Faces We Remember - Nepal

We met so any great people, here is a quick list of those we loved.

Poujon, Bejonce the cat and Sanjil, Poujons best mate.

Tony and Olga moving up a slurry of buffalo dung and clay forte chimbly.

David and Beyonce

Shamsers Ama

Rajan and René

..... And Casey

Tara enjoying quiet chats with Robin and Beyonce

Lance receiving a Diwali Tika from Ama.

Tara and Darleen.

Besowas- the boy who gave me the Nali name " Sita"

Brittany and Beyonce and JZee

Tara Sanjil and Monecha

Sostica of "Soniga,Moniga,Sostica ,Lisa and little boy Sirkrisna" the lowercaste nieghbours children.

Our Precious Sorgorm.

Bimala and Sorjorn ( " Babu")

Ole and Lorna fro Den!ark that we met Trecking

 Rissa David Pascalina Julia Brittany Paulo

Pascal

Josh who played soo many card tricks with the kids when I was sick

Julia

Shamser demonstrating how to climb a tree in his best suit to fix the router

Kalpana aunti bathing Lukey

Asalina, who spent many hours hatting with Tara

Lucus, Josh and Beanbee

Ros Elenor and Alice

Mina, Momata and brother

Maria

The two Leenas. Tara spent happy  hours making Christmas decorations with the Leenas

Mathew and Martena

Adam Isobelle Sam and Cherelene we ended numbing into them in Kath!Andy again on our last night.

Sjamsers baba

York

Helen Moulder Richard pulling their funniest faces for Tara who was devastated that this was our last evening together. We had met up with them in Pokhara after our walk and the kids were stoked to meet familiar faces.

Beyonce and the mountains

Kali and Token

Bus Trips.

"You're My funny Bunny, I'm your little cupcake "
I can hear Lukey singing to himself quietly as he bashes his ball around the hotel room. The last glimmers of Bollywood music ringing around his head from our bus journey 2 days ago. The only thing that has changed on busses in Asia since I was last here 10 years ago is that flat screens have been installed in the front of some busses. The deafening screeching of Bollywood singers is now accompanied by  actors dressed in lollypop colours and actresses  wearing relatively coversome bikinis and very, very, very long hair all dry humping like exited puppies but never ever actually kissing in deference to Nepali cultural values.

All bus journeys are different.  This was out eighth and final bus trip in Nepal.  We have got the hang of the factors that we can influence. We feed the children minimally before embarking and request "plastic" ( small plastic bags supplied for you to spew into if required) as soon as we get on the bus.  Boyd climbs up on the roof and secures the bags on top. We by tickets for 3 seats, hop on the bus early and bag the seats  one behind two others then defend them determinedly as more and more folk get on the bus children are expected to sit on their parents knee.  On one particularly memorable journey we only bought 2 tickets s for a micro bus ( minivan) and ended sitting  the whole family on one and a half seats for 7 hours.

There is a phenomenon  in reptiles where they become limp and docile when pressure is applied to their eyes and in chickens if you cover their heads then they immediately fall asleep. Well it seems that the same process occurs to small children when squashed into a minivan ( the van had 20 seats and there were 35 people inside) . Aside from vomiting over everything ( we hadn't asked for "plastic")  in the first 5 minutes they both promptly fell asleep and then on awakening just stared docilely our of the widow until our arrival .

But then there are he factors that we cannot influence. If you sit on one side of the bus you get to stare glumly at the 800m drops inches from the wheels of the bus as it squeezes past a truck on the single lane track. And if you sit on the other then you can watch the near misses as the driver overtakes on blind corners.

The morning before our last trip I happened to read the headlines of the Paper ;   
"4 electrocuted in fatal bus crash with power lines. "
Boyds saftey tip as we got on the bus that morning was :
" Never  attempt to disembark from  a bus when it is in contact with high tension power lines" .

Traveling on Nepal's roads are never dull!

Further Progress on the School

Volunteers start digging the upper terrace away at the school

Site. The millet has been harvested, 

The project gets heaps of interest from the local kids and today school finished early and they joined us to help. 

Sona and her Ama

Tara admiring the site. Note the pointy rocks dug in to mark the front face of the schools and the walls. We had used bamboo but it disappeared. Possibly used as firewood or just handy play swords. 

Baba( Shamsers father) bringing up some Iron from Besishaha for his own roof, not the school.  But gives an idea of te labour involved to collect materials on site. :-)

Tummy bug and final days.

Mummy got a tummy bug and spent a day in bed in the foetal position groaning quietly. Boyd was also quietly queezy so the kids spent the best part of the day watching movies on the tablet and ......

 Reading books with lovely Roz and......

The next day it rained alllll day so we did the same again.

When Mummy finally came right we enjoyed e sunshine of the bright post rain days.

When we weren't working we wandered through the village challenging ourselves to find new paths never explored by us before.

We found some new faces in the lower part of the village were the lower caste and poorer families 

Lived.

Luke with the pot used by Bosanda on the morning to rub down her floors and walls with a clay mix to keep the clay render crack free.

New house for a family

Minas sister with attitude:-)

Luke and Babbu watch Baba and Ama plough with the ox. Baba shouting and yoddling at the ox and Babbu mimmicing Baba in falsetto from his haystack perch.

Luke with Bossanda s chicks.