happy seventeen HJO

8.27.2012

It is impossible to forget someone’s birthday when you use the date and time and location everyday in various passwords and usernames.  So, today, somewhere on the west coast a teenager I know not will become seventeen. 

An overcast morning, calm, the birds sing happily, the Dutch boys in room five were up at six, like I was, all the windows for rooms five to one are open.  Only my windows are closed for while the cool air is perfect for sleeping the quarter-kilo mosquitoes are not good for sleeping. 

Work begins on the dining room ceiling.  The rain holds off, a good thing with all the chairs and tables outside.  There are definite benefits to having a considerably extended family nearby, two men have been here since yesterday helping in the kitchen and this morning both of them showed up at room six requesting my presence in the dining room.  Illness, injury, mental cognitive restraint and just damn ol plain poverty leave people of such young ages here in such run-down states, and that is where the institution of the family takes its positive or negative approach, how do you help a man whose uncle is his brother’s sister’s mother. 

You make him carry water, cut onions, make momo skins, a meal will be given.  And if there is work we can help, no work, well…then off ye be going to other family members not far away at all.

Kave is 36 years old, has a boy of six, he’s been a guide for twenty years, knows the Annapurna Base Camp trek well and he has a health issue, gallstones, he measures with a red crayon how big they were, take your medicine. 

Ramuz has been out of work for some time and there’s a desperation about him that makes me restrain.  I was chided once before for offering him a small glass of beer, so while I respect the order of this swathy family tree you never really know when you’ll show deference to the wrong person.

And for what it is worth, around noon the electricity went out and remained out for four more hours so work in the dining room never started.  So, a wasted day, no rain no power no work.  Ke garne, what to do.  At dusk heavy fog rolled in and Sarangkot remained inside the cloud until nine pm and yet the three quarter moon showed itself defiantly.
 

The Polish family will be greatly missed by the family.  Easy going, nothing bothered them, like no window in the room three toilet or the bottle of Nepali wine that should not be allowed to be called wine.  Not a complaint.  Those are good tourists.  Tomorrow they wake up at 5am, breakfast follows and then down the hill at six for a taxi to the bus station.  Places are always strangely quiet once children leave.  A bittersweet moment always.