Sign Language: English Lessons

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I couldn’t resist. If it had been a notice about washing your hands, or turning off the lights, anything else really…. I would have left it unedited. But the subject made it too tempting to ignore. So I made the corrections:

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Afterwards, I must say I felt guilty. Did I shame someone who’s already trying to work on their less than perfect English? Someone who may have poor English only because they never got the chance to study properly at school? Perhaps someone more sensitive than me took down the sign after I left? Ugh. I felt like a bad person.

Or maybe they appreciated it? The sign may have taught me a lesson too.

Early Morning in Pokhara

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Last month in Pokhara, at about seven in the morning, I was leaving my room for breakfast before starting work with some students in a hotel across the street. I was thinking about whether I had enough pairs of scissors and where I put my presentation notes. So at first I didn’t look up. The night before had been stormy and drizzly, and it had been too miserable to go out and explore. So I had stayed in the room and had an early night. Yet, first thing the next morning, this is the view that greeted me. I had to go back for the camera: DSCF5036
There’s nothing like a little storm to clear the air first thing in the morning.  And here clear air = stunning views of the Himalayans!
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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/early-bird/

30 Seconds: Saturday at Swayambhunath

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Nepalis work a 6-day week and Saturday is the day off.  Its a family day and the streets are quieter, so I decided to sneak off to Swayambhunath temple for a couple of hours to watch the monkeys and soak in the atmosphere.  I thought a 9am departure was pretty early and that I would get there before any crowds.  I was wrong!

Family time was in already in full swing when I arrived and the monkeys had long since split.  However, it was fun to watch the lines at temple, the coin tossing in the pond, and the general mayhem going on around me.  Families were setting up for a picnic in the most unlikely locations — and by picnic I mean cooking pot and granny peeling vegetables — and musicians blared and dueled with one another.  I just sat with my camera and watched.

Yet, surprisingly, there were still quiet corners.  As usual, I tried to capture a little here:  

Monochromatic

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I loved doing this Travel Theme challenge. Here in Nepal where the country has so many bright, vibrant colours, I headed off to collect riots of orange, red, yellow…. and yet I found myself drawn towards more muted tones, which was kind of surprising. My favourite is the dog, whose grime-streaked coat looks so much like the marble where he’s sleeping!

sleeping dog
engraved bell prayer wheels

http://wheresmybackpack.com/2015/04/10/travel-theme-one-colour/

On the Road Again?

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This is probably not what Willie Nelson had in mind.

Despite its name, it does appear to be capable of mobility, yet it never moves. Its always parked on one of the main streets in Kathmandu, amid of all the chaos of micro buses and trucks. Judging from my general experience of Nepali toilets, I can’t even begin to imagine what its like inside. In a city with no such thing as chemical toilets and no drains, quite how it works, I’m not sure.. As for the red and blue buckets…the mind boggles!

30 Seconds: Bandh

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Bandhs are general strikes. They have plagued this country in recent years: closing businesses, banning public transportation, and generally inconveniencing everyone for days at a time.  After a relatively bandh-free year, they are back and the Maoists who instigate them called for a three-day ban, starting today.  They seem to be having a harder and harder time making them stick…but still managed to take the chaos of Kathmandu down to a very strange kind of crawl today. Motorized vehicles vanished, schools closed, people walked to work or didn’t go at all.  The only vehicles allowed were essential deliveries, emergency services, tourist buses and diplomatic vehicles.  Those who disobeyed faced the possibility of confrontation or violence, so police were at every street corner.  Yet, despite the threat,  pedestrians filled the streets and the roads were quiet and more than a bit spooky.

So, in complete contrast to my earlier video of Kathmandu traffic, here’s a look at what happened today:

90 Days: Jamaican Me Crazy!

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Challenge-day-1

Today we hit the 90 day mark.  That’s 90 days until we leave Nepal.  It feels so different from that same stage in Manila when departure was just three months away.  Different, how?  Well, for one thing I am very busy at work with a big project, and have work and play events scheduled out until almost departure day.  I’ve been so focused on all of that, the 90 day mark just snuck up on me.  By contrast, in The Philippines, I was ready to leave my job. As Manila congestion got out of control in my area of the city, it had ceased to be somewhere I wanted to live.  I was also looking forward to the next country, excited and hopeful about the prospect of living in Nepal.

This time its different…challenging in new and demanding ways.  Even though we have known for quite some time that our next post is Jamaica, I am still digesting this news.  I’m still chewing over it and trying to figure out how I feel.  It’s hard not to say that I’m super excited when I know what a privilege it is to have the opportunity to live in such a beautiful place, but part of me is holding back.  Part of my excitement is just the dose of change that this journey will bring, and part of my hesitancy is just that: change.  Moving around the world is amazing and also exhausting.  Jamaica promises little opportunities work-wise, and it is further away from Europe and our home. And — let’s be honest — I didn’t pick it.  And that grinds too. On a bad day, I feel  cheated.  On a good day, I remember Kingston’s relatively clean air, the fantastic opportunity to go and live on a West Indian island, and my sense of adventure.

Most days, I’m just getting on with the day-to-day.  That’s an area where we excel.  We have 90 days left and we have just planted new annuals in the garden.  Planting flowers when we don’t know if we will be there to see them grow has become a sort of family motto over the years, at least this time (within the bounds of reasonable expectations) we know our departure date…so we plan on tasting at least a few of our freshly-planted tomatoes before we go.

See you at the 60 day mark.

Sign Language: Back Home

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I’ve chosen to do my last post on South Africa under the”Sign Language” banner because money exchange and wiring signs were everywhere in Cape Town, yet often they were the only real reminder that we had that we were truly in Africa. Cheap calling rates to Angola, bargains in West African francs and cheap tickets to Nouakchott. I barely knew half of the places and names advertised. I was warned by many before we visited that Cape Town wasn’t really “Africa” and–although I didn’t get the opportunity to see the contrast–what I saw was enough to still understand why.

Our time there was such a mixture of different emotions. You’d have to make the journey from one of the world’s poorest countries, to one of the world’s richer cities to understand the culture shock we found ourselves in. It took 24 hours just to feel normal again around traffic lights and sidewalks. I spent the next few days figuring out where I thought I was on the scale of all thing previously experienced: a little bit of England, a little bit of Australia, and a little bit of something else entirely. And, yes, judging by the staff who served me in the restaurants – a little bit of Africa. That was the oddest part. The separation of black and white is still very much in existence, but from the little slice of middle-class black South Africans that I saw, perhaps this is slowly changing.

Two weeks is not enough to see the country. I wish we had two months so see and explore the country more….and maybe we will some day.  But, as it stood, it was the perfect break from the chaos of Kathmandu.  ‘Til next time…