This is Marvin

My photo
Harichaur, Baglung, Nepal
Let's see, I'm currently 23 years old and I'm from Los Angeles, CA. I studied Latin American Studies at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), woot woot class of 2012!!! I let optimism and hope lead my way and I love it! I'm also currently a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Nepal as a health volunteer for the next 27 months, so I'm super excited for the next adventures awaiting to come!

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

My first blog in Nepal!!!


             To begin with, I would like to say that I hope all is well back in the states and I hope you all are getting ready to experience another Christmas and New Years along side with your loved ones. It’s interesting because these wonderful holidays seem so foreign to me seeing how in Nepal they are not celebrated, however, I definitely remember them and I send you all best wishes during this season of joy and love.

Well what can I say; the past four months in Nepal have been an emotional rollercoasters full of joy and excitement! I am so thankful and grateful to have had this opportunity provided by the Peace Corps right after closing the chapter of my college career. Let me start by saying how wonderful and magical Nepal is. Ever since I found out that I was coming to Nepal, many people never forgot to mention what a magical place that I’ll be heading too, and they were right! It’s great to wake up and smell the fresh and cool morning air and being witness to the sun gleaming through the mountains that surround me. Everywhere I go I can never make it on time because I’m always having small conversations with the members of my village. It’s funny because they all have the same question of where I am heading off to and everyday I always give them the same answer, yet I am always happy to stop and repeat myself. Before I continue on with my present day life, I would like to share some small pieces of the events that have occurred in the past four months.

During my Pre-Service Training (PST), I along with the other 19 volunteers where based in the Sindhupalchowk district where I was in the village called Chhap with three other trainees, Alex Clayton, Brandon Hugueley and Andrea Smith (I love them to death!). This was a great village; everyone was so great and welcoming to me and my other three Peace Corps trainees. At first, everyone was shocked that I look very similar to a Nepali due to my skin color, facial structure and thick black hair, which many times they could bet money that I die it black. I found it very amusing that I actually had to defend my natural hair color. In regards to my daily life, I had a very tight schedule because everyday except Saturday (the rest day) I had Nepali language class from 7am-9am, then after I ate my morning “daal bhaat” consisting of white rice, lentils and a variety of vegetables between 9am-11am. Between 11am-1pm I returned to another language class with a thirty-minute “chhiya” (tea) break after. Typically we had different workshops to attend after the tea break or at times we had time to plan for our upcoming projects. During PST, each cluster village had to conduct their very own project within our village as a practical. We conducted a village need assessment and with the help of the villagers, they decided that there was a need to introduce new techniques of agriculture; thankfully we had received an extensive three-day training on permagardening a few days before. The project went extremely well! Many villagers came out to see what we were up to and all I can say is that I had so much fun working together with them! So much can happen in three months of training. I met so many different people who warmly incorporated me into their family. My host family was just amazing; they are great people who I will forevermore be grateful for helping me navigate through training and through their cultural ways. I have never experienced a culture so foreign to me as the one that Nepal has, it’s very different from mine but at the same time it’s absolutely beautiful. I was lucky to experience two of the largest festivals in Nepal, “Dasine” and “Tihar”. Both festivals are filled with joy, music and an insane amount of food. It was great to see how the Nepali people celebrate these very important and family orientated festivals, I felt like I experienced Christmas twice. I never imagined how quickly I would be able to integrate into the community and earn their respect and love. It was great to walk through the road of my village and always find smiles on the way, whether it was the friendly shopkeeper, or one of my many “uncles” or my two favorite little girls who always followed me around. I could feel their love and interest in having us for the first time in their village. Thanks to this warm feeling, I was able to go through these three months with little trouble. Having this sensation truly energized and reinforced the reason of my stay in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer. Sadly, my time in Chhap came to an end and I can honestly say that saying goodbye to my training village must have been the toughest emotional moment that I had to endure in Nepal. The youth club of Chhap conducted a farewell program where practically the whole village showed up to say goodbye. I am horrible at saying goodbye because I get so attached and as I already imagined days before, I cried like a little baby. It was so hard seeing my host family members’ face filled with sadness as they said goodbye and to come back and visit them. Even though I was very sad because I was leaving, it was beautiful to feel the love of my host family, my fellow Peace Corps trainees and that of my entire village. Their tears were filled with joy and love, thus that gave me a breadth of fresh air as I got on the bus and sadly let my host mother’s hand go. 

From one adventure I embarked on the next one. But first I had to make a quick stop in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu where I had a weeklong training filled with many events. My fellow trainees and I solidified logistical matters, met our counterparts and conducted the long awaited swearing-in ceremony. Kathmandu itself is a rollercoaster, I passed my language exam and survived the mission of trying to cross the street, and the nerve rack was all worth it. I was able to bond a bit more with my fellow peers where we all got a chance to get to know each other a little bit more. After a long week, the moment of truth came where all 20 of us gathered at U.S ambassador of Nepal’s house. So many friends, high government officials and returned Peace Corps volunteers who have served in Nepal many years ago were present to witness our ceremony as we transitioned from trainees to official Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV). It was such an invigorating moment because those long 12 weeks of training finally paid off. Everyone was ecstatic and overjoyed due to the fact that the ceremony of Peace Corps Nepal 199 symbolized the official reentry of Peace Corps in Nepal after an eight years absence!

With the closing of the swearing-in ceremony, also came the close of my time in Kathmandu where I had to get ready to say goodbye to my fellow PCVs and for my two yearlong adventures waiting to begin. Again, the tears came running down my face as I said goodbye to great friends who were going off on a different path from mine and to the great Nepali staff that helped me throughout the way. Before I knew it I was off towards the district of Baglung where I would spend the next 24 months of my life working as a health volunteer in order to implement the food-security project I was assigned.

Now forwarding back to the present, I am currently in Harichaur, Baglung in a village called Kaoleni. My village is great and my new host family is very nice and welcoming. I have one host mother and father and two host little sisters and little brothers. I have a wonderful scenic view of the mountains that surround me and a beautiful river and waterfall not too far from me. There is no internet in my village which is completely fine as I have grown to not need it and if anything I can walk an hour to the next city and access it. In regards to my professional life, I work in the Primary Health Center (PHC), one of the three in the entire district.  I am so thankful to be in the position that I am because there were only three positions working in PHCs and I was fortunate to get one due to my past experiences and apparently my ability to network with others. My village is located about 20 minute uphill walk from Harichaur (the PHC’s location) where I work with a energetic staff. As of now things are a little bit slow, but things are picking up. I am responsible for working with the Female Community Health Volunteers who make up 19 wonderful women that I have already met and schedule dates and times where I will go and take part of their mothers’ group monthly meetings. For now, I am an observer who has small inputs hear and there, but once my Nepali langue increases a bit more I will be facilitating these meetings and providing training to all of the mothers’ group of each of the 9 wards in the Harichaur “county”. I will also be responsible in monitoring the growth of underweight children and incorporate preventative measures to decrease the number of children who suffer from malnourishment. Moreover, I am very lucky to have been placed in a site with another volunteer who is an agriculture volunteer. It’s great to have someone who I can talk to over a cup of tea when things get a little bit tough. I am very excited to have her hear because there is so much potential to have a greater impact with two volunteers who have different experiences to bring to the table.  I know that having a fellow PCV will provide me with a different Peace Corps experience, but nonetheless, a great one! We even already had requests to help the community with teaching English and to show them the technique of permagardening. I have a feeling that the next two years of my life will be filled with many adventures that will help me grow both professionally and personally. My goal as a volunteer is not be a great one but to have a meaningful and life lasting impact on the lives of my fellow villagers. Thus, I am committed to give 110% of my energy in working alongside with my village to help them find the path that will allow them to have a meaningful life through projects or even simple conversations over a cup of tea. In this path, I also hope to learn something myself, something that I will treasure and carry with me for the rest of my life. I hope to experience some of that Nepali magic that everyone talks about.

In short, I am only about four weeks in my service and thus far everything is going great! I love the food, the rich Nepali culture, music, and outstanding scenery, but especially the loving and caring Nepali people. There are way to many moments to write about but I hope that I have covered some of the most important ones and I hope that with this snippet of information you all have an idea of what is going on in my present life. Once again, from across the world, I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and happy new year filled with optimism and hope for a promising new journey.

With much love,

Marvin Gamez-Crespin a.k.a Kamal
(it’s my Nepali name meaning lotus the flower)