I don't have much to share. You know me: everything is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows all the time. This post is functioning as a proof of life for all of you back home.
I can say that July last year was the roughest month of my service, yet nothing particularly distressing happened (seriously, read this: Here I Yam: July 2025. It's a momentary lapse into histrionic personality disorder). Whatever happened a year ago, this July is going swimmingly. The end is in sight. Eight more months until I kiss American soil.
So what have I been up to? First, some updates from around the village. I went rice planting with some neighbor families and was once again humbled by the double time at which the women work. All I could do was plant at the perimeter of the field and get out of their way when they inevitably caught up to me. I didn't even need to play up the lazy American trope; I fully was the lazy American. Anytime I'm in the field, I like to be irritating and tell everyone that machines do this work in the U.S., something to add to their gilded fantasies of the West.
I've always had a bad back (maybe due to my orientation in the womb), and after breaking it last year by bending at the waist to plant, I decided on a different approach this year: the squat. It was a very curious feeling having just my butt and ankles submerged in the paddy water. The women were horrified. I don't know if they thought I was polluting the water or that the water was dangerous for me, but they implored me to stand up and change my clothes. I stuck with my method because I'm pigheaded.
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| Rice paddies |
On the project side of things, my host family and I planted 30kg of ginger and turmeric using my spacing and orientation suggestions (listen, folks, I'm not reinventing the wheel here). I'll keep you updated, as the night after we planted brought apocalyptic rain, followed by a month and a half of drought. It was so dry, in fact, that the village
pandit was called in to sacrifice a goat to the rain god Indra. There was a tense week between the sacrifice and the first of the big rains, but it's been hot and wet ever since.
What else? Well, my host family has desecrated an old copy of a Peace Corps/Nepal Annual Report by using its pages as placemats and to line the kitchen cabinets and shelves. Of course, the pages are wider than the shelves and hang down, so that every time I eat, I'm surrounded by the smiling faces of Peace Corps colleagues and supervisors, past and present. It's got to be a form of psychological torture, and my host family is unaware of the suffering they're inflicting. (I'm playing this whole situation for a joke! I have this new insecurity that people will take what I'm saying at face value. Which is difficult, because it's in direct opposition to an old insecurity of mine: people see me as a clown and never take me seriously. So reader, I assure you, I have never said anything sincerely in my life. Except when I have.)
Lastly, in village news, I'm the patron saint of dogs and children, and a new personal project is earning the puppies' trust. I'm working on this special little one right now. I have no idea who she belongs to, but she's cute and has a great personality and we are becoming fast friends.
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| Sleepy |
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| Big stretch |
The last notable event of recent months was a trip to Pokhara to celebrate the Fourth of July with my fellow volunteers. I've written before about Pokhara, the two-faced Sin City and Shangri-La of Nepal, so refer to my earlier posts if you want my impressions of the place.
It was, of course, great to reunite with the old gang and meet many of the new volunteers from the cohort below me (they arrived in January 2026, one year after I did). But if you know me, you know I'm quick to scurry off and do things on my own. This time, that meant going on a human safari, wait I mean tour of the Tibetan refugee settlements in the area.
I'll keep the background brief: there are currently 12 Tibetan settlements in Nepal, 4 in Pokhara, 4 in the Kathmandu Valley, and 4 scattered across the mountain districts. Tibetan refugees first arrived in Nepal in great number after the Tibetan Uprising and subsequent exile of the Dalai Lama in 1959. The Nepali government granted land to the refugees, and today, with central planning overseen by the Central Tibetan Administration, each settlement has a Tibetan school, a Tibetan medical facility, and a monastery/temple. Most first- and second-generation refugees made a living by selling handicrafts, but later generations are subject to the same trends and pressures as other Nepali youth, with many going abroad for education and work.
This tour took me to two refugee settlements in Pokhara, where we walked around, ate tsampa and momo with local families, and visited the monasteries and clinics. I'm very interested in Buddhist chanting, but unfortunately, the day I went, they had the junior monk division, aged 4-17, on it. Not quite the deep, resonant, haunting chants I was looking for, but still worthwhile.
I also visited a Tibetan doctor who, by reading my radial pulse, determined that I have a "phlegm disorder," which she identified as the root cause of my headaches, fatigue, gas and indigestion, and irregular menstruation. The treatment? Take fewer midday naps and eat more ginger and black pepper. Hey, I don't have much faith in Western doctors either, so I'm going to give her suggestions a go.
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| Beware: Peace Corps Volunteers |
No post would be complete without a remark about my return trip to site (travel provides me with most of my anecdotes). We happened upon a recent landslide, and the driver decided the ideal place to stop the van and talk to a cop was directly below where it had happened, among giant boulders and upturned earth. I felt completely safe, remembering the old adage: landslides never strike the same place twice.
And that's it. Like I said: proof of life. I'm here, enjoying my time, living quietly. Don't worry about me!
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Here I Yam! with a gal from the village.
I look 3x her size. |
