Nepal is the most beautiful place I have ever been. Every day of ministry I look out over the green mountains filled with rice paddies stepping down to the rivers rushing through the valleys. There is so much beauty I can hardly take it all in. Multi-colored buidings make up the little one street town we catch a crowded bus to for internet, filled with street vendors selling everything from guavas to car parts, ladies in beautiful sarees, old men in their traditional caps and school children on their way to and from classes. Butterflies flit about everywhere, some so big that I can't help but imagine tiny fairy bodies attached to the fluttering wings. Standing at the top of our house you can look out over the banana trees and flowering vines to the footbridge that leads to the other side of the river that sends the sound of it's roaring waters up to your ears.
And then you walk into the squatty only to find the biggest, nastiest spider you have ever seen in your life. A spider the size of your hand. Not to mention the 3×3 foot room containing the hole-in-the-ground-for-a-toilet smells like something just died in there and that it has never once been cleaned since it was built. Or you finally fall asleep in your little room next to the cows only to wake up a few hours later on your sleeping pad that has deflated thanks to some unseen hole to spend the rest of the night wide awake praying against the attacks of the enemy and that the grandaddy sized grasshopper you removed from above your head doesn't find it's way back to you. After falling asleep as the sun rises, you are awoken an hour later for breakfast, the same spicy potatoes and rice that you ate for dinner.
I don't care about any of those sucky things, I really don't. (Although you could pray for our sleep.) I am beyond blessed to experience and see all the things that I have this year. I am thankful for each mountain top, sleepless night, delicious meal and ugly bug that gives me another story and another way to see God. But so you can get an idea of what the race is like apart from the pretty pictures on facebook, here is a blog from my squadmate Nicole Ruggiano!
(disclaimer: I have never ever had mold in my hair.)
Things ya have to laugh at!
I have loved the last 9 months with most of my heart…I would not trade them for anything in the world. However, after stalking myself on Facebook, I have realized how glamorous this journey looks; and while it has its glamorous moments, there are definitely some details that, if not laughed about, will have a person literally in tears!
So…hope this brings a little balance to the Facebook status, video blogs, and pictures that you may have seen.
There are many smells on the race…most of them are sick nasty. After 9 months of traveling, I can easily identify the following:
- Burning trash.
- Stagnant slime/trash puddles.
- Sun-baked animal caucuses hanging in a butcher shop window.
- My teammates (!!)
- My Chacos,
- Stale urine in a squatty potty room that you have to pay to use and bring your own TP!
- Durian fruit.
- Chicken coops.
- B.O., on the pastor as he hugs me. B.O., on the motorcycle taxi man that I am straddling as the wind blows through his armpits. B.O., on the teammate who is sharing a bed with me. B.O., on ME!
- Nasty breath (most people who don’t speak English think that I can understand them better if they speak closer. Not true, I still do not understand you, and now I just gagged at your breath!)
- Anchovy piles that bake in the hot sun at the walk-through market.
- Cow pies, dog pies, goat pies, human pies. And if you’re not careful you’ll find some smeared on your shoes!
- Mold: Growing on my sleeping bag pad, my backpack and on my scalp!
- Laundry that didn’t fully sun dry before 3 days of traveling and was stuffed inside a zip-loc.
Some of the things we have to ‘laugh’ at:
- Five hour church services in a different language…how about language barriers in general.
- Roosters! I hate roosters. They sound like they are dying and I wish they all would!
- Being asked to try a mystery food in front of a host and smiling as it goes down, all the while looking for a hungry kid to sneak-feed your hot “corn-porridge” to.
- When all you need in life is a chat with your mom, and then Skype cuts out and the Internet is gone; love that!
- Walking up the side of a mountain to get home in the blazing sun.
- Drinking from a dirty Nalgene (water bottle) that smells like a turtle tank.
- Always needing a power converter, power outages, and blowing the electrical sockets when 2 computers are plugged in at once.
- Having to haggle for a fare price EVERYWHERE because I am white.
- LOUDNESS! Loud speakers on a 17 hour bus ride, loud speakers at church, loud radios and TV’s at the home of the people you are staying with, loud teammates, loud kids crying outside your window, loud roosters. The only way to find silence is to blast your headphones….oh the irony.
- Dirty finger nails…have you heard of an African manicure? Kinda like French manicure, except the tips are black and not white, and the black is under the nail and not on top.
- No AC, sometimes fans, and hot environments to live in.
- Hand washing your clothes and having them dry in the sun.
- Your dresser drawers being stuff sacks that your minimal clothing supply is stuffed into at the bottom of your backpack.
- Warm drinks. There is never ice. I want a Tervis Tumbler full of Sonic ice, Diet Coke and a lime.
- Dishes being washed in nasty water, always!
- Random strangers joining you bed in the middle of the night.
- Cramming 29 people in 15-passenger van.
- Eating more peanut butter & jelly than a kindergartener.
- Getting laughed at, stared at, photographed (with an old school cell phone), followed, being asked for my phone number, whistled at…people assuming I am rich and saying, “give me your Coke” “Give me my money”, people trying to be sneaky about touching my hair or skin (thinking I don’t feel it), having to sit in the “VIP” section at church.
- Breakfast equals: one semi-hard boiled egg, white bread and "fat spread" (or butter as we call it in America).
- Super gluing or duct-taping 45% of my belonging, including but not limited to: the soles of my shoes, my watchband, water bottles, pens, and a major shin cut (Band Aid/Duct Tape…same thing).
- Putting way too much water in wall paint.
- Babies peeing on the floor during church. Babies peeing on buses. Babies peeing on your lap. Dogs peeing on your back.
- Finding a scorpion in my bedroom.
- We have found much joy in the cheesy decorations used in the houses we have lived in, including but not limited to: multiple boutiques of fake flowers in clashing colors, couch doilies with matching pillows, body part chart with a naked kid, huge framed pictures of the local president or king, family pictures where no one is smiling, anything gaudy that has to do with Jesus, and I’ve even seen a silver pine cone chandelier with bows!
Bathrooms on the race…again, you just have to laugh at these things:
- Bucket showers, cold showers, or no shower.
- Quick drying, shammy towel that smells like cat pee. Oh how I long for a machine-washed fluffy towel that has been dried with a bounce sheet.
- No mirrors…ever!
- TOILETS: Squatty potties, flushing toilets with a bucket, hole in the ground ‘toilets’, waiting for 6 other teammates to use the toilet before you can, standing on two 2X4’s over a ditch praying to God you don’t lose your balance and that the wood doesn’t break!
- Sinks with no faucets or counter space.
- Filling your bucket with water from the spigot outside for your shower, washing your hands, or flushing some sort of toilet.
- Running out of water or the power going out when you are covered in suds in the shower.
- Peeing on your feet when using a squatty…but also being asked to use the ‘community bathroom flip-flops’. ew! no!
- Getting hair out of the shower drain that is being used by 17 people….SICK!
- Sometimes there is soap?
- Toilets not flushing when 11 out of 14 teammates have stomach issues, which results in pooping in the abandoned house across the street.
- Plucking my eyebrows in a sand-dollar sized compact with a headlamp.
- Roaches, geckos, flies, rats, worms, maggots, wasps, and/or spiders lurking in the bathroom, just waiting to pounce!
Every single one of these things I have witnessed and each has a great story to go along with it. This blog is a result of feeling tired and quite frankly sick of most of these things (except for the silver pinecone chandelier….I am trying to figure out a way to steal it without the family noticing!).
Seriously, if I didn’t laugh at the obnoxiousness of my situations, I’d be balling my eyes out; I’m still perfecting the art of laughing instead of crying!
A special thanks goes out to my teammates who helped me with this list and for being there when I need to cry and without you, I’d definitely not be laughing! Here’s to our last two months!
