Please, Mr. Postman...

As my second stop in Kathmandu has stretched from days to weeks, I find my sense of local identity has shifted gradually, beginning naturally enough with Interested Tourist, then falling gently into Affable Slacker, and now perhaps moving slightly again, now with no more excuses, shifting hopefully toward Foreign Volunteer.    It’s got a nice ring to it and it’s about time, really.  I’ve stayed too long in this pleasant community of derelicts, even if it was exactly what I needed when I began.

  

Today marked my second day in active pursuit of The Package, a Christmas Gift, sent with love but without a customs declaration, from The United States of America.   Navigating bureaucracy in a foreign language is often a disorienting experience, but personally I've found that if I endure it, keep coming back, keep trusting that at the end there is a prize waiting, a driver’s license, a trekking permit, or a Christmas Gift, that is sweeter from the time spent doubting that it would ever be surrendered by the unsmiling public servants charged with its protection, then I'm usually rewarded.  And besides, I really have no choice.   During my quest I found myself exchanging glances with other Westerners, silently sharing our frustrated acceptance of the indignities necessary to collect what was sent to us.  “This is insane.” We tell each other.  “I too would like to set fire to this building, but well, what can one do?"  After two days of being sent to every government office at both the Kathmandu Airport and the Central Post Office, days characterized by dimly lit rooms with packing material strewn across the floor, following men and women in circles from office to office, angry Nepali words regarding my package shouted into telephones which are then slammed back into their cradles, and form after form without a word of English, I was finally allowed to pay a sum of money so large (56.18 USD) that I wondered if local officials “wet their beaks” before sending it up the food chain, and triumphantly carry my prize back to Hotel Silver Home.   The prevailing feelings at the end of the bureaucratic funhouse are of relief and accomplishment rather than annoyance.  All the madness is forgotten.  All the moments of despair can now be reconstructed as amusing anecdotes.  Do I remember the part where I was near tears when they told me to go back to the airport?  Nope.  I don't recall.

Having achieved that small goal, I am free of this town and I have now alerted certain persons regarding the availability of my services.  If Kathmandu is where I end up volunteering, I think that will be fine, but I’d prefer to move on, perhaps to a smaller town, with fewer tourists and fewer hustlers.  It’s not a new observation that if one stays in a tourist town, one gets the tourist treatment, but it’s nonetheless true.  Every Nepali “friend” who seeks to insert himself into your day is suspicious; another in a long line of dead-eyed vacuum cleaner salesmen (“If I can have just a moment of your time….”) interested only in chiseling free a few rupees from the guy who he assumes has millions.  A friend tells me this is how Jay-Z must feel, which is probably true.  At the moment, I feel ashamed that I have had precious little interaction with Nepalis due to this hustler-mark dynamic and I hope that will change during my volunteer placement.  As always, I plan to keep you posted.