Third Goal

Her American Sister

I remember her smiling up at me one evening.  The light was fading in the sky, and the Dhorpatan hills out beyond the village were turning blue in the gathering dark.  The stars would be out soon, and maybe a moon.  She laughed as she swatted the ox with a short stick, urging him into the barn.  “He is my husband,” she joked, slapping the black haunches again, “Isn’t he handsome?” She was seventeen, a high-caste girl, from a good family.  I was barely twenty-two and fresh from a liberal ...

Baglung Pani Miss

A word of advice: avoid moving to a village where a volunteer preceded you. When I moved to Baglung Pani, Andy Walker was my own personal Freddy Krueger, popping into every conversation, and shredding my every deed. At each “good morning,” people would point to the hostel next to the school and tell me, “Andy Walker built that. What are you going to build?” At noon, the woman who gave me tea would drill me with questions in rapid Nepalese and then announce, “You don’t speak as wel...

Assimilation

           Assimilation.  We were trained, versed, and talked to ad nauseum on the subject.  So much so that during my first month in a village on top of an Annapurna foothill, it was a piece of cake to find my exact place on the downward trajectory of  culture shock. Homesickness—check.  Anxiety—check.   What I hadn’t expected was that no matter how clearly I defined my symptoms, checking them off could not fortify my heart.  I had entered a world of sudden isolation and silence.  At night I...

Peace Corps Nepal 1987