London to Freetown

 It’s day two of welfare pension collections.  I hit upon the genius idea of following a welfare pensioner back to his village.  I want to understand his journey better and get the full flavour village life. Seven hours, of the toughest trekking I have faced, later  I am reflecting on how stupid my ‘genius’ idea has turned out to be.   I am  following a veteran of Borneo.  Managre Gurung of the 2^nd Gurkha Rifles served from 1961 until 1970 when he was made redundant without any pension.  After service he returned to his village life in Maling as a farmer and so it is to there that I follow him back.On what becomes a torturous journey, up, up, up,up, up, up and up steep mountain side in the blazing heat, I try to think positively to keep myself going.  All of this exercise must be good for me: no I don’t care.  Didn’t Charles Dickens say, ‘walk and be happy’: he was obviously not thinking of the Himalayan country of Nepal when he said this.  I am so tired I don’t think I can go up any more.  I contemplate paying the veteran five times his pension to carry me.  After all I am spending the journey eating his dust.  He is 62 surely he should be finding this hard, at least perspiring a little: I am drenched.  One foot in front of the other I keep going.  We eventually stop after hours – I drink water and coke as fast as I can.  Manbagre cracks open a beer.   And then we are off again, through jungle and then down and down steep steps made out of the mountainous rock.  I am quite grateful to be going down but also hate it: at some point, unless I decide to settle in the village of Maling, I will have to walk back up.   We make it to his village.  I vow never to go on a trek again.   I wouldn’t do it again if I was paid and if I was paid it would have to be for a lot more than the 78 pounds Managre has just received. I arrive at Manbagre’s home.  It is his sons home.  His son introduces me to the family who live their;  his wife, his sister, his mother and his children.  The mud and stone home has three rooms.  A kitchen, where most of the family seem to be sleeping, a very small store room, full of potatoes and maize and another room with a bed in where I will be sleeping ( his sister usually has this room).  His father sleeps on a sort of bench with his wife on the veranda.  I note the lack of wardrobes, but they don’t seem to own enough clothing to need them.   Managre sleeps outside within an arms length of the buffalo he cares for.   The kitchen is the hub of life.  It is constantly smokey from the open fire sans chimney.  I put my stuff in my village bedroom home and look forward to a good nights rest before starting my village life in earnest.  But first outside to sit and have some chai.  There are suddenly thirteen villagers- mostly children all staring at me.   I quickly deduce the following, not many foreigners have stayed in the village and there is not a great deal of entertainment in the village.  Every move of the foreign English girl seems quite exciting to them.  I do feel slightly like an animal in the zoo and feel quite bad for them that I have no tricks.  But apparently they seem easily entertained, my nepali, ‘I am hungry’ ie when is feeding time around here?, is greeted with a great deal of excited discussion.  The children are also keen to try out their english.  I of course introduce myself.   This precipitates a chorus of rebeek, rebeeka, rebek, rebik, ikah and  much excitement. Time for dal bhaat though.  I bade farewell to my new village friends and go into the kitchen to sit and tuck into some rice and veg.   Then to bed, exhausted.  I get into my sleeping bag, ignore my roomies- big spiders and try to sleep.  The rain is thundering down.  It’s  monsoon season.  The corrugated roof makes the rain sound harder.  I think of the homes lost in villages through the increasing landslides caused by the destruction of the forestry in the jungle.  People cut the natural protection of trees down to grow more rice and food and the firewood is used for cremations.