NEPAL 8: Earthquakes & Death

“Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.” ~ Bill Cosby

Our faces lit up as our hotel came into view.  It had quickly become home, or at the least our home base.  We were greeted with sincere excitement and it felt good to be welcomed back, and even better to be just minutes away from eating.  We filled our bellies, threw our bags on the floor of our room, took hot showers, and put on clean clothes.  The bed beckoned us; we fell gladly into its grasp. 

Justin began to read, and we slipped deeply into a world created by words, familiar names, and far off places.  I felt a tiny tickle on my arm and another on my leg.  I sat up and began to look around.  Teeny ants were crawling all around.  I saw one on the sheets, another on the wall . . . Justin stopped reading and checked his watch, “A little before midnight.”  He watched me get up slowly, put on my headlamp, and walk to the edge of the bed.  “What are you doing?” he asked amused.  “Well, my dear Whatson, where there is one ant; there is a line.  Where there is a line . . .” I trailed off. “Ah ha!” I exclaimed pleased with myself.  “There are hundreds of them! If not thousands!” He couldn’t see any ants and thought I might be losing it.  “Go complain, and tell them we need a new room.  This one is infested!” I lifted up a bag of books and watched them drop out like crumbs.  He stood up, and glanced around unconvinced.  He looked at the wall and saw a strange root like vine creeping down.  He examined it closely, and discovered it wasn’t a root at all but a tunnel full of disgusting bugs.  “There are bugs coming out of this thing!” he cried out as he smacked part of the tunnel down.  “I want to go on record that I am complaining because of these things, not because of the ants!” he shouted back as he went downstairs. 

Soon he returned and let me know that we could have a new room.  I barely heard what he said; I was on a mission, and I had nearly carried it out.  I must have been a sight crouched over the floor, headlamp on my forehead lit up in full strength,  face low to the ground eyes squinting, eyebrows furrowed, murmuring undistinguishable words, and pointing towards an invisible line that I traced about the room.  I stood slowly as though awaking from a dream, shook off my stupor, and began to show him the trail that went from under our dresser, across the floor, over, on and around our bags – apparently we had interrupted their line by placing our backpacks on top of it – they continued up the wall, across the ceiling over our bed, and then down the wall again into the floorboard.  “Good job detective.” He teased.  “The guy at the front desk gave me a funny look when I told him we had ants in our room, but then he began to understand how serious it was when he saw me flicking them off my arm.  They are coming to spray, too.”  “Ok, but I want all of our stuff out of the room before he sprays.  I want to be out too.” I informed him.  Justin left the room and came back with a security guard.  The guard was adorned in a faded blue uniform, and a decorated hat resembling that of an old army commander.  His face was a mass of tanned wrinkles that refused to smile, and he came armed with two cans of bug spray.  The guard began spraying the room; I covered my mouth and ran out.  “I thought I said I wanted all of our stuff out!?!”  “Oh, I thought you said you wanted the stuff in the room while he sprayed.” He looked at me disappointed in the misunderstanding, and ran back into the room now filled with chemicals.  He began dragging our stuff out, and I followed suit.  We ran out coughing and choking on the harsh air. 

Daily we watch people from around the world communicating in a language not their own.  The Nepalese speak English to foreigners and, whether they are French, Arabic or Hungarian, they respond in English.  These complete strangers manage to successfully communicate their wishes to one another.   “How are there not more misunderstandings?” we mused one day.  “They barely speak English and yet they are effective in communicating what they want.”  This observance came to my remembrance and I shook my head.  Justin and I supposedly speak the same language to one another and have known each other for years and yet we constantly misunderstand each other.  It is a mystery.

The next morning Justin woke up with a sore throat.  It was unlike him to lie in bed all day and sleep.  I tried to make Justin as comfortable as possible.  “It must have been from breathing in all those chemicals.” He complained.  I wrote, watched a little television and listened to the news – an important political figure had just been shot only minutes from our hotel.  We decided to go out for a walk to get some ‘fresh’ air, and grab a bite to eat.  We needed to get to bed soon because we had to submit our visa paperwork to the Thai embassy early in the morning.  We were discussing the recent news as we returned to our room.  An airplane had crashed in Kathmandu only the day before.  A small 20 person plane had gone down and everyone had died.  “That could have been a plane from Lukla.” I said grimly.  “We could have been on that plane if we had continued trekking.  The friends we made on the trail could have been on that plane.”  He only nodded in response and sat on the bed.  I thought Justin was shaking the bed by nervously bouncing his leg up and down, but when I looked over he was sitting perfectly still, and yet the bed continued to shake.  He turned his head slowly towards me . . .

The light above us began to sway, the bed rocked back and forth, the furniture in the room shook violently.  Our eyes widened, the whites of our eyes shown wild with excitement. “Earthquake!” we exclaimed as wide smiles swept across our face.  Our room was on the third floor and the hotel began to shake and sway violently; people were running outside into the courtyard.  We sat calmly on the bed enjoying the rush of the moment, and then decided it was probably a good idea to get under something.  Our elementary school emergency practices leapt to our memory.  I curled up in a ball while smashing myself under the desk, interlocked my fingers and put them around my neck.  Justin jumped inside the armoire and shut the door.  Our voices were muffled as we talked to one another through the furniture.  Our energized laughs were barely audible against the commotion.  After a few minutes the earth came to rest, and we peeked out from our protective transient dwellings.  The light was still swaying, but everything seemed to be calm for the moment.  Later we heard that it was the largest earthquake that Nepal had had in over two decades; a whole 6.8 on the Richter scale.  Why is it that natural disasters, or disaster in general, seem to follow us wherever we go? A shooting – one dead, a plane crash – 20 killed, and an earthquake – 6 dead.  The death toll was mounting, but was only to get higher in the days to come.