Welcome to Nepal!

Hello all! Unlike most of my other blog posts I haven’t been inspired to write this one about something specific. I just have some spare time :-). Internet access is good in Kathmandu and I’ve decided to spend a few days in the city just hanging out, meeting some people, trading books, getting a haircut etc. before going to the farm I’ve chosen.

I will be going to HASERA farm 40 km to the east of Kathmandu. It’s a permaculture farm run by someone who seems to really know what he’s doing. I went to the Nepal Permaculture Group office and he was there so I met him and we talked about the farm. Unlike a typical WWOOF situation where you trade labour for room and board at HASERA you pay for room and board and there is more focused learning which may or may not include the usual farm work. I like situations like this because I feel more free, even though they are quite a bit more expensive than WWOOFing. HASERA is charging 450 Rs per day which is about $6.50.

Two days ago I learned about something which may disrupt my pleasant farm stays and romps through the Nepali Himalayas. A Latvian woman is being held incommunicado and without due process as a prisoner in a Nepali jail. She has been held there about 5 months after what seems to essentially have been what Amnesty International would call an “enforced disappearance”. Nepal is known to have a problem with enforced disappearances, as reported in the AI 2008 Annual Report. We only learned about her existence through informal channels. She was apparently arrested for being in a national park without a permit. Because she doesn’t speak English she cannot speak to her jailers and it seems they have decided to simply keep her in jail because of it. Obviously I want to learn more about what’s going on and see what I can do, including contacting Amnesty International. The Russian Embassy has known about her for two weeks or so, and has not freed her. There is no Latvian embassy in Nepal so this is another problem for her. Her family has sent the Russian Embassy money to buy her a ticket home and help with getting her out, but the Embassy apparently has just kept the money. Yesterday I was supposed to have had a meeting with a Russian/English speaking tourist who has spoken to her but it didn’t happen. I hope I don’t have to stay in Kathmandu any longer than I already have because I am getting anxious to go to a farm after almost 20 days in cities and travelling. But I can’t just leave her to the mercy of the nation states who would apparently just as soon let her rot in jail than go home. If I don’t hear from the person who has spoken to her by tomorrow I will go to the farm and be in touch as much as possible from there. When I remember what the Canadian state does, torturing people in specially built torture prisons in Syria apparently for kicks or electrocuting Polish people at the airport because they don’t speak English I am concerned about this person who has wandered into the grip of an irrational, powerful, brutal and uncaring organization.

On the bright side Kathmandu is much nicer than Delhi. The streets are more thoroughly paved which cuts down the choking, eye itching dust. There is a level less honking although it’s still annoying. The streets tend to be smaller and more pedestrian friendly, at least in the Thamel neighborhood where I’m staying. The food is less greasy and less spicy (spicy food makes me sick, I've discovered). Accommodation is a bit cheaper. It’s just generally smaller, quieter and more functional. Although taxi transportation is a lot more expensive you can generally walk where you want to go. This is the relatively nice area.

When I’m in some of the bad areas of the city I begin to compose poems in my head about the bad things and the insanity of city life, the rotting rats on the street, the masks people wear to escape the pollution and the con artists who will take advantage of your vulnerable and confused state to steal whatever they can.

Like most asian cities I’ve been to, locals in the tourist areas love to play Harass The Tourist. The goal of the game is twofold: make tourists dislike being in the tourist area, and get money from the tourists. Players are stationed every 10 to 5 meters and their goal is to thoroughly badger any foreigner to buy a tibetan violin type instrument, umbrellas, hash, hire a rickshaw or any number of other things which they probably have no interest in. I’ve realized that communication with such players or “touts” is not on a conscious level. If you look at them in the face and say “I’m not interested in buying what you’re selling” then this will actually encourage them, even though they understand English perfectly well. Paying attention to them at all is taken as a signal to become more persistent. This is really unfortunate because it shuts down rational language-based communication. I can dream up a number of humorous counter-games to play with the touts because their behavior is so predictable but I try not to be a jerk like that :-).

If you score well in the Harass The Tourist Game then you can play the Rip Off The Foreigner Game. Fewer players get to this level but it is also a popular national past-time. Rickshaws take you to (closer) places you didn’t pay them to take you to, and people are constantly trying to charge inflated prices or lying about various things, coming up with various schemes. The goal is to try to get as much money as possible for as little effort, of course. I come across this sort of thing at least twice a day. No wonder I don’t like cities. I think these negative social behaviors which appear in the city are symptoms of something really wrong with this way of organizing a society. Of course people who follow Buddhism don't do these things and I've met some great people in Kathmandu. Approximately 11% of the population identifies as Buddhist.

Note: When I speak about “India” or any other country name in the following writing, I mean the government of the state, which I don’t assume even represents the interest of the majority of citizens.

Through the Couch Surfing network I’ve been able to meet some interesting people, including some Nepalis who know a bit about the political situation here and a French person working on political documentaries about the country. The recent political situation in the country is very unstable. It seems that India wants to control Nepal so they have killed the royal family in an attempt to set up a puppet government, (in concert with the US; India and the US seem to work together). It is in India’s interest to keep Nepal politically unstable with a crippled economy and therefore a dependent trade partner. China and Russia are concerned about the threat of a strong US (Indian) presence right next to them so they have started meddling in Nepali politics as well.

India is a controlling power in Bhutan as well. I had an image of Bhutan as rather picturesque, with a benevolent King interested in “Gross National Happiness” rather than GNP. But I’m told that Bhutan’s Finance and Defense departments are almost completely controlled by India. The Royal Family has a deal where they can have their family, wealth and image of control as long as India can control these two key departments. In the early 1990s many people were ejected from Bhutan because they did not support the King; India was a major force behind this ejection because India to a large extent controls the King.

Someone I met yesterday shed some light on the Tibetan situation. He said that the main reason China invaded Tibet was to prevent it from being controlled by the US. So the idea of a Free Tibet, is more complicated than simply ejecting the Chinese. Any sovereign Tibet would have to defend itself constantly from incursions both by the two giants US and China.

On the relatively bright side if people in Tibet can manage to escape into Nepal - although many of them get injured very badly crossing the mountains - then they are generally given sanctuary here. Also they can freely enter India, going to Dharamsala or a different place. Recently the Chinese has put pressure on Nepal to send Tibetan people back for imprisonment/torture etc. but the Nepali people have protested and so far have sent nobody back.

I’m getting to try some Tibetan food which has been interesting. Momos are like a thin walled perogie. Thukpa (pronounced more like tukpa) is a noodle soup with lots of garlic, and Thenthuka (pronounced more like tentukpa) is another kind of soup with flat, square noodles, sliced potato, greens, onions and grated carrots. Momos are generally steamed and often not very spicy.

The number one thing to do in Kathmandu as far as I’m concern is to go to the Garden of Dreams. It’s a fairly small walled-in garden which you have to pay to enter and it is beautiful. There are so many little beautifully designed areas, with waterfalls, stepping stones leading through ponds, huge trees, and beautiful flowers. It reminds me of the scene in Lost in Translation when Scarlett Johansson walks through a beautiful park in Tokyo. The whole garden is has Wi-Fi access.

Deported!

So I got kicked out of India. And so did my German friend Jens. For him his visa was up and extension refused. For me it was a bureaucratic error.

To make a long story short, people with visas over 6 months are supposed to register with the government within 14 days of entering India. Registration is supposed to be done with a major office specializing in registration, or with local police in the area you're staying in. The police in Chhatarpur, M.P. are incompetent and didn't know how to register me. They refused to do so when I asked them to, actually. The Indian government has decided I am responsible for their incompetence and is deporting me for not registering. I did everything I was asked to do and could do but apparently that's not enough. It took them 9 days and 4 office visits in Delhi to decide this.

I'm sad that I won't be able to visit my friends in India as planned. But, as Vinod Bhave said, It is good to flow like water and not get stuck in one place.

Last night I took a 15 hour train to Gorakhpur and will take the bus to the Nepal border tomorrow. I hope to become involved with WWOOF Nepal and do some trekking to experience some of the "wisdom of the mountains" (as John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, would say). I will likely have to take some down time in Kathmandu which is fine. It will take me time to decide which trek to go on or to obtain a WWOOF host. Maybe I can try my hand at couchsurfing.

It's a big decision for me in the next few months which direction to go in after Nepal; to New Zealand and Australia for a taste of home and some serious farm studying from people who know their stuff or to Isreal/Palestine area to get involved in a different kind of non-violent activism?

Any suggestions dear readers?

Stolen!

The lock on my door
Faith in the people around me
My peace of mind
Broken, Stolen

How does honesty bless one mind and not another?
Why, fair honesty, do you leave a brother
Abandoned in the darkness
Of the soul.

When I came back from the University my lock was broken open and people had gone through my things. They stole only money. The lock was broken open with a rock, delicate little thing that it was. At least they didn't take my passport or bank card.

My first reaction was just to leave early. I just didn't want to be here any more. I can my things right quickly enough and be gone on the bus in the morning.

But I stayed to finish my work. Today is my last day, and I'll take the bus tomorrow morning down to Dehradun, stay there for a night and head off to horrible, big, dishonest, polluted Delhi. As you can tell I'm not looking forward to it. I hope I can stay in the Buddhist quarter but the two hotels I would stay at I can't phone properly because the phones don't work well enough.

I long for the apparent honestly of the Malay people, or the Thai. And their competence in organizing systems too, like phone, bus, etc. And their general cleanliness. But I'll stay here for three more months, perhaps my next destination will refresh me.

I am going next to Kota to visit my friend Ram which I hope will be very nice.

Fruit and Thieves

These have been the dominant themes of my life, as of late.

I found some great books at D.B. Pantnagar University. I confess I had kind of low hopes because I have come across some pretty shitty writing in this country from people who supposedly have higher degrees. But I found a book that has extensive details about apple trees and apple growing (pomology) in general. Oddly enough the ideological influence is heavy from the World Bank and cronies. Obviously the book is a relic of their push to have apple production in this area.

The book has lots of great information about orcharding. One of the more remarkable things was the descriptions on how to perform surgery on a tree to repair damage to the bark.

But it is also quite humorous in some ways. On the section on what to do with your orchard after it gets old, and they recommend using trees that last about 30 years, they basically throw up their hands. The text admits quite readily that using the chemical methods recommended the soil will be destroyed and will likely have microorganisms in it that prevent the re-planting of any apple trees. They give the suggestion of importing new soil (!) or fumigating the soil by injecting an extremely toxic chemical not available in India (chloropictin) or methyl bromide, (which is available but not as effective) covering the soil with a big tarp and leaving it. This destroys most microorganisms in the soil, including those that prevent new apple trees from establishing. Of course it does nothing for the pH, compaction, arsenic/mercury content, or organic content. So much for sustainability. They just don’t seem to acknowledge the idea that in in all likelyhood the Himalaya will still be here in 30 years, and people will still need to make a living. It’s a very short term book, just like capitalism and the entire ideology surrounding the World Bank.

When I got back to the orchard yesterday there were people stealing the fruit! The guy who owns the orchard, and I dare say has first dibs on the fruit, asked me to pick the fruit on Friday. Here we were Thursday, the people keeping a lookout had left in the morning and in the afternoon there were already people stealing all the fruit! The frustrating part was when I asked them to leave and got a Hindi speaking person on the phone, so the message was obviously clear, they still wouldn’t go. They just kept on picking. It was a real showdown to get them to clear off, and they took the fruit (asian pears mostly) with them. Then more came a few minutes later! The things people say are absurd. This new group had a person who spoke a bit of English. So he came up to me and insisted “We are not thieves, he is a teacher” pointing to the guy taking the fruit. What’s that supposed to mean, they’re not professional thieves? If you’re stealing fruit then that means you’re a thief, as I understand it. By the end of the day there was no more fruit and there was nothing I could do about it. Friday morning I hunted the grounds and harvested a grand total of 36 small apples. They are just tapping into the peaches now as they become ripe, we’ll see... I was hoping to be alone here for 3 weeks but it seems that’s not on.

In fact what really is sad is that they were stealing the grass as well. The area is overgrazed and infertile because it does not have a chance to get back on it’s feet by growing some plants and having them decompose. The idea that people will steal the very grass at your feet, meant for the worms, is so tragic to me. I’ve noticed people’s persistence is remarkable too. They just don’t seem to throw in the towel when they’re busted.

Previously my experiences with people stealing stuff in India have primarily been children. My harmonica, flashlight, camera, cellphone. But this time it was the whole family coming out for a gathering!

The economics section of the apples book shows predictable labour costs. 30% goes to hiring a guard to prevent people from stealing the apples. I think I’ve already mentioned that people need to hire guards to watch their wheat and irrigation pipes. There are people constantly guarding the mango orchards as well of course. This whole situation is pretty expensive for farmers to have to deal with.

Some kids, skipping school came and wanted some drinking water, which I was ok with giving them but they didn’t want to drink my boiled, warm, water. So I made them some mint tea instead. Then they started asking me to give them food. What? I should clarify that to all outward appearances these were not poor children, sporting as much clean clothes, leather shoes, jewelry and cellphones as the next person.

Some other kids came and stood outside my window demanding some potatoes. Obviously I didn’t have any. I told them to go to the market. In the city I get treated like a walking cashbox, and in the country it seems people treat you like a free marketplace. I suppose that’s better. Mind you, people ask me for money here too.

So now they’re after me potatoes, me water, me grass and me peaches :-). I don’t know if I can hold out much hope for my carrots, radishes, peas, corn and biomass crops that I’ve planted. I just hope I can keep an eye on my passport, and wallet. No wonder all the windows in India have bars on them.

For laughs, here’s the photo of the mother of the child who stole my camera. She swore she didn’t know anything about a camera... This person continues to show up every once in a while and ask for a job at the soap factory, which she was fired from for stealing.

Propane!

I have recently discovered that one needs to be an Indian Citizen to obtain a cylinder of propane gas for domestic use.

That is absurd. The only way for me to treat water in my house is to boil it. So I either have to lean heavily on the surrounding ecosystem to collect firewood, or use the only other fuel available; propane. The ecosystem is suffering enough from other human activities and firewood is very scarce. The only sensible thing to do is to act as those near national parks are legislated to do; don’t use firewood, but use a different fuel. No kerosene is available nor is any other fuel besides propane.

I understand there are lots of things that only Indian Citizens have the right to do. Many of these are sensible measures the purpose of which is to prevent re-colonization. I applaud these measures. For example, foreigners are not allowed to purchase land in Uttarkhand.

However, telling me that I cannot purchase propane and so must spend hours more every day heating drinking water and cooking food is a humiliation. Not only is it tremendously rude to treat guests of your country in this way, it is completely undignified that I should be forced to degrade the ecosystem in an unnecessary fashion just to drink clean water.

I hereby publicly declare that I have engaged in an act of civil disobedience; I have obtained on the black market a 14 kg tank of propane for the sum of Rs 2800. I am using it to cook rice, chappati, oatmeal and to boil water for drinking.

Deserts at my feet and clouds in my head

Hello all!

My time in Almora helped to solidify my interest in human made deserts. Looking at the history of the human race and our current situation it is obviously a major, if not the single biggest, source of real impoverishment. People destroy their land, and then what do they have? Nothing. No water, no food, no good air. Pakistan, Iraq, Greece, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Tunisia, Lebanon, Isreal. All great examples of beautiful lands destroyed by improper use. The same thing is currently happening in many parts of the world.

But there are areas and practices that have stood the test of time. Perhaps the big question for me is what these practices are and how to spread them, how to bring life back to the deserts.

I guess I’m studying this in the context of global warming and oil crisis also. I spent some time in activism, lobbying the government etc. But I suppose I got tired of asking other people to do things. It seem to me that we may have missed the boat on trying to prevent global warming, although not for lack of effort from groups like Greenpeace and Sierra Youth Coalition. International negotiation after negotiation has basically failed. So, in preparation for all the weird things that are predicted from a warming earth part of me has decided that studying ecological systems is the most useful thing I can do right now.

I wonder if central India will be evacuated as it warms. The temperatures in Delhi this summer reached 47 degrees C. Without abundant power how will people stay cool enough to even stay alive? Plants generally shut down at 42 degrees C and at some point begin to sustain heat damage. If this area of the earth experiences a rise of 4 degrees, will life as it is there now even be able to exist?

I’m beginning to question whether I’m really learning a whole lot about solutions in India.

I came to India with the hope of seeing a Satygraha campaign in action. To join one, work on one, and take those methods elsewhere. But from what I’ve seen, in India Gandhi is mostly history. His campaign methods are now a page in history books and are no longer alive and fully in use.

Where are the Satygrahi’s fighting corruption in India? Where are the campaigners standing with the Adivasis? Why did the Maoists even find it necessary to come to India, why do the Adivasis not use nonviolent methods? They don’t believe in them, of course. When organized crime was shooting up Chhatarpur, why did everyone in our ashram stay inside? Even with in “activist circles” I have seen nothing of what I was hoping to see. I have found a tragic absence of action based on the self sacrificing, well organized, disciplined model of Satygraha.

If you want to start a village industry, you have to pay bribe after bribe. Half the time the government offices aren’t even functioning at a basic level. Open at ten, take a two hour lunch and close early. Half the food in the public food distribution goes missing. Stolen by the very people who are supposed to be distributing it. That which remains doesn’t fit into the system properly because the is no recognition that half of it was stolen; how can as shopkeeper sell at the government regulated price when he has only half the food he paid for? Corruption in India is rife and for all the time I spent at Gandhi Ashram, Navdanya supposedly inspired by Gandhian ideals, Kausani Gandhi Ashram and other places I never heard of an effective non-violent compaign organized against it.

It’s not that I mean to really criticize what people are doing here in terms of activism. I just don’t see the reaching for the top, the struggling with the biggest issues around. I don’t see the big stuff being tackled. The things that Satygraha is meant to tackle. The issues that are so big you can hardly see them, the dangerous areas, the really deep-rooted, wide spread social problems. How can I criticize the organizations I’ve visited for their good work? Yet at the same time I’m just not finding a living version of the revolutionary philosophy I came to experience. The quiet work continues, like producing khadi, but it gets crushed under the larger issues that aren’t being addressed. Where’s the campaign, man?

Maybe Cesar Chavez is a better hope. Perhaps I should go to the US and try to become involved in the United Food Worker’s struggle.

Anyways, I’ve left Almora and spent a lovely two days at Kausani Ashram. I read Discourses on the Gita, which Gandhi wrote in 1929 at that same ashram. Then I went to Navdanya for a week to teach some children about testing irrigation water for salinity content. I had a good time hanging out with other foreigners, made some soap and distilled some essential oils. It was nice to look at the whole place again almost two months later. But it’s too expensive and dysfunctional for me to stay there very long.

I am now by myself in a little cabin near Chamba. I’m at an organic orchard overlooking the town, at 1000 m elevation. So far it has been very lovely although I had to set some things up with the cabin. The cabin is not quite fully functional. It’s mostly there but there are some issues. The water tank is filthy and leaks, I re-jigged the plumbing on the kitchen sink, jumped through hoops to get some propane to cook with and boil water with, bought a knife for the kitchen and so on.

I am at cloud level which is really beautiful when the clouds roll in. I have a great view of the town and lots of organic apples to eat. I pay for my own food. It’s nice and cool.

My job for the next three weeks is basically to think about how to bring the orchard back to production level. Right now it has been abandoned for a while. I don’t know much about orchards but the guy who owns the place knows even less it seems :-). So I’ll take a look, and hopefully get some help from the local university. It’s a great chance to learn about orchards on my own. Being an independent consultant is an idea I’ve been playing with, but I didn’t expect to end up in the situation so soon, albeit without pay!

I also plan to read The Pickwick Papers by Dickens and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad :-).

Here’s a view downhill of my cabin. 

SOS Continued!

Hello all!



First let me start with a shoutout to my friend Peter! I hope everything is going really well for you buddy! Here he is rolling seedballs at SOS Organics. He's gone from India now, touring through Europe visiting apricot orchards, drinking belgium beer and so on and so forth :-).


Peter is rolling seedballs by hand. Although it is common to include compost in the mix here we are just rolling some clay with larger soil particles (micacious rock in this case) mixed in, kneaded together with the seeds we want and rolled by hand into balls. This gives the seed protection against insects and animals while providing a habitat for it to germinate in. Just throw the seedball on the ground and it will wait until the rains come. We are just starting experiments really. How much compost to put in? What seeds to use? How to roll them? Some of them crack upon drying. The beans swell and can crack the balls. Our hand rolling method is slow. We're working on it.


Here's a baby goat playing by the spring where we collect our drinking water! So cute! But it's partly because of these guys that this area is on it's way to becoming a desert. There are many factors of course, including historical clearcutting, humans cutting down the existing trees, extensive forest fires and cows that eat anything small. The lack of vegetation eventually makes the rains stop coming. The seedball project is meant to battle this problem by sowing seeds on a wide scale. What will grow beneath these acidic pines, ravaged by fire, humans and grazing animals? This is our challenge.


Here's our goal! A bean and some grass growing out of a seedball. The seedballs obviously work but how to bring our knowledge to the level of being able to produce a lot, with the correct seeds in them and the right coating composition?


We decided that one of our first steps is to raise our ability to produce. Rolling by hand is just too slow for the areas we're looking at sowing. This is a photo of the metal worker and a fellow WWOOFer Jack building a seedball rolling machine. It's a very simple machine, just a rolling drum. With a bit of practice you could probably build one in an afternoon with a visit to the hardware store in Canada or the US. But in India it is a challenge to find the right parts and put it together. Or rather I should say it's a challenge for us in our situation with the language barrier and lack of local knowledge.



We're still working on it, carrying out our designs. It has been quite a balance between deliberate design and winging it with whatever equipment is available. I hope that in the next few days we will be able to get it working. Right now it spins too fast because we haven't been able to find pulleys to reduce the speed of the rolling drum. But we have a lead on some in a store in Almora... wish us luck :-).

Namaste,
James