How was your day?

When I was in Australia, I was travelling alone for 3 months so I had some time to fill with… things, like, travel things that you do to pass your time and see something new.  At that time early on in my trip that became scuba diving, which is weird because before I was petrified of the ocean. Things touching me, or the unseen things that might touch me was a really big turnoff, but a two day course later I was certified and hooked.

This time around it’s yoga although yoga doesn’t have that external sense of exploration with it, certainly the ‘guided meditations’ have a more internally focused exploration.  I have done yoga before but not regularly and not with a legit yogi who has an interesting aura of space around him. 

Scratch it till it bleeds...

His assistant is a young man from the hills who works wakes up early to study Japanese, then works on the family farm, and afterwards comes down to work at the yoga place as well. The walk takes about 1 hour, and lately at night he says by 5:45pm its pretty dark at the point when he’s not quite home yet.  Our conversation started off with “so how was your day?” which of course turned into, “tell me more about your farm” because I am slightly obsessed.

When he started telling me details about the family farm I went straight into interview mode.  The farm consists of 2 buffalo, 1 cow, 3 goats.  They milk the cows and make curd, butter and milk, and are able to come down the hill every 2 or 3 days to sell the butter and curd.  He says the buffalo can produce up to 3 liters a day which is higher than I have heard any farmer yet.  They also produce a rotation of grains: rice, wheat and corn which they use 50% for food, 25% for feed and 25% they are able to sell. They also produce mixed vegetables but have no tunnels.  On 5 ruponis (31 ruponis to a hectare), they are able to sell excess vegetables as well.  I forgot to ask about alternative streams of income because it seemed really interesting that they were able to sell excess food but perhaps they have a small family.

Something I learned in class (at school, in yoga today my mind settled on what animal will I eat for dinner today?) is that even if a small farmer is considered ‘subsistence’ level for growing, often times they will allot a small part of land for higher value crops such as a special holiday rice, to sell it for more profit and they buy in the staple rice they need.  In that way, even subsistence farmers are usually engaged in the market in some fashion.  Perhaps for this family, they are selling curd and butter (higher value thanks to processing) and buying other household needs.

The young man was learning Japanese so he can go abroad and make a more profitable career.  When I hear that though, it makes me a little sad because I think, if he is smart enough to learn Japanese, as well as speak decent English, is there nothing he could do to have meaningful work here?

Further to that, I asked if they have tunnels specifically, because I know that has been a big income generator for many farmers because the plastic tunnels help stretch out the season.  He said their land is too shady for tunnels, and that really it only helps the season for tomatoes and not the other crops. He also had a few other intelligent comments such as the price being too high and whatnot, and again, I was like, why isn’t this kid doing something entrepreneurial?

Anyhow, these questions get into a huge discussion which end somewhere in the arena of geopolitics, so far too advanced for this little blog, but I do know that lots of young people (1500 per day) leave Nepal to work abroad, and many when they get there earn very little more than they would had they stayed home.  It’s the prestige that draws them, as well as the false stories told by huge companies that essentially profit by charging people to place them in jobs abroad, not unlike the coyotes that bring people up from South America, and not dissimilar to their shady dealings either.