Not a Creature Was Stirring
Print this Page- By Amy Marshall Clark
- Country: Nepal
- Dates of Service: 2003–2004
Holidays—that is, holidays familiar and meaningful to me in the United States—during Peace Corps service can make for strange times. In many countries, the most important traditional day on a Volunteer's calendar is just a normal workday for everyone else. However, just as we're here to live in and learn about another culture, it is also part of our job to show our Nepali friends and neighbors something about where we come from. What follows is an extract from a letter that I wrote to my friends and family in the United States during the Christmas holidays in 2003. I describe the efforts of the Peace Corps community in my city to share the holidays with each other and the community, as well as some details about the new function of my home as a wintertime retreat for some of the city's smaller, hairier inhabitants.
Warmest holiday greetings to you from my city in Nepal! I hope that this letter finds you well and enjoying the season in the company of good friends and loved ones. I wanted to let you know that I am thinking about all of you at this time—as always—and that I hope that you are also remembering me! After a fantastic recent whirlwind of visits from family and friends, I am settling down again, but right now, missing everyone from home is one of the more pressing things on my mind. So, please know that you are with me and that I am missing you.
Greg and I are trying our best to bring the season's spirit to our community, and we are making a holiday for ourselves despite some of the obvious obstacles. These include the facts that Nepal is a Hindu kingdom and that the biggest festivals around here are Dasain and Tihar, which passed a couple of months ago. It isn't exactly "the season"; however, everybody is into the ideas of giving, sharing, and having a good time, so it hasn't been that difficult making space for a new celebration within this community, especially in a place where we were so welcomed and included for the Hindu festivals. Truthfully, after Dasain and Tihar, I felt more of a connection between Nepal and the United States than I had before. Dasain, among other things, is a holiday of great feasting with family and loved ones. No matter how far apart your family lives, and even if it involves several days of walking muddy paths up and down hills through thick jungle, families come together for Dasain. And, just as you will see empty lots in the United States full of Christmas trees for sale around that holiday, during Dasain, all of the neighborhood spaces fill up with chhangra. These aren't trees but goats—large, longhaired goats from the hills. Families will come to the chhangra lot together, searching for just the right animal to make their family feast. Unlike a Christmas tree lot, of course, what you buy at the chhangra lot is still very much alive, very pungent, and in need of shelter and food for several days before it is time to cook it.
Tihar, which falls a few weeks after Dasain, also bears resemblance to festivals and holidays in the United States, in that it brings families and communities together. Family homes and businesses all string up colored lights around the house, and neighborhoods work together to create beautiful light displays with everything from tiny candles to flashy bulbs. As this is a festival for the goddess of wealth, Laxmi, families make offerings at neighborhood temples and household shrines, and they bring gifts to each other along with wishes for a prosperous life. Not only do family members bless one another, but also they offer thanks to all of the many animals that serve their lives, including the crows that bring the news of the world, the dogs that protect the household, and the cows that provide sustenance as well as wealth. In all of this, blessing the living things that share your life is very important, so, when neighborhood children come around in large packs singing Tihar songs outside the door, it is customary to share some sweets and money with them before they go. Seeing these festivals in Nepal, I learned that many holidays celebrate the same ideas of togetherness, community, and festivity.
Now it is time for Christmas, which all of the Volunteers in my city love to celebrate. And, actually, there are some features of our city that are really working for us as we are planning our merriment. For instance, the poinsettias are in full bloom and have been for some weeks now. They are huge and grow everywhere—at our schools, in our front garden, by the side of the road. Having always thought of them as simple potted plants that serve their purpose for a couple of weeks in December, I am really happy to see them growing wild in pink, red, and white hues. To add to that, we've been reminded of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" on a nightly basis, most specifically referring to the part that goes, "…not a creature was stirring…."
Because, in our derra (apartment), actually, they are stirring. We've had some small—and some not-so-small—furry friends scurrying around here as of late. The method of extermination over here is to lure rats into a live trap; you set it up (we like to use old Slim Jims as our bait), go to bed, and wait for the sound of a snap. From there, to discourage return visits, you have to do the unfortunate deed of drowning them in a bucket. We really hate it, too, but just haven't really felt like there are any feasible options. Anyway, having caught one, we woke up and saw our friend in the trap. He was pretty large and mostly unpleasant, so we took him straightaway to the big blue bucket of water that was waiting in the bathroom. Figuring we'd done the job, we turned off the lights and went to bed. What followed was kind of like a James Bond movie. The hero gets caught by the villain and is put into an elaborate death mechanism. The villain, assuming that his scheme is beyond failure, walks away with a chuckle to allow Bond a private dying moment, and that's when the good guy's escape inevitably occurs. I guess in this scenario we're the evil ones because we woke up in the morning to find that the door of the trap had been muscled aside, and in that huge bucket of water, no rat! He had pulled some amazing Houdini-like getaway. Fortunately, we escaped the guilt of killing a fellow creature, and perhaps he's learned a lesson, as the scurrying has since been curtailed.
So, with the creatures stirring and the flowers blooming, we're coming into the Christmas spirit. Greg and I have arranged to take both Christmas and Boxing Day off, the request most graciously accepted by the administrations in our schools. And we'll be celebrating! We've spent the last five days trying to round up low-cost or no-cost treats, and we've done a pretty good job for our friends at school. They'll each be receiving a bundle of homemade colored chalk (all of the colored powder used for tikkas and for playing Holi is really helpful for this) and a plate of gingersnaps. It took us a few days to perfect the recipe for them and to bake scores of them in our stovetop Miracle Oven, which is basically just a Bundt pan set on top of an iron ring. To be honest, I'll be quite happy never to see a gingersnap again. I was never overly fond of them in the first place, and after a few bungled batches that included way too much ginger and a very high oven that burned the cookies to a crisp, I despaired of ever getting anything edible to the school staff. By some miracle, and boosted by my husband's persistence, we finally got them right, though they were gone so quickly we didn't really even get to taste them.
For Christmas Day we think there will probably be some folks at our house in the morning, as they'll have come in from the village for the previous evening's party with our Nepali friends. We'll exchange small gifts, visit with the family, and then cook. Mike's Restaurant down by the lake, which put on a wonderful spread for Thanksgiving, is having a Christmas dinner, but we've opted to have a home-cooked meal instead, though it will probably take all day to manage fried chicken, biscuits, beans, and gravy for six people. What can you do with only two burners? Still, the real point is to spend some time celebrating together, and we've got a whole day to do that. Also, for this time when we're all taking a break together, it should be a lot of fun to partake in some American food. We have come to love the daal bhat (rice, lentil soup, and vegetable curry) for sure, but once in a while it is magnificent to have a taste of home. This also helps when you know that your family is all together at home right now, most likely eating turkey and pie with whipped cream.
After that, we might wander up to the nearby Buddhist monastery, which is decked out for the Tibetan new year in hundreds of bright lights, which we can see from our home. This monastery on the hill is already a huge and colorful building; with the lights festooning it, it is impossible not to stare at its beauty. On the way home, we're going caroling in the neighborhood as a group of nine, and we're hoping that the little kids who so cheerfully shout their hellos at us every day, and who came to our doorstep singing at Tihar, will come out to share the fun and accept some tiny gifts that we brought over from the States so many months ago. We've already been doing Internet searches to find the lyrics to the best children's carols and wintertime tunes. The idea isn't to convert anyone to celebrating a Christian holiday, of course; after all, these people have a complex and beautiful religion of their own. Therefore, we mean this to be more of a celebration of happiness and togetherness, just as our community has shown us over the past year.
Without a doubt, though, we're doing our best to share a little of our culture over here and to remind ourselves of how special the season is.
As it turned out, the caroling was more successful than we'd ever dreamed. Whole families came out of their houses to watch us singing by candlelight, even though we sounded dreadful as a group and kept forgetting the lines to the kids' songs like "Rudolph" and, especially, "Frosty the Snowman." It didn't seem to matter to our listeners; they clapped, sang along, laughed out loud. When we gave out the gifts, just some small plastic cars and balls with some sweets, the children were beside themselves, running around and shouting. Perhaps we were a little too successful, as it is now June and some of them still ask us every single day for a car or a piece of candy. Well, pretty much everything we do here involves some kind of cultural mishap. Still, it is sweet to know that across religions and cultures, friends and strangers alike love to be included in a celebration of togetherness and sharing.
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