Nepali Basketball

Thursday afternoon I was recruited to play on the Kathmandu University faculty basketball team. The term “faculty” is used pretty loosely since it includes teaching assistants with BS degrees and lecturers with MS degrees. I was the only professor on the team and therefore more than twice the age of anyone on the court. My only advantage was my height (6’4’’) and the fact that I vaguely remember playing in high school 35 years ago. The only player as tall as me was Anuroop Manandhar who, fortunately, was also on my team and is an excellent basketball player. Of my six teammates, two were excellent players, one was pretty good and the other three were, how should I say, "less experienced."

The outdoor court at the main campus in Dhulikhel has great views of an expansive, emerald green rice field to the west and the mist shrouded Himalayan foothills to the east. I stopped a minute before the game began to wonder what the odds were that I’d ever be playing basketball in this kind of setting! After helping the others shoo away some cattle and goats from the court, the game got underway.

We took a decisive 12 point lead in the first quarter. Anuroop and I were able to clog up the middle of the lane on defense so that they couldn’t get off any good shots. He and our pint-sized point guard did most of the scoring while I concentrated on rebounding, defense and handing out assists. I knew that my shooting needed practice so I only took four shots the entire game, making two of them. Our big lead continued into the fourth quarter, so in the spirit of letting everyone play we let the "second-string" members of our team play – a nearly fatal decision since they turned the ball over on nearly every possession and couldn't score any points. Within a span of five minutes the other team had pulled to within 2 points, mostly from steals and fast breaks. Anuroop signaled for me to come back in and we were able to stem the blood flow. We had been playing a zone defense, but I decided to go man-to-man on their best player who was scoring all their points. Between that and a few buckets by Anuroop, we held on for a 30-28 victory. Not having played for 8 months, my legs felt like rubber after the game, but I still had to find my way back home (20 miles away).

One of my teammates also had to go back to Kathmandu, so we walked to the bus stop at the main road. A local bus came by within a few minutes. We paid our 40 rupee fare (about 60 cents) and settled back for the 1 ½ hour ride. Unfortunately, we hit a terrible traffic jam caused by a line of trucks and buses waiting for a diesel station to open along the very narrow road. There just wasn’t enough room for them and two more lanes of traffic, so a few trucks had become wedged together and couldn’t move. Everyone got off the bus and started walking the mile to Banepa hoping to catch another bus there. By this time it was 6:30 pm and completely dark. We waited for at least 30 minutes but no bus came along. Emsar, my teammate, then commenced to flag down passing trucks and vans, hoping that we could negotiate a reasonable fee for passage to Kathmandu.

A small covered truck finally stopped at 7:30 and Emras was able to negotiate a 500 rupee fee ($7) for us and the freshman girl who had latched on to us for protection. I’m sure it would have been much less, but the driver saw my pale face and jacked up the price. In Nepal there are always two prices for everything: a Nepali price and a foreigner price. We three wedged into the front seat with the driver while three men jumped into the bed. Along the way we picked up another 4-5 people, so the driver was making a good “moonlighting” wage that night. While stopping to pick someone up, the girl next to me looked like she was going to upchuck, so I hurriedly let her out to do her business. She had to get out one more time along the way. She was either car sick or I really smelled bad.

It was kind of eerie driving at night on the dark, poorly maintained, and deeply potholed road that is the major thoroughfare between Kathmandu and Tibet. There is a significant amount of smuggling that goes on along that route. We were stopped twice at police checkpoints, but they let us through quickly – one look at me and they knew I wasn’t Tibetan. Police usually don’t give foreigners a hard time, except for the few crooked ones who try to entrap them in order to extort money. We’ve had no trouble at all, though.

Finally, we reached Kathmandu at 8:30 but the driver let us off more than 3 miles away from my apartment. Emras and the girl waited for a minibus to get home, but I knew it would take more than an hour for me to make it home that way. Instead, I took off walking through the dark streets (the power was off again). As long as you stick to the main streets and stay out of the alleys at night, we’ve found Kathmandu to be a very safe place. I eventually got home at 9:10. My average speed from the bus stop in Dhulikhel to my apartment was a turtle-like 8 mph, but well worth the hassle to get in a good game of basketball.

We all have to make sacrifices -- or do we?

There was a little excitement here over the past few days. The new government came out with its new budget last Friday and decided to omit funds in support of the numerous Hindu religious festivals. Since communists are typically not a religious lot, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that a Maoist-led government would do this. They’re trying to find money to improve transportation and hydroelectric production – two of the biggest issues in Nepal’s development – so something had to give.

Well, it went over like a lead balloon, especially since the announcement came during the Indrajatra festival and just before Dashain – two of the biggest Hindu festivals of the year. In the past the government has given nearly $700,000 per year for festivals, with $166,000 of that used for purchasing animals for sacrificing at temples. Indrajatra and Dashain are big animal sacrificing holidays, with water buffalo sacrificed at the end of Indrajatra and lots of goats, chickens and ducks sacrificed during Dasain.

Last Saturday, on the last night of Indrajatra, there was a riot at Durbar Square where the chariot carrying the Kumari (Living Goddess) was to be pulled by young men one last time. Angered by the government’s new policy, the crowd took it out on the police and five people were injured.

The next day, a “bandh” (strike) was called in protest. I was waiting at my bus stop at 7:50am when someone got the news on their cell phone that our bus to Kathmandu University wasn’t coming because the main road was blocked by demonstrators. So, I walked back home and went with Bonnie to the American Club at Phora Durbar, had a cup of coffee and swam in the pool for an hour while she had a Pilates lesson. On the way back home we passed a group of protestors who were enforcing the bandh by making shop owners close down. Many of them opened back up again after the protestors left.

Many people we’ve talked to, especially the younger ones, aren’t really tied to the animal sacrificing and wouldn’t mind if it disappeared completely. But they all thought that the government’s timing of the announcement was pretty bad. The Prime Minister is out of the country on a trip to India and the U.S., so maybe he wanted to deflect some of the criticism away from himself and had the announcement made in his absence.

I’m looking forward to seeing President Bush receive Prime Minister Prachanda, who I think is still on the U.S. terrorist list since he headed up the Maoist insurgency for 10 years. A terrorist in the White House!! Run away!!

Assorted Bits and Pieces

Last week the other Fulbright professor and I decided to split the expenses of a driver and car. We figure we’ll spend at least $250 each per month, but it will give us a lot more flexibility in our transportation – and it has to be more comfortable than the Kathmandu University commuter bus.

Our driver, Sachin, is an extremely pleasant young man in his late twenties with perfect English. The first place we asked him to drive us was the Godavari Botanical Gardens south of Kathmandu. There were few flowers blooming this time of year, but it was cool, shaded and a very nice respite from the noise and heat of the city. After walking around for a few hours, a group of six Nepali girls (not too much older than twenty) came running up to Bonnie all excited. It was obvious that they had never met a Western woman before, especially a blonde. They wanted their photos taken with her and gave her some of their bracelets. As small as Bonnie is, they were all a head shorter than her and all their bracelets were too small to get over Bonnie’s hand. But one girl managed to force one on even though she took some skin with it. After five minutes of giggling and screaming, they hugged and kissed Bonnie and then pranced away. While watching all of this from the sidelines, little did I know at the time that a leech had fallen into my boot and was making a meal of my foot. Bonnie has all the fun and I get to be dinner.

Earlier this week we decided to have Sachin drop me off at Kathmandu University in Dhulikhel and then drive Bonnie back to Bhaktapur which is between Kathmandu and Dhulikhel. She wanted to see Bhaktapur’s version of Darbur Square (there are three Darbur Squares in the Kathmandu Valley). She convinced Sachin to walk around with her and get “Nepali” prices for her on things like camera batteries. She took some nice photos, especially one of Sachin posing with a cobra sculpture. Then after lunch Sachin drove Bonnie back to join me at campus. We had been invited by the biotechnology students to attend the opening night of their weeklong film festival, so we thought we’d grab a hotel somewhere in Dhulikhel after the movie.

After the film, the students told us that they’d walk us to the hotel since they were having a party near there anyway. I told them to wait for me at the main gate since I had to grab my bags from my office. Unfortunately, when I got there the entire building had been locked up. I found a custodian to let me in while Bonnie went to tell the students I’d been delayed. I thought the guy knew that I’d be right out, but he misunderstood and locked me inside in the building! So there I was yelling through a wrought iron gate trying to get someone to help me. I finally called Bonnie on my cell phone and she brought half a dozen students with her. They eventually found another custodian with a key but not before getting a good laugh at my expense and insisting on photographs before letting me out. They say the photos will be displayed prominently in their upcoming student magazine. Great.

On the way off campus, we passed a professor I’m working with who insisted on calling the K.U. International House in Dhulikhel to make reservations for us since the university would pick up the tab. It was over an hour’s walk to Dhulikhel with a few delays caused by some students wanting to change clothes before going to the party and some others forcing me to eat hot noodle soup since I was just catching a cold. They took us to the International House and checked us in before taking us to their party headquarters – a big, dingy conference room in a two-bit hotel just down the road from our place.

All together there were us and about 20 guys, all third year students and all in the recombinant DNA class that I’ve been helping to teach. There are 11 third year female students, but it would not have been appropriate for them to attend the party with the boys. So Bonnie was the lone female. We started out by having a little beer or whiskey and then a plate full of food. My cold was progressing fast and all I wanted to do was lay down, but the boys were ready to party. Someone cranked up the music and all twenty guys broke out in frenzied dancing. They dragged me into the middle of their circle and

made me dance with them. A little later they

asked Bonnie and me to dance together, and one

of the more daring ones asked Bonnie to dance with him.

We stayed there for about an hour and a half then politely excused ourselves. A few of the boys escorted us back to our room. I had one of the most uncomfortable night’s sleep I can remember. I was feverish, hot and cold, and overstuffed. The room was too hot and in the morning there was no hot water for a shower. Bonnie let me sleep until 9 am and then we decided to split. The caretaker tried to charge us 800 rupees ($12) for the room, but with the help of his English-speaking son we convinced him that we were official KU guests. Actually, only KU guests are allowed there, so I think he was just trying to make a little extra money on the side.

We walked back to campus and waited until noon when I was supposed to meet with a few students to get a research project going. I was feeling pretty miserable, but they had been looking forward to isolating potato DNA all week so I couldn’t let them down. My colleague and their advisor, Dhurva Gauchan, arrived with a bag full of small potatoes from a local farmer and we got down to business. Bonnie and I spent the next three hours in the lab supervising the students, Arjan and Dipali, as they went through the procedure. Once we get some good DNA, then we’ll start doing some DNA fingerprinting to see if we can tell the difference between the various potato varieties in the area.

At 3:30 we left the lab to reserve our seats on the K.U. “G” bus that would take us back to Kathmandu. There are three drivers that I’ve had on this bus. One is a very patient driver, one is generally patient, and the guy who drove that day has no patience at all. He was weaving and swearing and flipping off everyone the whole way back to town. He’d alternately slam on the brakes and then speed up, obviously trying to make me puke. He came dangerously close on a few occasions. I was so happy when we got back home. I didn’t even care that the power was out (again).

The Teej Festival: Red Saris and Well-fed Husbands

This is the last festival I’ll write about for awhile. There are so many festivals here in Nepal, I can’t keep track of them all! Last Saturday we went to the Father’s Day festival at the Gokarna temple where there were thousands of people praying and giving offerings (puja) to the Hindu god Shiva for the souls of deceased fathers.

This week is the festival called Teej where women dress in red and are especially good to their husbands, and, if unmarried, pray for a good future husband. The Sunday before Teej (which fell on a Tuesday this year) was a big shopping day, because on Monday the women cooked tremendous quantities of food, the purpose being to make their husbands happy and to fatten themselves up a bit for their day-long fast on Tuesday. Only the women fast, and that includes not drinking any liquids.

If they just stayed home to fast it might not be that difficult, but many get up in the wee hours of the morning to go to the Pashupati temple to give an offering and pray for the long life of their current or future husbands. The only problem is that about 100,000 other women have the same idea and the lines to the temple can be well over a mile long. It may take 5 or 6 hours of standing in line, sometimes in the hot sun, to reach the temple. And when there is no food or water intake that day, it’s not unusual for some women to faint, so there are always medical personnel on hand to help out. But, on the fun side, after the puja at the temple the women sing and dance down by the river in a demonstration of sisterhood. Some of the old-school women will bathe their husband’s feet that day and then drink the water as a sign of submission and respect. According to a Nepali friend, that ritual is falling out of favor in the cities and among the younger generation.

Bonnie was invited to observe the Monday food preparation at the home of our Nepali guide and historian, Kabindra. Bonnie took some sweets (cookies and chocolate) and a drawing/painting set for his 5-year-old daughter. While Kabindra and his wife cooked, Bonnie played with the little girl, Sajanathala, who drew a picture and then labeled it “jorila.” It took awhile for everyone to realize that she had drawn a picture of a “gorilla.” Her English is still a lot better than my Nepali.

Our maid Sita, the short one in the photo, invited Bonnie to accompany her to Pashupati on Tuesday morning. Since it was a “girl thing” I was not invited. That’s good, because if there’s anything I’ve learned in my life it is not to be in a crowd of thousands of hungry, thirsty and tired women! They left before sunrise at 4:30 am and when Bonnie came home three and a half hours later, Sita was still in line with quite a distance to go.

Bonnie took some photos of the throngs of lined up women decked out in their red saris. She said that for relatively small women they’re pretty good at shoving and throwing elbows in line. Bonnie said it’s very similar to what happens when Macy’s throws open its doors for the day-after-Thanksgiving sale.

Before I left for work, Bonnie wished me a long life and then went off to the Fulbright office to see if they could help get our internet service working again. It’s true all over the world: a woman’s work is never done.