Jade DragonBytes

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Warning: I use swear words in my blogs, just keeping it real, folks

Night time setup

So what’s it like living in Nepal for 2 months? First off, there is electricity for only 4 to 12 hours a day. I always wondered how people got by on just candles back in the day. It’s not so bad honestly, and you bring a headlamp to get by when you’re not working with candles. I keep finding myself wandering out of an area without candles and realizing that it’s pitch black. The power is often on at 3 am or some other really convenient time that I can’t quite understand. I find myself working on my blog by candlelight, which I find pretty ironic… As ironic as people carrying huge buckets of water on their shoulders and then stopping to answer their cell phone.

Western standards of cleanliness don’t apply here; I’m far from a germaphobe but I find myself amazed at the amount of dirt and grime on everything. The people that live here don’t notice it because it’s how they live. I find myself trying to just be cool and ignore the filth, but I have to admit there have been a few days where I struggle. Walking into the clinic kitchen and seeing Urmila preparing lunch on the floor is something you just can’t prepare your mind for. I think to myself, okay, that’s how they do it here and look they’re all fine. Every time there’s something just a little bit crunchy in my lunch I have to cringe and tell myself it’s just an un-ground piece of pepper. Right. If you’re the kind of person that walks around with hand sanitizer in their purse never, ever, come here. You will have a complete meltdown, or maybe you should come and get over it.

Local water fountain

Water is scarce so we put a bucket under the tap while we wait for the water to be heated by the solar panels; this water is then used to water plants and to do your laundry. Being here has made me realize that while I’ve fancied myself a conservationist I have a lot to learn. The clinic reuses water bottles until they start to stink. The sponges used in the kitchen for cleaning don’t get thrown out at the first sign of wear. There is no washing machine or dryer so it’s all done by hand. All food scraps are saved in the kitchen in a bucket for compost. I keep putting a lid on the bucket because it attracts flies and Uma (the cleaning lady) keeps removing it. I mention this to Nicky and she says that the concept of keeping the flies out of something has probably never occurred to Uma before. This concept has never occurred to me before.

Of course there’s no refrigerator. There’s running water in the clinic but it has to be pumped out of the ground into two large containers on the roof almost daily. If you forget to pump then it’s possible that you go to the sink to wash a dish and no water comes out. This happened for the first time on one of the two days I had where I was ridiculously homesick and fairly irritable. Okay, I think, so the waters not coming out, great. There’s no electricity so we can’t pump water until it comes back.

“Fuck, really? Of course there’s no water, and there’s no electricity,”  I sarcastically say under my breath but it’s noticed by Sonya. Sonya, one of the interpreters and students, forgot to turn on the pump so tells me that she’s only human and I realize I am over reacting.  Just add it to the list of things I have to get used to here.

Many local buildings don’t have any kind of running water; so the locals go to a community fountain and fill up there. Prajwal, one of the interpreters and my student, tells me that people spend hours waiting to get water sometimes. As I start to realize what this means I begin to feel less inclined to judge the dirt on everything. If you don’t have running water, it’s so much harder to do laundry and take a shower.

Most of the streets aren’t paved in the village so every truck that goes by kicks up a dirt storm. I bought a cuter face mask (if there is a thing) than the Home Depot style ventilator masks I brought my first day here.  Even though many people walk around with them on, I still feel like some kind of prissy Westerner every time I have to put it over my face to protect from all the dirt and smog from the ancient vehicles.

The clinic I live in is actually quite new and therefore much nicer than most of the buildings in the area. You can buy milk every morning from the local restaurant owned by Lilla Didi. She’s a smiley, happy loving person that welcomed me immediately. She knows a few English words and says things like “Amy, beauty,” “welcome,” and “no.” She’s a shining example of the friendly people of Nepal. Lilla Didi (Didi means sister) says that she loves all the volunteers so much and she is so sad when they leave.

Lilla Didi sitting on a table in her restaurant the Forest View

I’ve taken to walking around Chapagaon and into the neighboring Newari village at dusk after I am done working. It’s practically right out of a postcard with the beautiful old buildings, people in colorful clothes, chickens, goats, and straw everywhere.

Everywhere I go people stare at me. Apparently it’s not rude to stare in Nepal, especially at random white chicks with red hair walking around your neighborhood. I will be happy to be back home walking down the street in complete anonymity. The people here cannot afford cameras and they are completely amused by pictures of themselves. I walk around and when I want to take a picture I hold up the camera and say “okay?” They usually don’t answer but I take the picture anyway and then I hold the camera up, “you want to see?” They always smile or laugh at the picture. The little kids sometimes fight to be in them.  A lot of the kids here learn English and sometimes they follow me and try out the words they know. Because I work at the clinic they call me doctor. I can’t lie; I really like how it sounds.

Newari girl with my audience in the background

Newari village at dusk

Newari villager chilling out in a squat that is impossible for my body to achieve for longer than 2 minutes

Strategically inserted needles to stimulate the body’s natural healing procedure is nothing new, although it could seem like a fairly strange procedure to undergo if you’re a person who’s uninitiated to these types of treatments. Kids have a tendency to grow up with a organic aversion to needles, and that tends to filter into the way we think as adults.

The fear of getting pricked subsides, but we still try to avoid needles unless being stuck with one is absolutely essential. This is why it might seem strange to a person who has never had an acupuncture treatment to willingly lie on a table and have up to a dozen of much more steel needles hanging out of them for a variety of minutes at a time.  In a session that’s supposed be both relaxing and spiritually healthy, how can you possibly be comfortable?

The answer reveals itself when you begin to take a look at the acupuncture needles themselves, and in how they differ from the things that ordinarily come to mind when somebody mentions the word “needle.” For starters, they’re really tiny. By far smaller than the forms of needles utilised to give you a flu vaccination every year. In fact, they’re barely any larger than a human hair.

The cause why makers of acupuncture needles are capable to obtain away with this is these needles don’t have to be hollow, considering that they’re certainly not employed to deliver any sort of actual medication by way of injection. Instead, all that’s needed of these needles is always that they just barely pierce the skin, since the ancients who first developed the practice of acupuncture believed that the most necessary energy channels of the body resided very close to the skin. Because the pressure points that acupuncture aims to stimulate are rather sensitive, the needles only ever have to be thick enough to stay relatively straight upon entry into the skin.

To boost natural healing comfort, they may be also in no way sharpened to the point where contact using the skin causes any sort of “cutting” feeling. In this way, acupuncture needles have a lot more in common with extremely stiff hairs than using the kinds of needles that men and women normally consider of when they imagine any variety of ordinary medical procedure. (Acupuncture can also help with headaches. Find out more in this article.)

On average, acupuncture needles will never will need to sink deeper than a half an inch or so into your skin. This, combined with how little they are, final results in an experience that is by no means painful. In reality, numerous clients of acupuncture treatment report that the relaxation that takes place right after the sudden rush of emotional energy that’s been blocked up all this time distracts from any feeling related to the needles truly making entry into the body. What’s even better is they’re little adequate not to leave any marks whatsoever once the session has concluded. Even should you had quite a few acupuncture needles in you at any point in time during the remedy, you won’t feel any real discomfort. Only the euphoric sensation of your body’s organic spiritual strength returning, the vanishing of old body aches, and also the ability to obtain a very much a lot more wholesome and restful night’s sleep for a long time to come.