Time's awastin'...only six more weeks on TBT.

Had a really interesting meeting with my young girls this week. After the whole Santi and Smriti incident, we decided an actual conversation about marriage was in order. To start off, Reut drew a caricature of a traditional married woman in Nepal and we asked what the picture represented. We went on to discuss what exactly were the responsibilities of married women. Among the answers, "cooking," "cleaning," "listening to your husband," "having children." Some of the girls seemed TERRIFIED at the prospect of marriage. As Sahni said "I don't want to get married because I'll lost my freedom. Santi, the one who had gotten married a week earlier chimed in "You have to do what your in-laws tell you, and you always have to listen to them." Other girls voiced their concerns regarding their friendships- "We won't get to play with anymore."
The thing is,whether they like it or not, most of them will be married within a year or two.
It's a hard reality for me personally to deal with- they just seem like they have so much more to do before life responsibilities kick in. But this is their life. I think what I can try to do, with the short time that I have, is to develop their ideas, to improve their confidence--- to help them become the best 'selves' they can be for the next few years....
On a different note, we taught the stone quarry kids about hand washing and hygeine this week and I came up with a great game, Germ Tag.The way it works- One person is the Kidera (Germ) and another is the Paani (Water). The Kidera/Germ goes around tagging people. If you're tagged, you freeze, sit on the floor and yell "Paani, Paani!" (Water, Water!) The Paani/Water person them comes to 'clean' (aka untag) you and off you go. Worked like a charm.
Today I went with Yotam to check out an organization called Autism Cares. I'd found it online and the Minister (whose official title,I found out, is Deputy Director) had mentioned it to me, so I thought it was worth looking into. Well, let's just say it was both rewarding and disheartening. It's the only organization if its kind in Nepal and it opened just two years ago. Basically it was started by a group of mothers of children with autism and now has a small daycare and an amazing mother/child workshop program. But, they only have one trained staff member, and one part time doctor. He happens to be the only doctor in Nepal who can diagnose autism- people here don't know what it is and don't know how to recognize it. The thing is, I'm not sure people would care. They're slowly working on building it up but to what extent? How do you introduce a concept like that? In terms of Autism- America has schools, professionals, seminars, conferences, ideas, development and Nepal has....nothing?

One last story. This was bizzare.
On Wednesday, Sabita tells me that the school is having some sort of entertainment program, sponsored by a local Korean NGO. Thinking I would get a real cultural experience, I trekked down from our hut to the school building. There was a program alright. Set up on the main field was a large tent. In front of it- a small pine tree decorated with twinkling colored lights. On top of it- a red and green poster. With pictures of Santa Claus. This Korean NGO? It was a missionary organization. The entertainment program? It was a Christmas pageant.
Oh, and how did they open up? A young man, dressed in Nepali clothing and a bright red Santa hat stands in front of a very large, unsuspecting, mostly destitute, and generally Hindu crowd and says. "Merry Christmas. Listen to us and we'll give you presents!"
Only in Nepal....

My girls made me PROUD.

So I've been discussing youth and change and idealism with my young girls group...albeit in very basic terms. However, some of the messages must have sunk in because they decided they wanted to make a difference in our village. Their plan- rebuild the main path, which is quite muddy, rocky, slippery and in general very accident prone. We had been discussing this idea for a while without any concrete action taking place and to tell you the truth, I wasn't one hundred percent sure things would work out. But work out they did. Forget the actual path building- the hardest part of the work took place on Tuesday--they spent the entire day bringing up huge rocks, little stones, and baskets upon baskets of sand up from the stone quarry. Let me tell you, these girls are STRONG. and BUFF. and they work HARD.
The next morning, I woke up early and walked to the village alone (Reut was sick the whole week). Sabita, our Nepali coordinator and translator wasn't there and I was really nervous about things working out. Luckily, with Bijay's (another staff member)help the girls got the general idea and started working.
Clear the mud, sweep the path, put on sand, level it with rocks, put on more sand, pour water and repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat.
We worked for four hours and it was incredible. At some point, the whole village started to join in. There were my girls, age 14-16, directing little children, mothers, even some of the (mostly alcoholic) men joined in! And at the end of the day we had a beautiful, smooth, and safe path for people to work on.
Such Nachas.

On Thursday, I went, along with three staff members, to visit an NGO called Self Help Group for Cerebral Palsy which is an AMAZING organization.They have a school,vocational center, and physiotherapy institute.Basically, this organization supports all the cases of CP in Nepal with absolutely no help from the government (shocker). If you're looking for a worthwhile cause, here it is. http://www.cpnepal.org/

Other highlights this week include: waking up at four in the morning to hear a Shaman chanting outside my neighbor's hut(sitting in front of a fire, blowing a shofar, and banging drums), ostensibly trying to get rid of evil spirits, Bru's mom coming to visit (and giving me a package from my own wonderful mother), and eating really good lemon meringue pie in Boudhanath.
Oh, and one last thing:
On Monday, in my young girls group, we were going around in a circle saying one thing that happened over the weekend. Well, turns out that Santi (age 15/16), had gotten MARRIED over the weekend. To another village boy (age 18). Oy.
At least she seemed happy about it...

Chanukah in Nepal was definitely an interesting experience.

So first of all, we had to make our own chanukiot- you can't really go to the nearest Judaica store and buy one. But teek cha, I collected a bunch of clean garbage (yea, I've become super environmental) and constructed a small, colorful menorah. Mainly out of egg cartons. Which are flammable. Of course, I only discovered that after I nearly burned down the village on the first night of Chanukah. Good thing the guys in our group had created a giant beer bottle chanukiah to use instead...

It was hard to feel the Chanukah spirit around us but we worked at it. We made latkes, complete with fresh yogurt from our neighborhood cow, homemade applesauce and for the grand finale- sufganiyot from scratch! Of course, our neighbors wanted to know what exactly we were doing. And somehow, the Maccabee story just doesn't translate very well into Nepali...

Other than that, time has been flying. The resource room idea is going well- I've started working with three kindergarten students. One of them I've actually managed to coax out of the classroom and into the library (some candy was involved), two others I'm still sitting in their class, trying to get them to feel comfortable with me. It's been hard though, to see children who are need of obvious therapies and know they won't be getting the help they need. Huge thank you though to Rebecca and Matt for their respective OT/PT ideas.

My other groups are going well- the child club is adorable (yesterday I took them on a tiger hunt) and the young girls group is flourishing. This week, Reut and I wanted to tell a story that wove in the themes of 'small change, big difference,' along with the ideas of the power of youth. Somehow I started telling them the story of this guy Joseph who lived in a big village called Egypt. I might have used poetic license a little freely... in my story Joseph was a young teen who gathered his friends together to store grain in case of a famine when he realized his fellow villagers weren't concerned enough but they loved it.

Last story.

I was sitting in one of the nursery classes a couple of days ago as the teacher taught the ABC's.

Here was her example for letter G

Teacher: Letter G!

Kids: Letter G!

Teacher: G is for GUN!

KIds: G is for GUN!

Teacher: (pretending to shoot the kids) Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

Kids: (pretending to shoot each other, the teacher, and me) Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

P.S. Pictures! http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?id=554350271&pid=7938057