Springtime in Pondi: A Semester in India: Goat neighbors

I’m spending the next few weeks in a small (2,000 people small) town about 3-4 hours from Pokhara, Nepal. While in the village of Pawedanda, I’m volunteering – teaching English, Grammar, and Health/Population at a middle school as well as volunteering/observing the goings on at a rural hospital about an hour’s walk (or should I say trek) from my home, where I am staying with a host family. The family is very nice, and though the mother can’t speak English, we are beginning to learn to communicate without words. There is also a daughter, Susmita (12) who speaks English and understands me most of the time, and her brother Kshitize (sa-tease) age 6, who is like a baby monkey and goes through my things looking for ‘candy’ (tic-tacs). There are several children who live nearby, and if I leave my door open, suddenly there will be three of them sitting on my bed looking at me.

The house is very basic – concrete walls, dirt floors, etc. but I have my own room which is nice. It consists of a mosquito net, a bed, and two windows that don’t have windowpanes - so spiders, cockroaches, and mice (!!!) sometimes keep me company at night. Outside of my window, three goats sleep, eat, and make goat noises (let’s be real, they fart a lot and try to eat the bars of my window). Behind them there are two water buffalo, and if you keep walking around the side of the house you’ll get to the back which features an outhouse (squatting toilet), some vegetable crops (corn, rice, cucumber, tomatoes) and a back porch, where we eat meals together of dal bhat (lentils and white rice) in the morning and evening.

Also, I’ve only taken one shower in the past week, because taking a shower is done out in the open here! People usually go bathe in the river, but I chose to shower behind some trees outside of my program coordinator’s house. Cool. So yes I have goat neighbors and I’ve stopped taking regular showers. I’m livin’ the life, let me tell ya.