Friday 5th October 2007

Well hello there all you poor, unenlightened people of the past!
I have seen the future, and it is, well, dirty frankly!

You see, while you poor sods slog out your days in the dark technological age of 2007, I am here, sloshing through the mud and sewage of the future. Time travel may seem like some crazy science fiction concept to many of you, but I am in fact writing to you from Kathmandu, Nepal, in the year 2064.

(Although in fact, the very essence of writing to you instantly across a gap of 57 years may well result in parallel universes, causing a rip in the space-time continuum, the consequences of which, as many of you will know, could be disastrous!)

So, I can assure you that in the future, things have reverted back to a more simple time, with frequent power cuts, and toilet paper in the future has been virtually abolished!
The roads here are rather haphazardly paved, but most of them are just rivers of mud when it rains, and I am very glad I invested in some plastic flip-flops early on!
(For those of you with no idea what I’m on about, Nepal doesn’t follow the Christian calendar, but the Hindu/Buddhist one, which is why it’s 2064 here!)

As an aside from describing the busy hectic life here, I’m going to attempt to describe for your amusement a character I met here at our hostel in the first two weeks. Apart from me, there was Alan and Dom (both British and were on my flight), Jim (a lovely kiwi guy) and Jordan.

Jordan, I feel, deserves almost an entire email devoted to him for being literally the single most bizarre person I have ever met. He is a genuine caricature of himself, and epitomises every stereotype ever allocated the words “hillbilly”, “redneck” or “hick”.
He’s 20, from deep in the north of Florida (American of course), and I don’t think my description of him will fully do him justice, as his accent is so strong it almost needs it’s own introduction.
The nearest I can approximate to it would be a character called Cletis, from the Simpsons (hopefully most of you will know who I mean) so you’ll have to imagine that accent as I write on.

His laugh is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone genuinely go “Hyuk hyuk hyuk…” and he prefers to immediately describe himself as “stoopid” to anyone he meets as an excuse to behave in an appallingly rude and culturally insensitive manner (He also likes the “Hey, I’m an American, I can do what I want” option).
He claims that he’s here to gain some overseas experience before joining the Peace Corps, but isn’t interested in the cultural side of things at all, declining to come with us on our induction excursions, because he’s rather just work and get on so he can start earning money.

It amazes me that the Peace Corps would even consider someone like him, and although they may well have thought that doing something like this would have an impact on him, it’s clearly not going to. He got thrown out of his host family’s house in the first two days, as, despite being warned repeatedly beforehand that his drinking habits would not be welcome there, he just smiled and shrugged and said he was gonna take a big old bottle of rum with him and they’d just have to deal with it.

Which they did.

By promptly asking him to leave.

So he’s now in a hostel type place in the same town, but according to other volunteers down in Chitwan, he’s really hard to like, and harder to live with.
He is, I’m afraid to say, the kind of guy who makes all Americans look bad, which is a shame, as I know so many great ones.

His favourite anecdote, which I have heard a few times now, goes like this:
“This one time ma friend shot his girlfriend (that bitch deserved it too), and when he went to court, he put peanut butter on his ass-hole…”
(I’ll stop there, as the rest of the story is pretty disgusting, and trust me, you don’t want to know).
I haven’t seen him since we all went to our projects, but heard he was coming up to get his visa extended with us, which would have put a massive damper on our night out!

Luckily, it turns out he did his yesterday and has already gone back to Chitwan, which I was very relieved to hear!

Sorry if I sound harsh, but I defy any of you to spend a week with him and not feel the same way!
So, I’ll leave you there for now, hoping that the rip in the space-time continuum is too small for anyone to notice!

lots of love
Time-travelling Maya
xxx