When the Light Returns

With the aid of ear plugs and an eye mask to block out the 5:30am sunlight, I had a fairly decent sleep.

It wasn’t this though that was bringing joy upon getting up, it was the high winds and promise of rain.

Finally, I thought, the skies might clear from the haze that has covered Nepal the entire time I have been here and I will see mountains and sky. We were all doing our own version of a happy dance.

After eating, I thought I would leave early to explore before heading to school with the plan to go to Lakeside. As soon as I stepped through the gate onto the street however, the rain started and by the time I had reached the main road, the most ferocious wind had whipped up.

Items started being blown away from shops and I watched wide-eyed as a plastic water tank fell from a shop and start rolling down the road. Very quickly, shopkeepers pulled down roller doors to protect against the wind.

It was so bad, I couldn’t walk forward and had to take shelter against a shop. Just as quickly as it started, it stopped. With the wind and the rain, I decided I would wait to visit Lakeside to hopefully see it when it was clear skies.

It was delightful to be able to walk in cooler air and to be able to see colour in the surroundings.

I walked to the centre point of Pokhara, known as Zero KM. Every location away from Pokhara is measured from this point.

Robert, the volunteer who finished yesterday, showed me a restaurant he recommended called Y5 Restaurant, so I decided to stop there for lunch. I had  the most delicious mushroom chilli  followed by a honey latte.

After lunch, I still had time to explore, and I found myself wandering down to a river I could see on the map. As I walked, this was one of the most chaotic areas of Pokhara, with motorbikes coming toward me on the footpath, men yelling for my attention to choose their bus and cars, trucks, scooters and pedestrians all trying to make their way forward without any road rules at all.

The river turned out to be a deep ravine with a waterfall. Trying to ignore the rubbish in the water, I stood on the bridge above, also trying to make sure I didn’t make a wrong move backwards into the traffic while I took photos.

That all changed when I looked up. Suddenly, I had my first sight of the Annapurna range and I actually heard myself gasp out loud. Even from a distance and with clouds still covering it, it was breathtaking.

School was soon starting, but prior to this, I needed to find a stationery store to buy some board games to share with the children at the school. One of my dearest friends tragically lost her son James 10 years ago and just prior to his death, he came to Nepal, also volunteering in Pokhara.

To honour and remember James, Mirella gave me some money to buy something for the children at the orphanage he volunteered at. Unfortunately, the home where James volunteered no longer had children, so Mirella kindly offered for me to buy something for the children of where I was volunteering.

Knowing how little they have and often don’t have food, I bought some board games and fruit, including mangoes, a favourite of the children. The teachers write all donations of items into a book and were delighted with the games, telling me they’d once had Ludo, but it had been stolen.

Without Robert, we needed a class exercise to start things off, so I found some ESL sites that provided some tips and came up with the below:

I had each child stand up and choose an adjective for each sentence. After this, I had them in pairs to describe each other’s clothing. This kept them going for nearly 90mins before they became bored and we had to quickly move on.

At this point, they broke up into groups, each group choosing a different game. I had taught them a memory game yesterday, and a number of girls wanted to play this again. When we sat in the circle however, one of the girls wanted to play truth or dare.

The two other volunteers and I all looked at each other in horror, until the girls provided us an example of a question, which was as simple as “do you have brothers?” The girls quickly took advantage of us though, asking if we had boyfriends, and other more personal questions.

I managed to extricate myself out of that and went and sat with some boys playing Cara Board. It is essentially a flat board they had on the floor, with white and black disks, a yellow power disk and four open holes in each corner. The object is to flick the yellow disk with your finger to hit the white or black disks into the holes, kindof like a flat version of snooker.

The boys precision was amazing. When they asked me to play, I was appalingly bad, which is why when I finally got a disk in that won the game, they jumped up cheering loudly.

Soon it was time to go and I had to say goodbye to them all. When they realised it was my last day, it took me another 10mins to leave as they were all giving me warm hugs. They had all been so enthusiastic in everything, I was sad to be leaving them even after just a couple of days.

Walking out the door, I was rewarded with an even better view of the mountains.

After taking in my fill of the view, I decided to test my skills on catching the bus home. Pramilla had told me any of the vans would go past my stop or the green buses would too.

So it was with confidence, I climbed onto a green bus, that was unusually empty and quite decorative.

I discovered I was on the wrong bus after two stops and the driver held out his arm to hold up the correct bus for me to swap into.

It felt good to get home a bit earlier, especially being able to facetime Riley for a bit and to finally see the view from my rooftop terrace.

What a difference a bit of rain can make.