Too much

(October 17th, 2011)

I am tired. All that is here, it is simply too much. I am overwhelmed with the heat at noon when I go back home from school, the classes can be exhausting, the people can be too much for me.

The women. The hard working women of Nepali Terai. I see them every day … crossing the dusty roads of the village, carrying incredible weights on their backs, tight up with a sort of a string over their foreheads, so that the weight hangs on in this way down on their backs. Or carrying huge amounts of grass on their bicycles; I know how hard it is to walk with your bicycle alone in the middle of the day, but to carry these amounts of weight … they make you humble. You have no words, no more.

Some of them work all day long. All, day, long. From five, six in the morning, till seven in the evenings.  They are the ones who are very, very poor, and usually left alone to feed three children at home. They work around the houses of this middle class, that also exists here, for a few rupies, three or four pumpkins and the grass to feed the buffalo. If they don’t leave with the grass, there is no way to keep the buffalo; if they cannot keep the buffalo, there is no milk for the children. The only time when they rest is at 10, the time for eating rice. Most of the times, their meal consists of rice only.

And you never hear them complain.