15. And as if he was a lumberjack, he chops at your face with the razor, gauging perfect pressure and angle (You know he is The Master; you do not worry that he may be drunk)
16. Tea arrives and everything pauses
17. He finishes shaving you, including trimming around the backsides of your ears and around the back of your neck
18. More water, more beating about the face (You must tolerate this, it is purifying you)
19. The then produces a polished rock, somewhat coarse, that he rubs aggressively into your face, which hurts
20. He stops, goes outsides and spits again
21. The Master returns reinvigorated and maliciously rubs many balms, creams, and lotions with high amounts of alcohol that scortches your skin inside out
22. Your face is burning as if it has been dunked in sulfuric acid, yet you are still being Zen
23. The Master beings the head massage, which, let’s face it, consists of being punching in the back of the head
24. You remind yourself for the hundredth time to say, Shave, no massage
25. The Master takes his scissors and comb and begins trimming your facial hair, which is a meticulous process
26. You watch in the mirror as he singles out hairs, considers each, then trims accordingly
27. He finishes trimming and takes the sheet off you and outside, which he whips wildly
28. More water, another slap, something like a massage
29. He reexamines your face, uses the razor to touch up
30. More balms, lotions, tonics, and some baby powder
31. The Master then takes a towel and wraps it completely around your head and begins drying you off (You consider this is what it would feel like if your head was chopped off and put into a dryer)
32. The Master combs your hair and asks you again, Everything good?

Honestly, I haven’t been back to The Master in months. While his shaves are extraordinary—unlike any other shave I’ve gotten in Nepal—the other places are, well, gentler.

And these days in Nepal we could all use a little gentleness.

For the next year I’ll be working with primary English teachers, helping them to develop their teaching and English skills. At the moment this requires lots of visits to my cluster of schools, roughly 26 in the urban parts of Birganj.

So far it’s been a tour of the bizarre. I’m not seeing things through a cracked looking-glass, but through one that’s so old the glass is beginning to run. The schools really aren’t that old.

I think the oldest is around 42 years old. But Birganj is not a gentle place and the schools are beginning to show their ages. At one school, I saw a classroom that had collapsed into the sewer below.

But it’s really the people who have made the school visits interesting. With three trips to the training site, three weeks in India, a week in Kathmandu for a workshop, and all the travel time in between, I really hadn’t been in Birganj for more than a few days straight for almost two months.

One day back when I was sitting and having tea and talking with the tea didi about how I was a truly terrible person since I’d never given her photos of myself I was accosted by a very strange, very articulate man: RK Yadav.

He sat down across from me smiling broadly and asked me for my ‘good’ name. He asked me if I knew John. RK told me about how he and John had worked together in a small village a ways north of Birganj called Chhotaily for two years. He began telling me about how he and John had started an eco club at a nearby secondary school.

Theaters in Birganj had hand-painted film posters, like this one for Andaaz.

It sounded like the ghost of a previous PCV and it was. I’ve heard of this happening to other volunteers—almost always in small village settings—but it’d never happened in Birganj before.

I was surprised and interested to learn about this guy who’d been in Birganj who I’d never heard of before.

There are two major ghosts of volunteers in Birganj: Martha and Randall. I know about Randall because a current PCV in Birganj taught at the same school for a year.

I feel like I know Martha a little better because I used to live with the fellow she worked with while she was in Nepal, Rajesh. Rajesh had photos of his family together with Martha in the same room where I ate with them.

And then there was John. RK‘s English was archaic and sometimes spoken like a single line of an EE Cummings poem. Actually, RK himself was a poet.

He was in Birganj because he’d just had a collection of children’s poems in English published and had come to check on the order. His plan was to take the books to primary schools and help the teachers use them in teaching English.

Chhotaily was an excessively earnest guy. I couldn’t really get a clear picture of this John character, mainly because RK remembrances of him were so bizarrely inflated that it was impossible to figure out what was and what wasn’t.

Apparently, John had taught English, founded conservation projects, wrestled tigers to the ground, and built a few schools, as well as a hospital.

It was dizzying. Then RK pulled out of his shirt pocket a crumpled envelope.

He said, I have received this letter from John.

While slightly exhibitionistic, I couldn’t help but take the letter from RK, who was still smiling. When I finished reading the letter, I put it back into the envelope and collected my thoughts.

Theaters in Birganj had hand-painted film posters, like this one for Andaaz.

The letter was a single typed page. The envelope was dated June 2001 and was soft and slightly discolored. I could feel the oil from hands opening it, holding it, reading it, refolding it, again and again.

RK wore his topi and tikka, both symbols of the Hindu Kingdom (which is Nepal), and smiled at me proudly.

In his letter, John told RK that he was at seminary and suggested to RK that he read the Bible, pray to Jesus, and become a Christian in order to save himself for eternal damnation in hell for his pagan ungodly beliefs.

RK then went on to tell me about how once he and John had to spend the night together in the jungle of the Parsa Wildlife Refuge.

There was only one sleeping bag and John refused to let RK walk back to his home because it required a trip through a dangerous area (probably something to do with the Maoists, I thought).

John enticed RK into staying by giving him his sleeping bag. And what did John do? He slept only in his clothes the night through.

Sadly, I don’t know much else about the story. RK told me that John had only sent the single, proselytizing letter sine he left Nepal around four years before.

I think about what sort of character RK painted John to be, but when I think of the singular letter that may well have been a form letter from the How to Convert Heathens manual, it just doesn’t add up. It’s fascinating.

Anyhow, maybe I’ll see RK again and he’ll sing more glories of John. But let me sing of RK‘s glories, through his own poems.

First, an excerpt from the poem Means of Transportation:

Trucks carry heavy load,
Buses bring passengers;
Careless driving
Is very danger
Flying plane…………

Actually, there’s no clever tie-in between that excerpt and what I wrote about the mysterious John or RK himself, who is probably an excellent teacher; however, it is our duty to recognize the humorous in everything. From SEASONS:

Rainy uncle is dangerous.
Bring landslide and flood
Crops grows very fast
Parasites Suck the blood.

While RK‘s poetry showed me that he was really interested in contributing to the schools, to the community, to my amusement, John’s prose forced me to answer difficult questions that RK asked me about a man I’d never meet

Who was I defending? And why? Rainy uncle is dangerous, I guess.

Biha Bhayo?

It’s the question I’m asked the most. Well, I’m probably asked about US visas more often. Anyhow, I get asked if I’m married a lot. Every day, probably.

Adult films weren't shown in Birganj, but they were in nearby Raxual.

Every day. Every single day. The same question. Constantly. But this is life and I have fun with it. Some days I’m a widower, some days I am waiting for my elder brother to be married, etc.

But I didn’t have a clever response when the headmiss of JP Primary asked. I just told her that I wasn’t married, that perhaps when I returned to the US I’d get married.

She was a hefty woman. She was, in fact, enormous. She was a big, fat, jolly woman who strongly suggested that she find me a wife. I explained that almost no-one in the US had arranged marriages.

When love comes, I said in Nepali, we marry.

She looked at me, confused. (I do speak Nepali terribly.)

She then told me about how Mike had married a Nepali woman. I didn’t quite understand, so I asked again. Yes, she arranged a wife for Mike.

Who’s this Mike?

Mike was an English volunteer who had worked in Birganj some time ago for some NGO or INGO. I read in the school’s ledger where Mike had written an entry after awarding a student a prize for a drawing contest.

So the headmiss would have me believe that one day an English-speaking aid worker came to JP Primary, awarded a prize for a Birganj-wide drawing contest, and then entered into a marriage the headmiss had arranged. The day before.

Then I asked the headmiss, Can you find me a nice wife? I asked again and again.

Mike’s wife was from Hetauda, a city about two hours north of Birganj, and had been found by the headmiss.

Basically she had discredited everything I had ever said about how ‘my people’ don’t have arranged marriages.

She was quiet for a moment, waiting for me to concede that (a) I needed to get married immediately, and (b) she was the only qualified person in Birganj to find a white man a nice Nepali girl to marry. It was my lucky day.

My head was spinning. Never before had been stumped like this by a Nepali. Usually I’m the one saying strange things, but an Englishman distributing prizes for an art contest in Birganj and then asking the headmiss, Find me a wife, please, was a lot to understand at one moment.

Was this woman kidding? She told me that they met at their wedding and then went back to England together about a week later.

Anything’s possible in Birganj. While the headmiss waited for my concession, I considered—for a minute—having her arrange maybe half a dozen candidates for me to look over, like troops presenting arms for inspection.

It was a rather misogynistic daydream, but after keeping company in a patriarchal society for so long, the idea didn’t immediately strike me as inherently evil.

The endless number of bicycles in Birganj can be a bit boggling.

After a moment, the headmiss then said something I’ve heard more than once. Look at you. You’re white. White is beautiful, she said.

I told her that I thought Nepalis were some of most beautiful people I’d ever seen, which she quickly dismissed, We’re black. Black is ugly. Look at me, she said pinching her forearm before turning to mine, You’re white. Very nice.

I found my loophole. I asked, So why do you want me to marry a Nepali woman if you think they are ugly?

She didn’t even hesitate, You are white. Your Nepali bride will be black. You children’s color will be very beautiful.

Her logic was a bit cloudy to me, but I didn’t press for more answers. I was uncomfortable discussing this woman’s hatred of her own skin color, let alone her admiration for mine.

It’s been strange times since coming back to Birganj after my month long hiatus, filled with poets, matchmakers, and the strange, mysterious bideshis that made all of this relative to me.

And to add to the dynamic, the two new N/196 PCVs just showed up in town yesterday.

I wonder what stories they’ll hear of me when I’m gone.

Exactly when I got it into my head to join the Peace Corps is something I wish I could remember, probably because I was more articulate about it then than I am now. How many times have I heard people half-heatedly proclaim, I’m joining the Peace Corps? It’s enough to make me vomit.

Somehow the collective social consciousness thinks of the Peace Corps as a French Foreign Legion but for conscientious objectors. Are you failing in college? Out of jail with nowhere to go? Unemployed but unwilling to live with your parents? Hell, join the Peace Corps.

What I’ve learned about Peace Corps volunteers is that they are a group who, as a generalization for example’s sake, have their lives in order, insomuch as they are willing, transitory expatriates; however, I can’t deny the opt-out factor. At a time when future plans are discussed openly at family functions, joining the Peace Corps is an easy decision (usually answered with a breaking Oh).

A year later, I was riding buses and teaching kids.

I’ve never met anyone who has joined the Peace Corps (or U.S. armed forces for that matter) because they had an immediate future planned out. And as I put behind my college life, I realize that the rest of life isn’t necessarily any different than before. I’ve chosen a cheap, unique, and moderately elite graduate school: I turned in applications, went to interviews, and even took a few tests.

Just as I was nervous leaving for college, so am I now. Just as I met smelly people who could hardly read or write, so will I in Nepal. My worries are no different than at any other time when I moved: nervous about making friends, retaining ties to old friends, adjusting to a new lifestyle, and the terrible realities of pending dysentery.

I’ve been lucky to have the support of friends and family, which hasn’t gone unnoticed. My good friend Randy sent me a farewell card and wrote on it a few quartets from T.S. Eliot’s The Dry Salvages:

Fare forward travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus.

When I arrive in Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport, the newness of everything will invigorate me. Thinking of it now gives me an anxious sense of happiness. When the waters are still, let us mock the storm.

Maybe I’ll just join the French Foreign Legion if this Peace Corps thing fizzles. It’s just the first entry, of course.