tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50138372011-04-22T09:52:42.053+05:45Happenings in the Life and Times of Nathan BlomHere is my attempt to document my adventures in Nepal and to keep those of you who're interested up to date on my life.
The official disclaimer: I no longer need to have a disclaimer because now, thanks to the Maobody, my Peace Corps service is finished.Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comBlogger321100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1103241582623338752004-12-17T05:22:00.000+05:452004-12-17T05:44:42.623+05:45May 4, 2004 - Chhairo, Mustang
Buddha's 2548th Birthday
Last week was Buddha's birthday. This was significant here because while Nepal is the world's only official Hindu kingdom, the district of Mustang is mostly Buddhist. Given the predominance of Buddhism, I must admit that I was rather disappointed in the effort that I saw when the day itself came.
The entirety of the Buddha Jayanti Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1097576480819310132004-10-12T15:45:00.000+05:452004-10-13T17:47:00.256+05:45July 24th, Chhairo
4:30 in the morning. Nathan-sir! Nathan-sir! Utaunus! My two adopted nephews had come to wake me up. Today we were headed up to Marche. It still eluded me why we had to leave by 5 am, but that was when my family was going and, because I didn't know the trail, that was when I was also going. I quickly ate some of last night's daal bhaat and shouldered my pack and tent and we Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1097415670977879162004-10-10T19:00:00.000+05:452004-10-10T20:12:15.566+05:45June 14, 2004 - Kathmandu
I have started teaching tuition. This means that I teach my 4th and 5th graders for an hour before school and then I teach the high school students from Chhairo after school. Free of charge of course, despite the name. It isn't official school time, so most of the time I teach it wearing flip-flops, jeans and a t-shirt (a dress shirt, shoes, and slacks are my normal Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1088269700655275262004-06-26T21:52:00.000+05:452004-06-26T23:06:30.863+05:45More Random Musings from Mustang
Muna
The arguments of a fourteen year old had left me speechless. And he was talking in his second language. It had started in an all too familiar manner. "Hey, smoke some hashish?" His voice was already maturing into the sleazy creepiness of his older Thamel counterparts. Somebody needed to stop this before it got too far. That and the pent up irritationNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1082031677684630592004-04-15T18:06:00.000+05:452004-06-11T13:50:27.333+05:45Gokyo - Cho La - Everest Base Camp Trek
Tuesday, April 1 - Kathmandu to Lukla to Phakding (2 hrs)
I had flown into Kathmandu three days earlier. I was to have my annual medical checkup and then Ryan and I were going to head out for a two week vacation trekking in the Solokhumbu Region of Nepal - the home of Mt. Everest. The flight from Jomsom to Pokhara to Kathmandu was a particularly Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1080226905328389872004-03-25T20:46:00.000+05:452004-10-09T12:17:37.186+05:45Monday, October 27, 2003
GLOW Camp recollected
I woke in the middle of the night. I couldn't tell what time it was, but I knew that I wouldn't be going back to sleep. My friends were coming (but not for at least another 4 hours as it turned out to be 2 am). The airplanes had not flown the previous four days as monsoon clouds belligerently clung to the mountains long past the days when they Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1066036081116399902003-10-13T14:11:00.000+05:452003-10-13T14:53:01.190+05:45October 12, 2003 - Pokhara, Kaski
Images of Nepal
Jomsom
I figure that as long as I have mentioned Susheela, I will give you a picture of her and her up-and-coming guest house. Susheela and her husband own the building next to Ohm's Home, the second nicest hotel in Jomsom. They are an exceptional Nepali couple. They seem to have a loving relationship (rare in a country of arranged marriages)Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1066033439205907902003-10-13T13:50:00.000+05:452003-10-13T14:08:59.050+05:45Wednesday September 24, 2003 - Jomsom, Mustang
The goats are coming down. Herd after herd they are coming down from the hills. By the hundreds they fill the road, moving en masse, jumping rocks like spawning salmon leaping waterfalls. Throughout monsoon, the goatherds had tended them in the hills, here in Mustang, to escape the rain. But now that the rains have ended they are bringing them Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1066032275484413252003-10-13T13:32:00.000+05:452003-10-13T13:49:35.596+05:45September 22, 2003 - Chhairo, Mustang
Purna and Shankar, the proverbial bhadmas manches (naughty children) of our village. Not a week goes by when one of these brothers, aged 7 and 10, doesn't get a beating or have to suffer the punishing humiliation of crouching in front of the whole school, arms laced through their legs gripping their ears for 10 minutes as the other students snicker and Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1065873591744961482003-10-11T17:15:00.000+05:452003-10-11T17:44:51.893+05:45September 7th, 2003 - Chhairo, Mustang
My kids are great. This noon, I was starved and all of my dishes were dirty, making cooking a daunting possibility. I thought 'I need something easy, something quick. Ahh, I know, I want an apple and some peanut butter.' But alas, I had no apples. Not a problem here when apples are in season. I went to the school where the children were at recess and Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1065870311477433712003-10-11T15:41:00.000+05:452003-10-11T16:50:11.613+05:45September 4th, 2003 - Chhairo, Mustang
Little Sunil has seizures. At least I'm pretty sure that is what they are. He is in the 2nd grade and I once watched him taking a test. While all the other students were huddled over their papers, his head rose and his eyes rolled back into his head. He sat in this way for a full minute. A puddle slowly formed around his feet. Then his eyes and his Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1061358550579762562003-08-20T11:34:00.000+05:452003-08-20T11:34:10.416+05:45Monday, May 26, 2003 – Jomsom, Mustang
All day I have waited here in Jomsom, in the rainshadow of the Annapurnas. I watched as the bilious serpentine thunderheads poured over the shoulders of Nilgiri. And yet for their perpetual northward slide, the clouds never collected this side of the mountains. Inexplicably the immense mass of the storm could never accumulate here. Yet the entire view Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1061358138643484322003-08-20T11:27:00.000+05:452003-08-20T11:27:18.513+05:45Tuesday, June 24, 2003 - Chhairo, Mustang
I have electricity! Or at least I have a single light-bulb hanging by its cord. The light is fabulous. Last night I stayed up until 10:00 and didn't get a headache from squinting in the candlelight.
I also have a neighbor. Both of these wonders are because I have moved into the teacher's hostel. Yesterday, two of my fourth-graders spent the Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-1061293298213301982003-08-19T17:26:00.000+05:452003-08-19T17:26:38.110+05:45My Daily Schedule
Due to popular demand, I will detail a typical day in the life of PCV Nathan Blom.
8:00 - Wake up to the sounds of children running by my room. They have been at extra-curricular morning classes since six. I, however, am on a much later schedule than they are and have slept in, my laziness aided by the fact that my room has no glass in its windows, so the way I shut my Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-947938092003-05-23T22:56:00.000+05:452003-05-23T22:56:54.643+05:45Standing at the Edge of the World
Well, I hope that I have given you a picture, some hazy vicarious glimpse of life in Mustang. At this point, I feel that I have little more than that myself. But tomorrow morning, I will be stepping onto a small plane to disappear into the thin air of that world. I will try to keep in contact with as many of you and as frequently as possible, but in Mustang Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-947697772003-05-23T09:43:00.000+05:452003-05-23T22:37:39.000+05:45Paris from Nepal
On the second day in Marpha, Beth, a volunteer who is living 4 hours to the north met up with Justin, Mischere and myself. She had left her bags at a different hotel than the one we were staying at so we went back to pick them up. With the day half-gone and a couple of hours of hiking still looming over us, we decided to rest for a while and eat a large lunch. The entire timeNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-939229322003-05-07T18:15:00.000+05:452003-05-12T17:23:46.000+05:45The Village Upon First Arrival
Chhairo consists of about 30 stone buildings mortered together with mud. It lies in the width of the river bed with green fields of crops on either side. Between the village and the refugee camp is the shell of a deserted building. It is larger than any other building outside of Marpha but its purpose and age are indiscernable. The first day we went to the Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-938540192003-05-06T16:13:00.000+05:452003-05-07T18:12:34.000+05:45Mustang Musings - Part I
Pokhara
It is the most badeshi friendly city I've yet seen in Nepal. The streets are wide and clean, some even have medians to keep traffic in the proper lanes. There is no livestock wandering through the streets and yards. Neon lights advertise e-mail every three pasols – "100 rupees an hour" they boldly proclaim in English (but if you can read Nepali, you'll see 50Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-926981552003-04-16T11:08:00.000+05:452003-04-30T17:18:36.000+05:45GLOW Camp
Yesterday was our GLOW camp. GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World, but I can't help but be a little cynical towards the name and its significance for empowering women considering that as an adolescent boy I used to stay up late on Saturday nights to watch the scantily clad GLOW women on TV. They were the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling who would perform the most poorly of Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-925230832003-04-13T17:18:00.000+05:452003-04-13T17:18:22.966+05:45Tea and Talk
Last Tuesday, while walking by Bhanu High School, I met one of the boys who had helped translate for us when we visited the small village just outside of Bhairhawa. He was coming home from school, headed for the long dusty ride back to his village. We stopped and talked in broken Nepali for a while, but since Nepali was the second language for both of us communication was Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-919752812003-04-04T16:53:00.000+05:452003-04-04T16:53:59.530+05:45Marriage Anyone?
Let me recount a journal entry from the first week of my stay with my host family. For various reasons I have refrained from posting it until now. The names and identities of those involved have been changed to protect the innocent.
Friday, March 14, 2003,
Bhairhawa, The Terai
I think my Nepali family is trying to initiate the first stages of courtship between myself and Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-914743402003-03-27T17:38:00.000+05:452003-03-27T17:38:26.280+05:45A thirty-minute jeep ride.
That’s all it takes to move beyond the cosmopolitan center that is Bhairhawa. I would say car ride, but no car would handle the rutted oxen-cart tracks, much less the river crossing that threatened to flood our four-wheel drive’s engine. As I watch the white hood shed the caramel water, I glimpse the isolation these outlying villages must experience come monsoon Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-914057432003-03-26T17:31:00.000+05:452003-03-27T17:30:05.000+05:45Snapshots
As I walk the path next to my house, my squat and crouching stone-yellow house, I feel the radiance of midday's stifling sun trapped in these brick walls, a djinn slowly smoke-seeping out, released by the rub of sunset's touch. My left side feels the remembered heat while my right reaches for the evening's relief.
A shattered schoolbench, jagged ends biting the packed dirt floor, twoNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-911113122003-03-21T13:22:00.000+05:452003-03-21T13:22:32.420+05:45Rongi-Chongi
Yesterday was Holi, the festival of colors. Everything was rongi-chongi (which means splattered with color in this colorful language). Holi is named after Holika, a demoness who was sister to a powerful king. The king ordered everyone to worship only him, but his own son disobeyed, choosing to instead worship Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnu. Well, this made Daddy a Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-909871942003-03-19T18:22:00.000+05:452003-03-19T18:29:11.000+05:45Cricket and Strangers
Today, I played cricket for the first time. My little brothers were playing in the yard when I came home, so I stopped to join them. It was both fun AND humiliating. While I did just fine as a batter, hitting several balls into the middle of the duck pond which sits in the front yard, forcing my little brother to wade knee-deep on repeated retrieval missions, I fared Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-907579492003-03-15T16:55:00.000+05:452003-03-15T16:55:46.903+05:45Dry thoughts of a dry brain
It rained yesterday. I had walked out in the morning to a wind filled with the heavy air of a coming storm. My brother told me that the monsoons were months away, but by late afternoon, the western mountains were curtained by a black wall of clouds that moved with a massive quickness easteward across the flatlands. Two weeks of dust and dirt had made my bones Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-905162202003-03-11T17:24:00.000+05:452003-03-11T17:24:38.640+05:45Spectacle
Language classes have set in and the days are beginning to blur. I have found that routine has begun to sneak into my life and these days of dust and foreigness have taken on a hue of normalcy. For myself, my health and my sanity, I need to shift the pattern that is developing before it becomes hard set - I need more karate, more writing, and less bhaat (rice).
I have a cut across Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-902314882003-03-06T16:45:00.000+05:452003-03-09T16:37:06.000+05:45Black lung.
Four days in Kathmandu and I have positively diagnosed myself with a terminal case of black lung. Three quarters of a million people living on top of each other, heating their homes and cooking with woodfires, riding in the countless tuk tuks (three wheeled motorized rickshaws), motorcycles, buses and cars - none of which is younger than ten years old with exhaust systems ten Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-896262142003-02-24T07:21:00.000+05:452003-02-28T21:53:44.000+05:45One Night in Bangkok, Four Days in Kathmandu
Well third world big cities are something new. Kathmandu is dirty, crowded and run down like you wouldn't believe. Children and people packed into the street following anyone who is white and begging for money, because all white people are American and all Americans are rich (which by their standards is fairly true).
But let me tell you of SeattleNathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-888990392003-02-11T12:39:00.000+05:452003-02-13T12:36:11.000+05:45Notes from the North
Last week I headed home for the final time before leaving for Nepal. The trip takes about 8 hours and I had lots of time to think, practice my Nepali, think, listen to the radio and think some more. The sun was setting over Lake Michigan as I left the Mackinac Bridge and headed west into the Upper Peninsula. For the next two hours, I travelled US2 as it traced the frozen Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-884590902003-02-03T12:07:00.000+05:452003-02-03T12:33:27.000+05:45Three Weeks and Counting
I've had my last bout of American consumerism before I begin the ascetic life. Gotta make sure I'm all geared up to go - new sleeping bag, new trail shoes, solar powered battery charger. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not sort of defeating the purpose here. Seems like I will be living it up in the lap of Peace Corps luxury.
Tomorrow I head to the U.P. Gotta see the Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5013837.post-884301322003-02-03T00:24:00.000+05:452003-02-03T12:19:16.000+05:45Well, let's give this a shot.
Trying to set up my web-journal to document the long, strange trip that will be my life in Nepal. So I'll breathe in, breathe out, take a deep breath and dive into this adventure. Hopefully, I can take y'all along for part of the ride.Nathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08920381624483794750noreply@blogger.com