Greetings from Singapore

Hi, Everyone. En route from Kathmandu to ARI, we have been gifted with one night and day in Singapore due to a flight cancellation!

On August 7, we reached our first destination in Nepal after five flights. Over two days worth of traveling is perhaps a bit much for our age, we have decided! We have learned so much about rural life in Nepal and the challenges ARI graduates face. Their leadership skills are being put to good use as they work to help provide basic education, raise awareness about women’s issues and encourage indigenous people to claim their rights. We have seen the many challenges a developing country faces, such as load scheduling of electricity, sanitation and road improvement.



Our first reunion was with 2010 ARI graduate, Sandeep Lamsal from Taulihawa in the Dang District. This is the Lower Terai, or plains of Nepal bordering India and is rice-growing country. It’s approaching the end of the rainy season and in the temperature hovers around 95 degrees. Sandeep guided us all around Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha, on a scorching day. Of course we got seriously sunburned. The next morning our driver dodged goats as we drove along lush green paddy fields. We visited the ruins of the palace where the Buddha grew up as a crown prince. Later, we collapsed from either jet lag, sunstroke or both! We managed to meet and share meals with Sandeep’s family.

 

Breakfast with Shanta, Ammar and Simon Chaudhary



On August 10, we traveled to Ghorahi in the Upper Terai, a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains. It resembles the location of ARI! We were welcomed by Shanta and Ammar Chaudhary and their son Simon. Shanta is an ARI grad who also returned to be a Training Assistant. She works with BASE (Backward Society Education www.nepalbase.org), an NGO that helps provide education, works with women’s groups and advocates for the now freed bonded laborers to get land promised to them by the government. We kept hearing echoes of our own Civil Rights Movement.

Ammar and Shanta are members of the Tharu caste, indigenous people whose property and rights were taken away by a higher caste. Ammar works to educate all indigenous people about their rights and lobbies the government to recognize these rights in the constitution. In addition to their social work, the farming family grows rice, corn, vegetables and keeps three cows. They have a well but no tap water. Shanta cooks rice, potatoes, green beans, pumpkin leaf, chicken and soup (Joyce was thankful her dishes were not too spicy) on a two burner propane stove. Dishes are washed outdoors, and we enjoyed bathing in the stream after a hot day! If the sun had not shined, we would still have Simon. His joyful disposition kept us smiling, and he insisted that Bob Uncle and Joyce Auntie see him off on the school bus!



Siddartha Academy



We visited three different schools. Each time we rode buses stuffed with passengers and crossed rivers where water flowed over concrete pads instead of under bridges! Joyce closed her eyes and prayed. Sister Home Boarding School was started by ARI grad Sayni Chaudhary. Primary students are taught Nepali, English and Social Studies by young teachers who either have their Bachelor’s degree or are working toward it. There is also a Women’s Learning Center where women meet to discuss their concerns and are trained in skills such as sewing.

Siddhartha Academy is a private school, both primary and secondary levels. The principle gave us a tour of the secondary school, where chemistry, biology and physics labs are still under construction. We spoke to two groups of 10th graders where everyone seems to want to be a doctor or an engineer.



Rural Government school



In Tulsipur, we met the principle who started the government school twenty-two years ago with support from Shanta’s organization, BASE. He will retire in two years but dreams of a computer lab and a library before he leaves. Here, the children recited their lessons for more seasoned teachers.



We attended the 19th Indigenous People Cultural Program and enjoyed the local Tharu folk music.

 

Folk music at Indigenous People Cultural Program 



We’ve had the privilege of being the first foreign guests in Ammar’s family home, the challenge of walking narrow foot paths through rice paddies, and an arduous 13 and a half hour bus ride from Ghorahi to Kathmandu. Tomorrow, ARI!



  

Planning for August trip back to ARI

We are beginning to plan for August trip back to ARI

cherry blossom mantle

 

My mind is so much on Japan these days. We spent last summer in the north, a little west of the tsunami area. While volunteering at the Asian Rural Institute, we traveled a bit.

One June weekend we explored the beautiful bay area of Matsushima, where the poet Basho stayed for a time. This month, blogs report that the many pine-capped islands throughout the bay broke the brunt of the wave, or else the loss of lives and damage would have been much worse. Still, the town is suffering.

As northern Japan comes into its cherry blossom season, I remember the snowfalls of last April’s cherry blossoms. Perhaps this year, some of the devastation will wear a mantle of beauty. If so, to me it will symbolize the dignity of the Japanese people.

cherry blossoms snow

over shrines and splintered dreams

fragile pale beauty

Remembering Matsushima

After the tsunami that hit the northeast coast of Japan, I could not help thinking of Matsushima Bay and the 2 days spent in one of the three most beautiful places in Japan.
                     view from Godaido








Matsushima harbor

Entsu-In Temple garden



More pictures are posted here.

Bob's photos : http://www.flickr.com/photos/robray_nh/
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58228&id=100000116155876&l=f7893955b9

“I came to ARI as a bamboo but went back to Bangladesh as a flute.” Mr. Jerome Sardar Dwijen, 1973 ARI graduate and Deputy Director of the NGO, Society for Social Service, on his visit to ARI in July 2010.

                                            

We’re back home, making new routines, but trying to retain some parts of the life we were so fortunate to experience at ARI. Joyce still makes brown rice - yes, even for breakfast, miso soup and stir fries whatever is in the fridge. She located Hijiki seaweed (very expensive, here!) to make Satomi san’s salad and bonito flakes for dashi. And yes, we use our new hashi to eat with. We’re also making more of an effort to patronize local farm stands.

We’ll post a few more accounts of ARI life since the summer heat, humidity and resulting general exhaustion kept us from reporting as much as we wanted to while there. Here’s a summer day in the life of ARI.

6:00 AM  Good morning. The sun has been up since 4:00, it’s already warm and cicada wings are singing away.

6:30  Join the outdoor circle for 5 minute morning exercises via Japanese radio and the morning prayer. Meet briefly with your group to learn Foodlife duties. For half hour chores, Joyce goes to the feed mixing room for two months – sweeping the floor and breaking down Styrofoam boxes that held fish heads and tails and okara from tofu, which were used to make fermented animal feed. Bob goes to the men’s dorm to scrub the bathroom.

7:00  Foodlife time. In July, Bob and Joyce job share duties in Pig and Cow and Poultry sections. Joyce cleans manure from the cage-like farrowing pens of three sows and their piglets. Hose down the pens top and bottom. Mix feed for sows and make sure older piglets have enough milk powder. Bob turns the fermented floors with a pitchfork in the poultry house. Other volunteers and participants are working with us. We are so hot and sweaty by 8:00 that we choose showers and are late for breakfast.

8:15 Breakfast – rice, vegetables, soup, eggs, yogurt. Yea, chai! Group B dishwashing.

9:10 Morning Gathering.  Our daily weekday meeting with a mix of scripture, song and sharing. Everyone is assigned a day to lead Morning Gathering, so we gradually learn more of each other’s backgrounds. This is truly how we become a community and find the strength to do the work!

10:00 Morning work – Bob becomes computer systems consultant. Joyce settles into whatever writing, editing or photo research she has been assigned. Over 90 degrees, no AC, but a direct fan! Participants go to class. Farm volunteers (bless them) weed rice paddies, harvest potatoes, and do backbreaking farm work throughout the day.

12:30 PM – Lunch – rice, soup, pork curry, tempura carrot tops, salad. We’re in luck, a birthday means JeanHae’s delicious banana cake! Back to dishwashing, Bob!

1:30 – Afternoon work. We go back to the office, except when the heat and humidity get to Joyce and she takes a shower and maybe takes a rest until 2:00. Participants have two hours of class, and farm workers are in the field.

5:00  Foodlife – Work in the pig pen is difficult for Joyce twice a day, so Bob switches with her in the afternoon. What a sweetie! Bob cleans the pig pens, and Joyce gathers eggs and cleans them. We may be the first couple who job-shared at ARI.

6:30  Supper – rice, soup, fried tofu, vegetables, salad. Oh, yes. Yesterday was butchering day. Chicken feet! Last dishwashing for a week, Bob.

7:30 Monday- Prayer Meeting, Wednesday- Joyce’s English class, Thursday- Bob’s computer class. On Sundays at 8:30, we Skype with family. They are just waking up.

9:30  Main buildings close for the night. We fall into bed. The cicadas are still singing.

Kyoto - August 5th

Joyce & I went to Gion Corner where she had seen the Bonraku puppets in 1991. We enjoyed an evening of tradional Japanese music and dance.

 

 

On our second day in Kyoto we headed out on a bus tour. The Nijo Castle was the residence of the Tokugawa era Shogan who was the administrative head of Japan. It had massive stone walls to fortify it and the Shogun was always concerned with survival. The nightingale floors of the hall ways chirped as you walked.

The Emperor lived across town in the Imperial palace with no stone walls and slept very well at night. It was a beautiful Palace, but we could not go inside.

The Temple of the Golden pravillion (Kinkaku-ji ) was once the summer home of  Yoshimitsu, the 3rd Shogun of Ashikaga. When he died, his son fo llowed his father wishes to convert it into a temple.

Kyoto - August 4th

The first day in Kyoto, we headed south to the Fushimi-Inari shrine, the shrine of a Thousand Torii gates. They are so close together that they form a tunnel up the hill side from shrine to temple to shrine.

The Higashi-Honganji Temple was the next stop , only a few blocks from Kyoto Styation. To say it was large just does not do it justice. The main hall of the Higashi-Honganji Temple is one ofthe largest in Japan.

The Kiyomizu-Derai Temple is spectacular. Set high on the hills in the eastern part of Kyoto, it has a massive central hall with a veranda that hangs off the hillside and it was constructed without a single nail.

Underneath one of the temple buildings is a pitch dark space where you can follow a chain of woodern monk's beads strung on a cord around narrow passage ways and corners. It is close to going to the spiritual womb. And quite scary.