The past two weeks have just flown by! The first was definitely interesting - there was lots of house drama, thankfully all caused by outside people though. I lasted posted here on Saturday January 30th. That afternoon the four of us returned to Laxmi from Gorkha to find about 30 people up on our roof, all watching the laying of the cement roof for the house next door, and just generally hanging around. It was something of a surprise to find them there, as it had not previously been possible to get onto our roof except through the house. We've gotten used to people peering through our windows, but still not quite yet to the fact that people can just show up on our roof; it certainly makes it all the more important to remember to lock the upstairs door! Since then there's only been people up there while the builders are there, and only 4-5 at most at a time.
School progressed much as it did the week before, with lessons in the morning and Jubilee prep in the afternoons. On Thursday night Caitlin and I visited some more of our students, this time 2 sisters in Class 8 named Rama and Sapana. Their house is quite a bit larger than Rupa's; it has 3 rooms, all cement plastered, with a fourth room that is really more of a patio, as it has only 3 walls. Their father is in the Indian Air Force, so it was just the girls, their mother and their sister and her baby at home. Their mother doesn't speak any English, but is very good at communicating through gestures, so that was how we conversed.
The house is down the road south from Biren Chowk, a part of the road we had previously only driven along. In the evening we walked down ever farther, visited a temple to the goddess Shiva, and took in some views of the river valley along with the sunset. Then it was back to the house for dinner - dal bhat and curry of course! As at Rupa's it tasted fantastic, and we were given so much we could hardly move afterwards. It was the same again for breakfast; if there are typical sizes (Rama and Sapana ate only slightly less), I can well understand how Nepalis eat only twice per day.
Friday and Saturday held the bulk of the house drama for the week. The water for the house comes from a 500L tub on the roof, which we refill periodically using a hose that has been strung up from the ground. The water only runs in the mornings, so every week or so we make sure its full. We filled it on Wednesday morning, and by Friday evening it was empty. We figure the construction workers next door used it to cover the roof, as concrete here needs to be kept constantly wet for several days after it is laid (I have no idea why). This was extremely frustrating, as we couldn't wash the dinner dishes, make tea, flush the toilet or generally do anything involving water, including have a drink. Added to that, we then had to spend part of Saturday morning filling the tank before making breakfast.
The water, however frustrating it was though, was nothing compared to what we figured out on Sunday morning. On Saturday morning we got up to go to Manakamana (see related post), and in the midst of cooking breakfast, realized we had run out of bread. This prompted a search for the wallet containing the house money, in order to go down to the shop to get some more, which proved fruitless. After quickly turning the house upside down (we were trying to get out at a decent time to get to Manakamana) we gave up and just went for the bread, and then headed out for the day.
On Sunday morning we noticed some more things were a little off. Some random pieces of food were missing, and some of my toiletries were somehow in the far corner of Caitlin's bed. But, we attributed this to miscounting how many bread rolls we had and accidentally moving our stuff around without realizing it. It wasn't until we wanted cornflakes for breakfast, and we realized the bag was gone, that we really thought something was up (especially because a thorough search for the house money the night before still hadn't turned up anything).
For a while we were thinking that maybe one of Kirsten and Amy's students who came by Friday afternoon had swiped the money, but we nixed that after the cornflakes were gone, because we ate some on Saturday morning.
Now, when we moved in a month ago the house next door was little more than half-built walls. It wasn't possible to get onto our roof except through our house, and therefore not possible to get to the window halfway up the stairs, the only one in the house without bars. We also didn't realized that our roof runs underneath it, creating a convenient ledge. And now that there is a roof next door, it is very easy to walk through the unfinished main floor, up the stairs, and accros the 6-inch gap between the houses. Needless to say, we've come to the conclusion that someone came into our house through the window on Friday and Saturday while we were out.
What was surprising (and VERY lucky) was that next to nothing was taken, and nothing more valuable than Kirsten's cell phone, which we have discovered missing over the past week. The house money was only about 200 rupees at the time - roughly $3. We called Dulga, our landlady, on Sunday morning, and she had bars put on the window that day. She thinks it was one of the boys who lives nearby, who apparently has a history of this sort of thing. We've been very glad we have chests to lock valuables in, and have been using them!
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