Claire and I spent the day Tuesday traveling to the town of Damak in the region of Jhapa, where she will be doing individual and group supervision of counselors who work in the Bhutanese refugee camps nearby. She will do this for two days, and then spend a day teaching new counselors the basics of therapy. This is all with her employing NGO, TPO Nepal, which has an office here.
We left mid-morning for Kathmandu airport. As we arrived we put our own luggage through an xray machine (nothing special with laptops, liquids, shoes, etc., but women and men went through separate doors so we could all get frisked). We walked through the metal detector, but neither it nor the security woman caught the large keys in Claire’s pocket. No matter. We went to the ticket desk and got our handwritten boarding passes and checked our bags, and then went through another security screening, including another pat-down, to enter the room to wait for our plane. When it was time to depart, we took a bus to planeside. It was a propeller plane that seated about 60 people.
The plane ride took about half an hour to Biratnagar airport, a very small building. The luggage was driven right up to the small room where we were waiting, and the officials gave it out across a metal barrier by calling numbers, somewhat like a coat-check. We walked outside into the steamy heat (all the people in Kathmandu had said, “Don’t go to Jhapa—it’s too hot there!”) and sat under a tree to wait for our driver, who took us about an hour and a half through little towns and countryside to arrive at Damak.
Most of the way was through small towns, farms, and industries. One of the most interesting sights along the way was in wooded areas, where frequently we would see sarcophagi shaped and painted like little concrete houses, with doors and windows. We asked the driver and they were indeed graves, which you don’t normally see here, since Buddhists and Hindus commonly cremate their dead. We thought they must be either Muslims or Christians. Occasionally we would see one with a cross or a message about Jesus on it, so at least some of them were Christian graves. Later I read that many of the Bhutanese refugees are Christians.
Another interesting sight was some of the houses, which were built on stilts, often with a space or room for farm animals below. We thought these might be insurance against flooding in the rainy season. I read later that they were on stilts because of snakes.
We arrived at the TPO office and met several people, then were taken to our hotel, Hotel Kamakshya. By American or European standards this would not be much, but Claire said it was much better than one where she had stayed once in another town. We do have air conditioning, and a ¾ size bed with a mosquito net over it, a little futon-like couch, a bathroom with shower and lots of crickets, a padlock for the door when we leave, and even a full mirror with a “Welcome to Pokhara Nepal” (!) sticker on it. We are the only westerners we have seen here—though there is a U.N. office here as well as IOM (International Organization for Migration)—but there are wonderful signs around the courtyard such as “your satisfaction is our motto” and “well comes.” In the hotel courtyard we had a late lunch and, after a stroll around the area, returned for dinner. The employees are very attentive, bringing us our key when we forgot it down at the desk, bringing us extra bottles of water, giving us little bites of various dishes to sample, and even moving us from a smaller room into this one. The people around the town are friendly as well, especially the children, who practice their English on us: “Hello,” “how are you,” “good night!” We walked a long way and then rode a rickshaw part of the way back.
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