Sari shopping

Very very sorry about the lack of postings here lately. The internet we have is a modem that works like a cellphone. During the monsoon with low cloud the internet has been terrible. I got this post all set up - took 1.5 hours to load all the photos and the internet packed in and wiped it all! We have also both been very very busy with work.

A friend of Elly, another expat, and myself needed saris as there are several weddings coming up that we've been told attendance is not optional. Once a wedding is arranged the wedding is often held within two days time. To buy a sari can take a day, then the blouse takes a week to sew - it will be ready once the honeymoon is over (as they don't really have one). Therefore, with news of possible weddings we went shopping.

You basically go into the shop, look at the rack and pick a colour you like and the shop keeper will pull everything of that colour out for you to try! Generally, you take one look, disregard it and ask for more - the pile builds, but that is their problem, not yours!!

I initially thought I would go for a deep
red (bright red is the colour of the family of the
bride) or a deep blue.

 

 Then I saw this one that is more
turquiose than the photos indicate.

Then I had to make a decision!

I went with turquoise and Tasha went
with red

Here are some of the saris that
we didn't like! The flamingo is from
 Tasha's church in the UK and goes
overseas with people and gets his
 photo taken doing strange things
like sari shopping

Out for a dinner of momo's

 or swimming in the local lake - better him
than me!

We then had a night where all the girls got together to learn how to tie the 5.5 metres of material!!!

 

 How fat do you think I am!!

 The way it sits at the end is the most
important bit

Jo in a sari - now to get the blouse sewn
so that the top underneath looks better

House Construction in Nepal

I made this little video while we were living in the guest house after first arriving in Pokhara and have finally got around to uploading it. I'm not sure how this would have fared if it had been built in Christchurch.

The roller came back

We have been keeping you updated with the building of the new road. The top bit was sealed (albeit with a thin layer that is wearing out quickly) and then the money ran out so we were told that it was going to be a rocks/shingle/dirt mix for the rest. This had been bought in and we thought the job was finished. The road was really rough and unpleasant to ride on if your bike has no suspension. However, this week the roller came back with a few more trucks of dirt and has made it slightly smoother, although I am glad that my bike shorts are coming out from NZ next week.

Check out our roller

When they had nearly finished the upper section of the road, they in the middle of the monsoon, dug up the lower part. Motorbikes/buses/trucks etc continue to use this road, it is a bit of a rollercoaster and is most uncomfortable in a car and I cycle around it. It isn't as obvious with the rain as it is filling up the the ruts but the bus that is coming I can assure you was bouncing around wildly.

More monsoon photos

Mark walking to work - an hour later it was past our ankles but the ground is very porous and it absorbs really quickly as well

The road (river) - the fence on the right is the edge of the hospital property

Monsoon Pictures

Just to give you an idea of the effect of the monsoon here are a few before and after photos.

Looking back towards Pokhara (Febuary)

June

August

Devi's falls before monsoon....

....and after

Bisey (water buffalo) doing what they do best

This is the life

Tourist boats at the lake patiently waiting for the tourists to return

Our friend Dinesh taking his kids to school (not monsoon related, just a nice picture)

Renting a house

At the moment I (Jo) am looking after all the housing for the expats in Pokhara. This includes ensuring there is enough accomodation for new people coming to stay in Pokhara or passing through for language training.
In September and October we have a number of new members coming and so it has been necessary to rent a new house - easy, go to the classifieds, ring the appropriate ones up and have a look - WRONG!!!

There are no classifieds and often no phone numbers. No, just walk around the streets asking shopkeepers, friends and our landlords if they know of any empty houses and then walk on in.
Mark and I went on the back of our landlords motorbike (you don't wear a helmet which is great in hot weather but somewhat fatalistic) to the first house. It was a new house, the upstairs ws available and a Nepali family was living downstairs. The access was along a path the width of me, one shoulder touching the wall of the house, the other touching the barbed wire fence and was so slippery it was scary. The house was lovely and the bathrooms had been done really well but there was no kitchen and no plumbing to put one in. The Nepalis all thought we should just put a table and a gas hob in. When asked where we would wash out dishes it was suggested we could go downstairs to their kitchen or to the local tap down the road and around the corner.


Another house was 3 storeys and was lovely. The downstairs was available but it turns out that the house had only one kitchen, downstairs. The access to the rest of the house was also through the middle of the downstairs unit. Therefore, the upstairs tenants would be coming through the downstairs unit and using the kitchen all the time!
Another house was finished and people were living in it but they were going to move upstairs to the house that would be finished in '2 weeks' and wanted to rent the lower level out. It had the reinforcing iron sticking out of the floor for the walls but that was it. It stills two weeks from being finished 3 months later!
We have managed to find a good house, now we are having problems finding the landlord to sign the contract!

A typical Saturday in Nepal

6am
The sun starts shining through our window and pretty soon we're stuck to the sheets because its nearly thirty degrees and the fans not working because theres no power, time to get up. Too hot to go for a run so we lie in bed and listen to the landlady sweeping the yard and frantically ringing her puja bell.

7am
Wander out into the kitchen to make some breakfast. Mark cooks some eggs for breakfast as his stomach is still not used to dairy products thanks to several bouts of ghardia. And Jo has museli that she makes herself since its not available over here. Toast is cooked using a gas grill.

945am
Take a shower at the last possible moment before going to church as its going to be a hot service, fortunately the power has just come back on so at least the fans in the church will be working. The hot water is via a solar system, on the hot sunny days when you need a cold shower it is really warm and on the colder days it is freezing - nipples can cut diamonds! There isn't much water around so at least both ways you keep the shower really short.

10am
Walk the few minutes around the corner, past the grazing water buffalo to the church. Jo sits on the left side with the ladies and Mark on the right with the gents. Theres no seats at church so its two hours on a concrete floor with a thin layer of carpet with people touching you on all sides. On the womens side children crawling around on the laps of the adults. The service starts with twenty minutes of singing sitting down. Every now and then between the songs a few notices are read out as more people arrive cos being on time isn't done in this country. We can join in with the songs as we can read the Nepali script but sometimes working out the song number and finding it can take the length of the song. After singing sitting down we stand up for some more singing. Then its time to sit down again and listen to the sermon in Nepali that takes around an hour. Jo tries to work out words, grammer structures and what scriptures everyone is reading. Mark gives up and reads from his English bible.

Once a month the service finishes with communion. Here people walk around offering it to the rows of people. A plate with a flat naan is the communion bread and a small watering can with juice inside is the wine. The watering can is to be held near your mouth and you tip it in without the can touching your lips or spilling it down your front!! In the hottest season they ran out of 'wine' as many people took it as an oppotunity to quench their thirst!

12pm
Church finishes and we spend time talking to our Nepali friends outside. Sometimes we may go back to someones house for a drink and light snack.


In the afternoon we might go to a local hotel that has a small swimming pool which provides a great relief from the heat.  We might go to a street stall to buy some fruit that is weighed on the old school balancing scales with weights or stop at a local shop for a cold sprite and watch the world while talking to the shopkeeper - where are you from? why are you in Nepal? do you like Nepal........
If it is cooler we might get on our bicycles and go out past the city and check out that latest tasks that the women are doing in the fields. We like to get out of the city as there are less vehicles on the road. That way there is less chance of being cut off, pushed over into oncoming traffic (not oncoming lane as they don't exist) or even just coming around the corner to find a truck taking the whole road. The gravel country roads aren't much better than the town roads with all their potholes - either way it is hard on the bum.

In the evening we come home with the hope of being able to cook pizza in our little bench oven (Marks side won't have the yak cheese available here or he'll be on the bog for the evening), unfortunately the power has gone out again so we can either change our plans or cook it in a box oven. A box oven is a metal box that sits on the gas hob. It gets hot but there is no way to regulate the temperature making cooking cakes and bread difficult but possible. Pizza can also be cooked on the gas hob in a frying pan over a low heat.
Again the call of puja bells and sweeping is heard all evening as is the sound of everyones pressure cookers cooking the daily Nepali food of dahl bhaat. They eat it everyday, dahl being a lentil soup which is cooked in the pressure cooker. The rice (bhaat) is also cooked in the pressure cooker which does make it come out light and fluffy.

Then it is back to bed to lie under the mosquito net as the mosquitos in this country are really big and hungry and wait for the fan to come back on to make sleep possible. It is about this time that the dog choir starts. It goes from 10pm to 6am and the stamina is phenomenal. Every Nepali has a dog and all are terrified of them so the dogs bark to ward off theives and evil spirits. Therefore a night of barking is very important - and also very annoying!