It’s early still but the warmth of my bedroom wakes me once the sun has risen. I roll out of bed and walk into my kitchen, begin making coffee.
I turn on my shortwave and listen to the BBC and listen as I pour my coffee, stopping to rub the sleep out of my eyes.
As I [...]
The last thing that I wrote about safety and security got my webpage shut down by Peace Corps’ Washington, DC, office.
Perhaps it’s just coincidental that my predictions about the situation in the Rautahaut, Bara, and Parsa districts have mostly come true, much to the frustration of Peace Corps’ Kathmandu office. Not that it matters.
The fact [...]
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 [...]
Things should be simpler. If people can travel to another hemisphere, learn a somewhat obscure second language, eat with their hands, and grow comfortable with the sounds of bombs and gunfire then surely organizing and executing a basic teacher training with motivated teachers in a scenic location shouldn’t be a problem.
Piece of cake. Kid stuff. [...]
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:
I gave this country
education for the poor,
and they stole my bike.
So there it is. Nothing else. Moving [...]
