First my moan so you can appreciate the lengths I go to to bring you news. Have slogged all the way up to the VSO office (15 min walk allowing for getting lost again taking the "short cut") to get a decent internet connection only to find the power is off. So much for having figured out that if it was on here between 9 & 12 yesterday it would be OK between 12 & 3 today – the 3 hour rolling timetable of load shedding obviously doesn't apply on Sunday! So I've no idea when or where I'm going to be posting this.
Right, my account of our 2 week stay in Dhapakhel with apologies if I repeat things I have already told you in the brief e-mails.
The Ghokal Khudka family and their house
The family comprised Ghokal, known as hajur baa (grandfather), hajur amaa (grandmother), both in their 60s, their son, Deepak and his wife Gomala (30s) and their daughters Dipika (15) & Dinisa (11) and son Deepesh (13).
Hajur baa was described as a farmer although I discovered he had been in the Nepali Army for 20 odd years and then security guard at a bank. He had 2 cows (I have no difficulty remembering the Nepali word – it's pronounced Guy), 3 goats plus 2 kids tethered almost immediately outside the front door. All these chomp away on grass and hay that Gomala spent most of her day in the fields cutting. As far as we could make out Deepak did electrical work in an adjoining village, although, maybe because of our presence, this did not take up many hours a day. Hajur amaa was pretty poorly with asthma and stayed on her bed close to a couple of oxygen cylinders. The children spoke good English and Deepak understood a fair amount so thankfully essential communication was not too difficult and corrections were made of our poor grammar and pronunciation when we attempted to speak Nepali.
We don't seem to have any decent pictures of the house but this will give you some idea (kid's are from neighbouring houses). Three floors with two rooms on each, we were on the first floor (our window was below the mat hanging over the wall). The infamous squat toilet (with the only tap) was outside to the left of this picture and the kitchen cum Deepak & Gamala's bedroom was top right.
Front of house 
When we first arrived there was what looked like a farm building – but was in fact the old house - next to the house (behind the girl's head). During the course of our stay this was demolished by 3 labourers who piled all the timber in front of the house and left the bricks pretty much where they fell so it became a bit of an obstacle course to get in. As we left, they were laying out the floor plan to build a new house on this site for Deepak, Gomala and the kids.
I will have to disappoint those of you (GFR!) expecting explicit tales of toilet hell, it wasn't too bad - I've seen and smelt worse at Cowes Yacht Haven on a busy Sunday morning. Maybe my South Asian genes helped me with the squatting action and, after a few worries to start with, Sheila managed, although she did regularly visit an NGO in the village on the pretext of availing (great word isn't it, a South Asian favourite) of their library but really to use their western toilet.
Daily life
Depending on how heavily you slept (i.e. I was oblivious to it), the day started about 0530 with banging, crashing, coughing and hoiking as our family and the neighbours did their ablutions etc. We got up around 0700 when it sounded like the family had finished with the toilet. As soon as they saw Sheila plod off to the loo, one or both the younger kids would come into our room with hot milk and biscuits and generally just hang around investigating the radio, alarm clock and anything else before being shooed out so we could dress. Having expected more basic facilities than we had, I had planned to stay dirty but ended up braving the cold water for a full or partial shower every day. I can't say I enjoyed it or consider it a good way of starting the day.
After washing I normally escaped the house by walking 100 metres down to the shop to buy a newspaper and then sitting outside to read it. Being more patient and sociable, Sheila would spend this time talking to the children and going through her language lessons with them. Then at 0930 daalbhaat! Although we viewed this as breakfast, for the family who had been up for hours it was more like lunch. Maybe we were being spoilt or our family eat well but our daalbhaat was more than just rice and dall, usually we would also have some vegetable curry, a sort of omelette and what was described as vegetable pickle. All very tasty and, once we'd got portion control (of rice in particular) down to our more modest levels, enjoyable. Meals were eaten from a tin tray sitting cross legged on the kitchen floor.
Gomala preparing dinner
Off to language class in one of the other houses at 1000. A chiya (tea) break at about 12 before finishing class at 3pm or so. We were left to our own devices most afternoons. We did a variety of things including going into the nearest large town of Lagankhel (which is pretty much a suburb of Kathmandu) a couple of times but always seemed to end up at the chiya pasul (Dhapakhel's answer to the Lobster Pot café) to enjoy a bottle of beer with a couple of other volunteers. Then back to the house by 7pm for some more time with the kids exploring cameras etc before dinner of, you guessed it, daalbhaat at about 8pm. Bed by 9pm.
We had a few other bits of cultural education including a day of projects at a local school but I'll save these for another day and skip to some more pictures.
Goodbye tikkas & garlands
Hajur baa feeding the goats
The ladies (+ 1 smug bloke) waving goodbye
After a slightly wobbly start, we had a fantastic week largely because of the beautiful Khudka family. Some of our colleagues were not so impressed but I'm sure will look back at the village stay with fond memories!
Just quickly before I end, I must mention our April Fool. Inspired by a story of what last year's volunteers did, we succeeded in convincing one of our colleagues (it would be unfair to name her), fresh from the village and looking forward to life back in Kathmandu, that VSO had introduced an alcohol ban due to a (true) security incident involving a slightly drunk volunteer at an armed police checkpoint. She spent most of Saturday plotting how she would secretly keep drinking before giving us some serious abuse after we told her.
On that note,
Cheers, have a good week
Roshan
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