So a brief introduction about Sarlahi: it is one of the Terai (low lands) districts in Nepal, Southeast of Kathmandu, very close to the Indian border. In fact, there is so much intermarriage between Nepali and Indians. A lot of the population look Indian and in fact speak Mithali, an East Indian language, as their first language. Many Indians want to gain Nepali citizenship as that means more available land for agriculture (the Terai is one of the richest regions in Nepal). However there seems to be resistance from Nepalis about that: some Nepalis I've talked with openly expressed that Indians are very different from Nepalis and should not be classified together...
I have to say that the food here is so excellent and cheap. Yes, sure, we have dal-bhaat almost every day, but it's tasty dal-bhaat. Plus the advantage in Terai is that we get different kinds of vegetables every meal (for the most part)... Sure, it can get really hot here, and the sugar mill smells really bad.. But I like Sarlahi actually. It's laid back, people are so modest, and it's just a so different environment that I've ever lived in.
Yea, I'm a city girl. Confessions ;)
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I talk a lot to Saakya, the field manager here. Saakya has been with NNIPS (Nepal Nutrition Intervention Project Sarlahi) since its inauguration in 1989, and has slowly moved up the ranks to one of the most prestigious positions within the organizations. He's funny, sharp, observant and caring... AND he tells many jokes and stories.
One day after dinner, we passed by a man whose son is currently in the US, and asked if he could borrow the internet from our dera (apartment) to communicate with his son.
"His son is in the US...? Working or studying?" I asked, surprised. I didn't know education as so widespread in Sarlahi, a rural area.
"Studying," Saakya said. "The son of one of our staff is also studying in the US... Actually many people here have students studying either in Kathmandu or abroad."
Wow.
"In the very beginning, when NNIPS started, we had a hard time recruiting interviewers. Most people could not read - English or Nepali - and almost none spoke English. We gave people three weeks to learn how to write the numbers in both English and Nepali... and they did. Because they learned how to write, their children also learned how to write... That's why many of them are studying abroad now."
He likes to think that NNIPS gave the people in Sarlahi an opportunity for education... and I think he's probably right.
"When we started, almost everywhere was a forest. Malaria had just been eradicated from the area about a decade or two ago. There was no electricity. No internet. No mobile phones. The closest landline phone was about 20 minutes drive away... and it costed us 18 rupees per minute to call Kathmandu."
18 rupees a minute. At that time, a meal of dal-bhaat was less than 10 rupees, probably closer to 5 (right now it's about 50 rupees, which is like.. 60 US cents?). Imagine spending three times as much as you would pay for a meal to make a call for a minute. That's just... ridiculous. And now, almost many households in Sarlahi have mobile phones. All the staff in NNIPS have mobile phones, and some of them are getting tablets for work soon.
We now have a brick dera with almost 24 hours electricity, wifi internet (well it breaks down sometime but we do), modern toilets and running tap water (from well). Yes, we don't have A/Cs, but we have large ceiling fans that cool down the area a little bit. Living conditions are nowhere near say, my apartment in Baltimore, but it's something. It's a huge leap from 23 years ago.
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I've met many of the staff here. Every time we introduce ourselves, I would get a long name which I can hardly pronounce. Then I'll say my name is "Kat". "Kat?" the other person would be very confused. Soon I realize people say their full names when they introduce themselves, even though nobody really calls each other by their full names. In fact, people don't often call each other by names! If a girl is older than you, you call her "older sister"; similarly, "older brother" for boys. It's common to refer people as their last names, especially among the senior staff.
After a while, I wonder if it's even worth it for me to try to remember the names. I will probably mess up the syllables of the names, and most of the people I meet in the field... I don't even know if I'll ever meet them again :( But I introduce myself anyway, and try to pronounce people's full name correctly at least once.
And then I don't remember the names ever again.
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| L: Pregnant mom (17 years old); R: Team Leader Interviewer |
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| Some special fruit here.. name TBA |
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