Into the Concrete Jungle

I arrived in Nepal several days ago, after a long and harrowing (44 hours?) plane journey through Seattle, Newark, Frankfurt, and Doha. I met many nice people on the plane, especially on the last flight, during which a mother and 15-year-old daughter from Nepal "adopted" me, gave me fantastic amounts of information, and helped me get into a taxi and to a good hotel when i was woozy from the flight, practically rupee-less and completely overwhelmed.
Kathmandu is gigantic and bustling, but not in the same way as New York City, which is kind've what I imagined. The streets are tiny, numerous, and very similar, and they are all bundled under neighborhood, thus directions are just about as approximate as saying "The Bronx". I spent the first day trying to track down Prisoner's Assistance Nepal, and succeeded entirely through luck when I began talking a British woman in an Internet place after the internet failed, only to discover she was there with the same program. Since then I have gone every morning to help the kids get ready for school, and also in the afternoon to pick them up, help them with their homework, and play with them. The children are amazing- very strong, sweet, and clever. One child, Puja, who normally lives in the Sankhu home, is staying in Kathmandu for several days, and spent at least half an hour yesterday teaching me Nepali colors and parts of the body. It is nice to have a teacher! She says she will keep teaching me in Sankhu, and that her friend will teach me if i get there before her.
Despite all of the lovely aspects of PA-Nepal (the children), the staff has taken a little longer to warm up. Some of them are quite friendly, but i get the feeling others feel almost like we are in the way- perhaps they worry about "babysitting" us. The leader of the organization, Indira, has been gone for several weeks, so many of the volunteers have not met her yet. She is supposed to return today, and hopefully will be able to give us more information about Sankhu. I plan to travel there tomorrow or on Sunday, with another volunteer, Joe, who stayed in Sankhu for three months before. We are a little worried that we won't be able to stay in the home with the children, based on a comment one of the other directors made, but hopefully this will not be the case, and we will truely get to stay with them.
My afternoons and evenings in Kathmandu are generally spent with other volunteers, either from my program, or who are staying in the same guest house. They make up a whole range of nationalities, ages and interests, but i feel very close to the people I've met already, and will probably miss them. I am now sharing a room with Joe (technically Joehanne, how many of those can i sleep in the same room with? i mean, really?) to save money, and it is very nice to have someone to walk around Kathmandu with, where the storekeepers, beggars, and especially the drivers, are very aggressive.
I have also had some wonderful encounters with Nepali people, who have been very nice and welcoming. I ended up speaking with a shop owner near my hotel for perhaps an hour- he order tea and we talked about politics and economics (he is currently getting a masters degree). There are some wonderful Nepalis working in the hotels as well, and some of the people at PA Nepal are just lovely. One woman always calls me "Miss" and is trading english words/phrases for nepali.
I will update again in a week or so- apparently there is quite slow internet in Sankhu, which i will be able to use, though perhaps will not undertake very often. Let me know if you have any questions, or even if you just miss me , and would like to say hello (I already miss the cold and my mountains) . Namaste.

Details, Contact information, nervousness, and anticipation.

So, I thought it might be a good idea to give a brief sketch of my actual whereabouts in Nepal. For the first two weeks, so until the second or third week of July, I will be in Kathmandu, probably able to check my e-mail/post blogs. After that, I will be in Sankhu, which is a small village 20 km away from the city. I don't know what the electricity/internet/contact situation is in Sankhu, but I hopefully will at least visit Kathmandu in the month that I am there.

While in Nepal I will be very very difficult to reach via phone, unless I call you, but here is the (Kathmandu) office number for the organization I'll be staying with (Prisoner's-Assistance Nepal), who could probably relay messages if there is an emergency:
436-4896
(Notice the distinct lack of enough numbers, I don't even know the proper codes for kathmandu, so you'd have to really do some research to reach me this way)

The mailing address there is:
PCN 363
PO Box 8974
Kathmandu, Nepal

Once again, i don't know if that's a good way to send letter or not, and it would likely take 3-4 weeks to reach me. i would highly suggest against a package, as the contents may get distributed before i ever see them. I'll send another e-mail, or post a blog, when i know more about the available mailing systems.

For further contact information that is not internet-based, check out Prisoner's Assistance Nepal's website: www.thequietrevolution.net/panepal/contact.htm

Finally, the e-mail address i'm currently using is rosalind.gael@gmail.com instead of my old bowdoin one. however, if you send e-mails to the bowdoin address they will be forwarded to me.

As it is, I am leaving in 10 days, which is simultaneously nerve-racking and endorphin-inducing. If you have any last minute thoughts or messages (or advice!) please give it freely, I welcome it all (unless it's really mean. or stupid. (just kidding)).

I'll miss each of you, toilet paper, bare knees and my veganism, but i'm sure i will discover many things i never knew that I loved.

many miles, plans for summer and beyond, photography, and namaste.

In several weeks, on June 21st to be exact, I will board a plane and travel the 5,570 miles from Anchorage, Alaska to Kathmandu, Nepal. During my two month stay I will primarily work with Prisoner's Assistance Nepal (http://www.thequietrevolution.net/panepal), an organization which provides housing and education for children who would otherwise be sharing a prison sentence with a single parent. Though I do not yet know how I can best help the organization, I plan on doing whatever they ask, and proactively taking responsibility and tasks on (despite limited Nepali language skills).
I also want to spend the summer laying the groundwork and exploring the logistics of an interactive program between students in Brunswick, ME, and the students in the PA-Nepal program. Currently I would like to create a Photo-pal program, where the students learn photography and trade images with each other, an idea which I am developing with my good friend, Samuel Modest, who will be in Darjeeling in the fall. We would love to see this idea flower in many locations around the world, so the students can get more than one different perspective. However, such a program cannot be planned without paying attention to the specific needs of the students in PA-Nepal and other locations, the logistics of camera equipment, networking, and printing, as well as an effective and thoughtful curriculum, all of which require time and 'reconnaissance'. In the meantime I have a bagful of discs so I can at the very least bring the paragon of all sports to Nepali children: Ultimate Frisbee.
I will also be an active representative of the online non-profit Omprakash (www.omprakash.org), an organization which seeks to increase the connections and learning between grassroots educational non-profits and volunteers. At home in Alaska, and later in Nepal, I am advertising for and spreading awareness about this free, amazing resource for people who wants to volunteer abroad and for the programs who seek them.
I will return to the states on August 18th, spending the fall semester of my Junior year at Bowdoin College in Maine. At this time I will use the information and knowledge I gained in Nepal to finalize a program (photographic or not), and gather the resources to return and implement it in the spring of 2010. This blog is for my family and friends, and for anyone seeking to know more about Omprakash, Prisoner's Assistance Nepal, or international photography programs. Please tell me about your thoughts, questions, reactions or news, I want to hear from anyone who has taken the time to read my thoughts and experiences. I recently looked up the definition of Namaste, and found that it means "the spirit in me recognizes the spirit in you". I hope I can always find such affinity with and respect for others, even when they are very different from myself. I value this kind of appreciation more than anything, and hope to discover more about it this summer.
Therefore, until my next post:
Namaste.