Friday 23 May 2014

Saturday 24May

Wow woke up at 9.30 - longest sleep since leaving SA- a combination of  exhaustion and YAY! Too much Tequila coffee liqueur! Jen brought a bottle from SA for a friend which turned out to be the wrong thing so hey we had to drink it! So last night a group of volunteers enjoyed a merry evening at th Electric Pagoda around the corner from the hotel premium where we spent last night. Jen and I caught A mini bus from near the nunnery to come onto Kathmandu to an afternoon feedback meeting at the VIN office. Oh my - SA taxis take on a new look now! At one point there were 28 people crammed into the taxi!! Amazingly everyone was so good humored - giggling and laughing with no angry voices as elbows dug onto sides and faces were shoved into shoulders and worse! It rattled its way through the never ending assortment of motorbikes, scooters, ancient busses and trucks, small cars used as taxis and of course the constant stream if pedestrians walking on the edge of the road as the sidewalks are being dug up everywhere to widen the roads. So we wear our face masks all the time. Unfortunately we were ripped off by the taxi toute- same as in SA - he shouts out the route and collects the fares. It seems we paid 10 rupees for a max 40 rupees trip! Akkal our driver was outraged and wanted to know if we knew the registration number!!!

We then had to walk what we had been told was am 8 to 10 minute walk to the office! Forget it! We arrived utterly deleted and vet unhappy campers about 40 montes later having clambered through the rubble, debris and unsavory sights and mess that is on the roadsides. It's a constant exercise in mindfulness I guess which is really energy sapping. I guess until we get accustomed to this it will continue to be so- so hard not to judge but rather to accept as the way it is  - so these daily encounters are the spiritual path....I can only imagine how I will delight in our roads while seeing so much with new eyes. I guess roads in Masi could compete with this but our fortune is we can escape the roads in Masi! Also it seems to me the roads in Masi are less hazardous with children safely playing ball etc on them while that is out of the question here 

It seems Saturday besides being a day. I am standing on the 6th floor lookiing out the window at washing hanging from everywhere on the roofs of the homes I am looking down on. There are a couple of children bathing in a tub and getting dresses, an old woman sitting in a shady spot on her patio. A feeling of peacefulness, roof top garden and hens growing, straggly tall trees searching for sunlight between buildings, shoots growing impossibly out of cracks in walls, debris on top if rooves and solar panels everywhere. 

1 comment:

  1. Interesting contrast - Electric Pagoda and a nunnery in the same paragraph. Your living conditions sound like a serious lesson in non-attachment. Love to you both!!

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