Star-Struck

Saturday night was by far the coolest night of my entire life. Hands down.

I was planning to do just sit on my balcony and read, because I was pretty exhausted. Aryo - "Prince" boy - and another guy came by later in the afternoon to say hello, and convinced me to have a beer with them- just for a minute. Robul- this other guy - is in his early thirties and looks like Bob Marley plus Malcolm X.

Robul is actually an Eritrean photographer employed by the UN to document the Nepalese elections (this past April), disarmament of the Maoists, and ousting of King Gayendra and the last of the Nepalese monarchy. He stays in Nepal for about a year and then moves on, he's covered Ethiopia, Eritrea, Australia, Libya, Somalia, and on and on. He is bidding to go to Iraq around the same time I leave for home.

We went to hang out on the porch of his flat in Thamel, and his friend came over, an Australian-born woman in her 40s, who also works for the UNIM (I think United Nations Instance Monitoring) doing radio programs. She also has worked in every corner of the world doing god knows what. These people are absolutely facsinating.

Listening to them talk (with only candles because the electricity was out- as always in Kathmandu) was very humbling. The two of them with Aryo -who is Nepalese, but has also lived Australia and China for decades, was incredible. I can't begin to describe how it felt to be on this porch in downtown Nepal with people from Kathmandu, Eritrea, Australia (and I guess Texas) who work for the UN, have lived all over the world, have seen and lived in places we only hear of through National Geographic. And the cool thing was, they acted totally normal, I mean SO nice and interested in everyone else. They were all super attentive to each other (kind of a big thing here) and just easy going, happy to be there, even though none of them really knew each other- and definitely didn't know me. And the things they talked about, like we would talk about the weather... I mean they spoke easily about news leaks in disarmament plans, and the Maoists stealing keys to military lockers, and the Chinese cultural contingent in Ethiopia, and how that impacted revolution in Kenya.


I felt so so young.


But they talked in such a personal manner about these, what is for me "text book subjects." They had ownership of the conversation because that is where they lived and saw and felt and breathed. Like when we speak of the new construction on the science hall in Sewanee (new classroom additions), I have ownership of it because I have lived and breathed and seen and smelled all the stages of that construction. I have actually seen the impact of that on the people of Sewanee, and felt the impact on myself. I knew Sewanee before the construction, and I will know Sewanee after the construction.

That was the way they were able to talk about "foreign policy" "genocide" "religious war" "taliban" "de- colonization" "globalization" "living in the global south" (global south being developing world) and on and on.



I felt star-struck. All I wanted to do was listen to them talk forever.



But, the fun didn't stop there. We left Robul's flat and went to a really small bar with a funk-jazz band downstairs and the European soccer cup game (don't know) upstairs. Again, ridiculous nationalities everywhere. All these people were from 24-34, super hip young kids from Switzerland, Jamaica, UK, Venezuela, and on and on talking about soccer, the UN, King Gayendra, the latest dope, whatever.



Again.. I didn't think it could get any better and it did. I had kept on begging to go home, because I was trying to "stick to my original plan" of reading Chronicles of Narnia -alone- on my balcony. Thankfully, in retrospect, Aryo basically told me to shut the **** up, stop being American, and have some fun.

So, we went to another bar - absolutely the coolest few hours of my life. This bar was all outside in a big garden with a river running through it, and crazy fountains and stuff everywhere. They had a really big live band set up, a really funky number from Australia and New Zealand. I really liked the music, sounded more like a jammy scene I was used to rather than the Hindi techno that is going on everywhere. The bar tenders were Nepalese, the DJ was from Gabon, two beautiful ladies from Phillipines, an older man from Granada (we spoke spanish and I felt so cultured after not knowing a thing in nepalese) Robul from Eritrea, two women from France, one lady from Kenya and on and on... and those were only the people I met...

It was so cool to see the Filipinos dancing their native Hawaiian-looking hippy dances to the New Zealand funk, right beside the Kenyan ladies' native dance with all the arms and turning - again to the New Zealand funk.

And all of these people were doing SUCH cool things in Kathmandu and Nepal- mission work, sustainable development, the British Examiner, integrated English for elementary education, United Nations monitoring, Morroccan Ambassador.... and on and on.....

Again I was star-struck.



I didn't dare to take any pictures, So, no pics to post from that night, but maybe soon.