Women's Group- Family Planning: Trip to FPAN

There is too much that has happened to try to write about all or even some of my experiences over the past month, so I am just going to write about the present time. I am currently sitting at a table outside with my laptop at the Swayambu cafe, a small cafe with wireless internet a 10 minute walk from our volunteer house in Kathmandu. We had about an hour and a half to eat dinner tonight so I decided to get away for a bit to get a change of scenery and some time alone. This is something that always seems like a great idea in theory but I don't always make the effort to do. Tonight I decided to just go for it. In a weird way, many times being here in Nepal reminds me of being at camp. I think it is just this sense of absolute freedom to roam around without any responsibility, wear t-shirts and baggy pants, eat when you want, socialize, etc.... it's like the entire country of Nepal is free to explore and discover. It's an awesome feeling. I am now sitting here by myself drinking my second cup of coffee at 6:45 p.m. just because I feel like it and am not thinking too much about anything. Just enjoying this time to myself.

Today the people in the women's thematic group visited an organization in Kathmandu called F-PAN which deals with family planning in Nepal. We spoke with the director of the organization asking him questions about contraception to gain information for the work we will be doing in the villages. One of the main goals of the Women's groups will be to educate about family planning - different methods of contraception, what side effects to expect, why it is important, etc. At first I had a lot of mixed feelings about doing this work. For one thing, it felt like a very personal issue to be dealing with. How is it okay for us as Westerners to come into these villages and impose our ideas on these women? Secondly, I am not convinced that the Depo-Provera injection that is given every 3 months is the safest way for these women to practice birth control. It seems strange to take these Western inventions and give them to these women whose bodies work differently, with different diets, a lot of physical labor, etc. and without informing them of the side effects hope to solve the problem of overpopulation. These were my initial thoughts. In our first group meeting I kept going on and on about how there must be more holistic, natural methods of helping these women.

One of the main issues is that without contraception, women in Nepal do not wait between having children. There is some crazy statistic, which I do not remember right this second, about how many women have children within a year of giving birth. Aside from the obvious problems of not having enough money to feed a large family, and that these children are forced to become child laborers, which leads to health problems and more extreme poverty, these high birth rates are dangerous and physically harmful to Nepali women. So, family planning, like all the other work we will be doing here, is a larger issue on both a societal level and the level of individual families. These issues are complex and all very interesting. I sat there in the F-PAN office today wondering how I got here to a place where I am able to use my skills and experience to help doing exactly what I am interested in?! I am fascinated by these health related issues. I am really enjoying doing the research involved and am very much looking forward to working with the women in Mahadav Beshi. I am so happy to be working in the Women's Group. I attribute a lot of the reason I chose to work in this area to my experience in the Sterling Women's Weekend this summer. The Weekend made me so much more connected to my identity as a woman and my connection to all types of women. I am not sure I would have felt this way before doing The Weekend. I used to have feel a certain stigma whenever hearing "Women's" related things but now I feel so drawn to it. As much as I love children, and little Nepali children are the cutest, I know that the Women's Group is the perfect place for me here. The social work aspect and health related issues are a perfect fit for me and I am so thankful/excited to have found myself here.

There is much more to say (I have a feeling I will be ending all of my posts this way), but I need to head back to the house soon and the electricity just shut off so I am now sitting in pitch black by candle light. We are leaving for the villages Sunday! I will have my cell phone there but no internet access. The closest internet access to Mahadav Beshi is a half hour drive away. I am not sure how often we will be going. For those of you who have asked me... my cell phone number here is: 981 - 822 - 6210. I will continue to write. I love and miss you all!

Some pictures!

Tea break stop on the way to Mahadav Beshi

 Mahadav beshi!

 Our volunteer house/mud hut  in Mahadav Beshi!

Inside the mud hut! ( my new room for the next 3 months :)

Purim at the Israeli Ambassaor's (man on the left in blue and purple) house!

                    Befriending the cows like my Omi <3 <3




Just wanted to upload some pictures to show that I'm here and making friends! We were split up into our villages this morning and I will be going to Mahadav Beshi (pronounced Madabesi), a village an hour and a half away from Kathmandu. It is a very interesting place with many different projects and places to work. A lot of agricultural work has been done there by Tevel b'Tzedek and they now have an irrigation system that allows for flourishing fields of growing cauliflower, cabbage, papaya trees, rice fields, tomatoes, potatoes. It is simply beautiful. I am with a great group of people and very happy about being placed there. When we went to visit the village for a few days last week I immediately fell in love and just knew I could see myself there. It is slightly bittersweet because not everyone I have become friends with here will be in the same village. A lot of my friends will be in another village much farther away. But I am happy that I was able to trust the good feeling I had about the place and the Nepali staff that we met and follow my intuition to make it my first choice. I will be working with the Women's Groups. The villagers in Mahadav Beshi are of the Rai people. There is also a population of migrant workers that live in extreme poverty by the river working as stone breakers. There is a lot more to write  but I need to go finish getting ready for Shabbat. I will try to write again soon! Shabbat Shalom from Kathmandu :)

Living Goddesses, Yoga, and Monkeys

Well, I have only been here for a little over a week and I already feel like I have too much to write to keep up this blog. But I will try to do my best to give an overview of what things are like here and what I have been doing.

I was pretty nervous the whole way here on my flight from Delhi. The flight was delayed about three hours and to be honest I was relieved to be able to just sit in the airport, despite the many hours I had already been traveling. I did not have anywhere to be and was feeling very anxious about the reality of landing in Kathmandu, getting a visa, collecting my suitcase, getting a sim card for my cell phone, choosing a hotel, and finding a way to get there. The flight was short and I did my best to distract myself by watching Modern Family episodes on my personal T.V. At one point the captain came on the loud speaker and told us that the weather was better and visibility would not be a problem, but there was a lot of air traffic so we would be circling until we were able to land. He thinks we have enough gas but we might need to land somewhere else, "hopefully it will not come to that". Awesome. I just thought it was funny that he shared this with all of us. 

Anyway, the views of the mountains were beautiful flying into Nepal. The huge green hills and snow capped mountains in the distance were unlike anything I had ever seen. As we were landing and seeing this aerial view of the city I just kept saying "Oh my G-d, oh my G-d, Oh my G-d". Wow, it was just this crazy overwhelming feeling of excitement and anxiety all in one that I was actually finally here, in this foreign, beautiful place. The Kathmandu airport looks like a long wooden barn. Everyone walked right off the front or back of the airplane onto the ground where we got on buses to drive us to the terminal. Inside there were booths to fill out forms for a visa, a line to hand in that form and pay the visa fee, and then you walked straight over to the baggage claim. Pretty simple. It didn't seem like anyone checked the forms or information too thoroughly at all. Just a formality and way to make money. 

The baggage claim area was a huge warehouse with a long luggage belt, with bags and boxes strewn all over the floor. Literally all over. There were people everywhere and it was hard to find a place to walk. By some miracle I happened to see my bag close to where I was standing. When I walked over to get it a Nepali man came over to me and began picking it up and leading me out. I told him I still had another box I needed to wait for. He waited for the box, picked it up, and then motioned for me to follow him with all of my things. I am not sure where he came from or how he singled me out but I really didn't have much of a choice about any of it. He led me in front of the whole long line of people waiting to put their stuff through the security machine and got me all the way out in about two minutes. I told him thank you and it was okay I could take it from here, feeling a little unsure of this service, wondering why it was okay for me to just cut the entire line. He then looked at me saying, "tips? tips?". Ooooh. So this isn't just part of the airport service.... In hindsight it is very obvious to me but at the time, my very sleep-deprived, nervous self was just trying to take it all in. I gave him an American dollar (all I had at that point) and hoped he would be satisfied. 

Something I have noticed about this country is that either everything is done for you, and you are surrounded by people imposing their services on you, or you must not accept any help at all and assertively refuse all gestures so that you are left to figure everything on your own. I am not sure what I expected. I imagined leisurely finding my way and stopping to ask people directions or get suggestions from the man at the front desk at my hotel, I guess more like the way it works in the U.S. It turns out Nepal is a little bit different. I must have had 3 men standing around me, waiting for me to come in their taxi or go to their hotel,  while I tried to understand and make decisions about buying a sim card at the airport. As soon as I was done one of them took my bags and walked out to the street, threw my bag in the back seat of a little white car, what I realized after a minute was a taxi which was at a standstill in the biggest traffic jam I have ever seen. His friend jumped in the seat with my suitcase and they all yelled at me to get in the front of the car, on what we are used to as the drivers side. 

The only rule that I can see about driving here is everyone honks their horn to let all around know that they are coming. Other than that, it is kind of a free for all with motorcycles, rickshaws, taxis, and buses packed with people zooming inches away from one another - literally inches. I was in awe of everything I was seeing around me on that first taxi ride. I could not stop looking out the window, taking in my new surroundings. It was amazing and I don't think I'll ever forget how I felt that day.

I'm realizing that if I go on in this much detail I will be writing forever. I am not sure how many of you are still reading this. The next few days were filled with ups and downs. The first night I found the Chabad house, met a few Israelis who were traveling, and ate dinner there. I was tired, overwhelmed, and a bit lonely to find myself in a very foreign place without anyone. It was hard to know who to trust so I realized I needed to be assertive with the young man working at my guest house and insist that he leave me alone. I could do things on my own. 

My first day in Nepal I woke up, walked out of my guest house, wandered the streets of the Thamel for about an hour, and somehow found my way to the "monkey temple". All I could think when I got there was "Wow, I am freaking awesome". There are very few signs, and streets are not marked so maps are close to useless. I could not even stop for a second in the street to make sure I was going the right way because there would be multiple men yelling at me and everything is so fast paced. But somehow I did it and I was so proud! The temple was beautiful and there were tons of monkeys running around. 

Later that day I met two girls from Germany with whom I spent the rest of the day. We had tea at a cafe and then went to Durbar Square. We let a Nepali man take us on a tour of the temples there and learned a lot about Nepal and Buddhism. We saw a living goddess who lives in the temple with the priest from the time that she is 3 yrs old until she gets her period. She is chosen based on physical and mental criteria and only shows her face through a small window twice a day. The tour was supposed to be an hour but lasted two hours and ended with tea on a rooftop cafe overlooking the city.

Later that night I met up with a girl from the program and three friends she met in India to get a drink at a bar in Thamel. We ordered beer that comes in a jug to which you add hot water to and wait to ferment. I just kept thinking.. how did this happen?! Last night I was alone, a little nervous and sad in a country that is totally unfamiliar and now I am sitting on a balcony drinking beer with a bunch of people after a long, fun, interesting day. It was awesome. I think I got a small taste of what it is like to travel alone and it is a little addicting. 

I have been working on this entry for almost a week now. I plan to be more brief in the future although it is hard because everything is so exciting and new and interesting. I have been with the program now since Monday and am having a great time. We are living in a house together for the first month. The first morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m with a few people to go to a yoga class outside one of the nearby temples. It was an awesome experience. There were over 100 people there practicing yoga in the pitch black before sunrise with booming Nepali music. There was even a dance session at the end. I kept looking over to my left and seeing the monkeys on the side and remembering that I was doing yoga in Nepal?! What?

We take daily Nepali lessons and classes on community development. We just visited the first out of three places that volunteers will be placed for the volunteering. Each place has it's own issues and challenges. Every volunteer requests a specific area that they want to work on (Women's Groups/Agriculture/ Youth groups/Education) and his or her preference for which village to work in. 

I'm working hard practicing my Hebrew and learning Nepali at the same time! Not always easy. But Im really happy and having a great time. Please stay in touch! I love hearing from everybody!