It has not taken me long to settle into somewhat of a routine here in Nepalgunj. Days start and end early, I am up by 630 or 7, and in bed by 9 most nights. While my bed is essentially a piece of plywood with four legs and a blanket on top, I usually manage to spend ten hours a night in my bed, even if I cannot sleep for much of that time.

My room is on the second floor of a large family house. My room is spacious yet very nearly empty. I have my bed, a plastic chair and a plastic table and most importantly a ceiling fan. The house itself is much nicer than my room. Situated some five minutes walking from the mess of Sukhet Road, it is essentially in a village separate from the city and is surrounded by a few similar houses, a police barracks, and green fields stretching for miles. The roof of the house faces out to the fields and several small lakes used for irrigation. Looking out from the roof in the evenings there are always children swimming and playing cricket while massive water buffalo wander lazily through the fields, and a trumpet calling the police to bed. This halcyon setting is always refreshing after fighting my way through the crowds and the noise of Nepalgunj.

For the most part I leave the house for three reasons; to go to work, to go to the internet café or to eat. For work my colleague Krishna picks me up everyday on his motorcycle and we try in vain to converse while weaving through traffic over the mile of road between my house and office. My local Cyber Cafe is about a ten minute walk from the house. Each time I enter I simply say “Internet?” I either get a nod or a shrug of the shoulders and a “No connection.” About half of the times I walk to the internet cafe there is no connection and I have to forgo using the internet that day. When I go to eat I must walk another five to ten minutes past the internet café. I have been frequenting two establishments, Siddhartha Cottage and the Kitchen Hut. Both have English menus and great north Indian food. For $2 I eat enough for two meals, which is important as people do not eat lunch here.

My evenings are spent reading or typing back at the house. I have been asked to return home before nightfall (around 730) for my own safety, and so far I have obeyed. So I wander home and usually chat for a minute with Pinky before I head to my room to pick up a book. Pinky is the daughter of my landlords and one of the several characters I see around the house.

Pinky (an English name chosen for school, proving once again that if left to choose their own names children make a mess of it) is a high school age girl who speaks good English. For this reason she is the family spokesperson, if they want to send me a cup of tea, ask why I came home so late or tell me that I hung my laundry incorrectly they send Pinky to tell me. Generally she is always chiding or advising me, so my mother figure in the house is a 15 year old.

Pinky’s mother is a large woman with a large voice. She calls the shots and is clearly the one dictating to Pinky my lecture for the day. Her husband is a more quiet man who I usually only meet when he decides to drop into my room to try and fix something. Most recently he came in wearing a towel and a tank top but carrying a hammer. He beat at the lock on my door for a full minute and then gave me an emphatic “OK.” He left clearly feeling pleased with himself. Whether it was his hard work or excellent English that pleased him I do not know.

Pinky also has an older brother, who is clearly the family screw up. Portly with curly hair and a pleasant attitude that seems to say “You can tell me but I probably will not listen”, most of the time when I see him he is laying on the floor sleeping in front of the TV. While there are other aunts, sisters and uncles I have seen they are shadowy figures who just kind of watch me from behind half closed doors.

The final two characters that show up from time to time are great grandmother and grandson. One of the shadow aunts has a toddler who spends most of his time stumbling around the house with great grandmother chasing him. Best of friends, they can be heard babbling together for most of the day. These two share a fascination with the new foreigner in the house. Both find me to be the funniest thing they have ever seen, and cannot even look at me without laughing. As I am so amusing, they often play the burst into the foreigner’s room and laugh at him game. I will be reading, writing or sleeping and suddenly the door will creep open. Within seconds the room is abound with the hilarity of the situation. A foreigner reading a book! How funny is that! A good three or four minutes of laughing follows until their game gets tiresome and they retreat back to the kitchen.

I could not ask for a nicer family to live with and the location is ideal. The positives just about make up for have a stone slab for a bed, the electricity going out 10 times a day and the water being ice cold. Although if you ask again at 10 pm when the fan shuts off and my back hurts…the answer might not be the same…or maybe it would be.