Demi Tour of the World

Since my discovery of Nepal, memories pops up like CO2 in fizzy water, Romania being the most numerous bubbles.
Man mimicry man, his memories guide his path, bit of a multifaced karma.

It was said I will meet a young man in his 18 in Bhaktapur for a swap, my french against his region’s knowledge. So on the previous day (we are saturday, 7 December) Mrs. Bijaya adviced me to visit Changdu Narayan, the oldest temple in the valley. Narayan is one of the name of Vishnu. To reach it i can go to Mulpani by bus and then walk for 30-40 minutes did she tell me.
As the temple is nearest than Bhaktapur i decided to go there first.

On the day.
The bus stop me farther and the driver lead me astray. In doubt I ask the way to an old woman who answer “Cai na”, a no but she doesn’t wish to say more. So I go towards a bunch of young lads wearing black leather. “Do you want to smoke grass ? Will you have tea?”… we are in the countryside. Kindly, slightly high, they show me the right way, and Robin, wishing to speak more leave his friends, walk with me.
We meet his uncle, an ex-trek guide. “Will you have tea?”. We meet his young brother and his friend on a bike. So, Robin borrow to his dear kin his bike to give me lift to the river. There we leave each other only after exchanging our mobile numbers. He also tells me that wish going to France to study. He likes Nepal which is beautiful but he wishes for a western life. Two month ago he came back from two years working Saoudia Arabia. He’s still slightly high, i suspect he says France for I’m french.
“Bye and don’t forget, always forwards” does he tell me.
Thanks Robin.

To cross the river five workers are building the road and the bridge. I think they are that few because it is bank holiday, but Mrs. B. will tell me that’s two years they’re on this bit !
For my part I go forward, forward until a cross road with no more possibilities to go forward. Right or left, I feel like going left. Two locals going in their villages confirm it is the right way, “Utta”. Just after that the track goes from sand to dust, mixing with the soil. But no worry, that’s the backdoor way. And the people from their house tell me that’s the  right way. The monastery is up there, “Utta”. Then the thin path goes between houses, goes up, a man tells me it will be hard for me. The slope’s not bad, it’s true, after my coat i remove my jumper. If we are in December, winter even here, that the nights are freezing cold, that in the shadow we can feel this is shadow of a big white mountain, conversely, on the sun spot we can feel his powerful rays.
15 more minutes and i’m in an other village, this one surrounding the even higher temple. Nice staight stairs shows the way, a modest sign indicate we are on a World Heritage Site. At the door, nobody to welcome, only an other sign saying the foreign visitor must pay some 60 NRs (1 dollar).

The temple is like lot of its akins. Specifically, he reminds me the Sehla’s Monastery in Romania, hidden in the forest on top of one of the hills, Agapia’s village on the foot hill, with its own monastery. With Arnaud (the very Arnaud who organised the two festivarts), after some sweat over a freshly overturned earth track going straight in the woods, we reached Sehla by the backdoor. Leonard, a novice honored us of a visit of the site, from the pitch-black church on the candle light to the dens we’re lived ermites, some come back in summer (it were autumn). A Saint lived there too feeding of roots and water from the stream. While the Tatar invaders came for her, god created a backdoor exit that he sealed again before the Tatars. The religious community did invited us to stay for diner and the night, warm orthodox welcome it was.

Here no room, no priest, no ermite.
I call my student to tell him I should be 15 minutes late, I understand he’s coming, but few messages later, I understand too late i’ve misunderstood, now he must honour a date. Happily, in the wait for him, two young teachers invite me to join their photos’ group.
The whole class is curious of my loneliness, of my country, of my statue here in Nepal, etc. Boys ask me my musical taste and the teenage girls play their role. Going with them towards their bus, i discover the real entrance from where the visitor is expected : shops all along, guest houses, restaurant. The whole lot.
But too soon to leave we visit the museum. My guided tour is privided by Raj who wants to be a trekking guide. So he enjoys introducing to me the historical weapons and coins exhibited on the walls, plus a pictural display of the local legend.

 Gwala, a sheperd, bought a cow to a brahman. It was a good deal for the cow was very generous. Nonetheless he had to give part of the milk to the ex-owner. The cow had a favourite tree in the middle of a forest where she always went near by for her grass. But one day the cow stopped giving milk. How could it be ? The brahman wanted to see by himself what was going on.
Ti his own surprise he saw a little boy coming out of the tree who sucked the cow’s milk until the last drop. The brahman thought it could only be the act of an evil spirit and with the spepherd they cut the tree. How wrong they were ! On the fallen tree, the Visnu’s head (that, in consequence they cut) appeared. In fact the God wanted to punish the brahman for the murder committed by the brahman’s great grand-father.
As you guessed, the brahman, for forgiveness erected the very temple we’re visiting and it also explains the beheaded statue on the photo. Around the forest they’ve kept part of the forest but it doesn’t reach the bottom.

Students and teachers invite me to go with them to Bhaktapur. In the bus the atmosphere is muy calliente, every body dance, every mouth sing, they invite me to do the same. They give a lift to two ladies wearing a twnkling blue and a shiny yellow sari. On the threshold, one of the teacher is half in the bus half outside. They would drive mad the Health and Safety rulers writers of UK !
To put a foot on Bhaktapur’s Dubar Square (the Royal Place), the visitor needs to pay 750 NRs. I was told with a volunteer card it would be free, I don’t have any, but my new friends try to help there but with no help. The students get quickly bored, they don’t want to visit a museum they already know and prefer to go to Patan. So they leave me here. Exchange of emails and cheerrios.

I sit to take two lion’s backs which make me laugh while a group of for old teenagers invite me with energy to their thangka exhibition at their school. It is not an exhibition at all, it is a selling ticket, as sellers they lie, saying the money will go to the tibetan refugees. They admit it by themself. At least the school as the thangkas is real. Like this example, Bhaktapur’s visit is pleasant only for the one who don’t mind looking closer.
Why not paying 750 Nrs (more than the 10 dollars it is said to represent), in proportion of a western wallet, if the money is well used, but I believe it is ill used !
The only argument I heard was the place’s clean.
I don’t even leave the tourist area as I find a dirty river as everywhere else, its banks shamelessly generously garnished of plastic bags, twenty feet from another tourist entrance. In addition, the schools sight don’t give a chance to imagine the money goes there too.
To console myself I enjoy the law students of the town who ask people to sign their petition to aware of violence forwards women.

2007 ? Men from the West you’re late. We, in Nepal, are the year 2064, plus at least 3 hours 3/4 earlier to get the so needed rays of the sun on this december.

I did put my diary on side. A nice little booknote handmade in India given as a present by Stepahnie, Nawel and Marie, volunteers at the Festivart 2007. By the way  thanks to all the volunteers, thanks for their smiles and the warmth.

22 november I went towards my Hindu-french diary again moved I was by a tempestuous day.
On the morning, 7h30 a.m. I was at school. I came in the diner room feeling as if an unidentified object was missing on a familiar shelf, as if an unplanned event in was occruing in the middle of routine : Mrs Bijaya was sitting on the last table, supervizing the borders’ breakfast.  The thing is Mrs Bijaya never arrived that early, not even Miss Tsultrim who’s living in situ is downstairs that early. So I thought about a kind of swapped shift as I walked to Mrs B.. Once sat beside her, she first smiled at me as usual in the typical asian way, then said “Miss Tsultrim is at the Hopital” “Really ?” “Yes, she’s got a very painful stomach-ache, it started in the middle of the night”. “And the border had to carry her” did she added with a grin outlining Miss T. overweight. It happened that our headmaster, in hungriness open a fridge but not the can from which she ate fish. Later she admitted not knowing when this can has been opened. That’ll teach her ! In consequence she’ll have to stay one day and night in observation at the BnB (the name of the hospital, in reference to the two mains doctors initials and will fast for the week.

The incident put the teachers team in a sensitive mood. The routine was changed. Mrs. B. took Miss T’s role as welcomer of the whole students in lines in front of her, and started to make them pray (though not to Miss T’s salvation and everybody went to work, ut slower than usual.
Caught by the draughts in the school: a cold, which also gave me a persistent headache and a troubled stomach but the lunchtime came quick. As usual Dal Bat, Bat for Rice and Dal for a spicy lentils soup/sauce. Children ask for more chilly as it was sweets! Yummy !

An hour and a half later Sumitra, the cook, gonged her gong, time to go back on the benches. But while children went upstairs, Miss Bijaya’s face suddenly turned pale, shouted something that nor Pema (the Science teacher) nor I had understood, running to the first floor. So we followed, and again i tried to imagine what was happening. Some children have formed a thick circle, I thought of some dogs or rats intruders but two teachers emerged from the wall of students carrying a boy downstairs. his eyes lost, his neck and legs without strength but his two armed hardenned like wood, like a troll caught by sunlight.
They carried him in tne teachers room. Nobody knew what to do. From laying they made him sat, holding him, and he vomitted with not enough impulse to save him from the gravity consequences. They said Tashi, the unlucky boy was pushed. It was while Tashi’s arms started to relaxed progressively that Mrs. B. explained me it wasn’t the boy’s first time, that nobody pushed him and that he
’s got difficulty with the right side of his body. He can walk alone but slowly, his right arm’s weak but his right hand’s weaker. The first time such an incident happened, the parents arrived furious at a boy who supposedly push their son, in fact he had tried to help him. In consequence, Mrs. B. and the other teacher prefered to wait for the family unreachable by phone. I asked if it would be possible to call an ambulance, I was made understant it was a silly  thought, even a clinic is not far from the school.
The child, very calm, was now able to sit down on his own, and stretched his right arm, obviously used to the situation.
After 15 minutes waiting for some relatives an aunt arrived, being sorried for her nephew’s faith, and said the mother was her way… she arrived 10 minutes later. She wouldn’t admit her son experience this kind of incident home but at the same time she took holy medecine from her bag, herbs blessed by a Rinpoche, to give to Tashi plus several holy necklaces. I thought of epilepsy and my eyes grabbed the mother’s hair just shampooed, their very end still wet and dropping on the floor, that would explain her being late…
The small family went towards the monastery, the boy on his auntie’s back, and may be later towards a hospital. Not sure at all, the family’s very poor, and in Nepal there’s no national health insurance.

At the end of such a day’s school, Mrs Bijaya had to open her wounded heart to me and she told me the story of her adoptive daughter. She was full of tears but to proud to let them flow. I felt the stream of tears too. She also told me her own life, the words chasing her smile which came back fiercefully after each attack. Natural asian smile.
This reminded me about an american woman at the reading room who’s story moved me too. She’d been a cook, a non and many other things. With her 40 years experience of Nepal she told me Nepali people are no happy as thgey used to be… by the time I wondered if she compared the Nepali people’s mood to her own, so unhappy she seemed, vanquished by fatalism, where as she first arrived in Nepal in her happy hopeful youth.