The tenth is in!

...the tenth visa, that is. Four to India, four for Nepal, and two for Brazil. (Just Spencer and Miller will be going on a cruise up the Amazon with extended Ruppe family. I didn't want to risk my health before the big Asian adventure - not to mention an already maxed-out travel budget - and Eli remained faithful to his skateboard and friends. Or something like that.)

The last four visas I got were from the Embassy of Nepal. This is located in a little townhouse on Leroy Ave., near Dupont Circle. Arrived Monday morning, parked on Connecticut (Leroy was a 'one way' preventing a right turn), and put all my silver in the parking meter - sixty cents - which yielded me a grand total of eighteen minutes parking time. This is a bone of contention for many, I know - the new rates - and to the extent that folks in general are suffering in this G.D. II (second great depression), it does seem a bit cruel. On the other hand, if it is one more reason to walk, bike, ride the bus or metro (fare increases notwithstanding), telecommute, or in any other way leave that darned private automobile in the garage (or sell it), then I support the rate hike. Which may sound a bit 'let them eat cake' Antoinettesque; I would counter, however, it is more the opposite: 'how about they eat bread' since we are running out of cake (gasoline, parking spaces, roads, clean air, clean oceans, etc.)

So, huge digression behind me now, on to the next. My eighteen expensive minutes afforded me enough time to walk up Leroy to find the embassy, and some parking spaces (unmetered - which due to my lack of coins was more good than bad). I wheeled my walker back and moved the car closer.

Not knowing what the embassy would be like, I had brought the walker instead of the cane. Something to sit on, if necessary, waiting in line, etc. And - he adds cynically - it tends to elicit kinder regard by bureaucrats than a cane. Unfortunately, in front of the embassy are approximately eight concrete steps up from the sidewalk, with no hand rail. What to do? Sick the ADA on them? No, I'll just go slow, that's what: while breathing in, push down on the walker handles (this is one of the four wheel jobs with a seat - we'd bought if for Loret), to set the front wheels up on the step; while breathing out, lift the handles and set the back wheels on the step below. Pause, feel the balance return to the inner ear and the MS affected regions of the brain and spine. Repeat these steps eight times. Then wheel ahead to five more steps up to the door. Not a problem, I'm moving now folks. Not even the ninety degree heat is slowing me down - there is much more important stuff slowing me down. Like, what is the improbable miracle that dropped me here in this infinite moment, walking past the tall white pole bearing the strikingly unique flag of Nepal. You can see it here: http://www.embassy.org/embassies/np.html

(Anybody know how to put a picture in a blog post? Or make a 'hyperlink'?)

I lift the walker inside. Wooden floor with the dust and dirt of decades ground in. There is a stairway on the right side of the hall - put there as if to taunt me, dare me - I shrug. There is a door on the left slightly ajar. Nothing in the way of ornamentation or directional signs. A few years ago there surely would have been pictures of the late king Birendra and his wife queen Aiswarya. But the monarchy is no more. (Which tempts a huge digression here, but I'll let the curious do their own research on the web - or maybe at the library: just look in...what were those things called, you know, you could get a set of them, they'd weigh a zillion pounds, and make book shelves sag, twenty volumes, thirty maybe? Wyclopedia Britannica or something? World Facebook?)

I push the door open and say 'namaste,' and in Nepali ask, 'do you speak English?' A friendly man - sixty maybe? - sat at a desk with a big ledger book open atop it. With wavy hair and glasses, he had Mongolian features (suggesting Tibetan origin, though I didn't want to ask his ethnicity. I routinely ask Brahmins, Newars, and Chetris their ethnicities - or 'castes' - in order to confirm my guess. And am relatively assured that they will not take umbrage at this, middle to upper caste as they are. I will eventually learn this clerk's caste from his name, Dig Bahadur Tamang, his last name referring to the 'horse warriors' who migrated from Tibet to Nepal over the last several centuries. His 'caste' is the same as mine, that is, non-Hindu, aka. the drinking caste.)

He offers me a seat, and we begin a dialogue in Nepanglish: my Peace Corps years, how long he has been at the embassy - thirty years - how he does not much care for the Maoists (currently in control of the parliament), etc. Very ramailo (a word which translates as gemütlich in German, or cozy, relaxed, harmonious. At which point I will note briefly how often a German word will come into my head as I'm looking for the Nepali - as if there is just one 'foreign language storage locker' in my brain, where words and concepts can get mixed up.) Practice will help with this. I'm currently reading a book in German, as well as The Tin Drum in English. Maybe it's time to focus on Nepali...

At one point somebody shows up - could be thirty or sixty, red polo shirt, coiffed yet natural flowing sandy blond hair, khaki pants: which is to say, a stereotype of privilege (did I mention how judgmental I can be?) - and hands Mr. Horse Warrior his passport and visa application, which he will have to come back in some days to pick up. He leaves, and Dig Bahadur tells me he will process my visas right then and there while I sit and chat. He gets the correct impression that I am in no hurry, which by the laws of judo mean that I sometimes get there sooner. (And even occasionally realize that I'm already there: there is really nowhere, ultimately, to go.) Then he offers me coffee, goes and retrieves two steaming styrofoam cups - his black, mine with what tasted like creamer powder. It was delicious.

He gives me his phone number at his home in Gaithersburg in case I should need anything else, and he helps me with words like 'multiple sclerosis' and 'metastatic breast cancer' which I will want to know if we make it to 'my' village to explain the porters who will have carried me there, etc. He offers to help me down the stairs, but I take the opportunity to sit-walk it down, another physical therapy opportunity. Was nearby the Indian/Nepali restaurant, the 'Polo Club,' so I called my sister and niece who work nearby and they joined me for lunch.

After the drive home, the heat was starting to get to me; but oh what a beautiful morning it had been! The corn as high as an elephant's eye...