Haibung, Nepal

Three full days in Kathmandu and I don’t have much to show for it…

Before my friends left town, we visited the famous Monkey Temple (only $2 to have your life threatened by a monkey!); we got full body massages (which doubled as our annual breast exams); we sang-screamed the Indiana Jones theme song during car rides (on pothole-riddled streets); and we ate at the same shawarma shack four times (Thamel Doner Kebab- don’t miss it).

After one more helping of chicken shawarma and falafel, our last night in Kathmandu was capped off by an uninvited guest.  Around 12:30am, Linsea and I spotted a monster cockroach on the wall right beside Jess’ bed.  Since Jess was sleeping and I was pantless & afraid……. Linsea was our only hope.  She grabbed a towel, started tiptoeing towards it, cocked her arm, looked back at me, poised for attack and THENNNNNNNNN I screamed and woke up Jess.

I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to!  I was just startled because…… right as Linsea was going in for the kill, a big grey cat scurried past my foot and ran under the beds.  Ahh!  Is that a?  What?  How did YOU get in here?!  The cat was going for the roach, so we cheered him on…… but we also wanted him to leave.  It was a very confusing time.  We eventually got the cat out of our room, but we never found the roach.  Let’s just pretend that the cat ate him, cuz I don’t want to think about the alternative.  RIP.

Alright, APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY (too much fun, not enough time to write, no internet connection, you know the drill) …… the next mission in my Year of Adventure was a one-week volunteering stint with All Hands & Hearts in the mountains of Nepal.  The All Hands & Hearts organization is a disaster relief non-profit that addresses the needs of communities post natural disasters.  They have boots on the ground almost immediately – demolishing hazardous buildings, removing rubble, and starting the long process of rebuilding.  Homes, schools, community centers, but mostly, hope.

You might remember that in the spring of 2015, two devastating earthquakes hit Nepal in back-to-back months.  Villages were flattened, homes destroyed, and over 8000 people lost their lives.  Three years later and All Hands & Hearts is still here (in one of the least developed districts in one of the least developed countries).  Their main focus now is SCHOOLS.  My assignment was to assist in the rebuilding of the Kalikasaran School (serving 105 local children) and its newly-attached water filtration system.  But I’m getting ahead of myself……… let’s start with the bus.

There is ONE bus, every day, that runs from Jorpati to Gurungaun.  That bus leaves Jorpati at 1230pm, but you have to arrive at 930am if you want a seat.  For 90 cents, I got my window seat, settled into the 2-3-hour (18 mile) journey, and wondered how on EARTH:

1. The bus wasn’t tumbling over the edge of cliffs (as the back wheels regularly lost contact with the ground)
2. The bags weren’t tumbling off the roof of the bus (as the entire bus tilted 45 degrees, rocking back and forth through three-foot deep mud tracks)
3. My shirt could have gotten THAT dirty (from dust & dirt kicked up & swirled through my open window)

it’s a wonder i didn’t have a heart attack

During that 2-3-hour journey from Kathmandu to the terraced fields of Haibung, the scene that unfolded can only be described as a post-war zone.  Piles upon piles of bricks and concrete slabs and corrugated pipes and garbage and water bottles and rubble.  Everywhere you looked, another pile of something.  Another crater where the road should be.  Another goat holding up traffic.

The complete lack of infrastructure, three years after the ‘quakes, was astonishing.

Arriving at the All Hands & Hearts base as the last volunteer of the project (before monsoon season forces everyone to leave……… cuz using power tools and scaffolding isn’t the best idea in heavy downpours), I walked into something special.  I knew it right away.  All the volunteers were so warm and welcoming and wonderful and generous.  Big smiles.  Long hugs.  Living on top of each other, sharing everything, and having the time of their lives.

Not ten minutes on campus, and I knew that these people were meant to be my friends that I desperately wanted these people to be my friends.  Sometimes, all it takes is a split second to know you’ve found a new family.  (I had the same feeling during my very first practice with the Chicago Force women’s football team back in 2010…… and we all know how that turned out.  Splendidly.  It turned out great.  Heretofore, my instincts for friendship are unparalleled.)

Extra bonus: I arrived on the best night of the week.  Cheese pasta night.

the base!

Six days a week, the schedule ran as follows:

• 6:30a – WAKE UP
  • To birds chirping, roosters crowing, and volunteers shuffling around the base.
  • Roll outta your tent, grab 2 eggs & 2 pieces of bread, and cook ‘em on one of the four skillets.
  • Round out your breakfast of champions with peanut butter, porridge, an apple, and tea.
  • Wash your own dishes.
  • Slap on yoga pants, hiking boots, and a bright purple All Hands & Hearts work shirt.  **All clothes were either dirty, paint-splattered, or both.**
• 7:20a – LEAVE BASE
  • Walk 5 minutes from the base to the worksite, admiring the view (and the many animals that join you along the commute- ducks, dogs, roosters, cows, and a baby goat the volunteers named Oreo).
• 7:30a – mandatory MORNING MEETING
  • Discuss what work needs to be done that day and sound off on a quick roll call.
  • Strap on your hard hat and away you go.
• 7:45a – START WORK
  • Anything from shoveling to sanding to sawing to technical jobs that involved power tools and an engineering degree.  Based on my story about falling through a wall in a Nepali disco pub, I was not allowed near the power tools.  Probably a good idea.
  • Day one- I spent the first four hours pickaxing cement, shoveling cement chunks into a wheelbarrow, wheeling them across the worksite, transferring them to buckets, carrying those buckets to the edge of a cliff and then throwing the contents overboard.  I’d never pickaxed before!  It was so exciting!
  • Working alongside Alesia, from southern Italy, we figured out that Alesia and my grandpa’s mother (Elvira Delessandro) were BOTH BORN IN THE SAME SMALL TOWN OF L’AQUILA, ITALY.  Sooooo, we’re basically sisters.  Day one in Haibung, Nepal……… and I’m pickaxing with my sister.
• 12:00p – LUNCH
  • Lunch was always some form of dal bhat, cooked lovingly by one of three Nepali families whose houses bordered our worksite.  (Dal bhat varies widely but it’s usually mixed veg, lentils, and white rice.  Mix it up and whaddya have?  A freakin’ delicious mess of a meal.)
  • Grab your plate, line up, and wait for the neighborhood ladies to ladle out rations.  Not one grain of rice was left on any of our plates.
• 1:00p – RETURN TO WORK
  • Maybe a little sand-sifting to finish out the day?  Aka. shoveling dirt & throwing it through a door-sized colander to remove rocks.  Or painting the windowsills or sanding the stairwell walls or watching Bridget as she DANCES HER HEART OUT to ‘Play That Funky Music’ blasted over the loudspeaker.
  • Looking around, everyone was working with so much intention.  Through the lunch bell, after hours, even on their one day off a week…… through head colds and chest infections and ‘member that one chick fell off a LADDER on Tuesday, hurt her leg and kept working?  Committed to a job well done, for the kids and for the community.
  • Imagine a world where all your coworkers were happy and productive and worked hard ALL DAY LONG.  Even Bill!  And Bill never works hard.  Where the heck IS Bill, anyway?  Is he even working today?  No one’s seen him?  We’ve gotta get a tracker chip on that guy…
• 4:00p – DONE FOR THE DAY
  • If you worked on the landscaping or pickax teams, you most likely returned to base, crawled into your tent, and passed out until the nightly meeting.
  • If you worked on the painting team, you most likely returned to base for a quick bucket shower because paint. was. everywhere. (PS. It’s not coming off your face for at least three weeks so just pretend it’s eye shadow.  White primer eye shadow is SO in right now.  Stephanie’s sister’s boyfriend’s cousin said that Kendall Jenner bought some at Home Depot last week.)
  • IF you didn’t give a f*ck about what you looked like or how tired you were, you plopped down on a bench at the worksite marketplace, bought a beer or three or five, and swapped stories with other volunteers until the nightly meeting.
  • Due to my intense desire to make friends with these wonderful people, I opted for door number three……… hovering around certain people like a creep and smiling my absolute hardest.
• 6:00p – mandatory NIGHTLY MEETING
  • All 55 volunteers on base (during peak months, they had about 120) would congregate by the white board, while project coordinators and team leaders ran through all the successes of the day.  ‘We finished the retaining wall!’  ‘First coat of primer on the wash station, complete!’  ‘Only one person fell off a ladder!’  Another day closer to school in session…
• 7:00p – DINNER & FUN
  • After a dinner of lentil soup & chapati or dal bhat & rice or the infamous cheese pasta, everyone would gather ’round the fire pit, sing songs, and listen to Max & Jamal play guitar.  Springsteen, Simon & Garfunkel, Eagle-Eye Cherry – their musical toolbox ran deep.  (Also, fun fact: you need to drill holes in bamboo before placing it into a fire.  Otherwise, it’ll blow up.)
  • Other nights, things got ca-razy. ‘Cuz when pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime.  ‘Cuz when Roxy’s only 50 cents a liter, you can drink Roxy anytime.  (It took me one full hour, that first night, to figure out that ‘Roxy’ was a clear spirit made from millet and sold in old Sprite bottles.  It took me one more hour to decide that Roxy did NOT taste bad.)
  • One thing I wasn’t prepared for = how much FUN I would have working for a non-profit in the middle of the mountains.  We drank…… a lot.  Yeti Brewery extra-large & extra-strong beers (or Roxy).  We danced…… a lot.  With local masons and neighborhood ladies, to mashups of Mariah Carey and Nepali techno music.  And, naturally, we had nightly love fests where people explained exactly why they loved each other & why they thought each other was special.  (WHICH, if you’re one of my homegirls from the Chicago Force football team, sounds like a typical drunken night out.  hah)
• 9:00p – CURFEW / QUIET HOURS
  • Once the bamboo fire pit was snuffed out (or not), everyone would walk/crawl/stumble back to their tents and pass out immediately.  No tossing or turning or moving of any kind.  We lied like vegetables.  Were still like broccoli.  Comatose until 6:30a.
• 10:00p – MISC.
  • On Wednesday night, there was an emergency meeting called at 10pm.  (Quite outside the norm.)  Everyone was summoned out of their tents (and out of their REM cycles) to the big, white board for roll call.  (Management heard reports of a volunteer in a bright, purple work shirt wandering down the mountain that night…… and needed to make sure everyone was safe, and no one was lost.)
  • Apparentlyyyyyy, the only person not accounted for……… the ONLY person that didn’t show up for roll call at the emergency meeting……… was me.
  • Apparentlyyyyyy, everyone was screaming my name in unison, trying to find me or figure out which tent was mine and WHILE STILL SOUNDLY ASLEEP……… I yelled out from my tent, ‘I’M HERE AND I’M SLEE-PAAAAAAAAANG!!!!’
  • Oh my God, mortified.  Mortifiedddd.  When multiple people relayed the ‘story of the emergency meeting’ at breakfast the next day = complete mortification.
  • Have I mentioned that I talk in my sleep?  Well, I do.  A lot.  SOLID track record of sleeptalking over here.  Just ask my randomly-assigned college roommate (who stuck with me for three years despite my late-night comedy routine).  I’m just glad it wasn’t me wandering down the mountain in my bright, purple work shirt becauseeeeee…… I might also have an issue with sleepwalking.

One-week volunteering with All Hands & Hearts was WAY too short.  I wish I’d stayed for at least one more week, but I easily could have stayed for a month or two.  The people of this organization are some of the best you’ll ever meet.  (And volunteers who’ve worked on multiple All Hands & Hearts projects – Houston, Puerto Rico, Philippines – attest that it’s the same everywhere.)  Something was in the air…… or maybe in the water.  Everyone on base seemed to have the same impression I did:

1. This was something special.
2. I’ve found my people.

Thereforeeee, if you’re looking for an international volunteer opportunity, check out All Hands & Hearts.  They’ve initiated 94 disaster programs to date and it’s absolutely F-R-E-E to volunteer (as opposed to most of the intl volunteer orgs that’ll cost you an arm and a leg).  Because, at the end of the day, don’t you want to be covered with paint and dirt and sweat and dust and blood and dried bits of whatever that is on your shirt?  Is that ceiling?  Is that bits of CEILING?

When you don’t see your reflection in however long you’re there, it’s funny to have to rely on others to tell you you’ve had a piece of ceiling on your chin for four hours……… or that yellow primer is still on your neck from last Thursday……… or that your eyebrows are coming in quite nicely.

What is clean?

On the flip side, if vacation days aren’t raining from the sky and you’ve already planned that family vacation to Aruba……… I’ve got you.  On the off chance you’re still deciding where to donate this year, I set up a link that funnels donations directly to the All Hands & Hearts organization.  Construction for the next round of schools is scheduled for Sept 2018, and they’re currently looking for funding.

If you can, and if you want to, it would mean a great deal to me if you helped out.  There’s still so much to do in Nepal, with thousands of kids school-less.  (And, rest assured, that the All Hands & Hearts upper management team is ORGANIZED & EFFICIENT, with 95% of every dollar going directly to the programs.)

Here is the donation link:  https://give.allhandsandhearts.org/fundraiser/1451784

And here’s a link to the All Hands & Hearts website:   https://www.allhandsandhearts.org/

Absolutely no pressure.  I just believe so strongly in what they’re trying to do and will *definitely* be volunteering on another All Hands project in the future.  Mark my words.  And save me some Roxy.

But back to the story.

I finished out my too-short week with All Hands on Saturday morning, and waited to catch the one bus back into town.  When the bus finally rolled up, an hour late, it was packed to the gills with people.  People everywhere.  1-3 to a seat.  Standing up and down the aisles.  Spilling into the street.  One of the locals grabbed my bag, tossed it onto the roof and motioned me to ‘get in’.  Okkkkkk, soooooo, in there?

Enter the most exhausting bus ride of my life.  For three hours, I stood in the STAIRWELL OF THE BUS (with the door gaping open) along with 4 other guys, 2 high school girls and one 10-year-old who glued her entire body to my side and curled both of her arms around my forearm.  We moved as a pack left and right and leeeeeeeft and riiiiiiiight and forward  and riiiiiiiight and BACK as the bus went over bumps and holes and pits and craters and screeched to a stop when goats wouldn’t get out of the way (or other buses were barreling towards us on a ‘road’ capable of fitting 1.3 vehicles side-by-side.)

Keeping myself upright was a struggle.  Especially when a little Nepali girl was counting on me as her support beam.

Biceps burning.  Thighs burning.  Everything burning and nowhere to go.  Nowhere to move.  And, of course, factor in my little sidekick who’d switch back & forth from wrapping her arms around my waist, burying her face in my lower back, and smiling at me in the bus mirror.

Anywho, I survived.  And she survived.  And I made it all the way to India.  Not on that bus.  Thank God.  I took a plane.  But that’s a story for next week.

the team.  🙂

after-work brewskies

the kalikasaran school 2 weeks away from completion

the beginnings of the EPIC new playground

the, ummm, carpentary station

the dish-washing station

the bamboo fire pit (in the morning)

a typical tent

my home for one week

a lady. in a tree. with a machete.

and the reason we were all there…..