This is the first time that Peace Corps has suspended its program in Nepal, which had run continuously for 42 years. That’s thousands of PCVs have served in Nepal and returned home to tell of their experiences.

But more importantly, what does this mean for our well-loved staff of Peace Corps/Nepal? Much uncertainty, I’m sure. Very sad news indeed.

Peace Corps Suspends Program in Nepal

Washington, DC, September 13, 2004—Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez today announced the suspension of the Peace Corps program in Nepal effective immediately.

The Peace Corps has had a successful 42-year program in Nepal, making great strides in the areas of small business development, education, environment, youth development and working on health and HIV/AIDS education and awareness. The safety and security of the volunteer is the number one priority of the Peace Corps and in light of the current conditions in Nepal, suspension of the program is a necessary action, said Peace Corps Director Vasquez.

Currently, Peace Corps volunteers are being consolidated.

The Peace Corps program in Nepal began in 1962. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have served as Peace Corps volunteers in the East Asian country.

© Peace Corps

My group, Nepal 194, will become the last PCVs to COS in country. I hope it isn’t too long before another group of PCVs is able to have, well, ‘normal’ Peace Corps experiences in Nepal.

Looking back on my service, I realize how damn lucky I was. Everything finished according to plan. Fast forward to five months later, and PCVs waiting around a five-star hotel in Kathmandu for boarding passes to Thailand, where they’ll spend a week or so COS‘ing.

Well, maybe I wasn’t totally lucky. That’s definitely one adventure I never experienced.

If you want to get marriage legally in India and/or Nepal, it’s quite complicated. There’s a clear separation between a legal marriage and a regular marriage.

In the eyes of the new Indian government, Binita and I are married. In the eyes of the people that Binita and her parents know, we are not. So we’re about half married as of yesterday.

When we have the tikka-giving ceremony in June, then Binita and I will be fully, 100% married. Wow.

Getting the court marriage, must like dealing with the police in Nepal for stuff that Binita will need for her visa, is a process mostly undermined by bribing.

I have to say, there’s nothing that exciting about bribing people. Think of bribing and you think of smiles and handshakes laced with cash.

Mostly in fake receipts and long, confusing explanations of hidden costs. It’s a process saturated in shame, which makes it seem much worse than it is.

I feel bad doing it, even though all the other folks who need something from such an office do the same. I wish it were bolder, shameless.

In other news, I’ve been emailing back and forth with the US Consulates and Embassy in India as well as the Embassy in Kathmandu, trying to get information for Binita’s Visa.

There’s a fine print under the fine print, which makes exactly confirming the details nearly impossible, since for details there are details.

Slowly, we’re figuring it out.

It’d been a month since I’d seen any of my Peace Corps pals and I was starting to feel slightly disconnected.

After lunch at Keventers, Venu and I decided to walk up to the Mahakal Mandir on Observatory Hill. I was really interested in visiting the temple since Binita’s mother had originally told us that Binita and I would have our ceremony there.

The venue had since been moved to their house, which was fine with me, but I was still curious to see what this temple was like, what might have been.

When Venu and I reached the top of the hill and the main temple, a small, whitewashed stupa with prayer flags so numerous they smothered the sun and hid the dense tree line around the temple.

It was beautiful, but smaller than most temples I’d seen. We were walking around the temple when suddenly a monkey swooped down from a prayer flag, landing just to my left and behind Venu.

It was really pissed off about something, teeth showing and screaming one of those terribly loud monkey-screams.

After a second, a young guy working as a guide for the temple who we”d talked to just before came running around the temple. The monkey immediately gave ground and ran off. Venu and I laughed.

We then walked down below the temple to find the small cave that runs below the hill and then along a sidewalk that runs below the temple along the north-east side of the temple.

It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon so the Hindus were gone and we had the temple to ourselves—and a couple Bengali tourists.

As we came around that sidewalk and were heading back up to the temple, a monkey standing on the railing started screaming and flashing its teeth at us. Venu walked ahead of it and I tried to ignore it as well.

It suddenly jumped down from the railing and sprinted towards me. I gave ground a bit but noticed that the monkey was not stopping. After it was about a meter from me and heading at full pace I started running. And laughing.

I didn’t go far before I stopped and looked behind me. I knew that there was no way this monkey was going to chase me this far. But it had! The damn thing was still right behind me, teeth flashing and angry as hell.

I started to worry and ran further down the hill. After a minute, a three more monkeys responded to its screaming and there were four monkeys chasing me.

At this point, I was really running.

At the bottom of the sidewalk I tripped on a gutter and fell. When I got up the monkeys had again multiplied. There was another one standing on the railing just above me, which grabbed my jacket.

I had a newspaper with me and tried to use the daily news as a weapon, without much affect. I broke free and continued running, now with about half a dozen monkeys running after me.

The worst was this. As I was running back towards the main temple, more monkeys were swinging out of the forest (on prayer flags, actually) and dropping just next to me, swiping their claws and brandishing their teeth.

The six became seven, then eight. Finally I reached just below the main temple with a line of pissed monkeys rushing towards me.

Anyhow, I began to ascend the stairs when the Nepali guy who’d scared away the first monkey manifested out of nowhere with Venu behind him. Immediately the monkeys dispersed.

He comforted me by saying, The monkeys are very naughty. Sometimes they hurt people.

The photo processing places don’t print black and white, so I searched out a fellow who had a small darkroom for passport photos. He said he’d develop the negatives and then I could have prints made with the negatives on color paper.

Of course when I went to pick up the negatives, they were ruined. I don’t think it was the guy’s fault, but instead of bad film. I had had it for quite a while.

Unfazed, I told him I’d come back in a couple days with another roll of black and white to try again. He gave me discouraging advice, Shoot color.

I was walking back home trying to figure out the man’s advice. Does he not want to print my negatives? Does he think that black and white film in this area is bad? Or is he hinting at his inability/unwillingness to print my negatives?

And then someone said my name. I turned around and saw Venu, a N/196 PCV from Nepal, living/working in Janakpur.

He had been in Darjeeling for the past couple of days with three friends from the US who’d he had met in Delhi and then went touring around India with, hitting Agra (Taj Mahal), Benares (ghats on the Ganges), Kolkata (heat?), and finally Darjeeling (scenery).

We made plans to meet later that night, for a beer, at Joey’s. I was late getting back and Binita’s mother was unimpressed with how I’d ran into someone I knew in a place I’d only been living for 12 days.

She was even less impressed with my plans to meet him back in Chowrastra at 8 PM. I was told stories of people being hacked to death on the streets during the Gorkhaland movement and drug addicts openly using during the night.

Now it was my turn to be unimpressed. I narrated stories from Nepal: office blown up, land mines at the airport when my flight was supposed to land, waking-up to gunfire how many times, bomb near my house that rattled my guts, bombs over breakfast at Himanchal Cabin, Birganj’s major shot-to-death in front of the buspark, being poked with a submachine gun at a school once, et cetera.

Over a couple not-awful Bengali Sand Piper beers, Venu narrated his adventures in India with his friends from the States. One had been working in Namibia as a Peace Corps volunteer and began augmenting Venu’s stories with, And I’ve been to some intense places before.

My favorite was Venu’s story about the Taj Mahal.

See, there’s two-tier pricing in India, which means people who don’t look South Asian pay a higher price. For example, the zoo in Darjeeling. I had to pay Rs. 250 to get in, which Binita paid Rs. 10.

Anyhow, Venu is of Indian heritage, but is essentially to India as I am to Denmark. He doesn’t speak Hindi but he did have a plan to get in to the Taj Mahal for Rs. 10.

The day before going to the Taj Mahal, they’d go to the old fortress of Agra. At the ticket gate he had played the part of the mute Indian and just handed the person behind the counter exact change of ten rupees (the non-Asian price is Rs. 500). He got in without a problem.

So the next day he goes to the Taj Mahal and approaches the ticket counter with the same strategy, mute Indian, change in hand. He hands over the change when the guy behind the counter asks in Hindi, What’s in the bag?

Venu, not understanding, smiles and pushes his money towards the man, who instantly makes his mark.

Go back and get a foreigner ticket, he tells Venu.

And Venu, defeated, spends Rs. 750 instead of Rs. 10. At some point, Venu leaves the Taj Mahal grounds, let’s say to get something to eat.

There’s a big sign that says, Re-entry with ticket only, and upon returning a new ticket guy is at the counter. Venu shows him his non-Indian ticket stub.

Go back and get a SAARC ticket, he’s told by yet a different guard.

Of course, the man says this in Hindi and Venu doesn’t understand, just pushes his ticket closer and starts to go in. Finally, the man clarifies in English that he has to buy the Rs. 10 ticket to get in since he’s Asian, more or less.

Venu spends Rs. 760 on tickets at the Taj Mahal, suggesting that he is neither Indian or American, but both. And for that he must pay.

Darjeeling has been a home for people from other places for a long while now. And mostly because of its scenery, location, and, oddly, mild weather.

In comparison with the majority of West Bengal, the weather in Darjeeling is extreme: the days begins cold, then it rains, then the sun, then the wind, then rains again, and hail, and strong wind, then it stops and it’s sunny, and so on.

All this weather happens in about a period of, oh, two hours. Thinking of the endless, blazing sun of Kolkata or even its day-long rains, the irregularity of the weather here is definitely a change.

But for the tourists, it means that Kanchenjunga is often not available, hiding behind an endless army of marching clouds.

When the mountain does make an appearance, everyone notices for the most part.

While it’s true that Binita’s parents ability to get excited about seeing a mountain that they’ve been seeing on and off like a bad ex has clearly waned into almost nothing, with me around they’re able to get excited at least in showing it to someone else. Kanchenjunga has made three appearances in my ten days in Darjeeling.

The monsoon this year has come early. Even though people in the tourist areas are quietly grumbling about the weather, elsewhere in town it’s a good omen. It means water. And water is scarce in Darjeeling.

At a public tap in downtown Darjeeling, rules and guidelines for its use are written all around. And people will carry a dozen liters up and down the hill, spending hours just on transporting water.

When the rains come, the mountains go. And suddenly all around town, people are outsides, crouching and kneading laundry. In just an hour or so after the rains cease, clotheslines are full and kids play cricket in muddy streets, their clothes drying and done carrying water—for a day at least.

It’s India, but Nepali is the language, even as saturated with English and Hindi as it is. I’m starting to understand why people from Quebec call themselves French-Canadians. Here, people might refer to themselves as Nepali-Indians.

The history is interesting if a labored effort to read, so you’ll have to find it elsewhere. I’ve been in Darjeeling a week now, which I count as more of a measure of how long I’ve been out of Nepal. I miss it. Nepal, that is.

There’s something about living with a certain amount of anxiety that seems to put everything else into proportion. If I couldn’t get to the office in Kathmandu on time, oh well, there were riots and tear gas on the way. If a training didn’t go well in Birganj, ho hum, my office was bombed into rubble.

Life is quieter in Darj, as the locals call it. There’s something cosmopolitan about this place, too, but in a particular way. I’m from a small town—a small town in Texas at that. Everything in Darjeeling is unique to the place, especially how they dress and speak.

It’s a cosmopolitan affectation. But what I like about it is how widespread it is. Even though today’s barber looked Bihari, he still spoke Nepali throwing in about as much English.

It’s Nepali, even if they say, Today ko program late bhayo.

I arrived in Darjeeling on April 15, 2004. That last morning in Kathmandu, sitting in the domestic terminal of the airport, waiting for a plane that I wasn’t sure would make it to our destination of Bhadrapur, it didn’t seem like it was my last day in Nepal. (For a while at least.)

I was more occupied sitting silently trying to convince myself that flights go every day, there’s never any crashes.

But Binita had told me too many horror stories of her life working for the domestic airlines, notably Necon Air—recently defunct.

My last flight to Birganj had been exceptional intense. I was waiting for my flight to Simra with Kurt, another PCV, when the weather turned sour.

Dark clouds were followed by strong winds, rain, and finally hail. Kurt and I joked to ourselves, Doesn’t look like our flights are going anywhere today.

Then suddenly a woman called a flight, Cosmic Air, Simra! Cosmic Air, Simra!

I was flying with Yeti; still, I was more than terrified at the thought of a small Twin Otter plane flying over the hills of the Kathmandu Valley in strong winds, hail, with zero visibility.

I asked Kurt, If they called your flight would you go?

Kurt looked outside, which had become dark even though it was mid afternoon, Hell no.

The rain, hail, and wind persisted and another flight was called. After ten minutes the small Cosmic plane heading to Simra roared down the runway and up, immediately into the clouds and out of site.

And then I heard, Yeti Air, Simra! Yeti Air, Simra!

The sound inside the plane was thunderous. The hail banged loudly on the light metal skin of the plane as it tumbled down the runway. I could feel the plane swaggering in the wind. My hands were white, though they grasped the arm rests with enough force that I might have snapped it in two. The plane ascended and immediately banked to the left.

I was about to die.

Actually, the flight went pretty well. We climbed way, way high and at a speed it gave me a headache. I was somewhat calmed by the relative lack of turbulence.

But, dammit, things didn’t seem right when I noticed we’d been in the air for half an hour. The flight should take 12—15 minutes. It’s only 90 km. After trying to psychically project my concern, the plane began descending.

After dropping through the clouds, the air in the plane became stuffy and the windows hot. I saw Simra airport just ahead. Oddly, I correlated this place to life. Such a strange place to be a pleasant sight.

Our jeep from Bhadrapur took us directly to Darjeeling. Well, after lunch and sitting around in an office in Karkarbhitta for an hour. It’s still direct. Anyhow, I started considering my last moments in Nepal.

I was 12 hours from Birganj, but still I was eating in a restaurant I’d eaten in before. A little while later I was in India, buying snacks in a place I’d been before.

Just before heading north to Darjeeling, I spotted some train tracks where I’d peed before.

For the first time in a long while I was going somewhere new.

After speeding through the heat of Siliguri (I’d been there before, too) we began our ascent into the hills. Binita told me that we’d be taking the shorter, faster road into Darjeeling. She also told me this road is the one from which the occasional jeep tumbles off when the monsoon is in full force.

Twenty kilometers outsides of Darjeeling in cloud-enclosed city we stopped for Binita to call her parents and let them know that we were coming.

So far, the place reminded me of Dhunche. A single road with just a little here and there on either side of the road. The jeep continued winding around the roads (and the occasional bus) and finally start going down for a change.

As the jeep turned from the outside of a bend inwards, the entire city of Darjeeling suddenly appeared. I couldn’t believe it’s size.

People say Darjeeling’s small, but I’m thinking those folks are comparing it to Kolkata’s 13 million-odd people; however, for a hill city in Asia, it’s mighty big. Larger than any other hill city I’d been to in Nepal, like Ilam Bazaar, Jomsom, or Dhunche. Much larger.

I’d joined the Peace Corps. I had gone to Nepal.

I had lived in a big, industrial city on the border with India. I had baked during the summer in a concrete jungle. I had gone days without walking on grass. I had learned to speak Nepali, Bhojpuri, and Hindi badly.

I felt like I was somewhere that I hadn’t been before.

Essentially, the Nepal I had expected. And I was in India.

And it doesn’t nearly express what my experience meant to me nor all the things that happened—good or bad. The document’s odd, third-person language is just the way Peace Corps has us type it. Enjoy.

Description of Peace Corps Volunteer Service

Scott Allan Wallick — Nepal/194

After completing a competitive application processes stressing applicant skills, adaptability, and cross-cultural understanding, Mr. Scott Allan Wallick was invited into Peace Corps service. He was assigned for his first year of service to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the primary level and for the second year to work as an English Language Teacher Trainer (ELTT) with primary-level English teachers.

Wallick entered Peace Corps’ pre-service training (PST) on February 23, 2002, participating in an intensive, 11-week program in Nawalparasi district, Nepal. Language training included 135 hours of Nepali (speaking, reading, writing) and 12 hours of spoken Hindi. Technical training included 110 hours of methodology, educational systems, and other large-class, low/no-cost materials strategies. As a part of technical training, Wallick completed 6 days of practice teaching two 4^th and 5^th grade English classes.

In addition to language and technical training, Wallick also completed 30 hours of health and medical training focusing on self-diagnosis and self-medication, 30 hours of cross-cultural and community activities, including English and math tutoring, and 17 hours of safety and security training, focusing on historical and current implications of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency.

Wallick successfully completed training and was sworn-in as a Peace Corps volunteer on May 8, 2002. For his first year of service, he was assigned to Sri Sundarmal Ramkumarji Kanya MV (secondary school) in Birganj, Parsa district, Nepal, where he was one of 22 faculty members. The girls’ school, with an enrollment of over 450 students, offered eleven grades of study. Wallick was assigned to His Majesty’s Government’s (HMG) Ministry of Education and reported directly to the school’s headsir, Hari Krishnore Misra.

Wallick was responsible for the HMG’s mandated English curriculum for the 4^th and 5^th grades, teaching 12 hours per week for 9 months (over 300 hours of instruction), a full school year. For his first year, Wallick’s primary responsibilities included curriculum development, lesson planning, constructing and administering exams, monitoring and evaluating students, and preparing the students’ end-term grades. Wallick shared all faculty responsibilities and also taught a computer literacy class to the faculty for 2 hours per week for three weeks.

For Wallick’s second year of Peace Corps service, he was assigned to the District Education Office of Parsa district, located in Birganj, where he reported directly to the District Education Officer, Yogendra Bahadur Basnet. Wallick was responsible for holding bi-monthly teacher trainings for a cluster of schools comprising 26 primary-level English teachers. Prior to the beginning of this second year project, Wallick worked with 11 other N/194 ELTTs to create the program’s curriculum, including structures, functions, educational topics, and monitoring and evaluation tools.

During his second year, Wallick instructed 26 teachers during 30 hours of formal sessions and provided over 200 hours of on-site assistance to the teachers individually at their schools. His major responsibilities during this program were to monitor and evaluate the progress of the teachers as well as the ELTT program (Peace Corps/Nepal’s first), design sessions based on the ELTT curriculum, provide specific support and generate motivation to the teachers, assist the teachers with classroom management, and provide and model EFL methodology.

In addition to his primary first- and second-year responsibilities, Wallick also organized and facilitated two teacher trainings at other Peace Corps volunteers’ sites. He created the curriculum for a seven-day teacher training (21 hours of instruction) in far-western Nepalgunj. The training was designed for non-teachers, as the school was also an orphanage and the teachers were volunteers.

He designed and co-executed a four-day, two module teacher training in Dharan, located in the mid-hills of eastern Nepal. The first two days (7 hours) were a general training for the school’s faculty (eight teachers and a headsir), focused on developing student/teacher relationships and expectations and establishing rules and consequences. The other two days (7 hours) were for a cluster of 14 primary-level English teachers and focused on effectiveness methods for teaching English speaking, reading, and writing skills.

At the request of Peace Corps/Nepal’s training office, Wallick assisted during two other PSTs (N/196 andN/198), instructing Peace Corps trainees (PCT) on Nepali educational systems, teaching strategies, and classroom management, for 22 hours, including example teaching four 4^th and 5^th grade classes for PCTs’ observation. He also mentored two PCTs during their practice teaching, providing pre- and in-class support for over 6 hours to each individual.

On two other occasions, Wallick was asked by the training office to assist during in-service trainings (IST). He facilitated a 3-hour session on classroom management during the N/194 IST. He also facilitated 6 hours of sessions during the N/196 IST, including a review of the ELTT curriculum and second-year planning for their second year.

Peace Corps/Nepal’s training office also asked Wallick on two occasions to locate and analyze potential sites for volunteer work placement. Wallick selected two schools after conducting interviews with the faculties and analyzing the schools’ data. Two volunteers were later placed in both schools and completed their first year assignments successfully and with positive experiences.

Wallick planned and organized various secondary projects while full-filling his primary project goals. He planned two children’s day camps at schools for disadvantaged communities during the 2002 and 2003 International Children’s Days. During his first year at Sri Sundarmal Ramkumarji Kanya MV, he created and mentored a girls’ club for three months, which meet weekly for 2 hours.

He provided logistical and technical support to two other PCVs for a daylong HIV/AIDS awareness rally in Jhapa district, far-eastern Nepal. Wallick also was responsible for communicating information between the office and 22 volunteers as a regional warden. As warden, Wallick received over 5 hours of training in emergency preparedness and “what if” scenarios concerning the safety and possible evacuation of those 22 volunteers from the country.

At the completion of his service, a certified Foreign Service Institute examiner tested Mr. Scott Allan Wallick and he scored an ‘advanced’ in spoken Nepali.

Pursuant to Section 5(f) of the Peace Corps Act 22 USC. 2504(f), as amended, any former Volunteer employed by the United States Government following his Peace Corps Volunteer Service is entitled to have any period of satisfactory Peace Corps service credited for purposes of retirement, seniority, reduction in force, leave, and other privileges based on length of Government service. That service shall not be credited toward completion of the probationary trial period of any service requirement for career appointment.

This is to certify in accordance with Executive Order 11103 of April 10, 1963, that Mr. Scott Allan Wallick served successfully as a Peace Corps Volunteer. His service ended on April 7, 2004. He is therefore eligible to be appointed as a career-conditional employee in the competitive civil service on a non-competitive basis. This benefit under the Executive Order extends for a period of one year after termination of Volunteer service, except that the employing agency may extend the period for up to three years for a former Volunteer who enters military service, pursues studies at a recognized institution of higher learning, or engages in other activities which, in the view of the appointing agency, warrants extension of the period.

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 sip, I look through my window across 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.

This is my last day in Birganj.

Moments later I’m at Himanchal Cabin, pouring over The Kathmandu Post and The Himalayan Times with another cup of coffee, eggs and toast on the way.

I joke and answer questions about the photos with the kids working here. They know me and sit at my table when there’s no work. I’ve known many of them for more than a year, a few for more than two years.

After breakfast I walk across Maisthan. The newspaper man waves to me from his shop and I wave back.

Further down the block there’’s a man who sits on his patio with a radio to his ear. I’ve seen him nearly everyday I’ve lived in Birganj. His hair is now nearly shoulder length.

I’ve never talked to him, but every time we see one another we mouth, Namaste.

I turn west for another block and then south to the Internet cafe. The young computer nerd turns on a computer and I wait for it to boot.

After a moment, I log on to Yahoo! and read my emails. The keyboard totters and bangs loudly on the uneven desk as I type. I send a few emails and then sign-off.

Outside I jump into a rickshaw and head back north past Maisthan, the clock tower, and my neighborhood, Ranighat, towards the water tank area, Murli Gardens, my previous neighborhood.

I get off in front of my first flat and immediately notice that nothing looks different, except that someone else’s laundry hangs from my balcony. This is me. I am coming, I am going.

Rajesh and his family make lunch, Nepali daal bhat, and we sit together, eating and drinking whiskey, perhaps a bit early. This is a goodbye I knew would be hard. I have a little whiskey and realize all those misunderstandings were my misunderstanding.

A flood of memories pours over me and I feel shame thinking of their patience and friendliness towards me. All I do, though, is compliment the food and ask for another drink, smiling.

Two hours are gone and as I walk back towards the main road I stop at Mira’s for tea and a scolding. It’s been nearly a week since my last visit, a period of absence that they find entirely unacceptable, and I smile as they hassle me. Still smiling, I ask for a biscuit for my tea. They tell me not to leave. They say I will forget them.

Mira, who gave me bhai tikka, I won’t forget you.

I know that in small ways, I will remember them, but I will probably never see them again.

They opened their home to me. I feel that my friendship and occasional gifts were so completely inadequate I wish they”d hassle me more. They don’t. They just give me more tea.

After I finish prolonged goodbyes, I walk to Ashish’s. He lives where a British VSO once lived. She was a friend and showed me much of Birganj.

Now Ashish lives in her flat. I think about my flat and the Australian who lived there before me. I wonder if this cyclical nature of volunteers coming, working, and leaving is good. We fly in, from far away places, try our best to improve things, and then leave just as suddenly as we came. Again and again.

There are already several volunteers from out-of-town at Ashish’s for the big farewell party. Oh, and St. Patrick’s Day.

There’s green Carlsberg beer and water buffalo meat cooking. Just after dark the music gets louder and the dancing begins. This has happened so many times that I can’t help but be sad to know that this, again, is a last.

Before it’s too late, I walk alone back to my flat. The streets are empty and the houses are dark. I notice (as I always have) how the fluorescent lights hanging as street lights eerily illuminate the crumbling streets and gloomy homes.

It’s beautiful. I walk across the abandoned dry port, past a building that was bombed by Maoists, into Ranighat and finally home.

As soon as I walk in I notice my packed bag sitting in the kitchen, waiting for tomorrow’s departure. I can’t sleep so I go to the roof to look over sleeping Ranighat.

I can’t look in any direction without recounting encounters with people, street food, places I’ve been, places I haven’t, the houses of kids I knew. They will never see me again and soon I won’t remember many of them.

The next morning I get into the jeep heading to the airport. After a few moments we’re outside of town, passing through places like Parwanipur, Jitpur, and finally Simra.

This may or may not have happened.

I may not see the clock tower and think, This is a last. I may not notice the Bollywood movie posters that used to catch my eye.

This part of my life is over (or rather ending very soon) and I will never live again in this city full of contradictions—and that makes me sad. Very.

But a new chapter in my life is opening and I’m turning the page, anxious for a new beginning.

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 is that we Peace Corps volunteer are ourselves responsible for our safety. How can someone expect someone else to take care of them?

Let me explain the situation.

Since December 19, 2003, when I wrote an post for this blog titled Bombs Over Birganj, there have been around 18 bombs detonated in the Birganj and Kalaiya areas, all Maoist.

There was also a large attack by ’several hundred’ Maoists on the Simra airport (the local airport for Birganj, about 12 km north of Birganj).

The office where I work, the District Education Office, was bombed on February 18, 2004.

Fortunately I was not at the office that day. I was in Kathmandu finishing my close-of-service medical check-up.

There had been two bandhas called while I was in Kathmandu so everything took a bit longer than it should have; however, this is the way of Nepal nowadays and so one must just get used to the on/off tendencies of the country.

One day things are on, the next they’re off.

When I arrived that the Kathmandu airport on February 21, 2003, I checked in a went into the waiting area past security to wait for my flight.

As soon as I was inside, a friend who works for another airline told me that because of a ’security problem,’ a previous flight had been unable to land in Simra. He wasn’t clear what was sure, but assured me that my flight would be canceled. I waited.

Ten minutes after my flight was supposed to leave, an announcement over the loudspeaker said that all persons flying to Simra should return to the check-in desks. We were told that the flights to Simra were canceled, as said before, because of a security problem.

I had just found out while in Kathmandu that my office had been bombed, so I was a bit nervous. I called the Peace Corps’ duty officer and asked them to do a little research on the ubiquitous security problem and get back to me before I rescheduled my flight to Simra.

When the duty officer called me back, he told me that there had been a total of eight bombs planted along the runway. He didn’t know what type of bombs they were, just that the army was in the process of safely detonating them.

He then suggested that I wait until a few other planes landed safely in Simra before taking a flight back. I agreed.

So I day later (and after two other planes landed safely) I boarded a plane bound for Simra. The flight was rough and I was wondering if it was the weather or the pilots preoccupations with land mines on the runway.

Once at the Simra airport, I was present when the Minister of Information (then Kamal Thapa) was arriving. The first person to exit the plane was a fatigued soldier carrying an M-16. And so was the second and third until Kamal Thapa himself emerged.

Even I thought this was strange.

Back in Birganj, I stopped by another airlines office, where yet more friends work, to see if I could get some better answers about what had happened the day before. They told me that five minutes after their plane had left Kathmandu bound for Simra the bombs had been discovered.

The flight time between Kathmandu and Simra is about 15 minutes.

Early on the day I was flying to Simra, I ate some sekuwa just below the airport and then walked my way up to the terminals, which takes less than 10 minutes.

As I was walked into the airport, the army folks were off to the side of the road where they are usually standing RNA guards. Next to them were three kids, about 14 or 15, standing on their heads with their shoes off. One of the army guys was beating the kids’ feet with a switch of some sort.

They waved me by without even asking for my ticket, which is the standard procedure. I stopped for a moment and asked what was happening. The army-man-in-charge-of-beating-feet told me that the kids were naughty. I asked why.

Because they don’t have jobs, he informed me, his frustration with the children palpable.

I thought about the kids, Maoists, and bombs at my airport.

About a week ago in Kalaiya the army murdered two civilians in their houses and then took their bodies to the jungle where they were buried.

Family and other folks found out about this and went out into the jungle and found the buried bodies, dug them up, and marched in the main bazaar area in Kalaiya, putting the bodies on display and rallying in front of the army barracks.

The people called a bandha and there was some confrontation with the police and the army, ending with the army lining up and firing blanks at the crowd, injuring 15 people.

This is how you when the people’s support, right?

Since December 2003 there have been two bombs at the army barracks and another at a police station in Kalaiya.

The number of reported cases by the Nepali media of the police and army killing civilians in Nepal has been escalating exponentially by day recently. Stories of rape, murder, and extortion are beginning to appear in the newspapers.

Three youths were killed in Narayanghat on Maha Shivaratri. A while ago in Hetauda, a bus conductor was shot through the chest and killed by an army man who then apologized, saying he had accidentally aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.

After seeing those army men brutalize those three kids, I think that the army could not exist like it does without the Maoists, just as the Maoists couldn’t exist without the army being the way it is.

Somehow I forgot to mention this. Forgetting to mention something like this suggests something about how we all feel here in Nepal: safe.

Yet it’s a safety borne mostly out of complacency and a youthful feeling of invincibility that every PCV here feels. I think that the the thing we overlook is that the people who we’re working with here just can’t leave the country if things get too bad.

Anyhow, when I got back from the training in Dharan, I was walking to my flat when I noticed a building about 200 meters from where I live looking quite a bit different.

I though, Oh, this must be getting demolished.

Later I asked a local what was happening with the building and he told me that it had been bombed a few nights ago.

Even tonight I walked by that building. Bricks are strewn about the road in front and the one side of the building is mostly exposed.

It was an empty, government building just sitting in a field—across from the the army barracks in Birganj. Why would the Maoists blow-up an old, abandoned government building that’s across the street from the army barracks?

I guess because they can.

I was going to stay for a night, maybe two, before heading back to Birganj.

Anyhow, I think we were having dinner and Andrew was talking about the school visits he’d be making the next day: a short in-and-out trip to invite two English teachers to an upcoming training.

So wouldn’t it be funny if I came along, pretending to be one of those know-nothing jocks from Washington, DC, pretending

1. to know something about the work (that we’d just invented)
2. be aware in the slightest of the surrounding people and their culture

We could mock the worst aspect of Peace Corps to the people whose opinions actually mattered—the Nepalis, who were often victims of seemingly random, surprise visits from people with unclear agendas and even stranger messages to deliver to people with whom they have no clear connection.

I’d seen it happen just a couple of months before when two Peace Corps suits (essentially ‘from corporate’) rolled up in a white SUV at an agricultural co-op where a PCV was working.

Their backgrounds were not in agriculture. They had no visible interest in the economics of the micro-finance scheme of the NGO. In fact, they were ex-military intelligence.

Strange ambassadors to send to a dirt farm needing international development assistance, especially considering their collective credentials from Vietnam and Somalia.

After they asked preliminary questions on how the office was built (as in, “With what type of steel-reinforcement?”) and the location of the toilet (there was no toilet, just a pit latrine), they mostly talked amongst themselves about the >chiye they’d been served.

Oddly, they both, respectively, compared it with teas in Vietnam and Somalia.

Very enlightening.

Anyhow, the locals had sat nearby, uncomfortable with their non-comprehension of the foreigners’ curiosity with the tea.

So far they’d been told that they two men in starched blue shirts, starched khakis, and high-gloss burgundy loafers had come to Nepal a few days ago from far away lands to visit their NGO. And so far they’d been asked about concrete and then mumbled to themselves for twenty minutes about, apparently, the tea.

Then they walked to the white SUV and road off into the sunset, leaving the volunteer behind to explain what had just happened.

Sadly, terrible behavior by the office big-wigs in Peace Corps isn’t limited to dumb Americans, although they usually do it with such bumbling skill it’s humorous for everyone involved.

If only the foreigners’ bumblings were just cultural misunderstandings they could be excused. But it’s usually logistical and financial intimidation. If they don’t make a good show, they don’t get a PCV.

If they don’t get a PCV, they haven’t any access to the piles of money available through grants and proposals.

Now we’re way up in the Himalayas, far from the hot, oppressive Terai. A friend from my group was posted in small village in Lang Tang National Park, the heart of Rasuwa district, which is north of Kathmandu and runs along Tibet.

It’s a wonderful place full of mellow, accepting people: some indigenous to Nepal, some decedents from Tibetans. All are Buddhists in my friend’s village and there’s only a single government school where she teaches.

So a couple of the senior staff from Peace Corps (who happen to be Nepali) show up in her village to assess the situation. She has but a few months left in her village before returning to the States.

The staffers are her program officer, a woman, and a training officer, a man. Upon arriving, the two check into the single hotel in the small village, which they find awful.

They been complaining to the sole proprietor of the sole hotel in the little village about the hotel’s lack of rooms with joined bathrooms.

Actually, the place is little more than a small overnight dwelling for trekkers heading up, up, up to see some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Probably a rare occasion to hear the phrase ‘attached bathroom’ in Nepali.

But they’re not done. Much to the volunteer’s horror, during dinner the duo ask the proprietor for meat with their meal. They guy says that meat isn’t available and heads back into the kitchen.

The PCV is crawling in her skin and explains that the Buddhist in her village don’t eat meat. She’s lived there for 24 months and no meat.

Nonsense, the woman says, I saw chickens out front. Then the PCV has to explain that chickens also lay eggs.

When the proprietor comes back from the kitchen they ask him again for meat, mentioning the chickens.

They’re for the trekkers. Although I’m a Buddhist, I’ll prepare eggs. The woman is spurred by this and starts negotiating how much it’ll cost her to get him to kill a chicken.

Of course they didn’t get any meat. All they had done was publicly tried to bribe a person into abandoning his religious beliefs—for money.

The volunteer was so mortified that she spent the next day apologizing for her offices’ thulo manches. Touching lives, making a difference.

Our plan was for me to wear Andrew’s pin-stripped suit, a Nepali >topi, and act like a total ass.

I couldn’t speak Nepali and would have to pretend like I was from Mars and totally baffled by everything. Yet I would have to press them for certain, pointless information and ask them to do certain, pointless things in my absence.

We showed up at the school in a white car that we’d rented for effect. We had the driver pass through the gate and right up to the office’s front door.

The driver, convinced by a practice dialogue Andrew and I had gone through in the car, got out and opened my door for me. I then walked directly into the office and began loudly introducing myself to the faculty, who were sitting around just before school began and exams were handed out.

Hello, I am from Aaaaahmeriii-cah, I said in my best moron-from-Washington voice, and then commanding Andrew, shouted, Translate! The faculty then gave their introductions.

I listened and then began asking them pointless statistical information, like how many 14 year olds were currently attending the school, It’s the age when children learn the best, I told them, Get ‘em when they’re 14 and it’s all over—translate!

Andrew was trying to translate, but the sight of me looking so out of place and acting like such a fool was too much for him and he started laughing, quietly to himself.

His counterpart came over to ask him a question while I was discussing dental health with the headsir, putting his hands around Andrew in an unexceptional display of affection.

I turned to him, We don’t do this in America, I said, looking as dumb as I sounded, And I find it . . . disturbing.

I realized that I was losing steam and asked the headsir if I could address the entire student body, but he told me that because of exams only a few classes were present.

That’ll be sufficient, I said, because I need to share some things about dental health.

I then asked the faculty what they thought was more important, learning English or dental health.

They talked amongst themselves and then told me in unison, Both are important.

Fine. I then walked out of the office and wandered around the school, pointing at students and shouting, Is this a student, Andrew?

Once the students were assembled I produced a whistle I’d taken from Andrew’s and blew it as loud as I could. I had them.

Out of another pocket I took out some floss (I had grabbed it just as we left Andrew’s, thinking a prop or two might come in handy) and asked the students, What is this?

No one knew so I told them it was floss, yelled at Andrew to translate, and began giving a demonstration of how to use it in front of the 8^th and 9^th graders, who were assembled outside.

A girl raised her hand and asked (in Nepali), Is this available here?

I said something and Andrew translated, Probably not.

I then asked the students if they enjoyed learning English and of course they said yes.

And how can you speak English, I was really being ridiculous, without a nice smile?

I then asked the kids how to take care of their teeth.

Brushing, they shouted in unison.

I then asked some other ways. A hush fell upon them and no one said anything for about half a minute, until a small boy in the back of a line said, Exercise?

Exactly! I told them, glad that the kid had given me something else to ramble on about, Mouth exercises!

I then went through the three mouth exercises I’d instantly invented in my mind, the big O, the sidewinder, and the cat’s meow. I’ll let you imagine what these were.

I had the kids going through the exercises when the headsir came up to me, “It is time to begin the exams.”

I concluded by telling those present that I would come back in five years if they hadn’t taken care of their teeth, I would remove them, forcibly, Translate!

A girl raised her hand and mentioned that they wouldn’t be at this school in five years. Good point. So I took their names and told them that I’d track them down. This seemed to make them happy.

The faculty hadn’t bought it, though, and I think that’s a good thing.

Next time when a white Peace Corps SUV rolls up into the school grounds, drives right up to the office, and some ridiculous moron with absolutely nothing important or significant to share with the faculty marches into the office, maybe they’ll understand better how to deal with them.

One last note.

As Andrew and I were leaving, we noticed two teachers. One was Andrew’s counterpart, mouth wide open, and the other was the headsir.

The headsir hand a length of floss in his hand and was carefully flossing the other teacher’s teeth.

Touching lives, making a difference.