Feeling at Home

written Sunday, April 6, 2008

Tonight I feel satisfied. I had a wonderful three days of visiting with Americans and I just had my favorite lentils overtop mashed potatoes (I can’t even tell you how tired I am right now of rice – thanks to Anuraj for suggesting I ask my sister in law to boil some potatoes for me to make some good ol’ mashed potatoes).

So, I got my social quota filled this weekend – and I got out of this little apartment, which was good since we will all be staying in for the most part next week. (Thursday, April 10 are the elections. Things are slowing down for this monumental week and hopefully there won’t be an increase in violence. There were already 4 socket bomb blasts in Katmandu this weekend! So it’s kind of a “go out only if you need to” type of time.)

On Friday I visited with Sandra Lapp. Her husband works for Mennonite Mission Network and their family is here for six months. Their place is beautiful! They had a huge back yard and a nice, large, sunlit house. This was a nice change from the two bedroom apartment and 10x5 plot of grass/garden at my sister in laws. (I had just been thinking that morning or the day before how much I wanted to see grass. And there, at the Lapp’s temporary residence, was a whole half acre of it!) She shared some freshly baked carrot cake, some lemon “squash” (juice) while we talked about life in Katmandu and Nepalgunj – power cuts, dirty water, getting sick and staying well, crowded streets. And how your perspective begins to change the longer you’re here and things that might have been difficult or unpleasant become bearable or even comfortable. I had lunch with her and her daughters and talked about their high schools and traveling along a cliff in a large Nepali bus. It was a most pleasant and refreshing time. (Oh, did I forget to mention Anusha, that’s because she was at home with my mother in law, also a nice treat!) I found a taxi and Anuraj told him over the phone how to take me back home. Thank goodness for a fluent and accessible husband!

On Saturday, the big accomplishment of the day was getting to and from a restaurant where I met a friend for lunch. Anuraj always chooses taxi drivers by looking at them, so I decided to do the same. For the ride there, I saw a man cleaning his taxi with a rag. A good sign, I thought – especially when some taxi drivers are smoking or sitting with a leg hanging out a window while they are waiting for passengers. He graciously took me right where I needed to go. His meter was accurate and he didn’t try to rip me off, so I gave him a decent tip, which he seemed quite grateful for. For lunch, I met up with a woman that I met at the Catholic Church the other week. She is a PhD candidate with John Hopkins University and is doing research here. It was nice to be with an American woman who is my age. We found a Chinese restaurant on the sixth floor of a complex. We hiked the six floors since, like most places I’ve been, the elevator did not work, and found that there were no other customers (I did not get sick, so it was a good choice, and the mini fried spring rolls were delicious). We talked about Nepali customs – like how the women don’t call their husbands by their names (my sister in law is a great example she always says, “Shubums’s father, their father, his father,”). We talked about Philly cheese steaks in Philadelphia (just thinking about it makes my mouth water, and there’s not many meat products that make my vegetarian mouth water anymore). And we talked about the random Mennonites and Mennonite places she knows – like Baltimore’s VS Asylum Seekers, and “Extending the Table” cookbook. On the way back, I choose my taxi based on the direction it was facing. I got in, told him where I needed to go (thanks to Anuraj, who told me just a few minutes before where exactly I was needing to go), and he said, “100 rupees.” “70 rupees” I protested, knowing good and well that the meter would read somewhere between 65 and 69 rupees if it was accurate. “80 rupees,” he said. I started opening the door – I may be foreigner who can’t speak Nepali but at least I know how much to pay for a taxi ride. That scared him enough for him to agree with me. As he started up the car, he said, “Meter?” “Yes,” I said, even though I don’t know why in the world we went through the hassle of bartering if he was going to turn the meter on! Anyways, it was a whole 67 rupees, so I gave him his 70 which we agreed on earlier – yes, a skimpy tip for trying to rip off the foreigner! (fyi, right now the exchange rate is about 65 rupees to US $1)

And today, was my visit with the MCC program directors for Nepal. They are an older couple who have been here since 1978. They had stints of being home in Canada for 3-6 months, and one time they were home for 3½ years; otherwise Nepal has been their home. They will be retiring and returning home in October, after turning everything over to new directors. I met Walton a few blocks away from his house. We walked past some store fronts, a “Ganesh Mandeera” (small temple about 5x5x5 devoted to the god Ganesh), and a school before we turned into a dirt alley. I followed him up to their 2nd floor apartment and greeted his wife Ruth who asked if I wanted “black tea or green tea” (you mean they sell something other than black tea here??). We visited over lunch – Walton told me about MCC’s work in Nepal, we talked about their family and what it will be like when they return home to people who don’t really understand (or care?) much what they’ve been doing the past 30 years. “Different people have different gifts,” Ruth said, recognizing that some people have the “gift” of living in Nepal for most of their lives, and some people have the “gift” of living in Canada. (That has been provocative for me to think about.) Most interesting was hearing about Ruth’s work with two different women artisan groups. The one group is a residence for seven former women “traffickers” (women who have been “trafficked” into other countries for prostitution). They study in the morning and do beadwork and knitting in the afternoons. The other group is for poor and marginalized women who also do beadwork. One of the groups is a supplier for SERV and they both have a variety of clientele, local and international, I think. Ruth, while her background is in nursing, has made a wonderful contribution, mostly in what she calls “quality control” (i.e. determining what size a scarf should be so that they are all consistent, etc.). I would have enjoyed talking to her more or gone with her to work. I am hoping that the next time Anuraj and I are both here, we can go over to visit them (with Anusha, they are missing their grandbaby). They have broadband and graciously allowed me to attempt to download pictures onto the internet. (This was somewhat successful – After an hour and a half of frustration, due to my computer, not the internet, I finally was able to download 45 semi-random pictures. I didn’t have time to organize and make captions for them – I asked my mom and sisters to do that for me, and 15 pictures that I was really excited for you to see, didn’t make it!)

I went home surprisingly refreshed. I was telling Anuraj about this, how comfortable it felt there. How much “at home” I felt. “Maybe it’s because they’re Mennonite,” he suggested. But the Lapp’s were Mennonite. And Walton and Ruth are from Canada, about 30 or 40 years older than me, and we didn’t really have any “connections,” besides MCC and being Mennonite. I was thinking about it later, curious about what it was that made me feel so at home.

- Maybe it was the simple lunch – the homemade bread that we used to make open face egg salad and tuna sandwiches, the carrot sticks, the delicious bran/raisin muffins and that green tea.
- Maybe it was the conversation, flowing and enjoyable.
- Maybe it was the fact that they left me to use their internet and do my own thing.
- Maybe it was the fact that they have lived in Nepal for 30 years and therefore really LIVE there. By that I mean, they had a full spice rack and lots of cookbooks, they had a Bible Commentary from the ‘70’s or ‘80’s and a collection of other books, they had family pictures and bulletin boards with notes and photos and photo cards from home. They had some Bible verses posted around and an MCC calendar hanging up. Basically, it didn’t seem like they had half of their belongings somewhere else – they had them all there, in their modest apartment in Nepal.
- Maybe it was the fact that I felt so at peace there. I looked out the window of their office and there, out the window, was green. It was a batch of trees. It took me a while to realize why that struck me. It’s because nice, green trees that are higher than the 2nd story of a house or apartment are so unusual to see. The trees filled the entire 4 panes of the window. I can’t even explain how wonderful that was to see.

Ultimately, I think it was the fact that I felt like I had just been at the home of one of my favorite couple’s from Harrisonburg – where I could always go for good company. And whose simple lunches were always satisfying. And who always made their home my home, letting me use this or borrow that. Whose house just feels peaceful to me; a place where I have always felt at home.

So, that was my weekend. It was good to get out and visit and make some new acquaintances and friends!