Fruit Trees on a Monsoon Afternoon

ouch!!

i just cut my thumb wickedly out in the garden, where i've been working for hours. pulled some grass to clear the area around a purplish, mountainous borinda bamboo that a friend of nick dawson's brought us from taplejung district and some sliver of it went through my thumb & out again. ow! it was bleeding a lot before, but it's ok now. hurts, though...

it's about 6:30 pm on a saturday. my first day staying home in our compound in budhanilkantha all day since we came back to kathmandu ten days ago from the states. it's been a lovely day, fresh this morning, then drizzling & rainy all afternoon. quite overcast actually, with billowly clouds on the horizon against the southern hills behind koppan monastery. now that i'm inside, i can watch the clouds ('both sides now') while typing upstairs in out computer/tv room (for those of you who've been here...). as you can imagine, it's very, very lush during july in the himalaya. the monsoon.

there's also a peaceful view north of the forested, 7,000' ridge on shivapuri from where i'm sitting. a cluster of houses a thousand feet above us. my clothes are still damp and the temperature is dropping. yet, listen: the birds are giving their final chirps of the day -- goodbye day -- before darkness settles in...

just an hour ago, our little rivulet had a foot or more of water pouring down with the gutteral, gurgling sound of a mountain creek overflowing. i'm surprised the fish in the ponds are smart enough not to be washed away. while the duck floats contentedly paddling against the current...

like f. scott fitzgerald's famous image of our restless american souls at the end of 'gatsby'.. trying to capture the past that eludes us, always...

well, it's summer and south asian wet is always impressive, so there's tons of stuff growing, multiplying & creeping everywhere... leah doesn't even want to go in the garden because she knows that there are leeches back there. i usually end up sufering one bite a visit, no matter how many hours i'm out & about -- although sometimes i'm lucky & see the little black creature before it enjoys a liquid meal at my expense.

this afternoon i saw a globular hornet's nest hidden on the fence in the climbing roses along the road in the back. unexpected & strange, no doubt, but actually, quite lovely decorated with whirling brown, white and tan colors like europa or io or one of the oddly resplendent distant moons of jupiter. anita says when it gets much larger, the nest will have honey & we can smoke out the hornets. well, they can... i think i'll run for cover (with ms. leah) if someone wants to challenge a wasp's nest, even for homemade honey. no winnie-the-pooh me!

still, there's nothing like nature to keep the mind occupied, rested & observant. the colors and patterns. colors & patterns. no wonder hours slip away when i'm out back meandering, trimming, cleaning, cutting, carrying, standing or just staring.

as dame rebecca west said about the balkans before the second world war, wherever you found water moving, you'd find an old turkish man standing. i think i'm slowly becoming that old turkish man in the mountainous exurbs of kathmandu...

as the wise old penguins in the cartoon 'madagascar' say, 'just smile and wave; smile and wave'...

actually, since coming back, the garden's offered a few treats as we've had the pleasure of eating home grown corn on the cob, iceberg lettuce and sweet & sour licchis. the corn & lettuce, of couse, is seasonal, while most of our fruit trees were planted when we made the back gardens over the past 2-3 years; but everything comes up quickly here. although, coming to think of it, the fruiting licchi tree must be 5 years or so, since it's much bigger than the other licchi trees & it's the only feeding us now.

early the other morning when i was strolling out back before work, i counted about 20 orange, lemon & grapefruit trees . it'll be a literal orchard in a few years, if they stay healthy. there's one absolutely adorable young grafted orange sapling (only three feet high!) ladden with about 70 green fist-size oranges and another with nine fruits that look more like dark green xmas ornaments hanging above our pond.

then, there's leah's favorite: two cute reddish mangos on a three foot grafted sapling from siraha district down in the terai (near the indian border). the save staff brought it up to me a few years ago with the licchi saplings.

plus, there are scores of purplish guavas starting to grow from flowers, they're small, marble-size, but in a month or two will get as big as peaches. oh, yes, we've got some peach trees, too, but these are small nepali ones -- not the lush greek ones of our dreams. then, the little 'muntalas' are starting to pop up all over our one kumqat tree. there must be hundreds; but we'll have to wait a few months to enjoy them.

but the biggest surprise on coming back after five weeks away, however, are two chinese thorn bamboo shoots that must have pushed out of mother earth right before we returned. these 'babies' pushed out of the ground measuring 10" in circumference. wow! i'm not sure how tall they'll get, but i surely wasn't expecting such massive 'tusa' (as the nepalis say) from this bamboo. shakun found it, i believe, in a nursery when we were in phuket some four or five years ago. in the early years, you can tell the bamboo's age b/c each year the shoots get a bit larger. this chinese thorn bamboo (there are sharp thorns on the branches) has about four generations of shoots from the 2" circumference to the 3" circumference to the 5" circumference, then this 'mother of all circumferences.

of course, since it's monsoon, there's alot of new priapic bamboo shoots stretching skyward. the early varieties did their shooting in april/may, befoe we left, with the early rains -- but the later bamboo are starting their push about now.

we've a beautiful dendracalamus minor that i brought from a nursery near mom&dad's home in florida a few years ago that has seven exquisite shoots on the other side of the tea house pond. the new shoots have a dreamy, gray-green hue with faint yellow stripes on the stalks. the crown, when coming up out of the soil, has feathery, dark four inch leaves above the culm with short black hairs. they're quite serene & beautiful, as you can imagine.

like so much of life when young, tender, fresh & innocent...

worth standing and watching, too, just like the world-weary, turbaned turkish men many decades ago in the distant mountains of the balkans...

or berkshires or sierras or adirondacks or pyreenes or pocanos or olympias or rockies or jura or just in our own backyards...

good-bye, day!

Human Rights Acropobia While Throwing Pebbles in a Backyard Stream

like many of us, i suppose, i prefer saturdays spent in our garden, lingering, watering the trees, finding pebbles for the stream bed or taking a walk up the hill behind our home. it constantly amazes me how 8 or 9 am can so easily b/c 2 pm in such languid times. i'm not sure that i can yet slide into such quiet regularly, but it feels good on the w/end when i don't even have go into an increasingly busy & crowded town from friday night to monday morning...

although last saturday, it was good to cross town to help the national human rights commission (nhrc) with the planned press conference on impunity issues. i'd been encouraging them to bring actual victims of such human rights abuses, be it abduction by the maoists or disappearances by the government or killings, torture or the sad litany of human casualities from the past ten years of conflict. we were fortunate to receive frontpage news the next day w/ headlines on impunity and the government's lack of seriousness to respond to past nhrc recommendations on these cases -- esp. w/ louise arbour, the un high commissioner for human rights here in nepal for a week.

still, you would be shocked to hear all of the subtle and not so subtle politics that goes on iin this human rights' world. sometimes i think it's b/c we aim toward the highest levels of human aspiration, the top of maslow's pyramid of human values, whereas we're still dealing w/ the nature of the human ego with all of its passions, jealousies and self-centeredness. one can get moral acrophobia (fear of human heights...) in this type of lofty, at times rhetorical human rights environment. then, of course, we're dealign w/ some of the lowest forms of human distemper, as well, when our beastly nature overwhelms our self-control and we are able to murder another soul in a fit of anger, revenge or mere ruthlessness. some days, when you see the faces of those who have suffered, and the accusations made, i think i've stepped into the nyc prosecutor's world of crimes and investigations -- leaving my past development world of literacy, public health and micro-loans far behind...

then there are the institutional politics between international and national bodies, not to mention, not far in the background, the influence of the political parties on the main actors in the human rights field in nepal. add the donors with their own agendas and, at times, arrogance, with the wealth that is lavished on western organizations while nepalis who work in places like the nhrc must make do with salaries of $150/month and offces that are barely equipped with heaters or computers or vehicles. sometimes i feel like, even in the human rights field, its the equivalent of working in an inner city school with the handsome, well-endowed prep school in over across town up on the ivy-coated hill. after so many years in save the children, which is part of the well-endowed world, maybe it's a good opportunity to be reminded of the realities of the barriers that we try to avoid seeing in our daily lives.

whoosh! as someone said to me when i started this work last september, 'human rights makes child rights look like kid's play...' ;-)

as many of you know, dear nepal, within this unsteady peace process, remains on the knife's edge. political change continues at a dizzing pace w/o actually creating a sense of greater security or stability. we've been rocked by riots in lahan, siraha, of all places, down in the terai (near the indian border) the past few days w/ young students killed and the madeshi (terai people) liberation groups leading the charge. then a few days ago we had a national transport strike for two days, too, protesting their busses being burnt in siraha & elsewhere due to these demonstrations. more, whoosh!

although the strike is over, so no more long 25 km bike rides from home across the valley to pulchowk and back... the political instability promises to continue. the govt is intent on elections to a constituent assembly in june to write a new constitution (over two years), but one wonders if this is an exercise in collective day-dreaming. the signs are not exactly promising, even as everyone keeps promising that the election will go ahead as stated. with all of the political maneuvering going on in the background, proverbial trenches and media airwaves, it sounds, to say the least, and based on recent nepal experience, mildly optimistic.

to be honest, it's also a bit tedious as this story never seems to find its balance. after a week in cambodia over new years seeing the economic growth & potential there, it's disheartening to see how beloved nepal stays stuck in the present continuous tense, or even rewind, w/o finding a way to fulfill the country's wondrous potential. even eternally optimistic shakun is getting a bit fed-up w/ the situation, as she also gets more invovled in the drama of janjati/ethnic politics, proportional representation and constitutional change.

in that sense, i can appreciate joshua deciding a week ago to apply for the world college program. he is eager for something new for his young life, even it means doing his 11th grade over again in a different, challenging environment. the world college program is based on an IB curriculum which emphasizes community service, created by the founder of the outward bound program, there are some dozen campuses around the world, including italia, wales, singapore and british columbia, which is josh's order of preference. however, admission is exceptionally competitive given the limited places for americans which he understands. still, it'd be absolutely wonderful for him, even as we'd miss him terribly at home if he was accepted.

lastly, there is still english premier league football. the boys command the tv on the w/end nights when their principles play. last w/end it was the league leading manchester united vs a resurgent arsenal. alas, ez was emotionally crushed when thierry henry scored w/ seconds to go against man utd. ezra, literally, sat still for ten minutes, staring away from the tv, then rolled over and slept on the floor of the room. i felt so bad for him, but he wasn't to be comforted, alas. whereas josh seems to have made some emotional separation from liverpool (a girlfriend, methinks, helps...), but ez is in blind young teenage love w/ his redmen from the north country...

xoxox from afar...