As I hinted in my previous journal, once I met the volunteers on their tour of south western Nepal, I decided to ride with them in their mini-bus for a couple days. They were headed back towards Nepalgunj, and I was genuinely interested to see how their play was received in various locations. The response from the audiences was overwhelmingly positive and made the volunteers feel great about what they were doing, and deservedly so I might add.

While I enjoyed the play and think that the work they are doing is great, the highlights of my trip with the volunteers probably came in the times in between the cities. While riding on their bus these were not human rights activists but a bunch of kids on a trip trying to have some fun. So despite the amount of energy expended on three to four performances of their drama everyday, these bus rides were not times to rest but the time where they let loose the most. A trip of several hours would be spent singing and dancing in the bus without a moment’s pause. They rocked out to Indian dance songs, they banged on drums, they sang and screamed along to the love songs and they also created their own traditional Nepali songs. The most common type of Nepali song from the hill regions have a sing and respond structure. Two groups of kids would form, usually boys and girls, and each side sings to the other. The second group has to react to what the first group sang. Between boys and girls there is usually a kind of flirtatious joking, but in this bus it took on more of an aggressive competitive form. The kids would generally sling insults at each other within the structure of the singing. A clever line or particularly cutting insult would send the whole bus into convulsive fits of laughter. I think I laughed almost as much as anyone despite the fact I had no idea what they were saying, their antics were enough to get the point across.

On our road trip we made a couple stops for sightseeing. We saw the Mahakali Bridge near Mahendranagar. This is a footbridge that is over 1.5 kilometers long. Before this bridge was built the residents of the area across the bridge had to go through India to reach other areas of Nepal. We also stopped our bus ride at the Karnali Bridge. The Karnali is one of the biggest and most important rivers of Nepal. It is spanned by a short but tall suspension bridge with only one suspension tower. This bridge is the pride of many southern Nepalis. We stopped for a long and amusing photo session at the bridge.

Once we had finally reached Nepalgunj and the performances had been completed it was time for me to part ways with the volunteers. It had been fun, perhaps too much fun for me. My voice was hoarse and I was exhausted…but it was all worth it for a couple days of pretending I was in high school again. Except this time I was one of the cool kids…