Swallowing a Fly

You know the song, There was an old woman who swallowed a fly..." that goes on and on with one event connected to the next. That is our life sometimes. Often, actually.

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The short story is we got a flat tire. The end. But life overseas seems to be an interconnected highway of events that complicates even the most mundane daily happenings. I will paint a brief example.

Our driveway, as most streets in Kathmandu, is very narrow. The kids can almost touch side to side. So can our car.

The government of Nepal is widening many roads throughout the valley, which sounds nice but is laden with problems and issues. So many. Our road is one, so there are red marks on walls and houses that need to be moved. Supposedly this was planned decades ago and people were compensated then and warned not to build close to the road. Who knows? All I know is that to widen our road means to literally ask people to take down their walls brick by brick, rock by rock, with a hammer. Our neighborhood looks like an earthquake has hit. It's a mess! I can't imagine how long this project will take. I also can't imagine how we will get out and go anywhere in the next year. We popped a tire trying to get up our driveway by unsuccessfully missing some such rocks.

Which leads to the next event. Where were we? R's eyes have gotten worse so I had to take him in for some glasses. The poor kid can't see and so I couldn't wait. I took him in to a local clinic, which was an experience for sure. On the way home traffic was really bad in our neighborhood.

Which leads to wedding season. This is an auspicious time of year to marry, and wedding season has been going on for months. Parades, bands, and people up and down our street constantly. Have you ever seen a wedding band? It's cool. And loud. And it doesn't matter if it blocks miles of traffic, the band will proceed, following by well-wishers dressed in fancy clothes. It makes pulling in to our narrow, rock-blocked driveway even harder. Hence the flat tire.

So the tire. Our driver was off that day so our gardner tried to change it but he couldn't find the jack. Not one to be easily stopped, he rounded up a group of men to literally lift our car off the ground like Superman so he could stack a pile of bricks (likely taken from the masses out on the street--how handy!) to hold up the car. They changed the spare tire which looked like it came right off a matchbox car and wouldn't get us across the street, let alone across the potholed roads in every direction. Which brings me to the milk.

Who were all those men he rounded up? Two of them were my milk men. With a deep hatred for longlife milk that tastes gross and costs a fortune, I was thrilled to find a solution. I found a company that milks cows from outlying villages, sterilizes it, puts it into recycled glass wine bottles, and delivers it to my door. It's not a perfect solution but it works for now. Each bottle even has my name on it.

I could go on but I won't. You get the point. It never ends.

P.S. We have a new tire now. It involved our driver and gardner taking our old tire on their motorcycle across town and returning with the new one. Nothin' to it.