davethegrinch.net

Sarah says:

Despite it being somewhat of an afterthought, just a wouldn’t it be cool if we went to… we have ended up spending longer in Nepal than any other country - six weeks in total - and we’ve both given and received back so much more here than we expected or could have hoped for. We have lived with three families in three different areas of the country, we’ve learned some of the language, our affiliation with the volunteer agency helped us feel like we were apart of something bigger and like we had a connection, a family, in this very strange and foreign country. We have spent so much more time with locals here than anywhere else, we’ve traveled on the worst of their public transportation, we’ve been treated to local food with local families at their dinner tables, we’ve learned their card games, we’ve made friends. And we’ve hiked ourselves deep into the heart of their glorious Himalayan mountains - 16 days on foot, over 100 miles walked. And our eyes have seen beauty like we’ve never seen before.

I never could of anticipated the experiences we’ve had here but they’ve been some of the best of my life for so many different reasons. Finally, finally, what we’ve been asking for since the day we left home, finally happened - we were able to get close to locals in a very real way. Nepali people have nothing - a level of nothing that I think very few Americans could fathom - yet they want to give you everything. They want to give you a bed in their homes, a place at their table (or on their dirt floor) and as much food as you can fit into your stomach even if it means they go without.

We have come to love their ONE and only national dish: dal bhat - basically rice, a lentil soup and curried vegetables, usually potato and a green like beans or spinach. That’s it and most Nepali people eat this two times a day, every day of their lives. In fact, if you’re tired of the entire world being obsessed with American fast food, come to Nepal. Fast food chains don’t exist here and even if they did, Nepali people wouldn’t touch the stuff. It’s dal bhat all day, every day. With the help of our first trekking guide and friend, PM, I’m going to make a million for Nepal with a tee-shirt that says:

Nepali Life, Dal Bhat Life.

As in India, there is NO such thing as personal space in Nepal. Everything from the space you’re currently taking up on the sidewalk to the bus seat you’re sitting in - it’s all up for sharing and to us Westerners with a huge sense of space entitlement, this will quickly get your blood boiling. But guess what? You’ll be the only one upset. They might plop their bag of 500 potatoes at your feet on the bus without blinking but you can also put your potatoes or your annoyingly large backpacker rucksack, in between their legs and they’ll gladly mind it for you and will even take good care to make sure it doesn’t fall over. It doesn’t bother them - it’s just life and everyone just gets on with it! Ke garne - what to do?!

Nepali people, in all sincerity, view every single person as their brother and sister. You can feel it in the air and witness it at every turn. There is no such thing as a stranger here and it’s no act. They call each other brother and sister, they stop and say a few friendly words to each other on the street and it’s for real, all the time, whether the person really is their brother or if they’ve never met them before in their lives. One evening on one of our treks, David and I were trying to explain to one of the Nepali trekking guides how it’s not that way in America. For example, when I get on the bus after work, I’m not going to know anyone on the bus and I’m going to be tired and busy and I’m just going to want to sit quietly, keep to myself, listen to my iPod or read a book and certainly, for sure, I’m not going to want to talk to anyone. He simply could not relate to this and he thought we were saying that America is under some kind of bizarre dictatorship rule where we’re not allowed to talk to other people. It was nearly impossible for us to explain that, where we come from, people are not automatically your friend or family. You are strangers to each other and it takes time to become anything else. It’s not that we’re not allowed to talk to each other, we just don’t generally really want to. Total blank. Then he got quite upset and asked in his comical broken English, if a ‘citizen’ were to fall down on the ground, ‘what can you DO?!’ We were at a cultural impasse. He just would never understand just like I’ll never understand 2.5 million people all literally feeling like family.

This is not to say that I love everything about their ways, their ‘habits’. They stare at you while you eat - drives me crazy. And, in line with this personal space thing, they stand really really close to each other and sit really really close to each other. Again, it throws me completely off. Most people do not use Kleenex. No need when all you need to do is close one nostril and give the other one a nice hard blow. Go on - right there on the sidewalk - go for it. Just wipe your snotty finger on the closest wall. I guess some conservationists will be glad to know that trees are not dying for toilet tissue in Nepal. Also, it is completely socially acceptable to violently cough up phlegm and spit it on the street or, even better, on the floor of your house. I mean, this is like a smoker’s cough times 1,000. It sounds like dry-heaving or a choking dog and has been my alarm clock on more than one occasion as everyone does it and does it loudly and grotesquely. We’ve heard it has something to do with ridding the body of impurities - a Hindu thing maybe? I dunno.

It’s exciting to be here. It’s infuriating and exhausting and I’m overjoyed that I don’t have to ride on another of their public buses. It’s also heart-breaking to witness the extreme poverty and to learn more and more about the politics and cultural…..ummm….laziness, stubborness, I don’t know……that doesn’t seem to really want to make significant changes. But just like in Vietnam and Cambodia, Nepal gets under your skin and I do think I’ll miss it. I feel fulfilled, invigorated, accomplished - like I’ve done something big and good and new and I’ve grown from my time here. It was good, really good. And tomorrow when we fly out of here for our one lay-over night in Delhi, I know I’ll be a little sad.

Thanks to the Nepali choir boys and their hysterically funny and right-on rendition at 2am, outside our hotel room window, I’ve had this song stuck in my head for weeks: …..Leavin on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again…. You could get very angry that they’re singing when you want to be sleeping, but for the time being it won’t do any good. So just stick in your earplugs. Ke garne.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 6:05 am and is filed under Global Travels, Nepal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.