Walking Around a Nepali Village

Clicking some (or all) photos will take the clicker to my Flickr page.

In the morning, in Chandanpur village of Lalitpur district, we decided to take a walk for a while. We wanted to see how people were living in their homes and what they were doing in their fields. We walked uphill for about 10 minutes and reached at a house. Inside, a lady was apparently preparing food along with her son. She turned out to be a MaSiKa (Matri Sishu Karyakarta: health worker on safe motherhood) who talked about her wrok in the village. “The Tamang women are less enthuasistic about getting expert advise and involvement during pregnancy than those of Brahnim-Chhetri caste,” she said. She is a Newar who attended highschool and is from the area of Lalitpur that is nearer to the capital city. “Initially it was so boring to come here in this type of village,” said the woman. “Now I am used to with the life here.” The woman also talked about the disease that was causing serious harm to the corn production in the village. She said many farmers in the village, including herself, have started planting cabbage instead of corn this year. [More about this has been mentioned in my Nepali article titled Motorcycle Diary that appeared in 26 July’s Koseli.]

After about half an hour of chatting with the lady and taking photos, we moved towards other houses a little further….on the other hill. As we were climbing, I felt someone was throwing stones over us. One small stone slightly touched my eyebrow of my left eye. We thought some pranks were trying to scare us away. We continued climbing and within minutes reached a house. The entrance path and a small gate were beautifully decorated. We entered. We saw two boys trying to bring down kattus fruit with the help of a sling. So those stones were going down to the path where we were walking.

A kid, trying to collect Japanese kattus, a fruit, along with his friend, looks at my camera. My sudden presence in his garden must have pushed him in an awkward situation. He was like…who the heck is this guy…Their house was beautiful. We talked with them, asked a couple of questions and tried to crack a kattus. That thorny thing is quite a something… I had never seen before.

The kid with his buffalo. The animal is insured. Don’t you believe? Look at the right ear (of the buffalo). See the photo below…for a close-up view. That little white thing is the proof that the buffalo is insured. The owner said he didn’t insure the animal but that was already insured when she bought some years ago.

Suraj Kunwar gives a try to deal with the fruit…it’s so thorny and it hurts hands. So you really have to struggle to get the sweet thing inside that thorny cover. But the fruit wasn’t ripe so the taste wasn’t that good either.

And that’s my hand, the one that is holding the fruit.

A home in Chandanpur village of Lalitpur district, outside Kathmandu valley. The irony is that the place is kind of remote even though it is in the district that is so much attached to the capital city. “Lagankhal is also in Lalitpur, this village is also in Lalitpur,” said a villager hinting at the prime location of Lagankhel.