Tihar: Festival of Lights

October in Kathmandu is holiday time. Mega holiday time. Comparable to December in Canada, when Christmas bombards its way into our lives, closely followed by New Year's celebrations, leaving us wrung out and tired by January.

Dog with Tikka and garland

In Nepal, Dashain (pronounced Dassai) is the first big holiday. Lasting around 15 days, it is a time for food, family, rituals and prayer. For us as non-Hindu foreigners, it is time when everything is closed, the streets are quiet and we are bored. This year, we took advantage of the holiday and went to Thailand for a week. But that story is for another post.

A few weeks after Dashain comes Tihar, the festival of lights. It is similar to the bigger Indian holiday, Diwali. Tihar is my favourite Nepali holiday as people decorate their homes, give blessings to a mix of creatures, and mostly come out of their homes to celebrate, making it much easier to participate in as foreigners.

Our rangoli leading to our home

The first 3 days of the festival are dedicated to animals: day 1 for the crow, day 2 for the dog and day 3 for the cow. On the dog day, you can see the numerous neighbourhood and street dogs feasting well and marked with a red tikka on the forehead and a marigold garland around their necks. ! Unfortunately this year I didn't get any photos but I managed to find an appropriate one online.

Our gates decorated with marigold garlands

People decorate their homes for Tihar, putting lights (similar to christmas lights) on their homes and decorating doorways with marigold garlands and rangoli - colourful patterns made of brightly coloured powders that welcome the deities. Wanting to be part of the celebrations and make a god impression in our new neighbourhood, we also had our Didis help us decorate our home for Tihar, and got our very own rangoli, welcoming the gods into our home!

Making a rangoli in Khokana Durbar Square, a village nearby

We also made sure to visit Patan Durbar Square - the town square - in the afternoon to see the decorations and festivities. Una enjoyed the people watching!

U watching the world go by in Patan Durbar Square

Selling colourful powders for making rangoli

In the evening, children (and sometimes adults I was told but haven't experienced) visit homes and sing and dance for a little bit of money. We had two groups of neighbourhood kids come, dressed in their finery, and give us performances. The pictures don't do them justice as they sang and danced and one even gave a little introduction speech. !

Happy Tihar!

Pregnancy Party ktm style

As my belly grows larger, I am learning more about pregnancy and birth related traditions and customs in Nepal. Since the baby will be born here, and I am surrounded by Nepali ways of life, I have an opportunity to learn other ways of doing things and to try different cultural experiences. I will try to write about and share these experiences as the arise. Here's the first one.

Unlike the pre-birth "baby shower" tradition I grew up with in Canada, Nepali's don't like to give

baby gifts, particularly clothes, before the baby is born. Instead, it is a tradition in Nepal that when a woman reaches the last month of pregnancy, her family comes to her home and brings her special food and she feasts. The food often includes lots of sweets, and the special holiday "beaten rice" (which is exactly what it sounds like - a dish that I find hard, chewy, and a bit puzzling...)

Knowing that we have no family in Nepal to celebrate pregnancy with, a group of J's colleagues came to our house on Sunday and brought delectable Nepali dishes to feast on. Delicious!

Aside from the great company of the lovely ladies, who filled me in on all sorts of Nepali customs around babies & birth, there was: the rich and creamy butter paneer, mutton curry, roast chicken, chicken biryani, and a tasty masala salt salad. And for dessert was the famous khir, thick, rich, sweet yoghurt from Bhaktapur.

Now this is one tradition I could really get used to....  yum yum!

From KTM to Vanuatu in 16 days

Although it is a slight deviation from our posts about life in KTM, I recently went to Vanuatu as part of a UNICEF research study and wanted to share a few photos from the trip.  I spent two weeks travelling around Vanuatu but spent the majority of my time helping conduct a survey on early childhood care and education on the island of Maewo.  For those of you who don't know where Maewo or Vanuatu is located, here is a link to Google Maps (http://goo.gl/maps/poggK).

This particular island is quite remote (two small planes and a boat ride to reach the island) and not a tourist destination.  The local population was incredibly hospitable and welcoming.  No electricity on the island besides the occasional generator and pretty slim choices in terms of meals.  Lots of taro, fresh coconut, mangoes, and fish.  Amazingly (to me at least) the drinking water was simply rain water collected in large holding tanks.   Here are a few photos from my trip.  Hope you enjoy.

Santo Airport

Our second flight of the day.  The planes keep getting smaller and smaller...

A final early morning boat ride to Maewo.

Children playing marbles with stones.

A view of Maewo at dawn.

A typical beach on Maewo.

Remnants of a long forgotten lava flow.

A kavaa bar (men only).  These establishments can be found in every village.

A waterfall at Naone.

After a 4 hour hike to the falls, this dip in the pool was much needed.

A beach on the southern coast of Maewo.

Teej

Its Teej time here. Teej is a Nepali Hindu holiday celebrated by women over 3 days. As I was told, single women celebrate that they may find a good husband and married women celebrate the life and well-being of their spouse.

The festival combines fasting and feasting (the latter of which I partake in happily) and women wear red and dance to celebrate.

Ladies at a Teej party - Red!

On the first day of Teej, the women often gather in the evening at a matriarchs home, where they eat all their favourite foods, including Khir (Nepali rice pudding). On the second day, married women fast and often go to the temple where they dance and celebrate Shiva. As a Nepali friend told me, the married women pray to Shiva and fast for their husbands to live a long healthy life. In the evening, the women do Puja and wait for their husbands to allow them to eat, at which time the women will have water or milk.

My foray into sari-wearing

"But the men aren't invited to the parties, so how can they tell their wives?" I asked.

"Oh, Ali-Ji, nowadays they just send a text!" Said my friend. Ha.

I was fortunate to be invited to two pre-Teej parties on the same day, one for parents at the kindergarten, and the other for the teachers and staff. I went to both. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time coming up with something red, as the outfit I wore last year would no longer fit over my protruding belly. So what to do? Buy a new outfit or get one made or..... wear a sari! perfect, as a sari can be wrapped to fit any size belly.

Thank you to Roma and her daughter who sourced me out a beautiful sari borrowed from a relative. And it was no ordinary sari, but a red, luxurious, bejewelled, spectacle that was given to the borrower by her father  on her wedding day. Clearly, wearing this would be an honour.

After a hot and frustrating process that involved 2 helpers, many safety pins, and at least 45 minutes, Roma and her daughter had me adorned.

U being adored

Even U got to wear red, and was fawned over by her many admirers at the kindergarten.

The parties were lots of fun, and included singing, dancing, and of course - feasting. I relished the opportunity to socialise with many of the teachers at the Kindergarten who I see frequently but rarely outside of school. I think they were impressed with my (rather bold) move to wear a sari. As a pregnant foreigner I definitely did not blend in. !

I admit that when my friend first explained the principle of the Teej holiday to me, I was initially shocked and dismayed to hear that the festival women celebrate was not about women at all, but about the husbands who they had or hoped to have. Of course this would be my western, feminist, agnostic identity shining through...

However, in my (albeit limited) experience of Teej, in witnessing two parties, and talking with many women who celebrate the festival, it seems to me that it has become a space where women come together, in an unrestricted and free sort of way, to dance and celebrate as sisters. Really beautiful.

celebrating Teej

...and we're back

It's been awhile since the last post. An embarrassingly long while, actually. And after travelling back to Canada for an extended vacation this summer, I realised how many people were interested in reading our blog. So, I'm back online and will try to not give up after one or two more posts.

In order to cover all the ground I missed in the last 10 months, I will have to break up all our news and Kathmandu excitement into smaller, flashback type posts.

News item (and post) #1: In April, we moved out of our lovely flat and into a HOUSE. This is our house:

Ganesh shrine beside our gates

We loved the house at first sight and were swayed by the many windows, the out-of-the-way community feel, and the fact that not only was the living room a former yoga studio (complete with an Ohm symbol still on the wall), but the house gates are located right next to a Ganesh shrine.

Ganesh is the elephant-head Hindu deity who, according to wikipedia, "is widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deva of intellect and wisdom". Could we find a home with better Karma??

a glimpse of our garden

Reasons for move:

1. We wanted a garden.
2. Ironically, a house plus garden would actually be cheaper than our all-inclusive-still-kind-of-living-like-a-westerner-style flat
3. More news, our 3 in Kathmandu will soon become 4. More space is therefore needed. After all, where would the grandparents stay when they come halfway around the world to babysit??

We were so excited to move from a space that we had grown out of and began to feel more 'local' moving into a mainly Nepali area. Unfortunately, within the first week of our move, these are the things we discovered about living in a house rather than an all-inclusive-still-kind-of-living-like-a-westerner-style flat:

1. Cockroaches. Big, creepy, very un-North American cockroaches. I know, I'm a wimp. But really - they look like this:

I have now have had my toes tickled under the bedsheets at 2am by a cockroach, found one in my water glass in the morning, and boiled one in my coffee. BOILED COCKROACH COFFEE.

2. Unlike Toronto, Water doesn't just magically 'arrive' in your taps. (Clearly, one would think they know this). At our house, we have a 10,000 litre underground cistern that is supposed to be kept filled by water that comes flowing underground from the city. After moving, we learned that although we pay a monthly bill, the city water hadn't come in 4 months. So, in order to get water (not drinking water - tap water, showers, dishes, cleaning, laundry etc) we have to call a private tanker that winds its way down our tiny street then two Nepali boys drag a hose to our cistern and fill it up for about 15$. This lasts about 10 days to 2 weeks.
Wait! I'm not finished. Once there is water in the cistern, we then have to turn the pump on to pump the water to the rooftop water tank which takes about 30 minutes to fill. No water in the tank means no water in your house. And no electricity means no functioning water pump. With a load-shedding schedule that got up to 12+ hours a day without power in April means a person needs to be on the ball when it comes to water. Thank goodness we have a fantastic didi who mostly takes care of it.

Custom, locally made mango furniture in our former yoga-studio living area

3. Furniture. We moved into a house that had nothing but curtains. Western-ish style furniture to our taste doesn't come easily or cheaply and its been a slow process to furnish our house. We finally decided to enlist the local carpenter who made our table to also custom make us many pure mango wood items including an Ikea-copied kitchen island, a beautiful bookshelf and a very high, very unique, very hard bed.

and 4. The Ganesh Shrine. Not that we don't feel privileged living so close to a place of spiritual worship, but in Nepal, paying homage at a shrine tends to happen in the early morning hours. And, like almost all places of Hindu worship, our Ganesh shrine comes equipped with a bell so devout Hindus can announce their presence and invoke the deity. Our bedroom window is about 10 meters from said bell. Needless to say, we tend to rise early now....

Despite the challenges and a long settling in process, we are becoming accustomed to household life in Kathmandu and we have come to LOVE our house (bell and all), which we now call 'home'.

Oh, and it has a guest room! Visitors welcome in exchange for a few hours of babysitting...

Farmers Market Goodies

There are some comforts of the familiar life that we don't like to sacrifice, even for a life in kathmandu. Finding certain individual indulgent treats can be difficult here, and for me, those 'treats' tend to be edible. The is no Loblaws or Essence of Life in Kathmandu, no one-stop grocery shop where you can get any ethnic ingredient or health food or organic veggie. Here I have taken the habit of prowling each grocery shop looking for certain ingredients. i know i can find Kimchi at one store, beef tenderloin at another, Japanese food at yet another...
Hence, I was thrilled to discover the 1905 farmer's market held every Saturday in the city. Here is a link to a little video of the market made by a travel group. 
The market is held in picturesque restaurant grounds and the wares are sold by various local craftsmen from Nepal, Italy, France, Russia, Poland...
The goodies we found.... it was like Christmas morning and thanksgiving dinner combined....

Cheese! (goats cheese, mozzarella, brie, all fresh made)

Fresh organic produce!

Multigrain bread!

Fresh homemade Italian pasta!

for J: pain de chocolat!

and for U: fresh mango puree!

Cheese, fresh ravioli and various organic produce (including shittake mushrooms!)

my stomach is telling me that it is getting easier and easier to call kathmandu 'home'...

j inquiring about something at the market

friends!

many people have been asking about our social life here. do we have one?

I couldn't imagine being here without a baby. Having a baby has immediately propelled me into a world of playgroups, facebook groups, singing groups (for baby, not for me thank goodness), baby-safety talks and used-baby-stuff groups. Likewise, a baby can always serve as a topic of conversation or awkward-moment cover up when attempting to meet new people.

In a quick few months, little u has managed to form us quite an extensive social network and she can't even talk yet.

Having some friends over for sunday 'family' dinner

U and her good friend at the cafe.

We've made friends from all over the world: Ireland, Nepal, Australia, America, Austria, Holland, France, the UK to name a few places. Apparently there are other Canadians here but so far I've only met two. Neither of them asked if I knew so-and-so from Canada.

play group!

My only concern is our lack of Nepali friends. The expat community here is just so involved and so keen that the only Nepali people we see regularly are those that have married foreigners, those J works with, and our didi and Nepali teacher.

That's the things with the expat community. Many of them are working in development, or with embassies, or otherwise are on 2 or 3 year contracts and are used to living the transient expat life, moving from place to place. So they are really good at making friends. Forget the small-talk, the life-stories, the inside jokes from way back and idea of really understanding a good friend. All I needed to do was show an interest in making friends and 2 days later I had a whole group.

It doesn't matter if we don't know each other's last names, really.

u in heaven with a friend and toys