Last Tuesday our teams left Kathmandu and headed to Damak, a city in eastern Nepal, where our contact is originally from. We were going to do house visits and to possibly continue constructing a school that a previous World Race team started several months ago. As we’re learning things in foreign countries don’t always go as planned. We left Kathmandu at 3:00pm and were told our bus ride to Damak would be about 10 hours. Well……16 hours later at 7:45 am we finally arrived at our destination. About 8 of those hours were literally like riding on a wooden roller coaster. I spent most of the ride trying to keep things from falling out of the overhead bins on everyone around me. Needless to say it was LONG night! We spent the rest of that day resting and then the next morning at 4 am we woke up to begin our hike up a mountain to the actual village our contact grew up in. Again we were told that it would be a 3-4 hour hike for us because the locals can do it in about 1.5. To make a long story short it was a difficult climb through the jungle. There were areas where we had to navigate across ledges that if someone fell would have been really bad news. Five and a half hours later we finally made it to our contacts parent’s house. It’s definitely the farthest from civilization I have ever and may ever be in my life. What they can’t grow on their land they have to hike that same trek to get it from the village. Along the way we passed little kids loaded down with heavy baskets they were carrying. I was so impressed because I was struggling at times with the mere 20 lbs of weight I was carrying in my book bag. I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier to have finally arrived at my destination than I was that afternoon!
Once there we went and gathered drinking water from a local spring, then the guys went down to the river to catch fish for dinner. I haven’t done a lot of fishing in my life, but the way our contact used was very unique. He spent the first hour of fishing gathering up fresh cow poop. He then mixed the poop with cornmeal to make 7 balls of cornmeal poop. Each one was the size of about two softballs put together. He then dammed up part of the river using some large rocks. He set the poop balls behind the dam where the current now wasn’t as strong and stuck a long piece of grass out of the top of the poop ball to help locate the traps later. While this was going on several of us had the opportunity to finally play football (soccer) with about 20 of the locals. It was so much fun and being next to the river made it an incredible view. We now refer to it as The Field of Dreams. After finishing playing we watched as our contact threw a cast net over each of the traps. He caught about 20 fish total, but none of them were over a couple inches long. Luckily this wasn’t the main course for our dinner or we may have gotten really hungry that night. When he fried them we just threw them back and ate every part of the fish. I was a little leery at first, but they were delicious!
The next day we did house visits to a few of the houses in the village. Because of where we were at the houses were extremely spread out, so this involved a lot more hiking through the mountain. We talked to some Hindus and to Christians as well. It was encouraging to talk to the Christians in what we considered to be the middle of absolutely nowhere. The power of the gospel was extremely evident in these remote places. We were given a tour of the school that a previous World Race team had started. We weren’t able to do any construction because it’s rainy season and it would have been too difficult according to our contact. He did tell us though that the school is extremely necessary because as of now kids in his village have to cross the river to get to school. He said that kids die almost yearly trying to cross the river because they get caught in the currents and drown. Crazy to think about the risks these kids are taking everyday just to obtain an education. Makes me wish that my students back in America understood the privilege they have with their education and would take it more seriously.
That evening I had my first experience of trying to catch 2 roosters that were running around the yard of where we were staying. After catching them the two other guys on my team did what you’re probably thinking and took the second steps in preparing them for dinner. (I’m sure I’ll have my chance at this sometime before June gets here.) I will say though that it was a little bittersweet eating dinner that night. The roosters had woken us up and kept us up that morning, so I didn’t feel quite so bad eating them. Ha!
The next morning we woke up at 3:45 am to begin our descent back down the mountain. This time though we did much better and made the trek in a little over 3 hours. We were all extremely thrilled to finally be done and to be back at the base. From there we went to the orphanage that our contacts ministry is building. They currently have the foundation laid and a World Race team is coming in October to continue building it. He told us that it would take about $18,000 to completely finish the 3 floors of construction. Amazing that an orphanage can be built here for the price of a new car in America.
Over the next two days we traveled 17 hours riding public transportation after we were again told it would be about 10-12 hours. Then after we got to our destination one night our contact told us we had a 15 minute walk that turned into 50. This was after a full day of riding a hot sweaty bus that had twice the number of people on it than seats. To say that I wasn’t extremely frustrated at times would be completely untrue. On our 11 hour bus ride all we had to eat was a banana and a package of crackers because the bus was pulling out at lunch before we had time to eat. I’m going to address what the Lord is teaching me about my frustrations in my next blog.
At the end of this round of traveling though we were completely rewarded and it made everything worth it. We had the opportunity for our fun day this month to go on an elephant safari at Chitwan National Park. Four of us rode on an elephant for about a 2 hour safari through the park. We saw lot’s of deer and one rhino. It was one of the coolest, if not the coolest, things I’ve ever had the opportunity to do. I never knew this kind of thing existed or it would have been on my bucket list years ago. I’ll post some pictures on facebook, but I’ve had no luck posting pictures on here because our Internet hasn’t been strong enough. It’s been an eventful 6 days.
The next two weeks we will be staying in Kathmandu to do Bible distribution and we’ll be teaching local Nepalese people how to use the Internet and different computer programs. We are excited as we’ll get to write the curriculum for this as well.
Thanks again for your continued prayers!!
