Waking up in Nepal

It is hard to believe that a country could survive on 8 or 9 hours of electricity a day. Hey, it’s hard to believe that OUR family could survive 8 or 9 hours a day without electricity, but here we are doing just that! Yesterday for example, the power was on from 11:00a.m.-3:oop.m., that’s four hours. I decided to bake some cookies while we had power. I couldn’t double the recipe because I just wasn’t sure if the white powder in the little bag that I bought was baking powder (which I had), or baking soda. I asked Momita to read the Nepali writing and all it said was Ram Store and their phone number ( the store closest). So the cookies would be an experiment. As it turned out, the powder was baking soda. They turned out pretty well. They disappeared quickly, as you can imagine one batch would. Last week when I was baking Will’s birthday cakes, Shryjana(?) dropped by. She had never seen a cake being made and had no idea what went into them. She had also never seen a cookbook. I asked her if they (her family) had an oven, and the answer was no. It dawned on me that most people here do not have ovens! I now understand how one can do without an oven or power. I’ve learned to do everything with two gas burners. I make toast in a skillet (it’s really good too, by the way). Last night we had steak w/onions and peppers, french fries, and rolls. I made spaghetti w/corn and fresh green beans on Monday. Tuesday night was chicken stir-fry with rice. I have finally come up with 6 meals to rotate. I’ve made soup for lunch several times including potato, chicken noodle, and vegetable beef (yes, beef, shhhhh!). I think we have stopped losing weight! Back to the power, or lack thereof. It came on last night for around 3 hours. We’re not sure because we were asleep. Concerning meat safety, we only buy enough for a day or two. It seems to stay frozen very hard in the store freezers, since they are the deep chest type. The ones at the two local stores we shop at most, are the size you would see back home for ice cream bars, very small. The local people don’t eat meat like we do. I can see why. It is VERY expensive to them. The stores keep a very small supply of meat and sometimes they run out of it. In spite of everything, life goes on here. The buildings have lots of windows that take advantage of daylight. Many times I forget to turn the light on even when we have power. I guess this goes to show you that one doesn’t need what one doesn’t have. But truly, I do need hot water! I’ll write more about the contrasts here later.

From the Eastern hemisphere,

Liz