It's been an eventful week. Last Sunday I attended the wedding of a co-worker. It was a civil ceremony (as both were divorced), and took place at a community centre. Civil weddings are a new thing in Nepal, and most of the Nepali's had also never attended one. There was a short ceremony, followed by food, music and dancing. There was quite the thunderstorm going on at the time, so just as the musicians were getting going, the power went out. The music stopped, and the lights went out, but everyone continued eating their dinner to the light of all the cellphones that suddenly appeared out of pockets and purses. There was a roar of approval when the lights came back on 15 mins later, and the dancing got underway. On Monday, I arrived at work to hear that the body of Shamsher, one of the hospital administrative assistants, had been found in the river. He had disappeared the week before, and family and hospital staff had been searching for him for several days. Suicide had been suspected, but since his body hadn't been found, people were beginning to hope that he had just staged his death and disappeared. So it was a shock when the body was found, and everyone was feeling very bewildered and sad. We waited around all morning for the postmortem to be done, and then the funeral service was that afternoon. We all gathered down by the same river, where the Christian burial ground is, and after a short service he was lowered in. He was well liked at the hospital, had two small sons, and was a leader in the church. It was so very sad, and it will take everyone awhile to come to terms with the tragedy of it all.
It was a blessing for the staff that the rest of the week was off. This week Dashain, the largest festival in the Nepali year, has been celebrated. I'll talk more about that in another blog, but the holiday came a good time for everyone to have a bit of a break from the stress surrounding Shamsher's disappearance and death. Tomorrow will be my first day back at work, and I wonder what the mood of the hospital will be.
I have just got home today (Sunday) from another wedding. This time a Christian Nepali wedding. It was the son of the director of the Nepali side of INF, and so it was a gala affair. There were rumoured to be over 1000 people there, and there certainly were lots. The church was packed out (and when everyone's sitting on the floor, you can pack a lot of folks in) and there were chairs set up outside, and they could watch it from the 
live videotaping. The wedding was quite similar to a Christian wedding back at home, but the bride wore the traditional beautiful red Nepali wedding sari. And they did all of the program during the service – speeches and everything. This meant that afterwards, we could pick a line – either for food or to greet the bride and groom – and get on with celebrating. There were vats of delicious food prepared, and people there from all over. It was nice to have some of the INF ex-pats from Kathmandu there, and for those who had been working in INF for a long time it was like one huge reunion with Nepali friends they hadn't seen in years. This is me with Joyce on the right.
To both weddings I wore my sari, again getting help from Nepalis to put it on properly. Today was particularly fun, as Roz was in town for the occasion. Dilmaya (in the middle of Roz and I below), the woman who helps out in our house, come before the wedding to help put on the saris. She came with her son and friend (and her kids), and we had a bit of a sari-putting-on party, then piled into one taxi (all 7 of us) to go to the wedding.
No comments:
Post a Comment