Cauliflower!
on Sarah G in Cambodia (Cambodia), 17/Feb/2011 03:28, 34 days ago
Cauliflower. It’s big here. It features in at least two of my daily meals. Usually roti bread (chapatti) and curried cauliflower for breakfast, a snack at work (noodles or mo-mo’s) then rice, dhal and curried cauliflower for dinner. It’s lucky I like cauliflower (although after four months I am not sure I will ever want to see one again).I went to the village for a couple of days last week...where we also ate cauliflower. On the 4 hour bus journey I was fortunate enough to be sat on the correct side; the side where I couldn’t see how few inches of road remained at the edge of a massive drop into an icy Himalayan torrent. But we reached our destination safely, ate rice...and cauliflower...as I proclaimed for the hundredth time about the enormous amount of rice Nepali people eat, Jiban said ominously ‘you will see why later’. And I did. The climb up to the village was roughly equal to four hours of step aerobics. It wasn’t unpleasant though, women from the village bounded down the hillside in their bright saris, some bouncing babies tied to their backs. At the top a view of the lovely village of Yanglakotand the snowy tops of the high himals peeked over the lower foothills to greet us. At 1832 meters were 488 metres higher than Ben Nevis.Our bags followed us up. Sexistly I had expected a male porter, but a smiling lady had arrived, shorter and skinner than me. Not only did she load my massive high tech rucksack with loads of technical bits for carrying it, into her wicker basket (ah the irony), she also loaded the bags of the other three staff, a bit of shopping from the local town and proceeded to do the 4 hours of step aerobics. Amazing! Throughout the week I saw people carrying inordinate amounts using wickets baskets - its balanced using strap on the top of the head and rested on the lower back. Nepalis say that if you pick up a water buffalo every day from the day it is born, you would be able to carry a fully grown one, after seeing that women with all our bags, there’s a part of me that wants to believe it!Our PHASE health workers can’t go 5 steps in the village with someone greeting them and wanting to chat, it’s obvious they are very well respected. Yanglakot is the LEAST remote of our health posts, others are up to 7 days walk from the road. Our young health workers (most of them are in their early 20’s) live in the villages for most of the year and deal with anything the communities might throw at them. Acting as doctor, nurse, midwife, counsellor, paramedic they are often the only health professional for miles around. In Pushbar’s house two bags sit, waiting, in the corner, one labelled ‘emergency’ the other ‘delivery’, she ready to go out any time of the night of day to help.Pushpar (the healthworker in Yanglakot) and meI managed to spend a little bit of time in school, we have some alternative schools here to allow children to catch up, the teachers are fantastically committed, I think resource wise they have less than a lot of the Cambodian schools I went to. The houses look so cute, and make for great scenery against the tiered paddy fields which now, as it dry season, contain potatoes and mustard. As they are made out of stone, it makes it cold inside.I was going to say it has got a lot warmer in Kathmandu, I take that back. We had a day of rain and now are back to being able to see our breath again. I got three sets of Nepal clothes yesterday, beautiful colours, lovely detail and made especially for me, but I won't be able to show them off until it get a bit warmer as I am usually found bundled up under several jumpers.Saturday tomorrow, our only day off in the 6 day working week, im hoping we can go to one of the temples on the hills around Kathmandu to get a good view of the valley.Just one last thing - this morning there was a woman at the bus stop with a goat on a lead?!