14_Through frustrations towards peace and being alone in Nepali language world

This night I woke up due to the nightmare, feeling that someone is pressing my hips. Opening the eyes I had nightmare related fewer and took of a layer of clothes hoped for relief. Turning from one side to another side I suddenly heard a strong rain hitting the roof and that made me feel quiet. Probably the air pressure was causing my discomfort. Although also the rain with changing hail did was not that pleasant either, several times I would open my eyes getting afraid the hail to destroy my roof. Luckily I would soon close my eyes feeling happy of not being killed by rain drops.

Morning came with few more drops, but above all- the wonderful view of snowy mountain tops and powerful clouds being so close. It was fresh and beautiful.

The family where I stayed

After a morning interview I finally moved into my new house. The mother of the family is the woman who bought my love immediately. The woman with a warm smile and mother care just wanted me to feel good by all means. She was not scared of me saying few words in Nepali and understood more than I said. While talking to her I could see my face turning into child expression what I have with very few people and in very few occasions. My stay here should be good, I said to myself.

And so-my new house has two floors and it belongs to the local businessman and generally important, smart and quite rich person. It felt a bit wrong to stay with a rich person, but I really desire the highest comfort I can get in this village. Besides, in Nepali village context rich people are also the most responsible people, thinking about development of the whole village. I struggled a bit attempting to get my own room and finally got it (in the evening it turned to be that I still got a room to share with other girls, but I insisted again). As I said, house has two floors and few rooms are for guests only.

My room is on the first floor and it is quite painful and difficult to get out – the stairs are quite painful and in the evening everything is locked and sealed, so getting for toilet outside is almost impossible. Beds are on wood and the air is going all through my room and there is no really temperature difference with inside and outside-the gap between the walls and the roof is of 20-30 centimeters.

The house kitchen is outside, containing the place for fire. Normally the family would gather there during the evening to eat and enjoy the heat coming from the fire. It feels nice, but my eyes are crying sitting so close to fire in the closed room, so I rather minimize this enjoyment after taking the meal. This evening I also gave up my intentions to eat with a spoon and finally have started eating with my fingers. I would previously always deny this, saying that this liquid food is just so disgusting to eat with a hand. Actually, it is, but I got used to it so fast and even started liking it.

During the second half of the day we went just to another ward. Nepal is divided in 75 administrative districts, each of them containing village development committees (VDC). VDCs, in return, all apart from cities, consists of 9 wards. That another ward was on another side of the hill, which means going down and going up. Overall takes one hour of enjoying the nature and crossing the bamboo bridge. Surprisingly, I was almost not feared to walk on those old narrow woods hearing cracks and feeling how the bamboo dangerously bents under my weight.

The view from another side of the hill is even more beautiful. After this physical exercise and being attacked by this calmness the frustrations slowly started to disappear and the peace quietly entered my heart.  Nothing to question and nothing to doubt, it felt impossible not to be happy in this pure motherly beauty.

It appeared that the person we were looking was a tall Nepali man whose handsomeness would be envied by all Hollywood and Bollywood stars. Being 45 he looked like 30, which is very strange in the village where people usually look much older than they are. I felt shy to talk to this portrait of beauty, trying to hide my unexpectedly active feminine features. In Nepal I almost forgot to be a woman. I have had only a small pocked mirror I used throughout the month only few times mostly to look at my teeth. Here it felt so much important to be warm and to put big jackets and within this dust it just seemed so inappropriate to think about being be pretty. Besides, Nepali men are very polite even in their looks and I completely abandoned my look putting make up only on few occasions.

But this time it was so hard to be a middle gender as always! I kept my professionalism though, maybe speaking Nepali and smiling a bit more and a bit differently than usually, turning from my middle gender personality into a woman again. The result was unexpectedly good; few men joined our conversation and shared their experiences, very valuable for the research. This time people did not just answer questions, but also asked me questions (and not only boring-where are you from type of) and the interview turned into a long talk, after which I felt friends with them, for the first time here. I was thinking so much about the ways how to approach the people here-can the femininity be the key?

Today was my first day without my assistant, finally getting unattached and facing the need to speak a lot. Most of the time I do not understand what they say or ask me, but I noticed that I can intuitively guess, the feature what I sometimes feel appearing. This way I travelled in Italy and managed to talk to people. I really have NO IDEA how I managed to do that, but I had few talks with pure Italians not knowing any word in English. This time also, only my shyness and fear to misunderstand usually keeps me from answering the question I have not understood. However, in all the cases my thoughts are right and it is true that the INTUITION translates the language. Isn’t that amazing?