Eventually, things get done

Besides getting out of the smog, noise and insanity that is Kathmandu and seeing the mountains, I also went to Tambuchet to work. There is a a birthing center and a clinic there, but both are poorly equipped to say the least. The birthing center is two large, bare rooms with concrete floors, 2 beds, 2 IV stands, a table, and a bathroom. The bathroom has a (squat) toilet and, in theory, a shower. One of the things we brought with us was a wall-mounted electric water heater (if you've traveled much in Europe you've probably seen these--you dial in your temperature and hit "on," and they start producing hot water fairly quickly). The existing heater had been invaded by mice--or something--that had chewed through the wiring, so there was no hot water and almost no water pressure to the showerhead. (I should know--when we got back from Tatopani I was so ripe I made a valiant attempt to shower there, lack of hot water notwithstanding.)

The other big project was work on the school that I mentioned in the last post. The school has a number of very spare classrooms. Each has a chalkboard


And some metal benches



Many of these benches are missing boards. In fact, there was an entire storeroom full of frames with no boards at all. We brought lumber that Craig and Heather purchased after their initial trip to Tambuchet, but the boards needed to be cut to the right lengths and needed serious sanding, then painting.

Also, Craig planned to install "skylights" which consisted of replacing one panel of corrugated tin on each roof with one panel of fiberglass so the kids could have some light AND close the door to the (completely uninsulated and unheated) classrooms in the winter when it's cold.

There were a number of things standing between us and a productive day on Monday. For starters, all we had to cut the boards were two craptastic hand saws. Clancy, Craig and I spent about 3 hours cutting 4 boards very badly on Monday in order to build a small shelf unit for the birthing center. Rom saw us working and kept shaking his head. He told us to stop, that he would help us on Tuesday. Tihar ended Sunday, but after the 4-day holiday they take a day to recover from the holiday so he wouldn't work on Monday. Gotta love that!

We kept asking Rom if he had a power saw. He was very cagey.

Tuesday morning we headed to the school, which is a solid 20 minute walk up the trail we took to Tatopani--there is no road--to measure benches so we could cut the boards, which were back at the birthing center where we had unloaded the truck. When we got to the school, we couldn't find the person with the keys. So we sat and had tea and waited. About 45 minutes later we were able to get into the school. We spent another 45 minutes measuring, and Craig checked out the skylight situation.

As we left, we were forced to stop for tea again. By the time we got back to the house, lunch was ready. After lunch, Rom got on the phone for a good hour.

A word here about Rom. Clancy decided that Rom was the Nepali Godfather, though Craig insisted he was more like Cheech. Combine the two and you've got a pretty good image. Rom in one of the warmest people I've ever met and he laughs a big, happy laugh a lot. Every night before and after dinner he would ply us with raksi, the local moonshine. I think it's distilled from millet, but the details were a bit sketchy. It is served with hot water and a little yak butter and it's delicious--quite reminiscent of sake. When he discovered that we drank alcohol, he was delighted. Every night he'd sidle up to one of us (usually me) and give a sidelong glance. "Raksi?" He'd ask, barely suppressing a grin. When we would say, "Ok, just a little," he would burst into gales of laughter, flagging Sujita and saying "raksi!" delightedly.

Rom also seems to know every single person in the Chilime Valley, and most of them seem to owe him favors. How did 26 boards, weighing well over 200 lbs., get from the birthing center up a mile and a half of trail to the school? The Nepali Godfather enlisted two guys who each strapped 13 boards to their head and headed off, rejecting all offers of help or payment and insisting that their loads were not heavy.

We started saying, "Rom's the Man!" and he quickly picked up on this, smiling broadly and repeating, "The Man," pointing his thumb to his chest.

While we were in Tambuchet, Rom was putting in a bid to work on a new hydroelectric plant in the region, so he was on the phone a lot.

When 3:00 Tuesday afternoon rolled around and we were finally able to get to work, Craig set to on the water heater and also on supplying light to the bathroom, which had none. In the meantime, Heather and Clancy started seeing patients in the clinic and I waited for Rom to saw and plane the boards so I could paint them.

I didn't have to wait long. There was no electric saw in the end, but Rom is a human circular saw. Those boards that Clancy, Craig and I struggled so much with? Rom whipped through them in under a minute each. There was, however, an electric planer. In order to plug it in, Rom needed an extension cord. No problem. Out came a length of plastic coated wires. As I watched in growing horror, he stripped the two sides of wire on one end and wrapped the bare wires around the prongs of the plug on the sander. He used electrical tape to secure the wires to the prongs. Then he stripped the other ends of the cord and approached the 3-prong socket with a metal file. Sticking the file into the third prong and pressing down, he inserted the bare wires directly into the socket holes.



At last, the moment many of you have been waiting for. The reappearance of the propane tanks, this time as saw horses:


At one point, when we finally thought we were moving along a good pace, Rom stopped what he was doing and came into the other room to watch me paint. I was happily and successfully using a camp stool as a stand for the boards, but Rom didn't approve. He stopped what he was doing to build me two wooden stands:


We did manage to finish all the boards by the end of the day, though half way through planing the last board, Rom took a 20 minute phone call leaving Clancy and me standing there with paintbrushes in hand, waiting.



When I left Tambuchet at 7:00 Wednesday morning, Rom and Karma rode with me as far as Dunche where Karma would get her citizenship card. When we stopped for the first set of 2 flat tires in Syabru Bensi, I told Karma I needed to find a bathroom. She looked around for Rom and, not seeing him anywhere, called him. He pointed her to a relative or friend's place. As we walked through town to get there, we spotted Rom standing on a pile of construction rubble shaking hands with a group of men.

When the bus pulled out half an hour later, Rom wasn't on it. "Where's your dad?" I asked Karma. "I don't know," she said, nonplussed. Sure enough, as we drove back through town to get on the main road we saw Rom shaking hands and waving goodbye to the men as he ran to hop on the moving bus. I waved at him as he got on and he pointed to himself, grinning, and said, "The Man!"