Sita and Sushma, 8 and 10

Sita and Sushma, 8 and 10
Manamaiju, Kathmandu 2005

The red clown nose, one of two I brought with me in 2005, was a great crowd pleaser. Sometimes I would namaste a group of children, holding my hands hand together in front of my face as one does, (but with the foam nose squished between my hands), and then when I would lower my hands I'd have it on my nose—and they'd burst into surprised laughter.

All the children would then want a turn trying it on. Sometimes, to their disappointment, their noses weren't big enough yet for it to stay on. 

If you would like to donate to Mercy Corps’ Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

If you would like to donate to UNICEF’s Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

2011: I printed up some of my old photos, and walked the routes I remembered. I was able to find Sita and take this photo, six years after the previous one. I asked her if her friend Sushma was nearby, but she told me that she had moved away a few years ago.

Sanju and her family

Sanju and her family
Balaju, Kathmandu, 2011

I met Sanju in 2002, when I was teaching the schoolyard game Red Rover to a bunch of children in a fallow rice field in Kathmandu. I was trying to teach how you try to break through the other teams line but, at the same time, not hard enough for them to hurt each other. 

That rice field is now covered with a house, the surrounding area being more built up than nine years ago. 

On this visit, Sanju's ama made me tea that was piping hot in it's metal cup, and it became a bit of a good-natured running joke upon my visits—the extreme heat of the offered tea, and my seeming inability to cope with such.

If you would like to donate to Mercy Corps’ Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

If you would like to donate to UNICEF’s Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

Below, is a set of four photos that I took while I was demonstrating my best Nepali dance moves for Sanju's family. They seemed rather amused at my effort.

Sunil at his families fruit stand

Sunil at his families fruit stand
Naya Bazaar Marg, Kathmandu, 2011

I would walk past this shop—one of many set up along the busy thoroughfare Naya Bazaar Marg—every day on my way to Balaju.

This long road is a constant stream of traffic: enormous lumbering TATA trucks, motorcycles, buses with thunderous horns, vans with passengers packed like gum balls, tempos with little puttering engines, bicycles loaded down with long bending lengths of re-bar, men, women, and children in school uniforms dodging puddles.

Large colorful posters for the latest Bollywood and Kollywood films are displayed on free walls. I happened to see some posters being wheat-pasted up one day; a pair of boys, one with a ladder, the other with a large bucket and a brush so rigid from the glue that the bristles had curved over like a hook.

If you would like to donate to Mercy Corps’ Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

If you would like to donate to UNICEF’s Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

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(I believe you can see Sunil wearing a red top in this panorama of Naya Bazaar Marg—he's basically under the "A" in "MANIA" on the big red billboard)

P.S. — The first Nepali movie I saw was called Dharmaputra and starred Rajesh Hamal, colloquially known to children countrywide as "the hero of Nepal". The movie was about three hours long, with plenty of dancing, romance, and singing.

A month or so later, I picked up a videocassette of Star Wars in Kathmandu to show the children of my host family. About 30 minutes in, my bai [younger brother] turns to me, unimpressed, with his arms out and says, essentially, "What, no singing?"

Busy mother with baby under her wing

Busy mother with baby under her wing
Manamaiju, Kathmandu 2003

Walking home one afternoon, I ran across this woman taking in the family's laundry.
I love the cloth that holds the baby; it’s like she’s wrapped her son up in a piece of star-filled night.

If you would like to donate to Mercy Corps’ Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

If you would like to donate to UNICEF’s Nepal Earthquake fund please click here.

2011: With a freshly-printed copy of the original photo in hand,
I was able to find the mother and son again to take this photo eight years later.

Update: I recently ran across this photo that I took of them looking at the old photo.

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