making instead of buying, needles, school's out for the summer, a new baby in Sankhu, appreciation.

People forget how to make things for themselves in the Western world. Instead of cooking a birthday cake they pick one up at Walmart, already decorated with balloons and flowers. We buy pre-made, pre-packaged foods, clothing, furniture, houses, and so much more. Often, even if we could figure out how to make one of these things, we opt to purchase it anyways, for lack of time to actually make it ourselves. After all, as Benjamin Franklin said: time is money. Nepal is a good contrast to this lifestyle as I am constantly confronted with the homemade: breakfast and dinner is always home-cooked, the girls here crochet mind-bogglingly huge colorful blankets they refer to as ‘bedcover’, and no one at the home goes to a hairdresser or barber.
What it all comes down to really is time. For example, two days ago I learned how to knit. I’ve been bugging knit-savvy friends for years to teach me this, but never ‘found the time’, and yet it only took 5 minutes for me to get the hang of it, although obviously I was slow and clumsy with the skinny needles I’d bought in Kathmandu. Unfortunately, we soon found that the wool I’d purchased was too thick for the needles, so Kristel and I brainstormed ways to make thicker ones. We settled on two lengths of straight bamboo, which I whittled to points and sanded to a smooth finish: presto, home-made knitting needles! I shouldn’t be too proud of this accomplishment, but the truth is, I feel incredibly satisfied every time I use them, and love the 2 ½ feet of scarf I finished in just a couple of days. I can’t remember the last time I felt so proud of something that I worked on, including most of the papers I wrote at college last semester. The lesson here, at least for me, is to remember the importance of making and doing things for myself. Many of the small processes are what make life satisfying, not necessarily what we accomplish, but how we accomplish it. I could buy a scarf at the store and the result would be the same: when winter comes my neck will be warm. However there is no way I would feel nearly as much satisfaction in making a purchase and wearing it as I doubtless will with my homemade one.
While the first several days dragged after I got back to Sankhu, they have since sped up again, racing by in long conversations, clicking needles, a lovely hike, and the last days of the kid’s exams. Yesterday I gave a “Photo Exam” consisting of 10 written questions and a ‘practical’ portion, where I had them take 5 portraits, of whom I would be the judge. My main motive was to see whether or not their photography class had changed how they photograph people, as my biggest challenge when I first gave them cameras was to stop them from taking hundreds of nearly identical, oddly-angled photos of their friends in stiff poses. Looking through their photos I did notice a definite difference, although perhaps only 5 students seem to really see the camera as new kind of eye, and examine the world differently with it. Today the Science exam for the older students, and tomorrow is the first day of their month-long vacation. For the Junkiri Primary Students the last day is much more like a “fun day” with a quiz contest, sports, and general fun time. The students came up with all of the questions and answers for the contest, and I actually undermined the question “What is the biggest city in the world?” as the answer written was “London” and the teachers thought it was “Taiwan”. I told them “Hong Kong”, and was ashamed to just discover that it is actually Shanghai. Whoops! I don’t know if I should come clean!
One question all of the volunteers have been speculating on is the length of gestation for a cow, given the very pregnant cow that belongs to the home. Two days ago we stopped caring, as Laxmi, the beautiful and esteemed cow, went into labor and gave birth to her calf. One moment I was just sitting upstairs talking with some of the girls, and the next moment, after a burst of excited Nepali, we were all running down the stairs and up the hill, where children surrounded the laboring cow in fascination. The calf wasn’t yet visible, but we could see some thick pieces of placenta hanging down, which the cow broke off with her tail and self-cannibalistically ate, probably for the protein. The actual birth took several hours, and I regret not having been patient enough to wait next to the cow the entire time, but I did get to see the recently-freed, wet calf getting a thorough licking from her mother. The children crowded around the shed, peeking through holes, each others legs, and over heads to get a glimpse of this new being who suddenly entered our world. I’ve never experienced a birth before, and I felt awe at the miracle of two beings existing, where before I only saw one. After only a couple of hours she was standing on trembling legs next to her mother, leaning faintly on her maternal, stable flank. What it must’ve felt like for her, to breathe real air for the first time, see colors, hear sounds, taste milk! Birth is such an amazing thing, and I continue to feel inspired by this glimpse of it. Don’t worry mom and dad- I’m content to observe for the moment!
Here’s to birth, cool breezes on increasingly hot days, and the coffee and bread courteously given to me by the owners of this internet place. The world truly feels a lovely place.