My poor old Cafetiere – shattered unsuspectingly and ultimately into 1000 pieces on the journey back to Kathamandu. No more fresh pressed coffee for me.
Leaving Speeches
Suzanne and I both recieved wonderful gifts from the MIRA Dhanusha team
Kardak – training session on Ramanand Chowk
Emaciated Cattle – snapped from the back of the bike
Cow’s are everywhere in Janakpur – this one parked itself in the middle of the main highway and gave itself a bit of a wash
…to get to the other side?
Many of the places I filmed in were jaw droppingly beautiful – I broke out the 7d 60fps 720p to caputure beautiful wild flowers blowing in the wind at sunset. Absolutely stunning.
A crowd of villagers watching me work
Not understanding the timer function
Not understanding the timer function – got it on the third attempt – note I am holding a baby goat which someone gave me.
This beautiful sunset shows brilliant JPEG compression artefacts – hopefully it still gives you a sense of how gorgeous the place is!
The boy on the right was very keen on taking photos and whilst I was fiddling with the 7d slow motion took pictures of his friends with my 5d whilst my back was turned. I caught him and corrected his technique.
With 12 days continuous shooting behind me I’m trying to put the pieces back together now that I’m in Kathmandu. Tomorrow I start back again on my clinical placements – the second part of my elective in fact (I’ve inverted my SSC and elective placements for any medics who might be prepared to take arms against me on this point). Today on my first day off in ages besides sharing a lovely dinner with Delan and his Parents, I’ve had a small chance to get to grips with, to try and stay on top of, the photos from Janakpur. Here is the first of two posts from Week 5 – being out with the camera throughout the day meant that I had so many opportunities to capture the various facets of the incredibly photogenic Janakpur.
Please enjoy – and as always if you’re interested in anything here comment or send me a message and I will be sure to reply….
Terrible photo of me meeting Christie, Ed, Bernie, Penny and Barrat (Sherpa and guide) in Or2K. Glad we managed to meet albeit briefly.
And to my many medical friends who are now finishing their electives (including Bernie, Christie and Penny who I met just Friday gone) I wish you safe travels back to Terra Firma and strength of mind against the looming threat of exams.
Today I leave. Listening to Mitchell’s Blue to celebrate the passing as I pack up my bags. I’m going to miss so much of Janakpur, The Rama where I’ve lived, MIRA where i’ve worked, the city in which we’ve all endured – and most importantly – some of the most generous people you’ll meet on this earth – right here in the Terrai.
More on this when i’ve got time to mull it all over in Kathmandu (in between frantically writing a presentation that i’m giving tomorrow lunch time!)
Thanks to you all for reading of my experiences here in this small corner of the world. I will be writing several more articles when I’ve got some thinking space back in the big smoke. I’ll be back at the end of March from Nepal proper – so until then . Lots of interesting adventures still to be had (not to mention oodles of work as well).
Pictures can only describe one aspect of the atmosphere of a place. The festival on Barhabigha really reflects something of the inner nature of life here in Janakpur – how everything revolves around the cultural cycle – much more than it does or even potentially ever did in the west. The next festival is always around the bend and religiosity or at least spirituality and mysticism is a fundamental part of existence for most people here. The chanting on Barhabigha was continuous, day and night with the constant refrain of Sita Ram in its plethora of intonations. With the office so directly opposed near the site I must admit that the constant intrusion was more than a little vexing at times. Some of the musical interpretations were to my ears rather abhorrent and the distraction whilst trying to work was at times unbearable. There we many times however that I was struck by the deep beauty of the incantations and on this occasion, cycling past I was caught by a primal tingle in my spine – the kind that purest forms of music seems to strike in me – certain lilts in pieces that seem to cause almost a welt on the consciousness – disarming and profound at the same time. This was one of those moments and – after I had collected myself I took my camera and captured some rather shakey footage of the mist ridden scene that morning. Now the festival is over and the hiatus of music is held until tomorrow when the next celebration begins….
Turn the volume up and try to imagine being here with this noise permeating across the entire city – hopefully it will give some paltry rendition of what it has been like to live here these past days.
A selection of Photos from my 4th Week in Janakpur. This week mainly involved chasing around schools and nearby “tole” (Villages) in search of children and thus a great deal of time spent on the back of Motorbikes. Also passed a really lovely evening with Chaube – eating at hotel local to his home. Afterwards we enjoyed some Paan together. A memorable night certianly – some of the photos are therefore credited to him (I especially love the one of me and the owner in the restaurant). Great to have some photos of me for a change!
PS – if you feel like commenting, please do! I really enjoy hearing feedback. Thanks to all those of you who have sent messages – Really encourages me to post more… Also – do people prefer the “gallery style” as in Week 3 photos, or this “slideshow” style? What is easier to view them all on?
Well here I am enjoying my second cup of coffee this morning. Last night I changed my order from 730am to 830am, deigning to take something of a lie in this morning. The first cup arrived at 8:26 and the second cup at 8:47! Slumbering after the first arrival I have enjoyed two lukewarm sweet cups this morning, drinking both after a 30 min cooling stage. Now feeling no different than I did before (this coffee is palatable but has no effect on my physiology) I have decided to write something about this rather hectic week.
Delan’s left us for a better place: Kathmandu.
The biggest news of course is that the big boss has gone home. Delan left on Thursday to Kathmandu to renew his visa and to give himself enough space and time to write this important Ph.D. upgrade. Here in Janakpur sure that the constant struggles with the study would have precluded him from actually finishing this in time – and having worked so hard I think it would be atrocious if we were not able to jump through this “hoop”. Suzanne, having done a Ph.D. already, was instructing us as to the various subtleties of this procedure – apparently people rarely fail and the minimum requirements are relatively light (a few thousand words and a brief presentation) – but having said that there is a degree of internal competition amongst the Ph.D. students, rifling to produce something magnificent. I suppose when one is presenting in front of an audience it would disturb the psyche if the presentation you deliver is paltry in comparison to all the others. I feel that as Delan is spending such a great deal of time abroad actually collecting primary data – one might argue that his time has been more directly spent in his work. I don’t have any real worries for him therefore. For my part – If I do eventually get round to doing a Ph.D. I would like to do my own primary data collection. Again not something that I was really that aware of before, apparently a large number of Ph.D.’s are written on pre-existing data… This makes sense of course – there are literal treasure troves of data out there in almost every imaginable field – however for my own sense of self I should like to think that if it came to it I would have a specific question which I would like to potentially address with my own original data. Who knows what time will offer?
Things feel different without his buffering presence here. But there’s no time to mourn his loss as both Suzanne and I are frenetically running around trying to finish our respective projects, mine the filming and has a clinical placement and her fieldwork. Currently we are pitching to return to Kathmandu on Tuesday. It has been a great pleasure working with a man for these last five weeks – in some ways we are quite akin – both really very much interested in the practical application of work that is done here but in others quite different. I have enjoyed immensely this company, his sense of humour and I hope he goes on to do great things following his Ph.D. One thing is for certain that his ability to stay calm and collected when things are fraying to pieces is remarkable. An interesting study would be to monitor the blood pressure of Suzanne, me and Delan in a given challenging situation here. I am relatively certain that his would stay the lowest.
To celebrate his departure we held two leaving parties. The first was a more relaxed social gathering at Rooftop restaurant (” the only place for smart people”). It was incredibly enjoyable to see staff after hours. I was pitched with Suzanne, Bishnu and Gagan at one end of the table whilst Delan enjoyed the company of Chaube and the rest of the gang at the other. It wasn’t a long evening, perhaps sensibly Bishnu called time early on, but the merriment was good enough to be remembered long hence. Rupesh my buddy from the trips to the villages and I sat next to each other and bantered away. Proudly, they bestowed upon me the nickname of Hashmuk (Pronounced “hashmook”) which means “smiling face” (because I am always grinning, they said). I think, to have a nickname implies having made a certain impression and I’m glad that this mine! Not that I should wish to disclose it here but there was much hilarity over the eventual naming of Delan (certainly amongst the staff) in the days that followed. Overall I think this reflects a real sense of camaraderie which we have developed with the team. After the meal the bikes drove 10m across the road to the nearest Paan shop, where Suzanne tried here first and last Paan. Deeply happy and a little tipsy we three cycled back to base in the dark.
After the meal we gathered around the nearest Paan stall and ordered our fill. Not an enjoyable experience for Suzanne!
The second celebration, a more formal affair, was on the Wednesday before Delan left where all staff present at the office gathered and there was a small imparting of gifts. MIRA and Delan gave both Suzanne and I lovely paintings and mugs from the women’s develop the centre tagged with the words “MIRA Dhanusha”. The style of painting is really quite something – simple but elegant and with incredibly subtle pastel colours which have a real organic feeling. Suzanne is in particular details in the scene the focus of her work – women and their indoor cooking environments. If and when I eventually gain a permanent place to live I should like to frame this – a celebrated memory from this beautiful time here. Each of us made a small speech – although I spoke too quickly and I am sure most of what I said was drivel. The sentiments we three shared together underlie the fact that we really have had incredible time here and really do value the working relationship we have built towards our respective goals with the staff. Delan obviously has a different perspective on things both coming back in the near future and having been here before – but I think he feels that this time in particular working together with Suzanne and me has been somewhat different. I should hope that the MIRA team feel like they have got something out of our being here beyond added confusion and extra work in their day to day activities. Hopefully memories from our brief visit will be valuable throwbacks for further celebrations ahead. Even when we don’t understand each other fully everyday brings more laughter than I normally have in a week working in London – that at least is universal…For my part I’m thinking hard of an appropriate gift to leave on my departure on Tuesday.
Everyone gathered for Delan’s leaving ceremony
The other major happening this week has been the filming. I have been given leave to film something of a documentary of the larger follow-up project here. So far I’ve been shooting since Sunday last and have amassed six days of film. It has been a struggle as usual to organise things but I have actually managed to get a lot of the main things I wanted to film completed during the course of this week: Two days filming with two local families, a number of interviews with MIRA staff and filming around and about the city of Janakpur – totalling over 200GB of footage. It has certainly been a whirlwind keeping on top of the schedule and keeping my two cameras running. I have several more things on my list for the coming days and not the insubstantial task of translating between three languages (Mathili, Nepali and English) for the various persons of the film we are going to produce. Currently we plan to produce four versions – three of which will at least get updated again when the final results of this project are available. Ultimately it is hoped that we can use this to articulate the work we’re doing here both to the local community, nationally in Nepal and also the international community in the wider sense. I won’t belabour the point here but it has been an incredible privilege to be allowed to do this and I really hope that it will have some beneficial impact.
People are always very excited to see their photos! I really wish I had some kind of portable printer. Next time I’ll take a polariod camera as well.
My parting thought here is something along the lines of what Suzanne and I were talking about together a dinner last night. Here in Janakpur I had expected to arrive and to be absorbed by the problems that supposedly exist in this part of the world. Indeed from an outsider’s perspective, reading statistics about the major determinants of “quality of life” and living standards one would say that this would be a terrible place to be. Indeed, even arriving for a short time one I think would be struck by the real poverty here and the way in which things just don’t seem to work as they do in the West (electricity, sewerage, gas and the many other facets and “difficulties” of living here). Suzanne says that had she have stayed just a few days here impression would have remained as such. But having been here now five weeks my lasting impression is not of the poverty or of the lack of proper facilities but how happy people seem to be here. There is almost constant air of festivity and people you meet a relaxed, non-confrontational and overall seem quite content with their lives.
It has made me reflect on certain issues regarding the imposition of ideologies about how things should be… specifically the idea to come in and change things for the better. Now, don’t get me wrong I still strongly believe that certain things were fundamentally improve people’s life and overall happiness. Specifically, those that relate to health – as poor health and fears surrounding illness can be singularly powerful in destroying happiness. Those factors potentially relating to economic material gains really I question their value. Having been in a really quite simple rural home yesterday I was struck by the desperately elegant nature of the place. Almost Japanese in its reverence for a certain rustic simplicity – it really was a beautiful place to be – but by our developed assessments a mud floor and mud walls would not score many points on a living standards questionnaire. Sweeping generalisations aside – it has made me consider the meaning of existence of a population level – coming back to my old axiom that if nothing is certain in this world (neither of why we are here nor of whether anything lies beyond) it is better to be happy in this life and to breed happiness in those around you. So I should congratulate the people of Janakpur who seem to have achieved an overall sense of contentment, which I certainly cannot recognise as being so widespread in my hometown, in spite of the fact that they live in one of the supposed poorest regions of the world. Standards of living may be different but altogether does that really matter if each day there is enough laughter to get you through? I would say this of course but I think the axiom holds true. After all what’s it all about?
Here are a few photos from the Third week in Janakpur. A busy which in which we started the study and the few days before the Barhabiga festival began. Enjoy!
This is something I wrote last week but havent had 5minutes to post!
It’s Delan’s penultimate day – I’m running around like Crazy trying to get my film done 2 more days shooting then editing and translating into Nepali – Mathali and English… crazy difficult!
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I’ve just been woken up by Kamnish with my morning cup of sweet coffee. After some truly horrific coffee experiences in India – I distinctly recall one cup of “Italian” coffee that I ordered in Jaisalmer which was a mixture of instant, masala spice and bits of what really can only be described as crushed wood – I swore never to drink coffee whilst here in Nepal. I even brought a cafeteria with me (a little two cup Bodium number) and two bags of Whittard’s breakfast blend gifted to me than my sister Natalia this Christmas. Despite this I’ve slipped into this morning order which occurs regularly between 730 and eight o’clock. The error on this delivery time makes planning to leave in the morning a little bit interesting but I don’t complain as it services are definitely more pleasant alarm clock down my iPhone whose repeat alarms I have over the years become quite immune to. The With so many iPhone users out there and sure in a few of you will have had such similar experiences. Overall I find that good coffee is really hard to come by on the subcontinent with the exception of places where Western influence is overpoweringly abound. Delhi – where there are boutique coffee shops like Starbucks and Kathmandu – or rather specifically Thamel (backpacker district) which is so westernised that good Coffey came as a natural sequitur to pursuing tourist dollar.
My efforts here in Janakpur been aimed at upgrading from office tea office coffee. During the working day at MIRA one is fortunate to have the attentive service of the lovely Bimla – all-round wonder woman who takes care of our every need. She and I have quite a rapport (or at least I think we do!) And really she deserves a separate blog post in her own right – suffice to say that office tea occurs between five and 10 times daily in small glass cups of sweet ginger tinted sugary water.
Tea “Chia” (or Chai – if you’ve been to India) is the normally served very sweet and with plenty of milk – not much of a caffiene punch but the sugary drive perks up the spirits. Served hot – even in 55degree C heat!
I search of this goal I have deprived myself of my 2 cup coffee brewer in my hotel room and a translocated coffee grounds they bought in Thamel to the office in pursuit of this goal. Unfortunately the quality of his Coffee seems to be lacking both in strength and in substance. One problem is that the grain has been ground too fine and as such there is always a fine silt at the bottom of the coffee. Furthermore Bimla insists on brewing the coffee with sweet instant milk which sets the whole thing off with a slightly bizarre chemically orientated saccharine aftertaste. Not ideal but at least it does give a little bit of a kick while you’re working.
Overall Bimla enjoys producing this concoction and just as with the hotel I seem to have got used to it. I feel in many ways that my adaption to things here in Janakpur – the food, the smell, the general lifestyle and of course the curious coffee may leave me in an odd retreat when I get home. One thing’s for sure I will be sorry to have left off alcohol for this period. My previous assertions that this was a great place to get work done have indeed been satisfied and despite the extended conclusion of the study (I had really hoped that it would be completed within one week rather than two) I have been able to score a number of things of the list and have gotten studying done to boot.
Nevertheless, I have found myself reaching for another drink during the day as I feel my habitual coffee use over the last six years of medical school has left me with a physiological need to some extent for caffeine stimulation. The drink of course is Red Bull – but not the branded variety you getting United Kingdom with its carefully labelled caffeine content – the raw Thai export version complete with all sorts of added extras. I’m not sure if it does have any substantially different qualities and maybe it’s the relative lack of other sources of caffeine in my general situation during the day but I seem to find my senses greatly heightened when I drink one down. I tried a little experiment the other day, drinking can of the stuff before I went on a journey on the back of motorbike. I shut my eyes the entire 15 min journey and drank in the sounds and smells of the city as we flew along. Things were incredibly vivid and maybe trip my mind in another way about thinking what it would be like to live here as a sight or hearing impaired person (come to the conclusion that I think it would be incredibly difficult and you may very well risked death by just simply stepping out into the street). After open my eyes my eyes were set by such a blue clarity as I haven’t known for quite a while.
Working hard – My Thai Red Bull hiding in the background of my room service chicken dinner.
So I’m not exactly sure what goes into this substance but it seems to more than replace my need for coffee during the day. Indeed the office staff have adapted to my daily reconnaissance for Red Bull which I then consume at my leisure on the grass in front of the MIRA building along with a packet of biscuits – who would have ever known that there are so many different types of cashew nut biscuit? Many abhore the taste of the stuff – but I guess the nascent associations with the good kick I get out of it has adapted my palate somewhat to the acrid substance. So… after a temporary reprieve from coffee we will have to see whether or not I return to my old ways back in kathmandu and onward to London – although the thought of trying to do finals without coffee seems a bit ridiculous!
Summary: Coffee is a tricky business on the subcontinent – Nepal is no exception. Plan carefully if you’re a coffee fanatic – or try other “local” specialities – like Thai Red Bull?!
Best wishes,
Seb
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POST SCRIPT my poor old cafeitiere – brought all the way from London has turned up cracked- I will be starting my investigation forthwith – in the mean time coffeeless again!
Well, that’s it! Today, officially, we have finished the calibration study. Pending review from Jonathan we will have completed this section of the study. It’s been an absolutely massive effort – working flat-out for the last month with no days off including the last 14 days where we have been continually searching out children to measure. Today we completed the matching, reaching our 109th child. We lost two data points – one child who was unable to complete the study and one who was the wrong age… but we overshot enough to be able to super-select the best quality data from the remainder and chase after our elusive equation.
What we came for – tiny bottles of saliva. A lot of effort for something so small! It will be worth it in the end…
It has been an incredibly interesting journey trying to get this data together but it is also has taken a great toll on both Delan and me… and staff also – key players have put in more than their fair share of hours to return these children. Following the first two days in which we got 40% of the sample we struggled along in dribs and drabs for the remainder of the 12 days, with children coming most days in ones and twos and occasionally larger batches. We visited a sheaf of local schools, called in favours from staff’s families and visited city “villages” setting up scales and batch processing local children who all seemed thoroughly interested to find out their weight number… We have measured literally hundreds of children to get the ones we needed.
I have spent a good portion of the last two weeks riding on the back on bikes to and from various schools and Tole (villages) Here’s a shot I snapped traveling through the main thoroughfare during “golden hour”.
All’s not quite finished however – we do need to get the saliva samples home – whist still frozen. If you know anything about living in Nepal – you’ll know about the power problems. At the moment the office generator is on 24 hours a day to power our freezer. But as usual things are not as easy as they seem on the surface. The general electricity supply in the office is haphazard to say the least. I’ve felt on more than one occasion that I’m risking my life by messing around with extension cables and whilst trying to rig up power to my portable editing suite. In the store room a faulty fuse connection has meant that the switches panel sparks dangerously at you beneath the plastic. These sparks have successfully burned through the tape that I placed over the freezer switch (a “don’t touch this switch” kind of arrangement)… besides being deeply concerning that it is possible for electricity to burn through a plastic switch in this fashion… this has ultimately led to us having to constantly checking the confounded machine day and night as it now keeps turning itself off and on. Luckily today an electrician visited the building to repair this problem. Funnily enough I recognised him as one of the construction workers who I have spied working on the roofs of one of the buildings opposite these last weeks as I sat out on the veranda working. Once the samples are safely away from Janakpur we have an arguably higher chance of success for regular electricity in Kathmandu. As soon as they reached London they’ll be sent away for analysis – In the mean time I will be keeping a beady eye on things as best I can.
So… having planned almost a year and a half ago now to go abroad to do something like this it brings a great sense of satisfaction that this actually happened in a relatively ordered fashion and ultimately and that we have successfully managed to complete study with really excellent data. The staff here at MIRA have given so much – in particular Chaube and Ragab who have been tirelessly working alongside Delan and me. It’s not an empty statement to say that without these people we would not have been able to do the study. Not speaking either the national or the local language essentially precludes one from doing anything more than simple sign language and thus makes impossible the explaination of our intents. Thinking from their perspective I dont think I would have trusted some large stranger who didnt speak my language asking me to produce saliva and drink some “special” water drink… So whilst the calibration film has helped a lot in explaining the process of the actual testing but fundamentally it is the MIRA staff who on the ground have fix things with the participants, the families and the schools and villages we have invaded to try and get the children that were needed for the study. Finally it’s worth noting that the children here in Janakpur have been absolutely incredible. They are superbly well-behaved and have been incredibly good doing the saliva sample testing. You might say “saliva samples?… that’s no biggie…” But really it is far harder than you would think to produce these samples correctly. I thank the children and their families for being so generous with their time and for being such a pleasure to work with!
Indeed an essential part of my job throughout these last few weeks has been to supervise the children in the waiting period. As a means of control over a range of different children (and often their many different family members) I’ve used fizzy drinks, biscuits to placate and have been able to rig up my computer with a second screen so that they can watch a film whilst they wait (and I can get on with other work as well!). This is the most consistently simple way of controlling children with whom you cannot communicate directly in terms of language. The one tripping stone has been that I only have one film which really was suitable to be watched by these children. But just as Europeans enviably speak many languages, people living on the subcontinent do the same… Indeed there are such a plethora of different languages that it’s hard to keep track – So whilst Maitili is the local language most Janakpurians speak both Nepali and Hindi.
This being the case I’ve been playing the only Hindi film that I have: Devdas (2002 version). Based on a story by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1876-1938) the film is a famous tale based in Bengal in the early 1900… An epic tale of woe and of lost and longing love – that re-echoes the mythology of Krishna, Radha, and Meera of the Hindu tradition. Devdas and Paro who despite being childhood sweethearts are rent asunder as adults when Devdas returns as an adult from his 13 year training in Law in London by their respective families arguing over family honour, caste and status inspite of the clear love that stands between the two. The songs from the film are sublime – if you’re at all interested in listening to some great relatively contemporary Bollywood music that doesn’t trip into Western influence then I thoroughly recommend you stick it on on Devdas (link to Spotify)… Or at the very least watch this YouTube clip of the famous “Dola Re Dola” or my personal favorite “Silsila Ye Chahat Ka” the opening gambit of poor old Paro.
With the end in sight – I look forward to really exploring Janakpur in the coming week…
My focus in the coming days before I return to Kathmandu (…now there’s a scary thought!) will be to film extensively in the district…having been so focuses on the calibration study I’ve had little energy to go out and shoot…little energy to get under the skin of the place as I usually try to when I’m travelling… I’m up to date with the photos I’ve take so far and am managing a smattering of medicine by the by. But… with the dates confirmed for finals exams it’s quite a prospect to be looking down the barrel of finishing medicine once and for all. A real thick slice of self-discipline needs to be laid on in this next stage so that I can hit the ground running and finish all of these projects before going back home. Wish me luck!
I’ve got reams and reams of footage so far from Kathamandu and Janakpur which I haven’t been able to do anything with. I finally set down a couple of 1 minute sketches of some of the ideas which I have been discussing in previously posts. These two short films are from my second week here. I will be sending up several more when I get the chance to work through some of the footage. I remember a talk by the old dean of Westminster Abbey when i was a youngling in the choir there… He used to say that for 1 minute’s worth of a sermon it takes a least 1 hour to write it. I’m not writing a sermon of course but these 1 minute shorts are about the same amount of investment. 1 hour in the creation 1 minute in the watching.
Once I’ve got a bit more of a handle on the inner workings of wordpress I’ll be able to present embeded Youtube videos – for the minute however please click the links to get to see the Videos.
Video 1: Sarswarti Puja Day – being mobbed by kids in the School
Seb Roberts: Life as It happens 