Alden In Nepal- Studying Modernization, Food and Health

Desperate Times Call For Brown Rice

2009-12-03T09:26:00.001-08:00

(What follows bellow is a semi-polished article that I wrote for Himal South Asian Magazine. The editor of the magazine said that the article must "strive hard not to be ponderous -- prefereably some good reportage to flesh out the stats -- and also will, as you noted in your pitch, at least makes strides towards extrapolating out to the rest of the region." So that explains the article's tone. In the end, unfortunately the article was not published. Hopefully I will do some more pondering on many of the philosophical issues of my research in the future as I continue to write on the subject. If you are strictly interested in my anthropological research on brown rice, skip to the 6th to last paragraph, otherwise enjoy the whole thing. Thanks!)

A decade into the twenty-first century, it is the environment of our very own 'development' and 'progress' that is breeding the largest public health crises of modern times. Obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes (herein referred to as diabetes), cardiovascular (heart) disease, cancer and gastrointestinal disorders are non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and illnesses that are quickly overtaking today's urbanizing world. In India, the incidence of NCDs is believed to have surpassed that of communicable and infectious diseases (CDs)—previously the main public health threat in the developing world. In 2003, South Asia had the largest diabetic population with 46.3 million people affected by the disease, with India alone, the "king of diabetes", accounted for over 31.7 million people. With a projected doubling in these numbers by the year 2030, the World Health Organization has called type 2 diabetes an epidemic of potentially devastating proportions.

The behavior and environmental risk factors of these diseases are well known: lack of physical activity, stress, alcohol and tobacco consumption combined with an improper diet. Excess refined carbohydrates like white flour and white rice and sugar (simple carbohydrates) is a main dietary cause along with too many refined and saturated fats, and salt. Such a diet tends to also be deficient in fresh fruits and vegetables, unrefined whole grains, and dietary fiber (complex carbohydrates). Dietary and lifestyle changes are widely recognized as being more effective than allopathic medicine for both treatment and prevention of metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

As a Fulbright fellow in Kathmandu, Nepal for the last year I studied food habits and the health impacts of dietary change in Nepal's capital city. To conclude my research I distributed brown rice, although unpopular in Kathmandu an important and extremely healthy, whole grain praised by doctors and chefs alike for its rich flavor and ability to help prevent and manage NCDs. Giving the brown rice along with surveys, it was my aim to understand whether switching from eating refined white rice to unrefined brown rice was a possible habit change for average people to make. As summarized near the end of this article, my results were largely favorable.

Here in Kathmandu, studies show that 18% of the adult population over the age of 40 has diabetes and an additional 10-40% of people suffer from a pre-diabetic state called Impaired Fasting Glycaemia and/or metabolic syndrome. This is compared to diabetes rates of only 3-4% in the Nepali rural adult population. While rural Nepalis are generally physically active and eating relatively wholesome fresh foods, Kathmandu's urban population is increasingly sedentary and eating more and more processed foods.

Globally, non-communicable diseases cause 60% of deaths, 80% of these being among middle and low-income families. In South Asia, the annual direct medical costs of diabetes alone total an estimated $1.2 billion. In 2000, for a low-income household in India, 34% of family income would be drained if one of the household members needed diabetes care. But diabetes is only a fragment of the big picture, cardiovascular disease causes 50-80% of deaths in diabetic patients and is now the leading cause of death in the world accounting for over 6.4 billion deaths per year—30% of total deaths. By the year 2010 India is predicted to host 60% of the world's total heart disease burden which, combined with other chronic diseases, could cost the country up to $237 billion in the next ten years.

Considering the enormous shift of the health care burden taking place in developing countries, one would expect international development agencies and governments to react to such trends accordingly. However this is not the case. In 2006, of $26 billion Official Development Assistance provided by the international community (OECD/DAC/EC), only 100 million supported basic nutrition and no funding was allocated specifically for prevention and control of NCDs. Instead most attention remains directed towards CDs.

One reason no significant shift of focus has taken place is because NCDs are commonly labeled "lifestyle diseases" of the rich and elderly. Obesity, diabetes and heart disease were once called "diseases of affluence" because in the recent past only wealthier people were eating refined foods and privileged enough to not do physical labor and hence were contracting these NCDs. Today younger and younger groups are being affected and upper, middle and low class people share an environment extremely conducive to being sedentary and eating mostly processed foods. In fact, NCDs pose a greater threat and burden in poor and disadvantaged communities for whom fresh fruits and vegetables are relatively more expensive and good education is a rare commodity.

Labeling metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease "western diseases" is a more appropriate term than "diseases of affluence." It is in fact the environment molded by "progress" and "development" originally brought from the western world that is kindling the fire of the current NCD pandemic. The extraordinarily harmful nutritional transition taking place throughout the world and underpinning the NCD pandemic is largely the product of the widespread industrialization of food production. The growth of sophisticated supply chain management on a global scale coupled with the expansion of market economies and the growing concentration of global food manufacturers explain why the cheapest and most widely available foods bought by a rapidly urbanizing population are energy (calorie) dense, nutrient-poor foods rich in simple carbohydrates and unhealthy fats. Quite ironically however, it is this so called "sophisticated" global food system that is greatly responsible for much unnecessary illness and loss of human life on the planet.

Throughout our history, humans have lived by eating primarily vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes that provide plenty of complex carbohydrates, micronutrients, protein, and dietary fiber. Our bodies are therefore biologically best suited for such unrefined, whole and natural foods. Only during the last century—most dramatically in the past 50 years—have people started to eat refined carbohydrates and fats as the basis of their diet. This short period is also the first time in which metabolic illness and NCDs have emerged in pandemic proportions, providing a good indication that such processed foods are not nutritionally suitable for good human health.

The nutritional science behind diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome is simple enough. Carbohydrates in the food we eat are converted into glucose, a type of sugar that is used to provide energy to the body. The complex carbohydrates found in vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains like brown rice, corn, millet, buckwheat, and barley are converted into glucose relatively slowly because the composition of these foods is naturally rich in micronutrients and dietary fiber—essential elements for proper metabolism and good health. (Moderate amounts of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and healthy fats in the diet are associated with low risk of developing NCDs like diabetes and heart disease.) Processed simple carbohydrates like white sugar, white rice, and white flour on the other hand are converted to glucose very quickly because they lack any significant amount of micronutrients or dietary fiber, which are stripped away during the refining processes.

Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, acts as a 'key' to open the 'doors' of our body's cells, allowing glucose in the blood to enter cells and be utilized as energy. When we eat simple carbohydrates in large quantities over long periods of time, the body becomes overwhelmed and loses its ability to deal with so much glucose. The pancreas eventually becomes tired, no longer producing good keys (insulin), the cells' doors' become worn out, becoming jammed. Glucose that thus does not enter cells stays in the bloodstream where it is a harmful substance that attacks the body and creates disease. This circumstance, called "insulin resistance", is the underlying cause of "metabolic syndrome"—a term that refers to a host of interrelated symptoms including obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood fat (triglyceride) levels. Left unmanaged, the conditions of metabolic syndrome pave the road to NCDs like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, eye damage, blindness and limb amputation.

In Kathmandu most people consume a towering portion of white rice two to three times every day. Compared to the rice, curried vegetables and dal (watery lentil soup) are taken in much smaller quantities. This great proportion of grain on the plate is suitable for the traditional agrarian lifestyle of rural Nepal, but transplanted into modern Kathmandu all of this white rice is a recipe for disaster. Today's most popular snack foods are also almost entirely simple carbohydrates, all being made from refined white flour combined with unhealthy amounts of refined oils: chowmein, chow chow packaged noodles, samosas, naan, puri, sweets, sodas, fried chips, donuts, white bread, and of course the quintessential sugar sweetened Nepali chiya (tea) served with white flour biscuits that some people will take up to 15 times per day in the winter season.

It was not long ago that white sugar, white flour and white rice were rare and expensive commodities in Kathmandu's capital city. At that time people were consuming unpolished brown rice with vegetables fresh from their garden. Besides rice people enjoyed (and still do in rural areas) bread and other dishes prepared from a diverse array of whole grains like corn, millet, buckwheat and barley.

Unfortunately, for most of Kathmandu's residents today, the only thing synonymous with real food is white rice. Even while recognizing the great healthfulness of food items made from different whole grains, people tend to associate dhido, roti, and even brown rice with the "poverty" and "backwardness" of village life. Many people come to Kathmandu from their village trying to abandon hardship and seeking the facilities and comforts of modern life. White rice and white flour are items that "look good", are "easy to eat" and "soft to chew". Brown rice "looks dirty" people say, "we eat rice that has been cleaned". Really, only by calling micronutrients and fiber dirty can we call white rice cleaner. It is a lack of these micronutrients and fiber that is not only partially responsible for the current NCD pandemic sweeping the world, but also for the increasing number of people suffering from constipation, gastritis, mouth sores, and pain and tingling in the limbs.

Besides the conceptual reasons I have mentioned, market availability, cost, and advertising from processed food producers are major factors accounting for the attractiveness and overwhelming consumption of refined foods. With such a vast subject of food and health at hand, I eventually focused my research on one topic alone. Assuming that some change in diet is necessary for improved health in Kathmandu, seeing rice as the most common food in the diet, and recognizing brown rice—naturally rich with important dietary fiber and micronutrients—as the healthiest form of the grain, I decided to research whether switching from eating white rice to brown rice was a habitual transition people are capable of making.

Initially, while talking to people about their conceptions of brown rice, I found people with a previous habit of eating it said that they really like it. On the other hand, people who had neither eaten nor heard of it before tended to respond negatively when ask about the rice, usually assuming that brown rice would be hard to eat and unpalatable on top of looking bad. For my final research, I distributed brown rice to over 200 random research subjects to be eaten over two weeks. After analyzing peoples' responses to eating the rice written in a simple survey that was given with the rice, I found that only about 23% of people indeed did have a negative experience the first time eating the brown rice opposed to 41% of people who had a positive first experience. Of those people with initial negative experiences however, and similarly for the subject group as a whole, about 55% of people said that their experience improved as they continued eating the brown rice—it become tastier and more enjoyable to eat with time. Overall 56% of people said that they found the brown rice "good", "tastier" or "better" in comparison to white rice.

Most of the research subjects had been eating white rice for their entire lives. My research concludes that however deeply rooted that habit of eating white rice may be, most people can switch to eating brown rice: by the end of only two weeks 51% of the research subjects said that they had gained the habit of eating brown rice, an additional 11% saying that they were trying to gain the habit. 57% of people said that they wanted to buy the brown rice again. By the end of the two-week period only 7% of people said that they disliked the rice. Over one quarter of the research subjects (27%) said that they found it to be "extremely delicious" ("dherai mitho"). About half of the people said that they would serve the brown rice to guests.

An even larger portion of people, 67%, subjectively found some positive effect on their health. Of those who commented, 26% said that their body or stomach felt lighter, 20% said that their constipation was lost, 13% said that they felt their diabetes managed (two people reported fasting glucose levels dropping from over 150 mg/dl to under 100 while eating the brown rice germinated), and 36% reported a great amount of strength and energy. Other people had sores in the mouth lost, improved digestion and appetite, and limb pain reduced, along with other benefits. Another good thing about brown rice, as 63% of people commented, is that it is filling; thus it can be eaten in smaller quantities and prevents one from feeling hungry very quickly.

My research indicates that changing eating habit is not necessarily an easy thing to do—it takes some effort. As one subject wrote on their survey, "at first I did not like the taste and found this rice hard to eat. Learning how to cook it well, and with a little bit of time, now I really like it and I only want to eat this kind of rice." I found a positive correlation between the amount of times people ate the rice and the how much they enjoyed it or created a habit of eating it. While among people who ate the brown rice four or more times per week (101 people), 71% enjoyed the taste, 80% had a positive health experience, 62% created a habit of eating it, and 70% wanted to buy it again; those who ate the brown rice 2 or less time per week (52 people), only 32% enjoyed the flavor, 36% had a positive health impact, 8% created a habit of eating it, and 37% of people wanted to buy it again.

"I feel great, you should give information about brown rice to everyone" writes one subject. Indeed, from the grassroots to the international community level, it is essential that coordinated efforts exist to provide education and awareness about the dangers of modern refined foods while making wholesome foods more widely available. "I am worried that this kind of rice wont be available in the future and that I will have to eat white rice again" writes another person.

Brown rice is not a sole solution to the NCD crisis in the Indian subcontinent, there is a diverse variety of wholesome foods being lost from the urban diet that need to be recovered in proper balance. My research indicates that no matter how dark the horizon may seem, humans are very adaptable creatures capable of changing their habits for the better. Undoubtedly, such change is necessary and must be supported from all levels of society.

Afu Puja, Health is Wealth

2009-06-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Written by Fulbright Researcher Alden Towler and originally published by The Republica Newspaper of Nepal on April 30, 2009.

While researching food habits and health in the Kathmandu Valley on a Fulbright Scholarship is the reason I have been living and studying in Nepal for the last seven months, I have also become very fascinated by local religious culture. This past Tihar I was invited by a Newari friend to his home for mhapuja, or ‘worship of the self’. While I am no expert on the religious culture of Nepal, I would love to share what such a celebration and worship of the self means to me in the context of eating and being healthy here in Kathmandu.

No matter what religion you follow, your world would not exist without the living tissues that you call your own body. Whether or not we say that god exists within ourselves, can we not agree that this body, this self of ours is an astonishingly beautiful thing that deserves much respect and celebration?

We can respect and worship ourselves everyday by eating the foods that our body will thank us for. In this sense, you do not really have to be Newari to do mhapuja. And really, eating healthily should not be such a hard thing do to. However, in our modern circumstance this is not the case considering that the lifestyles and food available today are often at odds with the lifestyles and foods for which our bodies are best suited.

Health professionals speaking from both classical Ayurvedic and modern scientific perspectives agree that the food which is healthiest for humans today is the same food which our ancestors have been eating for millennia. Of course having some sort of physical activity/exercise in one’s daily life is the backbone of good health. In America, where I was born and raised, many people have become extremely confused about what they should be eating and have forgotten what to eat. The foods and recipes from our ancestors have been largely replaced by the advice from doctors and magazines who seem to change their minds every other year about what foods are best to eat. Food becomes fad instead of staple. As a consequence, the USA leads the world in its number of people suffering from what I will call ‘metabolic illnesses,’ which include obesity, insulin resistance, Type 2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, and high blood pressure, with over 50% of our population affected.

India and China combine to host a quickly increasing number of 60 million Type 2 diabetics. Kathmandu falls geographically just between those two countries. Today close to 30% of urban Nepal’s population suffers from metabolic illness according to a recent study. While sedentary lifestyle is also to blame, diet plays a very important role creating illnesses. Today’s modern world has become plagued with the fruits of industry–overly refined foods.

Here in Kathmandu people have not forgotten what to eat—in fact Nepalis know exactly what to eat and prepare it exceptionally well, Daal, Bhaat/Dhido, tarkari nai khaau—but instead the problem is more that the foods people are eating have changed their form and have lost most of their most vital nutrients. The main three issues I generally see are too many refined grains and refined oils, and too few fruits and vegetables in the diet.

Refined grains such as white rice (as opposed to ‘pura polish nabhaeko chamal’- brown rice) and white flour (‘maida’ as opposed to ‘atta’- whole wheat flour) that have been stripped of their vitamins, minerals and fiber are now the main ingredients of Kathmanduites’ diet. Such over-processed carbohydrates, which are quickly converted to sugar upon ingestion, can be a main cause of both metabolic illness and malnutrition. Processed vegetables oils like soybean and sunflower oil along with dalda (margarine) have an unhealthy ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids (their ratio is 1:10 while 1:3 is the preferred healthy ratio) and can also contain trans-fatty acids which are becoming outlawed in the USA (these oils also often go rancid during industrial production). So let me say this simply: fresh, pure mustard oil (toriko tel) is exceptionally healthy (and tasty) with a perfect omega 3 / omega 6 ratio of 1:3.

Since when did ultra-polished white rice become the only thing synonymous with food or ‘khaanaa’ in Nepal? So many people have told me that this omnipresent white rice is preferred because it is pleasing to the eyes, it is good to look at. Do our eyes eat rice? If so, the habit of eating a mountain of white rice twice a day would be a wonderful puja to the eyes. But because this is not the case, I am afraid that such rice is partially to blame for many of Nepal’s health problems. (And by the way what ever happened to buckwheat (‘phapar’), millet (‘kodo’), corn (‘makai’) —acknowledged widely by all Nepalis as the most nourishing grains? Will these completely disappear from the diet as white flour becomes everything we eat—biscuit, momo, chowmein, chowchow, pauroti, dunot, naan, samosas, mithai…? I hope not.)

It is the essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber which are stripped away from rice and wheat which could otherwise be properly nourishing all people—students, businesswoman, fathers, and mother alike—the way they had been for millennia before the recent advent of the machine mill. Essential micronutrients are found in the bran of grains, the layer residing under the hull (‘buss’/‘bokra’) known in Nepali as ‘chokar’. Today chokar sells on the market for 15 rupees per kilogram so that it can be fed to animals. I love animals too, but don’t you think we should be feeding the most nourishing part of our food to ourselves? Afulai puja garnu pardaina?

The foods which the people of Kathmandu avoid like brown rice, dhido and sisnu (partially because people associate such foods with the antiquity and ‘poor backwardness’ of the village) are actually the best foods there are for our bodies! The reasons behind the prevalence of the overly refined foods I have mentioned are too complex to summarize here. But people from all walks of life should recognize the beauty of the self and work to overcome the silly social constructs which get in the way of the most important puja of all, afupuja.

Information on Germinated Brown Rice

2009-06-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Information on Germinated Brown Rice- Unpolished Rice which has been Soaked in Water Overnight (or 6+hours) before cooking
Compiled by Alden Towler – aytowler@gmail.com
“Rice compound reduces diabetes
Researchers have found that a compound that helps rice seed grow, springs back into action when brown rice is placed in water overnight before cooking, significantly reducing the nerve and vascular damage that often result from diabetes.
"You have to let it grow, germinate a little bit," says Dr. Robert K. Yu, director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics and Institute of Neuroscience at the Medical College of Georgia. "Some of the active ingredients generated as a result of the germination process are beneficial to you."
Germinated brown rice's ability to help diabetics lower their blood sugar has been shown but how it works remained unknown. New research, published online in the Journal of Lipid Research, shows the growth factor acylated steryl glucosides or ASG, helps normalize blood sugar and enzymes that are out-of-whack in diabetes.”

Source: 1) http://www.scientistlive.com/European-Food-Scientist/index.php?allUrl=Ingredients/Rice_compound_reduces_diabetes/20801/&category=Ingredients&articleTitle=Rice_compound_reduces_diabetes&articleId=20801&action=viewPollResults/germinate
2) http://www.physorg.com/news136467430.html

Useful Germinated Brown Rice
By Dr. Hari Bahadur KC

RICE is the most important food crop of Nepal. It has high economic as well as social value. Rice has supported a greater number of people for a longer period of time than any other crop since it was cultivated.
Benefit
The new way of eating rice may change the diet in the next century. The potential health benefits of germinated brown rice have attracted public attention and challenging the deep-seated prejudice against brown rice.

Germinated rice is brown rice soaked in water until it just begins to bud. The outer bran layer becomes soft and more prone to water absorption, making it easier to cook. Enzymes produced during the budding process break down sugar and protein, giving the rice a sweet flavour. Experts say, the germinated rice may enhance brain functions and reduce levels of lipids, or fats, in the blood. Studies have found that germinated brown rice contains three times as much gamma amino butyric acid, an amino acid that works as a neurotransmitter, as conventional brown rice, and five times as much as white rice. Known to promote blood flow in the brain, the chemical has long been used for treating the after effects of brain injuries and strokes. It is also known to help stabilise blood pressure and reduce lipid levels in the blood. In addition, compared to ordinary brown rice, germinated brown rice is twice as rich in lysine, one of the essential amino acids that makes proteins in the body and contains a higher level of soluble fibber. Researcher reported that, dietary fibber has been found to be more beneficial in its soluble form.Source: http://www.nepalnews.com.np/contents/englishdaily/trn/2003/apr/apr09/features.htm

Traditionally, grains have almost always been soaked, sprouted or fermented before eaten.
In Japan there has recently been renewed interest in sprouted rice thanks to a number of recent scientific studies done on gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a naturally occurring amino acid created during the germination process. The consumption of GABA is credited with important health benefits that range from lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, boosting the immune system, improving sleep, and inhibition of cancer cells. So it makes good sense to soak and sprout your rice. Both from the perspective of tradition and science. Today even the typical Japanese housewife knows to soak her rice before cooking
Source: http://radishboy.blogspot.com/2008/05/sprouted-brown-rice.html

Better nutrition, enhanced digestion, less allergic potential – WOW, who could refuse sprouted foods?
More research validating sprouting comes from Japan at the Shinshu University in Nagano. A group of scientists recently found that soaking brown rice turbocharged its nutritional value. Soaking the rice over night stimulates the early stages of where a tiny sprout (less than a millimeter tall) grows from the grain. “The birth of a sprout activates enzymes in the brown rice all at once to supply the best nutrition to the growing sprout,” They found that sprouted rice is not only more nutritive with higher amounts of vitamins and minerals than non-germinated rice, but it is also sweeter and easier to cook. I can confirm these cooking results from personal experience.
Written by Jen Allbritton, CN
(Copyright © 2003 Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers, Inc.)

A Burning Desire

2009-06-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

The black sooty fumes of a thousand torches raced to meet the already blackened air above a downtown Kathmandu street. Thick wooden sticks, the carriers of kerosene soaked cotton, hosted raging flames to burn hundreds of incandescent cries into the back of my photographic mind. An unforgetable image, to see the shadows of a thousand marching torch bearers taking their city by critical mass.

That day I had gone to a swimming pool with a group of Nepali friends. We enjoyed ourselves whether or not we could all swim, and after a cup of overly sweetened milk tea we parted ways. I stayed with my two Tamang bhais (little brothers/friends- see previous blogs for acquaintance stories), Suraj and Kusal, 14 and 9 year old kids I greatly adore. Walking along the road just next to the “Police Health Club”, where we had been learning to swim, my chlorine-singed eyes read a sign: “International Indigenous Film Festival”. Today was the last day of the festival and the last film of the day was scheduled to play at the current time–5pm. “Has the film already started?” I asked someone at the information desk. “No it will be a bit late- wait half an hour please” came the response.

Back outside I scrupulously searched for the best place for us to eat. The tents at the festival where serving typical Nepali snack foods from different ethnic groups–thukpa

(white flour) noodles, seasoned meat, potatoes, sweetly spiced rice flour donuts. The two boys and I found a nice mat woven from corn husks under a shady tent to sit on; our hosts were a group Newari woman dressed in remarkable black and red dress (these are the traditional dress of the Jyapuni, i.e. the female members of the Maharjan, the Newari farming caste).

The Newari people are indigenous to the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal’s capital and home to the biggest and most artisanal urban areas in Nepal. We ate typical Newari snack food: crunchy flattened rice called chiura; succulent buffalo meat barbequed over dried rice stalks and rubbed with toasted mustard seed oil, ginger, garlic and plenty of chili; black eyed peas; sautéed greens; chickpeas; chili potatoes; a condiment of peas, carrots, daikon radish and green hot peppers smothered with lime juice and toasted sesame seed paste; a thick, crunchy-on-the-outside soft-on-the-inside black lentil pancake with an egg cracked on top. What I love about Newari food is the healthy variety of tasty items given in smaller quantities to fill the plate opposed to the usual Nepali habit of filling the whole plate with white rice or noodles- leaving very little room for vegetables and legumes

The movie, ‘The Long Journey,’ started an hour later than scheduled, Nepali time for sure. It was about the situation of indigenous people in Nepal and their long struggle to proclaim and realize their social, environmental and political rights. A very long story short: Prithvi Narayan Shah was a Hindu King in the 18^th century who shed much blood conquering the Kathmandu Valley and ‘unified’ what became the Nepali Kingdom. What ensued was the creation of an autocratic monarchical system which privileged high caste Hindus (Aryan in ethnic origin) while oppressing and exploiting lower caste Hindus, women, and especially the dozens of indigenous tribal groups of Nepal, most whom have Tibeto-Mongol ethnic origins and are Buddhist and animists, not Hindus. Indigenous communities were infiltrated, their community-based self governing structures uprooted and their natural and human resources exploited without any sign of profit or benefit to local peoples. Today, 250 years later, Nepal is attempting to instate democracy (starting in the 1950’s) and the right of tribal groups are finally being recognized (on paper) by a mostly dysfunctional Nepali government. The film documents one human rights success in Nepal, which actually did succeed in becoming the second country in South Asia to ratify the United Nations treaty on the rights of indigenous peoples. And yet this is only the beginning to a long process of bringing justice and equality to the ethnic groups that have been largely ignored by the high-caste Hindu-dominated government for the past few centuries here in Nepal.

After the movie I walked along one of the central streets of Kathmandu with the Tamang kids who had learned about some of these issues in school but still couldn’t quite wrap their heads around these big ideas. They are Buddhist Tamangs, a diverse ethnic group, some of whom once served as slaves to the king. Both of these boys’ fathers are abroad in the Gulf now, working low-pay jobs in order to make ends meet. In their village the educational opportunities are lacking and hence they live here in the city, where the streets are overflowing with trash and drinking water is a rare commodity.

The sidewalk is filled with people selling t-shirts, mangoes and bananas, nail clippers, Ayurvedic herbs and umbrellas. Pedestrians walk through a maze of themselves and street vendors, overflowing into streets raging with the horns of a half dozen different kinds of motor vehicles.

As we climb the stairs of a pedestrian bridge I see a voracious mass of torch-bearers simultaneously sworming and marching toward a small cluster of policemen who seem absolutely terrified by the group that they were both fleeing from and trying to control. The three of us reached the top of the pedestrian bridge to meet a crowd of people staring and whipping out their cell phones to take photos. I asked a someone what was going on, “It’s the Maoists” one man said, “No, it’s the Newars, they are protesting for the creation of a state which recognizes them as the original people of Kathmandu and thus gives them their proper rights as indigenous people. Tomorrow the city will be closed in a strike.”

Behind us the sky was glowing deep neon pink hues, the sun already set behind our capital city, this concentrated carnal congestion of concrete. I put Kusal on my shoulders so he could see the scene below. Before us a sea of torch carriers bellowed their cries of anger and dissatisfaction with their smoky voices. The narrow street soon became as filled as it could be by the procession of flames, burning their message into the air and into peoples’ minds anywhere they went. We must be seen.

Indeed today the entire city is shut down in strike. Every shop is closed, not a single bus is running, not even motorcycles dare to take the streets, and youth yell at the few cyclists who pass by telling them to dismount. Torches have been replaced by burning tires throughout the city, burning even blacker messages into the masses. Such protests are not uncommon in Nepal and have detrimental consequences for average people who somehow pay for more expensive vegetables and cooking gas, closed roads jacking up prices; or they simply eat their rice without lentils or vegetables. For me it’s quite pleasant: I walk down the street without honking horns and black exhaust fumes in my face kicking a ball with kids in the open streets, pay a few extra cents for my vegetables and indulge the privilege of my white skin and green dollar.

Recent trip to lake of the sun god

2009-04-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

Om SuryaKunda

Processing Polished Rice: A Reflection on Diet and Health in Kathmandu

2009-02-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

While Nepal has become famous for the Himalayas, no less impressive is the mountain or rice that most Nepalis eat as the centerpiece of their twice-daily meal.

Not long ago the shades of wholesome varieties of rice in the market and on peoples’ plates ranged from reds to dark and light browns. The machine-polished rice oftoday is as white as the snow capping the Himalayas themselves. While Kathmandu’s rapid modernization has left the agricultural hardships associated with hand-hulled, less processed red and brown rice behind, the consequences of a new addiction to overly processed foods includes a Type 2 diabetes epidemic which affects close to one third of the Kathmandu Valley’s population.

According to a study conducted by the Nepal Diabetes Association, while only 3-4% of Nepal’s rural population is affected, 18% of Kathmandu’s urban population over the age of 40 has Type 2 Diabetes, and an additional 10% suffer from a pre-diabetic state called Impaired Fasting Glycaemia1 underpinned by insulin resistance. The term “Syndrome X” or “Metabolic Syndrome” has been coined to refer to a host of interrelated symptoms including obesity, high blood pressure, and high blood fats levels—the underlying cause of these symptoms being insulin resistance. The conditions of Metabolic Syndrome pave the road to diabetes and other related conditions like heart disease, eye problems, kidney failure, and limb amputation, just to start the list. Over the last five months, through interviews and informal conversations, I have been researching the dietary habits and conceptions of food in Kathmandu that I relate to the onset of Metabolic Syndrome in Nepal.

The body converts most foods we eat into glucose. Whereas sugar, along with processed carbohydrates like white rice and white flour, convert very quickly, whole grains like brown rice, wheat, corn, and millet are converted more slowly, and vegetables and beans are slower still. Over the course of years, as people continue to overdose on highly refined, rapidly digested carbohydrates like white rice, the body’s ability to deal with so much glucose wears out.Overwhelmed by too much insulin (produced to lower otherwise harmfully high blood sugar levels), glucose-burning cells become resistant to insulin, thus inducing the complications of Metabolic Syndrome.

Until quite recently people in Kathmandu spent much more time walking, doing physical house and agricultural work, and playing outdoors. Although peoples’ physical activity has dramatically decreased, the average amount of food and total calories people eat has remained the same if not increased. Daal-bhaat, the traditional Nepali meal usually consisting of a staggering amount of rice and a far smaller portion of lentil soup and vegetables, is relatively well-suited to someone engaged in physical activity—as it provides an abundance of energy for a hard worker—but it is a recipe for disaster for those who live sedentarily and also indulge in a lot of meat, alcohol, and modern junk foods.

Considering how deeply ingrained rice is in Kathmandu, eating rice in its healthier less processed forms should become a priority. The dhiki is a device traditionally used for hulling rice in Nepal actively present even in central Kathmandu until about 45 years ago. The dhiki’s physically intensive process of beating rice with a heavy beam of wood removes the inedible hull of rice but leaves partially intact the nutrient-rich bran and germ layer below which give the whole grain its distinctive flavor, color, and health benefits. The modern machine mill processes rice with far greater speed and with hardly any physical effort but strips away the bran and germ leaving only almost entirely plain starch remaining. White rice lacks the vitamins, minerals, and fiber found in the bran and germ that are necessary for proper and slow digestion of the whole grain. As one Nepali woman told me “We no longer have the hardships of the past, but we suffer with new diseases.”

White rice of course, is not the only problem. White flour, as opposed to whole-wheat flour, has become the main ingredient of most snack foods found in Kathmandu

—momos, chowmein, chow-chow/ wai-wai noodles, naan, puri, samosas, biscuits, and bakery products. Sugar-sweetened Nepali tea with biscuits is of course a quintessential Nepali snack. The increasing popularity of these junky snack foods among the city’s youth threatens public health even more severely than the mountains of white rice synonymous with daal-bhaat.

Everyone I have talked to about rice hulled by the dhiki says that it is incredibly tasty, filled with flavor and healthier than that milled by the machine. What most Nepalis do not know, however, is that machine mills can produce brown rice (unpolished rice), which is in fact available at many stores in Kathmandu. Unfortunately brown rice is relatively hard to find and nearly twice the price as the fully polished varieties, from which the removed bran and germ have been sold and added to animal feed.

When I talk to Nepalis about this sort of unpolished rice it does not seem very appetizing to them. “It isn’t tasty,” many say, because they think the rice would be “hard” texturally and “bland” in flavor.

The irony is that many of the city-people who say this have never tasted unpolished rice before, so how would they know? Regardless, the habit of eating white rice, like any deeply rooted habit, is a very hard one to change. The same Nepali health professionals who explain how difficult it is to make vegetables a more prominent proportion on the dinner plate, simply because of habit, also tell me how once they started eating brown rice, white rice was never as satisfying again—neither for their taste buds nor their stomach.

The attitudes taken towards unpolished rice by many people living in Kathmandu are similar to those that they take toward dhido, a traditional staple food of Nepal. Dhido is cooked with the flour of whole grains such as buckwheat, millet, corn, and wheat. Those who have a habit of eating it enjoy its more complex flavors and its hearty nature.

Dhido is widely recognized by nearly all Nepalis to be more filling (after eating you don’t get as hungry as soon), and healthier for the body. (It is also the exact kind of whole grain food that dieticians recommend for the prevention and treatment of Metabolic Syndrome.) Those who don’t have a habit of eating it however don’t seem to take any interest in it at all. When I ask some people whether they eat dhido, an almost disgusted and shocked look comes over their face as if to say ‘me? Eat that stuff?’ They reply “No, not really,” “I eat it every once in a while, a few times a year,” “it’s too hard to cook,” “dhido is bland, I prefer rice.”

In many ways, while unpolished rice and dhido symbolize the antiquity of village life and a way of eating that has nourished hundreds of generations who never suffered from insulin resistance, white rice symbolizes the modernity born from industry and an era of unprecedented metabolic illness. I am not suggesting that everyone in Kathmandu beat their rice with a dhiki, but my research shows that the wellbeing of urban Nepal depends upon a shift of consciousness and habit. The foods from the past (and present for the millions who still enjoy whole grain foods regularly) should not become relics, but rather the keystones of a modernity that champions wholesome awareness instead of refined ignorance.

1 Singh, Dr. D.L; Diabetes- Care and Management; “Understanding Diabetes Mellitus”; Nepal Diabetes Association, Rotary Club of Nepal, 2006.

Lama Family Series Part 3- An unending story

2008-12-06T21:31:00.000-08:00

for pictures: http://community.webshots.com/user/aytowler

Raajan and I shared a tiny bed while others fit like peas in a pod sleeping on thin cotton mattresses laid on the floor and on what otherwise function as couches. We woke up in the morning and sipped on tea and dipping fried bread for a breakfast. Through the window of the apartment I watched as enormous eagles and hawks circled above the infamous Swayambu monkey temple- a five hundred year old Buddhist stuppa at the top of a nearby hill with giant white pillars daggering toward the sky.

Raajan, Aama and I took a taxi to the other side of town where there is a public hospital. Getting there by about 9 or 10 am the place was already a crowded madhouse. Theoretically Nepal has a very affordable, nearly free, healthcare system. In reality the hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed, under funded and riddled which the problems of corruption and inefficiency which plague most government functions in the country.

We stood in line and paid a 130 rupees (<$2) entrance fee. Then we wound through crowded, stained concrete hallways not unlike winding through the crowded streets of Kathmandu. At the window of the orthopedic department of the hospital we took a ticket, number 152. As we urgently looked around to see what numbers the other people around us were holding we heard the window call “65”. A door opened a just enough for a few people to squeeze inside. We had already been at the hospital for nearly an hour it seemed and how long would this line take?!

Luckily Raajan knew someone. That is how things work here. If you know someone then you can slide through doors and find your way through the ugly system- whether its finding a job, getting out of prison or waiting in a hospital, its always better if you know someone, or have money.

We were without money but Raajan called their family friend. A few minutes later were, before the next ticket number had even been called, we were in that auspicious door we had seen cracked open before. This room was even more crowded than the hallway but somehow we crammed in and I managed to fit my big backpack under a patient bed hidden behind a curtain. I stood next to a giant stack of papers under an open window and watched as one by one people were called to a small wooden table nearby. There were three of these in the room, each with one or two doctors consulting patients. One girl had been thrown off a motorcycle and had a broken shoulder, dozens of people with casts on their arms or the legs, or the wrists, or their chest, or their… The doctors chatted about the recent Dossain festival half in English while they waited for their next patients to be called.

Raajan, Aama and I were shuttled into the next room where Aama was promptly seen by a doctor who checked out her leg which had been hurting for the last several months. He gave her a piece of paper sanctioning some sort of x-ray. We retraced our steps and found ourselves in another line, then with another piece of paper, then in another office, with another piece of paper, in another line, with hundreds of people sick and broken, crying and heartbroken, cared for and recovering, in another room, with a giant machine that looked like a prop from a space movie made in the 70’s, in a chair, in another room, with another piece of paper.

On my way for a breathe of fresh air out of all this hustle and bustle I opened a wrong door and found myself bombarded by the most wretched smell bounding from what looked like piles of rags and mops in what must have been some forgotten janitors closet. Outside I delved back into the bliss of a Saripha (cherimoya) I had brought back from the village the day before (see last two blog entries). I chatted with a few people and made a phone call to my old host family in Kalimpong, India. They told me three things: 1) they did not celebrate Dossain this year because a relative had died; 2) their uncle who I had spent a couple pleasant days with a month ago, who had taught a few songs about the nature of life and love, and showed me his humble government office and seemed so happy to had met me, had died suddenly of food poisoning; 3) my host brothers new wife had given birth to the child I had seen ballooning from her belly when I was there a month before.

My stomach churned first from shock, then from sadness, then from hunger. I took a few minutes to process this life, this death, this life, this empty stomach, and went back inside to find Aama patiently waiting in a chair with a piece of paper. Raajan, she said, had gone out looking for me. A traffic jam of anxious people, creaking stretchers and clanking equipment delayed my exit but I made my way out of the dark, damp, concrete mansion and out of the hospital gate. I met Raajan on the way, he guided me to the same restaurant he had just come from.

Returning from a precarious toilet and washing my hands I sat across from Raajan and could tell that something was not right with him. He was disturbed. I didn’t say anything besides small talk asking how the food here was, what did he have, etc. “Dal, naan, its good.” I ordered ‘khana’ (translated to mean food which includes rice) and was served rice, dal (lentils), three different vegetable dishes, two condiments- one pickled, one fresh, naan and crispy papar bread- all you can eat, $.80.

The sensory joy my mouth was undergoing was coarsely contrasted by the tragedy my ears underwent that afternoon over lunch. Last week Raajan told me that he remembers thinking that day as I started eating whether he should talk, “should I tell him? what should I tell him?” he thought.

I think it started with me simply asking about his mom’s condition. Raajan told me about the misdiagnosis of the previous doctor near their village and how he had not much more hope for this time around.

Then the subject returned to food. He told me about how when he feels ‘tension’ (speaking in Nepali he says the English word) he doesn’t have an appetite. His quickly approaching flight for Dubai, United Arab Emirates is now an unlimited source of tension he says.

Raajan told me about the time when he did not eat or drink for nine days.

He had told me on another occasion about his friend who had stolen some of his money and created a lot of tension, but this time I heard a fully story and began to put together the pieces of his and his family’s story, why he is over 500,000 rupees ($6,500 or over 10 times more than an average annual salary) in debt, why he is headed overseas. I began to understand and to realize that I have no possible means of really understanding.

Raajan has told me many things about his life which I will try to put together as best as I can, but one thing which seems strangest to me is that he has not been able to share these things with other Nepali friends. He says that for many people, unless they are your closest family, or your absolutely best, best friend, sharing the tragedies of ones life, the problems, the tension and the issues is considered insulting. Raajan tells me that most of his friends these days find ways of showing off their new clothes and new cell phones, but rarely share the feelings which have been breaking Raajan apart from the inside out for years. I gave my open ears, mind and heart. I know we are both the better for it.

Instead of trying to recount their family story the way it has been related to me- in scattered bits and pieces over the last 2.5 moths as I spent a great amount of time with the Lama Family, I will now try to tell it as the coherent whole which it is to me now. Obviously I don’t know even a small fraction of the story’s entirety, but I know enough to have been incredibly moved and touched, shocked and disgusted, angered and disturbed, determined and hopeful, amazed and grateful, filled with sadness and tears. I asked them if they would mind me sharing, they only encouraged me to do so.

Raajan’s Baaba (father) is now in his early-mid sixties. Baaba’s mother died when she gave birth to her first son. Baaba worked and lived in his poor Tamang village with his father until he was eleven years old. At this time Baaba’s father unexpectedly got sick and died leaving Baaba alone. The people in the village blamed the death of his two parents on Baaba saying that the kid was unlucky and the bringer of evil spirits to their village. No one took him in, no one gave him care or love, he was completely alone, eleven years old in a remote village on the steep hillsides of the Himalayan mountains of central Nepal.

At the time when Raajan’s father took the 3 day journey by foot to the capital city of Katmandu, Nepal was undergoing its first ‘experiment with democracy’, a partyless panchaayat system which slighted feudal system but nonetheless aligned seamlessly with the king’s authoritarian power. During the 1950s and 60s is when Nepal opened itself to the outside world for the first time receiving foreign aid and political advice as a tiny, ‘backward’, landlocked country squashed between Tibet (China) and India. Although this is the time when education was given to anyone besides the highest royal and priestly castes, this experiment with democracy was not popular enough, nor successful enough to provide resources for Raajan’s orphaned father. Like now, like then, the government here is famous for taking foreign aid directed for development projects like roads, schools, orphanages and using it to pay salaries and buy fancy homes and cars in the face of some of the worst poverty in the entire world.

Today, walking around the streets of Kathmandu it is impossible to not see orphaned kids wearing clothes as dirty as the streets they sleep on, selling the shoes and biscuits tourists give them to huddled together and get high on shoe glue they buy for a few rupees. I don’t know what it was like 50 years ago here, but Raajan told me that that his father used to be alone on the streets.

Baaba made it to India soon enough where he found work as a load carrier. He probably carried heavier loads all day as a twelve year old kid than you or I could ever imagine carrying for more than 20 minutes. Loads here are strapped to the back with a rope that wraps around the forehead distributing most of the weight on the top of the head. I see old women carrying loads that looks several times their own mass. I see men carrying full size refrigerators, coaches, full sacks of stones and concrete, I see kids carrying 100 lbs sacks of rice, and overflowing baskets filled with ghaas (shrubs/grass/greens for animal feeed) which tower in comparison to their tiny bodies. There is a famous photo of a Nepali man carrying a grand piano up the side of a mountain for a British hill station resort.

Baaba found his next work in India as someone who spent all day in the jungle cutting ghass for animal feed. It was then that he had a caring employer and was taught how to read and write by carving on stones during his tea and lunch break.

In a few years he made enough money to go and visit his mother’s brother in the Darjeeling hills of India (a culturally Nepali region taken from Nepal by Britain in the Anglo-Nepales War which to this day struggles for appropriate political representation and autonomy). There he was taken in for a while by his Uncle and eventually given the promise that he could marry one of his Uncle’s relatives, a 12 year old girl at the time. Baaba joined the Indian Army and slowly made his way to a position as a security guard, the work which he did up until retiring just some 2 years ago. I don’t know all the places he worked, but I do know the man speaks more languages than I have fingers and almost as many children.

Aama and Baaba were married young and spent most of their time living at Baaba’s post. Aama’s first daughter is Basanti, a few years later the first son Bikram, then the second daughter Sharmilla, then the third daughter Urmilla, then the second son Raajan, then the third son Sano, then the fourth and youngest daughter Premilla, seven all together. Basanti was married when she was 15 and soon a her first son, Kunal, who is one year older than Premilla, Basanti’s first daughter, Kanila, is one year younger than Premilla. Sharmilla was also married around the age of 15 and soon had her first daughter Sunita who is one year younger than Basanti’s daughter. One year later came Sharmilla’s son Suraj, and then Basantis youngest son Kusal. Bikram also was married and has two sons, one who is named Beejay. In thirty-five years two people became sixteen.

The family moved around quite a lot. I know they spent a lot of time between the outskirts of Calcutta and the hills of Darjeeling. Baaba was able to save enough money to buy a good amount of land and a house in the village he was born in. Raajan moved to Borjyang village for the first time when he was around 9 years old. Borjyang is a Tamang Village where people mostly speak the Tibeto-Burman Tamang language which was entirely foreign to Raajan at the time. Raajan spoke Hindi, Bengali and Nepali. Slowly, with some ostracizing, and a lot of effort Raajan was able to learn his own ethnic language. Raajan became a vibrant young kid renowned by peers, elders and teachers alike as he excelled in school. (see “Lama Family Series Part 2.a&b Dossain in Borjyang Village” for village descriptions.

Raajan describes the village life to me as one of struggle. While his village is an incredibly beautiful place set among the terraced hillsides of the subtropical Himalayan foothills, his village is extremely poor. Until just a few years ago there was no paved road to the capital Kathmandu city. Even now the village is a two hour walk from the road where Raajan grew up having to walk to everyday for school. School for Raajan was packed to the brim with over ninety students in a small classroom. He would stand in the back and take notes while standing. His teacher would give him a gift of a new pencil or notebook when his wore out because he was always in the top five of his class and those were artifacts his family could not afford at the time.

School, field work, feeding the goats and the cows, cooking, and other house work was a lot for one kid. His Aama and Baaba would only come home once every other year from Calcutta. This would be the happiest times of their lives Raajan says.

His older sisters were home sometimes, but were getting married and moving into other homes with their husbands. Around this time Bikram was married to Bauju (Nepali name for eldest brother’s wife who comes to stay in the husband’s house), who Raajan says was like a mother to him in many ways. Bikram was the first of his siblings to go to Kathmandu, he was not heard from for five years, lost to the city life of alcohol and drugs of which he is still a victim (or an active agent I should say).

Basanti moved to the Darjeeling hills (today, with paved roads many of which were not there 10-15 years ago, an expensive 24 hour bus ride away) with her husband, the son of Baaba’s Uncle who originally took him in. Even when she came back to Borjyang to take care of her (husband’s) house and land, her son and daughter stayed in the Darjeeling area where the schools are good. It was not until this past year that Basanti’s eldest son lived with his mother again and her eldest daughter still goes to school in the Darjeeling hills, separated from her mother.

Recently a high school was built near Borjyang village, but when Raajan was growing up the school only went until 8^th grade. When Raajan completed 8^th grade he moved to Kathmandu to go to high school (grades 9 &10). At that time Sharmilla was living in the city with her son and daughter who were both studying in city schools, regarded to be far better than those in the village. For Raajan the transition from village to city school was very hard, he could no longer stay at the top of his class, but could still get by with the attention of teachers who he impressed considering his village upbringing. Also shocking was the sight of huge vehicles, TVs and lights.

As is described in the end of “Lama Family Series Part 2.b Dossain in Borjyang Village”, it is nearly impossible to grow enough food in Borjyang, and most of rural Nepal for that matter, to feed a family year round; so people have to buy food. To buy food you need money. Making money in rural Nepal is also something that is nearly impossible. A 15 year long Maoist insurgency and ‘People’s War’ just came to an end in Nepal, a Maoist movement which sprang from the depths of exploited poverty stricken Nepalis seeking justice after hundreds of years of oppression from a caste system, an authoritarian king, feudal and colonial systems, and a corrupt government. One source of income for rural Nepalis in recent generations has been the sale of young girls. This practice has decreased significantly, however today there are still some 12,000 young girls illegally taken to India each year as a part of the child and sex slave trade. People try to grow cash crops but are horribly exploited by middle men and struggle to compete agriculturally with neighboring India and China who are fully equipped with machinery, chemicals, and genetically engineered crops.

I have heard estimates that one quarter to one half of Nepali youth are abroad making money. Remittances are one of the center pillars of Nepal’s semi-colonial, semi-feudal, landlocked economy. The official unemployment rate in Nepal is around 42%. In Kathmandu a good salary for a middle level government worker is 8,000 rupees ($100) per month, a more average salary is 4,000 rupees ($50) per month and a minimum earning made my the lower classes who are the majority is 2,200 rupees ($27) per month- less than a dollar a day. I have yet to understand how people can get by with these low wages considering the increasing food prices and increasing housing prices which are jacked up by the masses which are flocking from the hills to the city in search of money. Abroad it is possible for someone from rural Nepal to make 10,000-20,000 rupees ($125-$250) a month. Providing one can share food, doesn’t get sick and doesn’t drink and gamble away his saving as is common in rural Nepal, there will be some to send back home.

While Raajan lived with his sister Sharmilla, Sharmilla’s husband Benaju, was abroad in an Saudi Arabia driving a car and was able to send home just enough money to pay for school fees, books, food, and the rent on the small single room apartment. When Bena got home after a few years, he wanted more privacy and kicked Raajan out. Raajan had no where to go.

While in high school at that time Raajan had found a job at a music store where he cleaned and maintained the shop making 1,000 rupees ($13) per month. This wasn’t enough to get by on. He was stuck, he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to call his father but it was too expensive (50 rupees ($.60) per minute) and sending a letter would take a month just to get there.

Bikram, Raajan’s older brother, also lived in the city as a taxi driver making a decent share, but was (is) a drunk and wasn’t of any help. Luckily Raajan’s other older sister Urmilla had just made it to Dubai at the time and was a nanny in a European woman’s home. Urmilla was able to send Raajan 10,000 rupees. This lasted him a nearly half a year of living, studying and sharing with a student friend.

When Benaju returned to the Gulf for work, Raajan was able to move back in with Sharmilla and her two kids. At this time Basanti’s husband, Ma, had also gone abroad and was working his first job in Malaysia. Before leaving Ma had been told he would have good working conditions, good accommodations and a great salary. None of it turned out to be true. He worked in a Chinese car factory manufacturing car hoods with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals outdoors under the relentless sun. He was sick often and any extra money he made either went toward medical bills or alcohol, not much came home to Basanti and her new born son Kusal. Basanti stayed in the Village to take care of the house and the fields, she had to cut ghaas to feed to animals to fertilize the fields which could bring in 2,000 rupees ($25) on a good peanut harvest. She sent Kusal to live with her sister Sharmilla so that he also could go to a good school. Basanti lived alone in her husband’s house, her husband abroad to make money, all three of her kids away at ‘good schools’ and her husband abroad making money.

Raajan changed Kusal’s diapers when he got back from College and helped Sharmilla around the apartment. Raajan is so far the first and only in his family to go to College and he is extremely proud of it. The government College fees, which is supposed to be free but which usually end up costing 15,000-30,000 rupees a year, were paid for by his sister Urmilla who had now been in Dubai for almost 4 years.

Urmilla was dearly missed by her family and finally came home to great them. She came with stories and photos of the white family she was a nanny for. Raajan says “when I saw the little toddlers’ photos, I couldn’t believe that they were real, they looked just like dolls.” Skin color is a very big deal for Raajan and some of his other siblings. A few of them, including Raajan, use a whitening cream called “Fair and Lovely.” It is not uncommon to hear people speak lowly about people with darker skin. One time Raajan said “yes my skin is darker, but my heart is white right?” and “when I am reborn I want to be white like you.” When the topic of dolls came up again, I asked him why he said that those toddlers looked like dolls, “in Nepal all of the dolls are white” he said.

Urmilla went to Dubai fairly plump, the traditional symbol of wealth and beauty. Her white employer encouraged Urmilla to loose weight to be slim, fitting her western conceptions of beauty. Urmilla returned to Nepal thin as a stick and tried her luck at modeling. She wound up marrying a young man involved in the Nepali pop / hip hop music scene. Raajan describes their marriage as such; at first it was great, but love is blind, Urmilla did not see that this guy was just marrying her for the money she had brought back from Dubai. As soon as that money was finished he began to treat her like shit. She stayed at home in the village while he lived in the city. She got pregnant and he induced an abortion by kicking her in the belly and on her back. She still has not recovered fully from this and gets sick often, now she wants a divorce but can’t seem to get away from her manipulative husband.

With Urmilla married funds no longer came to Raajan for his College education. His parents convinced him that he needed to drop out of College and get a job. Raajan says that his professors were very disappointed at the time, but he admits that there was no money to pay the tuition fees or to buy books.

Raajan had been working small jobs since he first moved to the city and now had to find something more substantial. He worked at a clothing and shoe store at the Kathmandu mall where he worked seven days a week, ten hours a day for a monthly salary of 2,200 rupees ($30). Raajan had greater visions than a dollar a day and started scheming with a buddy of his. They planned and thought and pulled together a miracle.

Raajan and his friend Bidur were able to open a clothing store together in Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu. To open the store they each had borrow money from friends and merciless banks with deathly high interest rates. To start the shop Raajan had some 300,000 rupees worth of loans and credit to his name, his friend was in the same boat. The shop sold hand made hemp and wool items extremely popular with tourists. He told me how some of the hemp clothes that came from the poorest regions of Nepal were sold by their producers for less than a dozen rupees. The items then take an enormous journey, much of which is by foot through the Himalayas, to reach the city where they are sold for thousands of rupees.

Raajan’s shop was incredibly successful and over the course of a year grossed close to 1,000,000 rupees ($13,000), a fortune. The operation was a partnership however, and everything had been agreed to be split 50/50. After a year, Raajan and Bidur’s wholsale supplier could no longer provide and they decided it would be a good time to close shop and count their profit. When all the math was done, Raajan figured out that after selling the shop Raajan’s half of the money would give him enough to pay back his 300,000 rupees worth of debts and have 140,000 ($1,850) rupees profit. He started making plans.

With Raajan’s new hypothesized 140,000 rupees profit he started to coordinate a trip to Switzerland where he would be able to find employment, save money, and one day continue his studies. The plans for this trip were coming into being extremely well, his 140,000 rupees would pay for half of the visa and airfare costs and he found someone to lend him the rest at a very low interest. He found a great ‘manpower’ organization which arranged a job in Switzerland and was preparing to fix his flight and visa for him. But the shop was yet to be sold, Raajan only had the money on paper, not in his hand.

Raajan and Bidur sold the shop and all of the nearly 1,000,000 rupees went into their joint account. Bidur withdrew all of the money and disappeared without a word.

An unspeakable crime, an unthinkable betrayal by a ‘friend’, a ‘partner.’

Raajan heard that Bidur had stolen the money and ran away to India, Raajan followed suit and stumbled around looking for his long lost friend. No such luck. Raajan returned to Kathmandu and relentlessly tried calling Bidur to no avail. He filed reports with the police, also to no avail. Bidur was gone. Raajan’s debt of 300,000 rupees from the loans to open the shop remained.

That is when Raajan hardly ate or drank for nine days. He cried more than he consumed, and he didn’t cry alone. His family, his sisters, his cousins, his parents, everyone was invested in Raajan- the ambitious, smart and charismatic 21 year old who was leading them all forward into Nepal’s new generation of opportunity and progress. Shattered. Destroyed. Nearly starved by grief, the creation of greed.

By this time the Maoist insurgency in Nepal was at its peak. Demands for the King to step down were higher than ever and an already unstable government was crippled by the violence of the Maoists backed by the popular support of the country’s people who could shut down the entire city of Kathmandu in heartbeat and did so many times. Some strikes would go on for weeks and basic items like food and cooking gas would be unavailable for purchase. Things like food and cooking gas would be unavailable for purchase.

The proof of Bidur’s theft sat in the police station. And sat. Murder cases went and go untried. The proof sits as meaningless pieces of paper, stacked and rotting in neglect. The criminals roam free paying small fares to those who might put them behind bars. The maimed victims remain without money, without a voice, without justice.

Eventually Raajan was able to call Bidur from an anonymous phone and, in a disguised voice, say that he was a different friend who needed to meet up with Bidur as soon as possible. They arranged the time and the place. As soon as Bidur saw Raajan’s face he sprinted away. Raajan chased him all over the city, but Bidur got away.

The police were proving to be worthless. At one point Bidur was caught and put behind bars, but after giving the police a mere 20,000 rupees ($250) he was back out. The police then recommended to Raajan that he should cut off Bidur’s leg so that he wont be able to escape next time. Raajan sought other ways to get his money back, he needed to pay off those loans at the very least. A lawyer would cost something like 5,000 rupees ($70) an hour. The court process, if it would ever happen at all, would take one-two years. I honestly have no idea how much money Raajan would have to give the police to keep Bidur in jail and how much he would have to pay a judge to see his case, one of thousands waiting, waiting.

Besides the police, other people with guns (power) in Nepal include the King’s Royal Army and the Maoists. Who could he trust to try to get his money back? The Maoists had been to Raajan’s village and filled peoples heart’s with false promises that it was the Maoists who would lift up the exploited poor from hundreds of years of oppression. They took land for ‘redistribution’, demanded to be fed, and threatened to kill anyone with associations to the Royal Army. The Royal Army had been to Raajan’s village and told everyone that the Maoist are rotten liars who seek nothing but to tear the country apart and seize self serving power; they demanded to be housed and fed and threatened to kill anyone associated with the Maoists. With the Maoists now elected as the majority, the Nepalese people chose the Maoist despite the costs of thousands killed, thousands displaced, insecurity and political destabilization. The ends seemed worth the means.

Raajan also choose the Maoist as people with guns. The Maoist told Raajan that for 50,000 rupees they would seize all of Bidur’s assets and give half of them to Raajan. Raajan started paying the Maoists by handing over 100 rupees for a cup of tea when it ordinarily cost 5 rupees, buying them fancy cell phones, inflated meals and any number of other money requests. All in the name of uplifting the exploited poor of course. Raajan’s debt only grew as he paid the Maoists off.

However, Raajan realized that Bidur’s only tangible assets were his family’s land. Bidur had invested a lot of the stolen money in the illegal trade of an endangered species of sandalwood and would be very hard to retrieve in this aggressive manner. Bidur’s family’s land is worth 100,000 rupees ($1,300). If Raajan gave the Maoists 50,000 to seize the land and then the Maoists gave him half, the only thing outstanding for Raajan would be more interest on more loans necessary to get the 50,000 rupees to begin with.

In total Raajan ended up giving the Maoists the handsome sum of 25,000 rupees. By a miracle Raajan was able to meet up with Bidur again and get him in the hands of the Maoists. Raajan insisted on going with, but the Maoists got in a separate car and drove away, Raajan did not know what would happen.

Apparently the 25,000 rupees Raajan had given thus far was not enough for Raajan to get any money, or real justice for that matter. It was only enough money for the Maoist to drag Bidur to the jungle, hang him upside-down from a tree branch and beat him silly. This of course helped neither party, but probably only decreased any chance Raajan may have had of Bidur giving him some money in the future.

I can come nowhere close to understanding Raajan’s pain from this situation. For a high school educated young man coming from a poor farming village in Nepal, being 300,000 rupees in debt is a hole so unimaginably and suffocatingly deep, digging oneself out of it is like trying to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen; one in five people die, and only another one in five make it to the top.

Raajan, an extremely bright person with blossoming energy, was able to pull himself out of his slump of helplessness and reflect on his options. Finding a job that would pay more than 3-4,000 rupees per month was just about impossible, and that of course is hardly enough to pay the room rent let alone eat, pay for siblings’ tuition and book fees, or pay back 300,000 rupees worth of loans for that matter.

One opportunity arose which he capitalized on. Another Tamang family from Borjyang, Raajan’s village, owned a couple of store fronts in a well to do neighborhood called Bhatbhateni. A few months now having passed since Bidur stole his money, Raajan was somehow able to take out more loans and buy one of the storefronts for 70,000. Over the course of the next couple months Raajan ambitiously outfitted the store with a rack to display the fruit and vegetables that he was selling with the help of his family. A juice machine was included in the initial 70,000 rupees payment, but as his credit racked up, slowly but surely as he outfitted the shop with packaged juices, a scale, and fruit which he bought regularly.

Raajan found the enterprise unsteady, but profitable nonetheless. After the costs of buying fruits and vegetables, paying the 10,000 rupee per month rent fee, transportation costs back and forth between Swayambu and Bhatbateni (on the opposite side of town), the total monthly profit would range anywhere from 3-12 thousand rupees. Enough to help pay rent, gas, food, and to slowly start paying off debt created by starting the new fruit shop. The hope of course being that one day enough income would be generated to start paying off the his older loans whose snowballing interest rates’ weight was being felt like iron balls and chains tying Raajan to the karmic greed of his Bidur.

Whenever his other family members had a chance they’d come by and help Raajan out sitting in the shop. With his incredible hospitality, flamboyant personality, and unending personal energy and commitment, Raajan built a great costumer base and the fruit shop did fairly well. To buy produce from the wholesale, which has to be done a couple times per week, they have to wake up around 4:30 or 5 am, every evening they stay in Bhatbateni untill sundown and then it takes them an hour to get home, another hour to cook, feed the arge family and find some sleep by 10 or 11 pm.

After several months the fruit shop had hardly begun to pay off its initial creditors, and it was becoming clear another source of income would be needed. Jems (pronounced kind of like ‘James’) is a family friend with distant relation that makes him like family. What exactly his job is, I am still not sure, but I know that he is involved with a ‘mainpower’ office. Mainpower offices are those which send Nepali abroad to work or study.

Jems showed Raajan a newspaper advertisement and encouraged him to apply for an opportunity to go abroad to make money. Raajan went and stood in a line for countless hours and was one of 1,400 Nepalis to be interviewed for this competition which would award 11 Nepali with above-standard work opportunities in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

His interviewees loved Raajan and told him he would be perfectly suited for the work in a five-star hotel which he had now been awarded. Raajan of course was also ecstatic. A five star hotel in Dubai! He was promised three years of work with a salary of 24,000 Nepali rupees ($320) per month, good accommodations, and two meals per day given by his work. A great opportunity.

Then Raajan and the other ten competition winners were handled by the mainpower office that Jems works for. The mainpower office took care of making their visas and airplane tickets, for a charge of course. Everything was coming together for Raajan it seemed, with that salary he could start pay back his loans in a couple years, maybe save enough to go to a Western country or go to college again.

One late summer day, about 7 months after Raajan had opened the fruit shop, a very strange thing happened. A peculiar man came to Raajan’s shop hoping to buy some fruit. The man was incredibly tall and skinny, but more than either of those two things his was a white man that spoke Nepali. That day Raajan only had one Asian pear left, an expensive fruit, and Raajan gave it to Jon for free after they had chatted for a few minutes. Jon of course is my roommate here in Bhaatbateni. It wouldn’t be long before I bought a couple of blood red, deadly delicious pomegranates from Raajan’s sisters and eventually met the man himself. They graciously invited Jon and I to their apartment for dinner (see Lama family series part 1) and the rest is history.

The night I went to their room for the first time, now over two months ago, was supposed to be Raajan’s last night before leaving for Dubai. The next day we found out that actually not everyone in the group had gotten together the handsome sum to pay for the visa and airplane ticket (120,000 rupees total - $1,600). At that time it was the festival of Ramadan in Dubai, and the Nepali festival of Dassain was quickly approaching; it would be best to wait and leave after Dassain.

Dassain came and Dassain went (see Lama Family Series part 2.a and 2.b). I returned from Borjyang village, I sat in an opened air restaurant across the street from the Hospital where Raajan’s mom waited for us with a piece of paper as Raajan opened his heart to me and told me how he tries not to feel hopeless about his situation. He is so incredibly sad to be leaving his family, his friends, his country, but he must, there is no other option. At that time the main power office had said Raajan would be leaving in three days, and so he seemed ready to go.

Three days came and the departure date was postponed again. I soon learned that Raajan was one of the people who was yet to pay fully for his ticket and visa. He and his sisters had been searching desperately for a source of money, but with so many outstanding loans, it was impossible. To pay off one of his first loans, Rajan had taken out another loan, the most extreme type. If Raajan did not pay the steep interest on this loan his family’s house and land would be seized. The first payment had already been missed. Raajan absolutely needed to go to Dubai.

Without Raajan asking me I offered to give him a loan of 50,000 rupees, enough to pay for the rest of his ticket and visa fees. He accepted saying he would pay me back in one year. I ended up giving him closer to 70,000 rupees, only a little bit more than my monthly Fulbright stipend which pays me more than professors and high ranking government officials in Nepal.

With Dassain passed the Festival of Tihar approaching and Raajan was deeply saddened that he would not be able to celebrate with his family, receiving the blessings of his sisters during the auspicious ceremony of ‘bai tikka’ (brother’s receiving of tikka- Tikka is a colorful decoration worn on the forehead during puja (religious worship ceremony)). We didn’t know why, but Raajan’s departure date was once more postponed, he was happy that he would be home for bai tikka.

I was invited to the bai tikka ceremony at the Lama Family house. I wore the tikka and received blessings and best wishes from the sisters in a beautiful ceremony of exchange, a whole story in and of itself. If I wasn’t already, this made me a ‘bai’ (brother) in a deeper and fuller way. It was a beautiful day, Baaba and Aama had come from the village to celebrate and everyone had a good time feasting and dancing. Baaba and Bikrim dai were both drunk as usual, but fun none the less. The next day I learned that Baaba had drank so much he hardly remembered the day before. After enquiring why, he told me he drank because he had so much tension. That is when I learned about the loan Baaba had taken out for his son and that was now threatening the future of his own home and land.

Baaba returned to Borjyang, but Aama would stay until her son left, now just a few days away. I stayed over again, ‘Raajan’s last night’, to find out that the flight had been postponed again, we still didn’t really know why. The mainpower office told him it was because the flights had become too expensive. He said he had been told he had the option to pay for his own travel to New Delhi where the flights were cheaper. Raajan turned down the offer while a few in the group took it up. That’s when I learned that everyday 600 Nepalis leave for the Gulf States to make money. Too much time had passed and there was too much work to waiting in the village, so Aama left as well, not sure what would become of her son.

Like the family that they are for me now, I continued hanging out with them, sharing laughs to ease the hard times which I continued to learn more and more about. One day sitting at the fruit shop Besanti told that Bikrim had come over the night before drunk and threw her smallest ten year old son Kusal across the room, injuring his back. That’s when I learned about the extent to which Bikrim makes a good amount of money driving his taxi, and how he wastes it all on alcohol, fancy restaurants, and his new girlfriend instead of using his money to help to pay for the food he eats, his two sons’ education, his brother’s debt, his wife’s loneliness.

Finally it was official, Raajan was leaving Sunday November 9^th. By this time many of my other Fulbright friends had also been spending time hanging out at the fruit shop and getting close with the family. We were all deeply saddened to know he was finally leaving and accepted the invitation to their apartment to make momos (Nepali style dumpling) Raajan’s last evenning in Kathmandu. Myself, Jon, Waverly (Jon’s newly arrived girlfriend), Sarah Zellwegger (my friend from Pitzer now working for child’s rights through UNISEF), and couple other Fulbrighters Danni and Danielle all went over there for a fabulously fun and delicious evening of momo making. While we were all sloppy and slow to learn, the quickness, dexterity, and perfection with which Raajan and his family made momos shows a lot about who they are.

I slept over again for the last night, left early in the morning as Raajan packed up his bag, to go to a class on Ayurvedic medicine hosted by Jon. I would return before everyone left together for the airport, his flight was at 5pm. After the class I called and said I was on my way back, when were they leaving? Hearing the sadness in Raajan’s voice really made me stop in my tracks and try to walk in his shoes. I walked quickly back to their apartment thinking I would be late. When I came in the room, the sadness I had been trying to empathize with was struck by a reality of ambiguity. What was going on, I was not sure.

I arrived at 3:30pm, “if your flight is at five, we need to leave now” I said. After a long pause I finally received the answer which settled me into the feelings of the room, of the moment. “We don’t have the ticket, and we still haven’t heard from Jems, you call him.” I called Jems: “Hallo?” “Where’s the ticket? Doesn’t Raajan’s flight leave at five, what is going to happen?” I asked. “No, his flight doesn’t leave until nine, he needs to be at the airport by five” Jems replied, “I am at the office now, the mam (boss) just left to get the ticket, I’ll call you when she returns.”

No call ever came from Jems that night, we called over and over again, no answer.

Frustration, confusion, disgust and anger. The amount of tension in the room was almost unbearable. I finally took out a board game and started playing with Basanti’s son Kusal. Then Sharmilla’s son Suraj got jealous, I let them try to play with each other. This did not work out so well. Within no time the two young boys were yelling at each other and starting to throw punches as well.

In that moment, all of this was too much for me to handle. I walked into the other room, myself close to tears. For the majority of both of these boys’ lives, their fathers have been abroad making money, money for the basic needs of food and shelter, education, and to move upward through society via material consumption. Now, these boys’ greatest and most present male role model in their lives was also on his way out, in a slow, painful process. What could these young boys possibly be feeling? Sure, it was an argument over the board game that started the fight, but I was sensing much deeper causes of emotional disruption.

As the sun set, we were able to free ourselves from the idea that Raajan would be leaving. We Prepared a wonderful meal and enjoyed each others company as always.

The next morning when I had had my fill of watching glamorous half naked Hindi beauty queens shaking their asses to technofied Hindi songs filled with the traditional sounds of tablas and sitar, by going downstairs to fill up buckets of water for the kitchen and bathroom from the well I escaped trying to think about how the music videos might affect the people here struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis -(twelve mouths to feed, ten months behind on a school tuition fees, being robbed by business partners and having the proof sit in the police office where they demand 50,000 rupees to start doing anything about it, on the way to the gulf to join hundreds of thousands of fellow Nepali fathers, sons, and husbands to bring a little bit of money into a frozen, landlocked economy, , "stress makes my skin so black, but my heart is white isnt it?" I heard Raajan say once)-

There was something very calming and timeless about throwing a metal bucket down a narrow black shoot, seeing nothing but faint indistinguishable silver ripples intangibly below and hearing a splash, thunk and kerplunk; then drawing the bucket up with a knotty synthetic cord in a way as to not allow it to hit against the walls of the well which would certainly send splashes straight back down. Pouring the bucket into another container and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating until a bead of sweat falls to meet the surreal surface somewhere below.

Life moves on. While everyone was overflowing with tension about Raajan’s departure, there was a new excitement in the air. Benaju, Sharmilla’s husband would soon be returning from Saudi Arabia. The word was that he had recently gotten a raise for his car driving work and everyone was very excited to see what he would come home with.

Other happenings becoming mixed emotions were the return of the school report cards. Sunita was literally ranked first in her class. She is an incredibly bright student. Premilla on the other hand failed in two subjects. After studying most of her life in the village, the transition to city private school for Premilla has been very hard, she is two years behind, but is persevering and doing ok. Sunita, Suraj, Kusal and Premilla all study at the same English Medium School. When four kids from a family all go to the same school, one studies for free, that is Kusal. Sunita also studies for free because of her outstanding marks. The school fees are about 1,200 rupees per month. Premilla’s school fees have not been able to be paid for the last 11 months. The only reason she has not been expelled is because the school administrators sympathize with Raajan situation, Raajan being the one who pays for his youngest sister. With the return of report cards, I heard debates about sending Premilla back to the village which resolved in keeping her here to study harder than ever.

Sharmilla’s glowing face was evidence that her husband had returned. I came over to the apartment after spending the day with my Nepali friend who is a wealthy twenty one year old living almost like a middle class American, computer, ipod, Maxim magazine, nights out with friends, the passion and ability to attend every show of the two week long Kathmandu International Theatre Festival, a guy who told me he would show me the other side of Nepali culture.

Arriving at the Lama family house that evening tore at my insides in an undescribable way. Benaju, a short, overweight man to shy to say anything more than hello to me, was at the two room apartment. In one room sat his wife and two kids Sunita and Suraj playing with their gifts a laptop computer he had won in a lottery, a camcorder he had bought, mini electronic organizers, top of the line cell phone, and a tall box of sweets and the promise of a new bicycle.

In the other room sat Raajan and Besanti. When I asked if they were happy that their brother in law was back they didn’t show much enthusiasm. Besanti jabbered on about how her sister Sharmilla had just gotten 75,000 rupees ($1,000) worth of gold, she explained how her husband works in the same country but further away from the city. Basanti’s husband asked Benaju to bring home a couple scientific calculators for his kids and niece Premilla and he would pay him back the next time they met. Instead Benaju returned with only two things that was not only for his wife or kids, the box of candies and some powdered milk.

Sano bai came in the room watching a video on the new cell phone. Raajan says “who needs a fancy cell phone? Simple is good enough for me.” “I agree, in the states, my cell phone is the old black and white kind” I concurred. I watched as Premilla watched her brother mesmerized by the tiny screen, earphones plugging his ears. I tried to imagine how she felt, that 15,000 rupee cell phone was enough to pay for a year of her jeopardized education. “I don’t like cell phones” she said walking away.

I slept over again that night and chatted with Raajan. I explained to him that I had been thinking about sponsoring Premilla’s education costs, but that this whole situation made me hesitate. Sharmilla’s husband just bought a 15,000 refrigerator, a 25,000 rupees worth of cell phones, a 5,000 rupees bicycle for his son, 75,000 rupees worth of gold for his wife; with that sort of wealth in the family why should I pay? Premilla’s own older brother Bikrim spends wastes away his money on alcohol, why should I pay?

“If my family had cooperated from the beginning do you think I would be in the problem I am in right now? I wouldn’t have to pay for Bikrim’s sons’ clothes and school books, I would have been able to pay off my loans and find another job to pay back my relatives more slowly, I wouldn’t need to leave the country. It may seem like we all get along great, but this is only on the surface. With Sharmilla’s husband back we are going to have to live separately, we will have to buy a new stove, we won’t be able to split the cost of gas and food, how can Basanti and I afford that? Sharmilla wants to stay together, her husband will soon be abroad again and she doesn’t want to be lonely with the rest of her family, but Benaju wants to live separate. He is another kind of person, he has always been like that” Raajan said. I remembered what Raajan had told me about Benaju kicking him out of the apartment when he was a college student.

Raajan had also explained to me earlier that one problem with Nepali society is that when people go abroad to make money it is seen as having climbed higher up the ladder of progress. They usually return with a complete lack of humility showing off their new found wealth with no shame. They insult their friends and families as they bask in their self-perceived superiority which often splits families apart, sons forgetting to repay even those who gave them the milk that nourished them into this world. Now Raajan said “do you remember what I told you before about people who come back after making money abroad? That is happening in my family right here, right now.”

This is when I learned that there is another issue adding tension to the family dynamic. When Raajan was in a really tough spot and being pressured extremely hard by one of his money lenders, his sister Sharmilla gave him 100,000 rupees ($1,300). Of course for Sharmilla herself, her only source of income being her fields and cow back in the village. The 100,000 rupees that she given away had been sent home by her husband abroad. At the time she lied to Benaju about where that money had gone. Recently, however, Sharmilla told Raajan that she had told her husband the truth. Raajan knew that it would only be a short time before Benaju would the demand the money back. “But he wont be able to ask me for the money himself, Sharmilla will have to beg for the money on his behalf. Why does he think I am trying to go abroad? I cant give it to him now, he knows that but he will demand it anyhow, by any means whatsoever” Raajan said pausing, the angst in his voice swelling the meaning of his words with incomprehensible emotions, “I think he is trying to buy some land.” A long silence. “Good night, sleep well, sweet dreams.”

I fell asleep pondering the relationships in my own family. ‘How do my inlaws relate with one another? What sort of tensions are there? What are our financial and emotional histories, hidden from me as a child and adolescent? Should I sponsor Premilla? Its only $15 a month and it would have such an impact… Of course, the rich American sponsors the poor Nepali; these people should help themselves. Nepal’s history is both blessed and plagued by foreign aid. But have they not made me just like family? Am I really family though? If I give the money will they think they that materialistic greed can always be offset by rich white people? Enough of the country is already dependent on aid. But is much of this country’s poverty not directly attributable to the West’s imperial domination of the global economy and resources?’ And on and on, the mind finds no answers. And so we call upon our hearts.

The next morning over breakfast we settled on the fact that the we all needed to go to the mainpower office and scold them for delaying Raajan’s trip so many damn times. A group of five of us left but only Raajan and I made it to the office. We waited until Jems showed up and then went up stairs to meet the mam (boss). At first they were only expecting Raajan and Jems, but when I showed up the guard had to make us wait as he went upstairs to clear things up with the mam.

We walked through an enormous carpeted room and came to a small office furnished with an exquisite wood desk with a glass cover, and a very nice bench and chair for guests. It was much nicer than most government offices in Nepal I have been to.

After waiting a few minutes the mam came in. We asked her in Nepali why Raajan hadn’t left yet. “Well we have been having some problems” she started saying in English, directed at me until Raajan interrupted saying it would be better for her to speak in Nepali so everyone could understand, I concurred in a way that displayed my fluency in the Nepali language.

It took I while to get it all out, but at the meeting Raajan heard for the first time why his trip had been delayed for the past 1.5 months. Raajan had been to the office countless times before and was told white lies. Jems, his own family relative, had never told him the truth either (and Jems claims he also didn’t know until then although that’s clearly a lie as he had been working closely with the mam for his commission). Both Raajan and Jems agree that it was me that was the cause of the unveiling. It took the presence of a white man to let Raajan be told the truth.

Originally the trip was delayed because all the funds where not there for the visas plane tickets. Soon after the original delay, Raajan’s visa to leave the country had expired. Because he had only seen his visa once, briefly when it was issued three months earlier, he did not realize this. And so every time the office told him he was about to leave, even though this was physically impossible, Raajan had no reason not to believe them.

Nepali’s who go abroad to Gulf states typically live in overcrowded, dirty hostels and do the low wage physical labor in these countries. In the meeting, the mam told us that the Nepali Ministry of Labor inspected the hostel where Raajan was arranged to stay at and found the conditions too poor to allow their citizens to live there; eight people living in rooms meant for four, that sort of thing. Those destined for the Gulf States must have written on paper where they will be working and where they will be staying. The Nepali government would not allow anyone to leave Nepal that was destined for certain hostels until these places cleaned up there act.

The mam said that telling the truth about the situation would have been too discouraging for Raajan and the others, so instead they said that the tickets were too expensive. This lie covered up the fact that the office had illegally sent a few people in his group through India to avoid the Nepal Labor Ministry’s emigration restriction on those destined for the hostel this group was destined for.

I made it very clear how horrible I thought it was that they had been lying to my friend this whole time, “Why did you tell Raajan to pack his bags last week if he did not even have a valid visa? Do you have any idea what you have put Raajan and his family through the last two months as you tell them so many lies?” Raajan was clearly upset and repeated to the mam what he had told me before. Raajan was thinking about taking back his money and looking for other options. Immediately Jems and the mam said “No, its ok, you will you go to anyways? You have our promise this time, we will have everything ready in one week.”

We clarified everything, we set the date and said we would come to the office in six days for the ticket which would then prove his departure for the next day. The issue with the hostel was cleared up, they would renew his visa, get the ticket, everything would be fine.

Six days went by and Raajan and I went to the office. The mam was not there. By this time Raajan was used to this sort of treatment and felt like he would never go. His friends and family felt the same way. By this time Raajan would say he did not know when people asked him when he was leaving. We had no other option but to wait another week.

On our walk back to my neighborhood that afternoon is when Raajan told me some of the most disturbing news I had heard so far. Raajan told me that he had been trying to contact me the last day, I said “sorry, I was busy, why did you need to talk so bad?”

“Someone is threatening to kidnap me or people from my family” Raajan said.

I was shocked and made him repeat himself to make sure I understood. Raajan told me that he was walking through town the other day when he ran into an old friend of his. They were chatting and the guy said that Raajan better not show his face around here. The friend told him that one of the guys Raajan owes money to was planning to kidnap Raajan or someone from his family. For the last two days since Raajan had heard this news he was too scared to leave his apartment and ended up sleeping at mine that evening.

“Do you think it is a real threat?” I asked.

“Of course, there are so many people that this has happened to” he replied, so many.”

This guy Raajan owes money to was the wholesaler of the hemp clothing Raajan sold in the shop with Bidur. Raajan would take the clothes on credit and the store accumulated a 130,000 credit which was split 50/50 between Bidur and Raajan. Of course Raajan had the money to pay off his share of the credit until Bidur stole everything. Now the creditor was chasing after Raajan for the entire sum and not Bidur at all, I wandered why. “I am so incredibly saddened” Raajan said, “I makes me feel so horrible to know that my family is physically threatened by this, and it makes me not want to leave, what if someone is taken while I am out of the country? I would want to die.”

I thought of all of the tension the Lama family was under- their land and house being threatened, their education, their daily life and struggle to make ends meet while simultaneous striving to move ahead and away from their starting place as poor farmers, fathers abroad making money, the rifts in the family, and now threats of kidnapping. To think that the majority of these issues stemmed from the greed and theft of one man, and the lack of a legal system to bring justice to Raajan and his family… I remember asking Raajan a few weeks before “whay didn’t you just take him to court, why didn’t he stay in jail, why didn’t you just take him to court?” Things don’t work like that here.

Went I got home Sarah Zellwegger came over and shared a cup of tea. She asked how things were going and I told her how the office had been lying to him the whole time and how fucked up it was that Raajan had been kept in the dark this whole time about the entire process. The way that mainpower offices are paid to take care of everything creates a very strange dynamic where the client (Raajan) is forced into the position of a clueless and helpless sheep who is at the mercy of the well educated and powerful mam who takes care of everything behind closed curtains. And why the hell was Jems not seeming to be of much help? Was it true what all the kids in the Lama family say, that he is a horrible guy?

Sarah related the situation to her own. She had come to Nepal on a grant to document oral histories of students at a particular school. On the internet the school advertised that their students where not charged tuition fees and that most of them where either from poor village families or from families displaced by the Maoist’s ‘People’s War’. The whole thing ended up being a lie. The owner of the school ended up being not only sexually threatening but an untrustworthy thief that was pocketing donations made to the school. To me that story sounds a lot like a microcosm of the enormous problem of corruption in Nepal.

In a few days a Pitzer college friend’s friends where passing through Nepal and I hosted them for a couple of days. We had a great time together. Their last day we spent in the small ancient city of Buktapur. On the way back to Kathmandu we hitched a ride on a small bus on its way back from the China border. Everyone was singing songs and jolly as their full day journey approached its end. The bus was packed with packages- blankets, pressure cookers, DVD players. People got off at their stops, some had gone on the journey to outfit their store with cheap goods, others took the 10 hour bus ride just to buy themselves a blanket at a lower price than they could get here in crowded Kathmandu. On the bus ride back I got a text message from Raajan that he was leaving tomorrow. No joke this time.

The next morning, Monday Novemeber 24^th I believe, 2.5 months after Raajan’s first supposed date of departure, I was kneading dough in my kitchen, making breakfast with Jon when Raajan showed up, dressed to impress. Jon said his goodbye and wished Raajan all the best. I wasn’t sure to smile with pride or cry with sorrow. Raajan was in a hurry so without eating we left and headed to his apartment.

On the taxi drive to his place Raajan received a phone call. The mood which was already unbearable reached a tipping point when broke into tears on the phone. He was speaking in mostly Tamang (his ethnic mother tongue which I do not understand) but there was some Nepali in there, enough Nepali for me to understand that his sister Sharmilla was begging for the 100,000 rupees Raajan owed Benaju. Demanding it no matter what, anyhow, any way. But how could he possibly pay?

When we got to the house, it seemed as though it were the day of a funeral. The skies were bright and the sun was shining but inside it was grey and gloomy. Everyone was crying. I had never seen this family like this before, rivers of tears. Everyone was crying, except for me, that would come later.

Two taxis went to the airport, I was in the one with Raajan, Benaju and Sharmilla. Sharmilla released the excruciatingly awkward tension in the car with the beautiful humor she is blessed with.

We all stood together said goodbyes. Raajan pulled me aside. He told me an enormous thanks, that he would have not been able to do this without me. I told him what a blessing it was that we had all met and become like family. He told me I was like a god to him. I told him, no you are like a god to me. I told him he must remember to eat well, even if his stress kills his appetite. We hugged, not a very Nepali thing to do, but something that had to be done.

Raajan walked away from us all with a big smile and his chin high. Basanti sobbed as she watched her brother leave just like her own husband two times before. Raajan boarded Jem’s motorcycle and waved a final goodbye as he slowly disappeared behind a passing bus and its following plume of black smoke.

Sharmilla and her husband were off to the village to prepare for their son’s upcoming coming of age ceremony. Basanti, sano bai and I took I taxi back home. Basanti slowly dried her tears and we rode in silence for most of the trip. Finally we started thinking how Raajan would be having a very unique and special experience, he had never been on a plane before or further away from home than northern India, now Dubai! Maybe we could be a bit happy for him, or at least send him our most positive thoughts and imagination of what would become in his near future.

Positive thoughts were hard to maintain for long. Basanti was soon crying again as she told me how all of Raajan’s tension would now fall on her. Besanti is the oldest in the family and is the one who cooks the most, cleans the most, now she will have to be the one to work in the fruit shop the most. Sharmilla’s husband wont allow her to go to the shop anymore she explained. Basanti was also faced with trying to find a new place to live now that they were being kicked out of their current apartment by the landlord and Benaju wants to be separate for the two months he is home. Basanti’s husband has only sent home enough money to pay for her eldest son’s college tuition, how will she pay for the rent, food, gas, there is not even money to buy produce from the wholesaler for the shop. The shop was making way less than it used to these days she explained. Now that it is cold people don’t want to by as much fruit or fresh juice. It definitely does not help that one of the most popular and largest department stores in the city is right across the street form the shop.

The Bhaatbateni supermarket could be thought of as the Wal-Mart of Nepal, except there are only two stores, and the prices are actually more expensive because there is no bargaining. For many Nepalis however, the modern shopping experience the place brings is enough to neutralize the slightly higher prices.

Two nights after Raajan left I got a phone call from Lalita, Raajan’s 16 year old cousin from the Borjyang Village. She told me she would no longer be able to study because her father cannot afford the books and the absence of her labor around the house and fields. She felt like dying and crying she said. I told her Raajan had finally left. Raajan’s Aama had gone back to the clinic she said, her leg was still hurting even after the medicine. “Ok well you still have your family, the most important thing, so don’t even think about dying” I said over the phone now loosing its connection, “Ill be coming to the village in a couple weeks, I’ll see you soon.”

We didn’t hear anything from Raajan for several days. I had mentioned to Raajan and Besanti previously that I would pay them to help me out in my apartment cooking and cleaning. Up until this point I had been washing my clothes by hand, cooking, cleaning, and everything. A lot for a student living with a roomate. Basanti started coming over to help me out, it was very hard to have her accept any payment, but I try to pay her well for her work.

One time when she was over we received our first word from Raajan in the form of an email that read something like this: hello I have arrived well and I will start work tomorrow. Things are not how I was told they would be. They said I would have a 24,000 nepali rupees monthly salary but it is only 15,000; they said I would have two meals given by my work for free each day, but they do not give this. If I want my work to give me food it costs 7,000 rupees per month. Instead of keeping the books at a gym at a five star hotel I will be a bus boy for a restaurant. I am staying in a very crowded and dirty room.

I have been crying a lot. Maybe I will try to return in 8 months. There is no place for me to cook and since I have arrived here I have had no substantial food, only packet food. Please say hello to everyone for me and tell Jems that it is not a good situation.

While I read this out loud, Basanti cried. She told me about how it was the same for her husband. They were told one thing and something completely different came when he arrived.

One evening I was hanging out in Swayambu at the Lama family’s house. Complaints about Jems were no new thing for me. Since the beginning I had heard, especially from the younger kids, that he was no good. Raajan complained about his dirty mouth and improper habits. I noticed on one occasion Jems draping his arms over Sharmilla, a married woman; although he did so in a seemingly brotherly way, that is absolutely intolerable in this cultural context.

As a gift of exchange during bai tikka I had given a precious bottle of honey from my mother’s hives in the USA. Premilla, who I gave it to, only had one spoonful before Jems had raided their refrigerator and downed the whole bottle in one go. The kids complained about this and how he just eats all of their food. Sunita told me how she scolded Jems telling him to never come back to her home, he was not welcome. They talked about how just the other day Jems had bought a new pair of 5,000 rupee shoes and exchanged his motorcycle for a fancier version, probably with the commission he made from sending Raajan away.

Sharmilla broke up all of the Jems bashing by saying “come on, he is not that bad, he helps out, he takes people around on his motorcyle, he helped Raajan.” Then her own daughter Sunita said “No, you only defend him because he helps you. He only takes you on the motorcycle because you have the nicest saris, he wont take others because they don’t look as good.” Basanti told me about the time she was sick and needed a ride across town but Jems didn’t offer, instead she had to walk, she never been on the bike once.

Later that evening Jems came in. He was offered tea and peanuts. He flaunted around in his fancy suit and new shoes as he chatted and threw peanut shells on the freshly cleaned floor. Someone commented on how he ate like a pig. Then Jems looked at me and said “Hey Phursang…” (Phursang is the name I am sometimes called with this family literally meaning ‘fair one’)… “don’t listen to these fools. Why would you believe her…” (pointing to Basanti) “she looks like a monkey, why would you even take food from her. These people don’t even know how to shit in a civilized manner. They wipe their ass with a rock, they don’t even know how to wipe their ass with a leaf…”

“What are you talking about we have a toilet at our house in the village” Sunita says. (They are the only family in their village with a toilet, most other families use the woods.)

“You have only had that toilet for two years. Alden, come over to my house sometime and I show you something nice, we have a toilet, we have electricity, I’ll take out one my motorcycle sometime” Jems said.

I was speechless and could only ignore the man’s gaze trying to imply that I thought what he had just said was meaningless to me.

A few days later, Raajan’s second email read something like this:

I miss everyone very much, reading your last email I cried so much because I feel so lonely here. I complained to my boss saying that I was lied to but no one listened to me. Nothing is how I was told it would be, but my luck is this way isn’t it.

I am working as a ‘busser’ at a Chilly’s Restaurant in Dubai city center. I have to work 84 hours per week, 3 days 12 hours/day and 3 days 16 hours/week with only one day off. The work is so horrible, I have to clean all day, every hour, every minute, every second. I neither live nor work with any other Nepalis, I haven’t seen anyone from my ‘group’. I live with black Egyptian men who only speak Arabic so we cannot communicate. I had some money in my room which is now lost. My work gives me one burger a day and soft drinks are free (Eating cow meat is not only illegal but also a sin in Nepal). Everything here is so expensive and there is no place to cook even if I wanted to.

I do not want to stay here at all, but I have no other option. I have so many loans that I must stay and work. I love you and miss you all so much!

I did the calculations. After one year of work and paying for food Raajan would not even be able to make enough money to pay for the plane ticket that got him to Dubai in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t a blessing after all, the guy who paid for half of that ticket. Basanti and I tried to think of ways to help. I have told Raajan to fax me his forms, that I have personally read, saying which hotel he was supposed to work for and so on. We could take to forms to the mainpower mam and demand the truth, demand change for Raajan.

Just a couple of days ago I got a phone call while I was in the middle of eating. I was in a small café just above a busy noisy street so I took the call and walked upstairs walking as far away as I could until I found myself in a tiny Kitchen. I was barely able to hear Raajan but could tell that his voice did not sound good. He told me the following: I am so sad, the work here is horrible and Jems has cheated us so horribly, he is a bad person. I have not eaten for two days, I have no time to eat, I have to work all of the time. I would try to complain more but I have found out that my passport and visa are not under my own name. I could be arrested and put in jail if any authorities here found out. Please go to Jems and the mainpower office to get my real passport and hold onto it safely for me. Maybe this is a way I can get a better situation here. Please, when you go to my village tell my parents to not have any worries, tell them that everything is fine and that I am making lots of money. Then we lost the connection in a loud beep. I turned around with tears in my eyes to face the two men waiting outside the kitchen, one of them looking like he was in his sixties. I walked past and wondered if they hadn’t gone through a similar situation.

The next day I sat down at the local tea shop we a regular I often see there. My friend works at the American Embassy and has been studying hard for an English language test which will determine whether he gets to go to Australia or the USA. He makes an incredibly high salary of 18,000 rupees ($230) a month. But it not enough he says, he wants security for his children, something his country is missing. One other friend was on his way to a chef training at a fancy hotel where he is hoping to get hired at 5,000 rupees ($64) per month. Another friend talks about his life. He drinks a lot of whiskey with his father, rides his motorcycle, hangs out and has a good time with his friends and searches for a job that will pay over 6,000 rupees ($75) per month.

On my way to the fruit shop I road my bike past a line ¾ of a mile long of cars waiting in line for the petrol pump. The price of gas had dropped by 5 rupees/liter (4 cents/gallon) and people were willing to wait two hours in line because of it.

I sat in the Lama family fruit shop with Basanti, she told me how jelous he son is of his cousins new bicycle. She told me about how one of the daughters of the drunk woman who wonders around the neighborhood had mysteriously disappeared. The young girl “had been taken to China to help as a wife.”

Sarah Zellwegger, who interns for UNISEF of children’ rights (the trafficking of tens of thousands of children per year being one of the main issues), came over and brought an amazing ray of sunshine to the shop as we sat and passed time. Basanti talks about how she can’t run the shop like Raajan did, its impossible, its too much for one person with a family she cannot leave unattended. She wants to sell it.

Soon a loud noise and bustle caught my attention. We stood up and tried to figure out what the commotion was all about, what was that crowd standing just outside the temple there at the intersection? Why do all the men have suitcase? A few minutes later I found out that the line of 30 or so men were on their way to the airport. They would also soon join the superior ranks of men in Gulf making money… Money, get away

Get a good job with more pay and your O.K.

Money it's a gas

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

New car, caviar, four star daydream,

Think I'll buy me a football team

Money get back

I'm all right Jack keep your hands off my stack.

Money it's a hit

Don't give me that do goody good bullshit

I'm in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set

And I think I need a Lear jet

Money it's a crime

Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie

Money so they say

Is the root of all evil today

But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're

giving none away… away…away…away….

Lama Family Series Part 2.b Dossain in Borjyang Village

2008-11-25T07:07:00.000-08:00

(for more photos check out: http://community.webshots.com/user/aytowler )

Raajan’s Maama (Uncle) is a highly regarded Lama (Buddhist Monk). He has gone to distant places to teach and has student’s that come from neighboring villages to pay respect to him. Now he mostly makes his living by treating people for various illnesses and giving them blessings. Whether it is diarrhea, sore muscles, a bad crop, or bad luck, one pervasive belief is that a cure can be found by ridding away the bhut (ghosts / spirits) which are responsible for the ailment in their occupation of a person or place. As payment Maama gets anything from a bag of rice to a few rupees.

My first time on the way to his house we came across a split in the path. This place was covered in flowers and rice. Raajan said that his Maama had done a blessing here to keep away the bhut that had been causing troubles for a neighbor.

We had gone to his house to receive tikka. Tikka is a colorful decoration worn on the forehead. During a small puja (religious worship ceremony) tikka is often given as a simple red dot on the third eye. Throughout Nepal many people walk around with tikka at any time of day, any time of the year. The tikka might be a plain dot, or it might be an elaborate piece of art combining various colors, rice, flowers and designs depending on the occasion. Dossain is an auspicious time when people travel to the houses of their elders to give simple gifts of milk or rice or alcohol and to receive blessings in the form of tikka. People will have their entire foreheads covered in rice and whitish yellow coloring as a symbol of this exchange of blessings and the godliness which we all inhabit.

A line of about 8 kids sat down on a straw mat on the mud flour in Maama’s stone house. Maama had prepared a concoction of chamel (uncooked rice) in a sticky paste. First Raajan, the eldest of our group, sat up straight with his hands cupped around his belly to catch anything that might fall. He lifted his chin slightly and turned his gaze downward. Maama whispered some prayers and flicked chamel this way and that in respect of the gods who are always recognized first. Then he gently covered a good portion of the center of Raajan’s forehead in the white rice while continuing to whisper prayers. The tikka was completed with the sprinkling of flower petals over the head. Raajan lifted himself up and bowed down to the feet of his uncle until Maama reached his hands down to lift Raajan’s head back up. Maama then continued down and blessed each of his younger relatives who in turn prostrated themselves to their uncle in utter respect and humility. It was a wonderful experience to be included in this blessing and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as the cool sticky rice was pressed into my third eye and flowers were sprinkled over my head.

We ate an incredible dinner at his house that night prepared by his two eldest daughters. Maama has seven children living in this small house and the two eldest daughters do most of the work as his wife struggles with mental and emotional problems which prevent her from doing many tasks like cutting ghaas, cooking and cleaning well. The hospitality here is incredible, almost too much so. I feel like a king to always have food served to you, to have the women constantly asking what you need more of as they wait for everyone else to finish before they serve themselves.

The next day we found ourselves back at Maama’s house sipping on fresh curd served by Lalita, his second eldest daughter. Then we were led upstairs to see some of Maama’s collection of Buddhist artifacts. A group of about four of us- brothers, cousins, we opened old books and scrolls written in the strange Tibetan script, we twirled around prayer wheels, beat on aged drums and blew on a beautifully carved, silver lined conch shell until our cheeks muscles were sore and could take no more. Then we sat down on the bed in the old room with Maama.

During festival time I had been noticing so much alcohol drinking and meat eating in the Buddhist community. Every house we went to they were offered. Even Maama invited us to enjoy Jard and roksi (corn wine and distilled corn wine) as is the custom to please guests. I couldn’t help but ask the alcohol avoiding, meat eating, middle aged married monk with a family a few questions.

“Can you tell me what you think about alcohol?” I asked.

“Its no good” Maama replied.

“But why? What does it do?” I said searching for a more full answer.

“Well” Maama began, “It ruins your heart, darkens your soul, spoils your mind, and destroys your relationship with god” he said in a very matter of fact yet heart felt way.

This definitely left me in a doubting and contemplative mindset. Nepalis are aimed at pleasing their guests, it is hard to refuse something without offending the host, finishing your mountain of rice is just about the only way to say thank you, not finishing it is a horrible insult to the woman’s cooking- ‘miTho bhayena?’ would be implied, ‘it wasn’t tasty?’

The conversation took another direction with Maama and it wasn’t long until he offered Jon and I some roksi. What! Jon and I looked at each other biting our lips to keep back the laughter, had this monk not just told us that alcohol is a horrible substance that ruins your heart, darkens your soul, spoils your mind, and destroys your relationship with god?!

“No, thanks” we said.

“Oh come on, just a little” he encouraged.

Saying no is just about the hardest thing to do in this culture. At this point I had had the jard a few times in the village but was yet to have its great grandfather roksi. Maama poured us a glass which continued to fill long after we said ‘enough’. I sipped the stuff and felt my mouth ignite. The burning liquor lingers in the mouth with a scent of cardamom and cinnamon as it moves down the throat tingling like liquid fire the whole way down. I am not a big liquor drinker, but compared to other liquors I have had, this was a homemade delicacy. I slowly sipped this puzzling contradiction of friendly hospitality and dharmic hostility. Jon was encouraged to finish the last sip before we headed back to Raajan’s house for dinner, it would be medicine for Jon’s upset stomach Maama said.

From the second day in Borjyang my stomach was never completely settled. At first asked the Lama family to boil our drinking water, but they told us that there was no need, the water at the springs is as fresh as it gets, straight out of a rock from the source further up the mountain. Who knows exactly what caused our problems- unboiled water, charred skin (see last blog entry), corn mush porridge- all firsts in my book, but Jon quickly became sick and bed ridden. While Jon had violent liquid raging from both ends, I was luckily only streaming from one, with only gas coming out the other. I woke up one time in the middle of the night and sat up straight to be met by a burp no shorter than a good seven seconds.

After a few days in the village most of the Lama Family had to leave to go back to Kathmandu, they had to re-open the fruit store and so on. Jon, Raajan and I had been playing around with the idea of walking back to the city- a full 2-3 day walk, but Jon was still not feeling well so he left with the others as Raajan and I stayed in the village for a few more days. Raajan just wasn’t ready to leave his village yet. He knew that soon he would be leaving for Dubai and would not be back here for 2-3 years. Raajan and I were hoping to go pay a visit to his one sister I had not met yet and who Raajan hadn’t seen for several months. At this point all I knew about Urmilla is that she is removed from the family in many ways because of her love-marriage and husband whom the family doesn’t like, that at one point she lived abroad in Dubai to make money, and that her husband’s house is about a four hour walk straight uphill from Borjyang.

Jon says that leaving the village he stopped by the Maama’s house again. Jon told Maama that his stomach was still not well and he was feeling very sick. Maama said it must have been because he drank to much roksi!

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the village. Without the whole big family and the blasting stereo, things were quieter and more relaxed. Slow days, good food, good people. I got to see how the men quantify their milk in the morning to be carried and sold in the city each day. I was able to see a the owner of the corn mill sacrifice a young goat to Durga spattering blood on the greasy industrial machine and giving a tikka of blood stained rice to his children. I was able to eat some of that goat.

I was also able to take an hour walk with Raajan and two of Maama’s kids to a holy place for puja. Across the village and down an incredibly steep hill we reached a beautiful waterfall. After bathing in the waterfall we climbed the adjacent rock covered in bat droppings and incredible ferns and came to a cave of white stone dripping with holiness. The white rock emanated a motherly wombness, and its brainy indentations made the place seem even more conscious than us humans. Behind sheaths of millennial oozing rock and stalactites were placed small artifacts for worship, but everyone knew which was the real god. We made offerings of rice, incense, prayers, fresh water buffalo milk, and flowers we collected on the walk. After giving ourselves tikka and climbing back up the steep mountainside he we walked back to the village collecting guavas, Indian goose berries, peanuts and tomatoes along the way.

I also had the frequent pleasure of being fed Saripha (Cheramoya). Raajan’s aunt Phupu, who is a more devote Lama (monk) than Maama, built the habit of inviting me into her home and sitting me down with a full array of these fully ripened fruits. We would chat some, but she mostly encouraged me to succumb to the blissful state these little fleshy morsels induce.

One day after John had left and before my bowels had found their peace, Raajan and two of his old friends invited me to ‘gumnu’ (to wander / go on a trip). We started descending down the hill out of the village in the morning so we could take a bus to another mountain where there was apparently a great temple for seeing and praying and fresh fish for eating. Before making too much progress down the hill I stopped midway through a terraced filled surrounded by bright yellow mustard flowers to inform the guys that I didn’t think I could make it. I was already feeling dizzy and tired, and was contracting my lowest sphincter to suppress an urgent calling. Of course they refused my proposal of them going on without me, so I said as an additional excuse that if I wanted to be able to visit Raajan’s older sister like we hoped, I would need to rest up.

I rested on the edge of the terrace and listened to the boys call my name from below. But the sight of the river waaaay below, and the mountain waaay on the other side, and the thought of climbing back up here by nightfall was too much. The thought of hanging around the village was much more appealing.

The past few days I had been spending a lot of time with some of Maama’s kids- Regina, Lalita, Ashish- and Bejay- the son of Raajan’s oldest brother Bikram, the fat drunk taxi driver who hasn’t come to the village where his wife and two sons live for several months, not even for Dossain. These kids always talked about how much they wanted to learn English. Speaking in broken sentence I could teach them I little but I felt like writing might be helpful especially because I would be leaving in a few days anyways. I had proposed a few days earlier to sit down and give them a lesson. They loved the idea and I thought today would be a great day. Maama had also half jokingly told me about a dozen times that I needed to teach him and his kids English. “You can speak our language but we cannot speak yours” he would say.

So I sat down with a group of four kids and Phupu (‘aunt’- the sister of Maama who is a more devoted unmarried monk) with the highest hopes of making great progress that morning. If they were really serious we could have a couple hours now and a couple hours later before dark. The kids were enthusiastic and it was a lot of fun. I gave them a set of colored pencils as a gift the day before. My idea was to use color coordination to teach them nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. I would write simple sentences in English language using roman script and sanskrit script to help with pronunciation and then translate the sentence into Nepali. Then later if the kids forget the meaning of an English word all they would have to do is coordinate colors. I knew there was only so much I could do in a day or two, but still my hopes where high.

It was all much harder than I expected. I was having difficulty explaining the meaning of grammar but was still able to pass some basic knowledge along. I saw in some of their school books that they had already learned about grammar, but clearly it had not stuck. The lesson was moving along very slowly. After about an hour Ashish, the younger brother of Lalita and Regina, started to become eager to go play. I began to become discouraged. This is when it really sank in that learning anything, but especially a language, takes serious long-term commitment. These kids already when to school where they were learning English, but they were clearly not getting much from it. ‘ So I can just teach them a few sentences and a structural basis!’ I had thought; but it is not that easy, especially because I really wanted them to really understand what they were saying.

Before finishing the lesson to go play again Lalita brought her homework that she had to complete before the holiday was over. I didn’t want to just do the homework for her, so I tried to do it with her. Quickly I realized that she could read all of it quit clearly but did not understand anything. The sentences she read used words from the past and present tenses using irregular verbs. These kids didn’t even know the most basic structures of the English language- how on earth their teacher could possibly expect them to complete this ridiculous assignment of answering questions about how animals from other continents ‘flew and fly’ and how ‘the man sipped tea from a saucer brought by the delightful mistress’ was now as alien to me as the relatedness of ‘bring’ and ‘brought’ are to poor Lalita.

Feeling like I hadn’t completed much of anything in the last two hours the kids sang me a song and wrote down the lyrics. Songs are always the best way for me to learn language. Maybe I should I have taught them a song, or spoke more, or… it no longer mattered…

We were off to play. Once every year, communities throughout Nepal- in the cities and in the villages- play ping. Ping is the world for swing. They construct huge swings towering 20 feet in the air and kids and young adults take their turn at standing in the rope and swinging themselves above the height of fear. It is said that paying ping removes obstacles from one’s life, that one is able to see past their fears and obtain their dreams if they play each year. I was amazed at how high the swing goes and the grace with which the kids push themselves toward the clouds.

For Regina and Lalita, Maama’s two eldest daughters, after playing it was time to cut ghass, and then time to pick vegetables, and then time to cook, and then time to clean, and then time to sleep, wake, cut ghass, milk the cows, pick vegetables, cook, clean… study? Schoool? Get married…

I joined Regina, Lalita, Phupu and bauju (Bikram’s wife) in the terrace to cut ghaas. We used our hands to rip up weeds by our hands and chit chatted with light hearts and occasional laughs. I couldn’t help but smile when I overheard them conspiring to go and eat immature, soft, sweet peanuts on the other side of the village next week; “we will tell them we are going to cut ghass…” I quickly learned the difference between a daal (bean) plant and a weed. I was embarrassed that I had pulled up one of their bean plants, the roots of which I tried, with no avail, to stick back in the earth.

Besides ‘are you fine?’ and ‘have you eaten rice?’ one of the most popular questions for small talk is ‘who is in your family? Do your have mother and father, brothers and sisters, etc?’ “Yes I have a mother, but actually my father died 10 years ago” I said this time around feeling comfortable sharing this with these people who have themselves treated me with so much love and kindness. “But I have a new father” I continue, “I have a younger sister and my new father has a son who is just like a little brother to me.” The “new father” part always throws Nepalis off. They say that here in Nepal, if a woman were to go live with a new man after her children were grown up, she might be killed. So I explain that well actually he moved into my mom’s house (a completely foreign concept). After my parents were separated he came to live in a room of my house to help pay rent, then eventually they started staying together in the same room. Divorce here is a new enough occurrence to cause some disgust, so this story is surely a mind and heart twister for them.

I asked the group of woman and girls why it is that if a woman moves in with another man she might be killed but a man can have multiple wives. Bauju explained that the reason her husband didn’t come home this holiday season is that he has a new woman in the city. I asked how this made them feel, they said its fine, “if your husband as more than one wife they should be able to live together and still honor their husband”. Bauju said she would like her husband and new woman to come to the village together.

“But isn’t there something unfair here, a gender inequality”, I kept on trying to imply. Regina and Lalita explained that the reason it was bad for a woman to go with a new man is because a person should only sleep with one person in their lifetime. Otherwise is a sin. Only if the woman has small babies and her husband dies or leaves can she have the honor of being taken in by another man, but even then she will be looked down upon for some time.

“So if a man has multiple wives he is not sinning” I asked.

“No” the girls replied, “because he will / should only sleep with one of them”.

At this point it was clear that the conversation was beginning to move into space usually not confronted. Sex is almost entirely taboo in Nepali culture. The older women now mostly kept silent. As the conversation continued however, I learned that Regina and Lalita’s had another older brother. In fact Maama, their father, has two wives and their older brother lives with their father’s first wife who could not get along with his second wife.

“So your father has two wives” I confirmed and received a positive answer.

“And his other wife had a son with your father, is this not a sin?” This particular topic receded with my point being made. We continued talking and I was incredibly surprised about these young girls forwardness in asking me about sex. I had heard that in traditional culture mothers and daughters hardly even breach the topic.

By this time our voices were extremely low, near whispers. “In your country do people sleep together before they are married?” they asked.

“Well some people do and some people don’t” I answered, “Some people think that to do that is a sin and others do not.”

One conception many Nepalis have of ‘my country’ (a strange concocted place where white people live- America and Europe- the difference between them unclear for many), among others such like ‘all Americans are white’ and ‘all Americans are rich’, is the idea that we all sleep with one person, leave them and quickly find another. Knowing my unmarried status, the girls asked me if I too had slept with someone before. My answer gave them a shock. “We really don’t like engresi people for this reason” they said. (engresi is the word for the English language and also can refer to white or American people).

“So you don’t like me?” I said.

“No, we like you but we just really do not like that habit” they replied.

“That is great” I told them, “I am glad you do not like all of my habits and we can recognize our differences”.

“How come you do not have a baby?” they asked.

“Because of condoms.” I must have said the word ‘condom’ too loud because Phupu turned around with a disturbed face grunting with a tone to keep it down or shut up. The girls explained to me that they knew about condoms from their sex-ed class that they were taking at school. They said that everyone is really shy to talk about this stuff, “but we shouldn’t be shy right?” Lalita said, “We can talk about it.” The girls told me that they knew about other forms of birth control- shots and pills and surgery as well and how it is better to have a small family with less mouths to feed- “A big family is a hurting / sad family, a small family is a happy family”. They knew about diseases and how a condom prevents them.

The fact that we had this conversation in the presence of the older women to me seemed revolutionary. The older woman would have been slapped silly if they had had such a conversation in their younger years. But there is a growing consciousness in Nepal that the status and respect of woman must be raised if the position of their society as a whole is to progress. ‘New Nepal’ is also bringing education and a new consciousness about development and progress. Raajan’s Aama did not go to school, there was none when she was growing up, especially for women. Raajan’s older sisters studied through fifth grade. Regina and Lalita are in 9^th and 8^th grade respectively.

Phupu and Bauju are both older adults while Regina and Lalita have told me that they are 16 and 15 respectively. I later learned that they are 18 and 17. Both girls say that their marrying age has come. I think they both feel inside that their fate is not unlike most of their neighbors, friends and family: they will (may) have an arranged marriage and be sent to their husband’s family’s house where they will do most of the housework and fieldwork and bare children. However when I asked about their hopes, “what do you want to be / do?” Regina says she wants to be a teacher and a good wife. Lalita says she does not want to get married, she wants to become a Lama (monk) like her Aunt Phupu. Se will go to school and learn the ways of monks. Another time Lalita told me she wanted to marry an American. I asked if that was really possible.

“Of course its possible” she said almost offended, “other girls from nearby villages have married Americans and now live there.” Lalita held onto my eyes later that evening and I couldn’t help but wonder which American this gorgeous young girl was hoping to marry. I also couldn’t help but wonder what processes of exotification might be exaggerating my attraction.

It is in fact not uncommon for aid workers and volunteers to marry local villagers. I have had fathers ask me to marry their daughter so they can move to America. I have had people ask me to pack their children in my bags when I return to my country so they can have a better life. ‘How can I go to America?’ is the next most popular question besides ‘have you eaten rice?’ ‘how do you know how to speak Nepali?’ and ‘who is in your family?’. The easiest answer to this question is “you need a visa.” An American visa costs more money than the average Nepali family can make in a lifetime or even in countless generations.

We wrapped up the giant piles of ghaas (weeds) we had collected and each carried a load up the steep hill to Maama’s house where we unloaded them for the animals. On the way back up I asked Phupu and Bauju to please not be offended by the conversation we had had. They said it was fine in a tone that seemed to show them giving way to an understanding that although taboo, dialogue about these things is important.

Getting back to Maama’s house I sat down with two young men that had come from several villages away to receive a tikka from their old guru. The boys had an old manuscript with them written in Tibetan. They were not very fluent with the book but I asked what the book was used for.

Maama asked what my birthday was, he took the book and moved his finger along an intricate pattern on the first page on the book. Back and forth he went, in a logic only he followed, until he landed on a symbol. This symbol caused told him to flip to a certain page and to read a particular stanza of that page marked by the same symbol. Maama told me that I had some bhut (ghost / spirit) with me. The bhut had been with me for quite some days he said. He told me that my stomach had been hurting.

I asked how serious these bhut were. “Not too serious.” I asked him who told him that my stomach had been unsettled for several days. “No one, only the book” he answered.

I was shocked but still not completely taken by belief. Before leaving Maama’s to go back to Raajan’s I asked if there was anything he could do to get the bhut to leave. “Of course.” So I asked him to Phuknu me. ‘Phuknu’ literally means to blow, but also means to deal with bhut.

So Maama lifted up my shirt where, he quietly chanted a mantra under his breath and lightly rubbed my stomach in a quick rhythm. The light touch tickled, and I would like to say it was somehow different from an ordinary ticklish feeling. The mantra he was whispering was only interrupted by quick bursts of air which he blew in rhythm with the chanting and rubbing. And just like that it was over in a couple minutes.

After a week of runny liquid stools several times a day, I did not move my bowels for two days after Maama did his work.

I returned to Raajan’s house and ate a quite dinner- Raajan and his friends had yet to return from their trip. Even though by this time I was feeling better, I was so glad I didn’t go with them. Finally the three boys got back and told me how much I had missed out, and how much better it would have been if I was there! They showed me pictures of the temple and the river from one of the guy’s camera phone. One of the pictures Raajan was especially proud of. He had taken the time to put individual leaves together on the ground to spell out: “WE MISS U.”

The other two guys left and that night Raajan and I stayed up for hours and hours talking. I told him about my attempts to give an English lesson. He told me about standing in the back of a classroom packed with over 90 students. He would lean against the wall and take notes using his other hand as a surface for his notepad. I asked about what it would mean for Regina or Lalita to move to the city and like some of Raajan’s other siblings and cousins, go to a private school. The city is really the only place where people get a good education and a chance to learn English in an ‘English medium’ school Raajan explains; but you have to get started at an early age. How can you transplant something whose roots are already so developed in its own home soil. Regina and Lalita are in 8^th and 9^th grade. If they went to a private school in the city they would probably be place in the 2^nd or 3^rd grade- they would not like this.

Raajan continued to explain that Maama would probably not allow his daughters to leave. Who would do the work around the house? How could he afford to pay tuition anyways? As it is Maama’s land does not produce enough corn and buckwheat to feed the family year-round. He has to take out loans and buy food to supplement their diet at certain times of the year. Raajan explains that he loves his cousins very much and how he sometimes buys them the new clothes, notebooks and pencils that their father cannot afford to buy.

From this conversation I began to realize the situation of poverty in the village. On the surface one does not see that over generations and increased population, each family’s plot of land has been divided and decreased in size several times. One does not see that the fields that seem full of food are hardly enough to feed families year round. One does not see the debt that most people are in from buying the newest seeds to plant for crops, from buying food to get through the hungry season, from building a new house, from buying fertilizer, from buying a plane ticket to go abroad to make enough money to send your kids to a decent school, from the cost of a funeral or a marriage, from buying a bisy, from the costs of feeding your relatives roksi at Dossain.

In this village most people who actually have a cow or bisy sell their milk as a main source of income- $40/month at the height of production. If fields here cannot grow enough corn to feed the people and animals here year-round, then you need to buy food and haul it in 100lbs sacks 3km up the side of the mountain. But how do you buy food? You have to sell crops. But if you are selling crops, that means you have less food and therefore have to buy even more to feed yourself. Kidney beans, peanuts, tomatoes, and potatoes are the most recently introduced crops in Borjyang- mostly grown as cash crops to be sold for income. To maximize income you have to maximize output from the fields. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are being introduced for the first time to the terraced hillsides of Borjyang- a symbol of a way ‘forward’. A way forward leads to change. Change means better schools, electricity, roads and hospitals.

Raajan explains this all in a very dramatic way that leaves a melancholic mood in the room. I try to explain that in the English language there is a difference between the words ‘rich’ and ‘wealthy’, that one’s heart can be rich even if they are monetarily poor. I tried to explain the richness I found here but my attempts were lost in translation. I explained that here a whole extended family lives so close but while I was growing up I could only meet my cousins once or twice a year via a vehicle of wealth- an airplane, but is that really a ‘rich’ family circumstance? I said this with a twinge in my heart knowing that it wasn’t the best way to explain what I was trying to say. Raajan explained that for the better part of his life he only got to see his mom and dad once every two years. Aama and Baaba lived in Calcutta where Baaba had a job in the Indian Army as a security guard. Raajan has grown up in 4 different places and never had an airplane to connect him to his family. Both of his older sisters’ husbands have been overseas for the majority of their kids’ life making the money to pay the city room rent and school tuition.

There is no comparing our lives, we both concluded. I told him that I had complete sympathy for him and his family but wanted to ask a question out of sheer curiosity, free of implications: if Besanti’s and Sharmilla’s (his two older sisters) husbands came home and the whole family stayed together, would the combined labor be enough to produce enough food freeing the family from the need for a monetary income?

No. No freedom from money. The harvest is not big enough, buying more land is too expensive, chemical fertilizers are seen as the agricultural way forward. Raajan himself is over 400,000 rupees ($6,000) in debt, a tragic story that will come later in the next blog entry.

That night Raajan brought himself near tears ranting on about the tough situation of his family. He left me speechless talking about his personal / family financial situation inextricably woven into the social and economic fabric of his country. He is struggling so much, he says, he tries keep the times when he feels hopeless to a minimum, but they are inevitable. He wants to bring his family out this dark hole he sees them in and into the light of progress and opportunity.

We finally went to bed with plans to wake up and hike up to his sister’s village so Raajan could see Urmilla before he leaves for Dubai. We woke up the next morning and said slow goodbyes. Baaba had been drinking again and acted out again his life story to make sure I understood that his parents died when he was eleven, that he was forced out of Borjyang to find work in India. His life spent in India making money for his family to have land in Borjyang again has left Baaba with a language that mixes Nepal, Tamang, Bengali, Hindi and a half dozen other Indian languages which I do not understand, but I understand his story. I understand how moved he is that I have become such close friends with his son. I understand that he has taken me in as a son as well and that he welcomes me back here anytime.

The trip to visit Urmilla’s house was no longer an option. Aama’s leg had been hurting her for a month now and she needed to go to the hospital. The local health clinic on the other side of the valley had done nothing but prescribed pain killers which had ceased to be of any help.

So Raajan, Aama and I spent two hours slowly walking down the steep hill that had led me to Borjyang over a week ago. Raajan and I tried to keep our patience as we walked behind 55 year-old Aama who carefully limped down the trail.

We finally got down to the bottom of the trail to the rice patties. Raajan and I sat on a rock next to a small stream while Aama crossed through the strong river current. We talked about our sex lives. We talked about what it means to have a girlfriend in Nepal (from his perspective, the perspective of a wealthier, middle class liberal Nepali might be different). It means having a top secret relationship which not even closest friends can know about lest they tell others and the word spreads. Raajan told me about the multiple white foreigners that have semi-abusively sexually violated him throughout his life. I told him how I talk to my mom about sex and how I share with her some of the most intimate parts of my life. Raajan is utterly shocked and dumbfounded by this. “In Nepal that could never be” he says.

We crossed the river and I took a few extra minutes to submerge myself in the shallow yet powerful current. Staying underwater for several seconds I would come back up again and truly soak in the marvelous beauty around me. Feeling more refreshed than ever we walked up towards the road. We sat in a small tea shop as bus after bus went by packed to the brim, inside and out, with people. Finally a bus came which had some room available on the roof. We boarded up and watched as someone was being carried down the mountainside on a stretcher; the rumor was that he had had too much to drink and needed to be taken to a hospital.

Finally a bus came with a free roof The inside of the bus was packed like sardines and quickly so was the roof. My legs dangled off the side of the enormous vehicle as we drove through the country side passing by small towns and fields of rice, corn and beans and felt the wind in our hair, singing songs and laughing. We passed by a house that had a relatively nice car parked in front with some guys hanging out around it. Raajan turned to me and told me that probably he would never be able to but his children and my children one day would have an amazing time together riding in a car with the top down listening to music while driving on perfectly paved streets through tall skyscraping buildings.

I thought of New York City and I thought of all the people in the world who get to do this whenever they want. I wondered again critically and skeptically about the perceived wondrousness of that scenario and again remembered that it is only my extraordinary privileged position that affords taking for granted my ability to live like that if I pleased. That privileged position however is not one that Raajan occupies and the dreams he has that motivate him to work so hard to try to improve the lives of his family and eventually his village, his country cannot be taken for granted. If you take your dreams and motivation for granted you will go nowhere. And I don’t so much think Raajan was speaking literally about that joy ride, I think he was talking about equality and opportunity. If he works hard enough, he can give the following generations the ability to access the facilities of the modern world which today are so grossly unequally distributed.

After being given food and a roof for the past week I paid for all the bus and taxi fares that took us back to their two room apartment in Kathmandu. I would sleep there that night and go to the hospital with Aama in the morning.

2008-11-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

Lama Family Series Part 2.a Dossain in Borjyang Village

2008-11-08T00:04:00.000-08:00

(from a journal written on Oct. 11-13th)

(visit: http://community.webshots.com/user/aytowler for more pictures!)

So Rajan would not be leaving for Dubai the next day, not for

another month. “No big deal, just a month, plans change, things are relaxed.” - or so I thought at the time. People have an incredible abi

lity to mask what is really burning inside. All of the complexities of ones life- the thoughts, the sadness, the anxiety, the history, the

headaches, the tears- they are kept ridden away from plain sight for the most part and only revealed with time and the emotional bonding that sheds the thick skin of superficiality.

It turns out that at the time Rajan was still not even fully prepared for his journey across seas. Rajan family had been searching desperately for a way to pull enough cash together to make his trip possible. As time passed I would learn more and more about the hardships Rajan and his family faced, but on the surface it was a time to make merry. The festival of Dossain was approaching and their family had invited Jon and I to their village to celebrate with them. Without hesitation I accepted their invitation to celebrate, eat feasts, make sacrifices, drink alcohol, play on giant swings, sing, dance and relax.

We took a reserved minivan that was shared with a dozen other people who lived in nearby villages about three hours outside of kathmandu. Crossing the city in order to leave it we were worried about extreme traffic jams that we suspected to have been caused by the mass exodus from capital city for the holiday, so we took a few back roads that shook our bodies in a synchronized dance tempo’d by potholes sending heads into the ceiling of our crowded van.

When we reached the major road which leaves Kathmandu, no wider than an ordinary suburban neighborhood road in the US but which handles transportation of goods and people for an entire country, it was apparent that it was the priority of thousands and thousands of people to get out of the city. Buses which are ordinarily unimaginably tightly packed with passengers hanging out the side door were now adorned with a full array of smiling faces, crunched bodies and legs dangling from the their roofs.

It must be remembered though that three hours in a car in the US and three hours in a car here are extremely different. It is rare to ever go above 40 km per hour and that would be considered fast while twisting and turning through packed city streets or narrow mountain roads in overflowing vehicles dozens of years old. We worked our way outside of the Kathmandu Valley and into the surrounding hills. We drove through forested areas and terraced hillsides bursting with ripening rice crops. We enjoyed a few rest stops. Re-boarding after a few cartwheels on a grassy lawn in front of tin roofed snack shacks I climbed onto the roof of our vehicle with a couple of other boys and looked off the back of the van experiencing the coming mountains and villages as they passed away. We held on tight to the metal roof rack which was also keeping our bags from flying off into the raging post-monsoon river valley we straddled from the heights of a steep concreted river bank road taking us further and further into the paharD (hill area).

We finally unloaded at a small little town of a few shops. We were in a relatively narrow valley, a broad river flowing through it with steep mountains on either side. The river was channeled to flow into the rice patties, cultivated as a lush bedding of this Himalayan cradle. We crossed the powerful and fairly wide river, the currents reaching up to my high thighs. At other times of the year one has to cross via a bridge further downstream to get across the river but for now we took the more direct route.

Directly across from where we crossed the river was a path that lead straight up the side of the mountain. The steep, relentless switchbacks quickly carried us to a giant rock where I saw a stream pouring down from a steep valley of thick jungle and a few bamboo poles carrying Buddhist prayer flags to mark the place where a girl had fallen to her death from the steep slopes above while cutting ghaas (a term used for weeds, shrubs or anything green and edible by domestic animals.)

We continued up the relatively barren and incredibly steep hill for more than an hour before we started entering into the village. Part way through the walk I took off my sandals because I like walking barefoot and because a health specialist in the US had told me walking as such provides the best mindfulness and alignment for my back injury. Everyone was saying ‘why?’ and ‘it doesn’t hurt?’ I would just say that no it doest hurt, I quite enjoy and it, and its good for health and mindfulness.

Rajan stopped to tell me “you see, you walk barefoot of your own desire, but when I was little I had no choice- when I lost my sandals, they broke or I outgrew them and there was no money for another pair, I had no choice but to walk barefoot up and down this steep mountainside. I would have to wake up at 4am to cut ghaas for the water buffalo and goats and then walk all the way to school (about 4-5 km, 3km of which on down this mountainside) and hurry home again to cut more ghaas, to do more housework, and to study before dark. Sometimes there would be no ghaas to cut so I would have to lead the goats way over to the mountain over there. I was always in a hurry because there was so much to do, so much work, so I would trip and cut up my legs and stub my toes.” Rajan showed me his shins and feet covered with scars.

As we continued walking along a few people commented on how this place was no good because you have to walk up and down hill so much. But as we neared the village it became clear that Rajan and his family were happy to be home. They stopped to show us and explain the multiple uses of every plant we passed by- whether fields of beans or yellow mustard flowers, a wild herb or a pipal tree (considered holy by Buddhist and Hindus because it is the kid of tree that the Buddha became enlightened under). One very peculiar plant was one that you could snap the stem of and then blow bubbles from its gooey juices. Apparently the seeds of this plant can also be used to generate light without burning. A few of the plants they talked about, including this ‘lightbulb seed’ and another seed that used to be used for washing hair, were described as being used by older people ‘before’, making their uses seem more like a thing of the past.

The sign that we had reached the village was a pair of enormous pipal trees growing out of an elevated stone sitting area. We caught our breath their under the same tree that people have been for god-knows how many generations. Just there was a water tap with a constant stream of water now pouring into an overflowing 3 gallon copper vessel, one of several at this tap. We continued up the stone stairs worn smooth by hundreds of years of use and finally reached the Lama family house as it was getting dark. I sat down inside the stone house on a hand woven mat placed on a comforting mud floor and met the baba (father) who had clearly been drinking. He seemed like a good guy but was speaking in a tongue I couldn’t understand very well. Most of the meaning I picked up was from his dramatic, bright facial expressions and the movement of his body, arms and hands which he was not shy to twist and throw around to communicate. Our phrase “body language” hardly does justice to explain this guy’s exuberant animation. We ate daal bhaat (lentil soup and rice) with fresh veggies and afterward danced a bit to the music blasting from the stereo. The only cassette we brought would be the theme music for this year’s Dossain. Power from a solar panel which rested on their clay tile roof as one of a few, if not the only one of its kind in the entire village provided enough electricity for the stereo and a couple light bulbs. Slowly things quieted down and people started getting in bed. Jon and I shared a bed with thick blankets as a matress while over a dozen people shared beds, thin cots spread on floors, and the comfort each others warmth.

Waking up the first morning cooing roosters and the sounds of women washing clothes and dishes filled the air as the first hint of the rising sun. Slowly others arose and chit chatter slowly became louder and louder as the sun rose somewhere on the other side of a huge mountain east of the village capable of hiding the golden disc itself but not the sun’s offspring of light and awakening life. I got out of bed around 6:30am when the sun had just breached the crest of the easterly mountain. Music was once more blasting and people had long since been out and about chatting, playing, yelling at each other in a strangely loving fashion, climbing guava trees, cutting ghaas (weeds/schrubs) for the animals, milking the cows and water buffalos, and drinking tea.

I descended the steep ladder leading out of our room, situated precariously above a concrete bathroom housing one of the only toilets (eastern style of course) in the village, to have a delicious cup of hot tea during the chilly morning hour. The tea was laced with black pepper, cinnamon, clove and sugar to warm and lift the spirits. I noticed baabaa take a full glass of roksi (home made liquor) before we started the morning snack of chiurra (flattened, dried rice) and chunks of smoky dried meat dripping with a freshly ground relish of tomatar (a sour fruit resembling a cross between a passion fruit and a tomato), hot chili pepper, garlic, ginger, salt and a few other spices. This is a delicious combination that is served as a snack and, from my experience during Dossain, as the food given to guests when they come for a visit. Vegetable curries and other condiments can also be served with fresh milk or curd. Either jard (creamy, thick homemade alcoholic grain milk of rice, corn or millet) or roksi (jard distilled into liquor) is always offered as well. While I find the roksi to burn too much, the jard is quite pleasant. My first time having the stuff in Borjiang village left me in a blissful mood watching the late morning sun light up the stone courtyard just outside of the Lama family’s home.

Jon and I had been told the day before that today would be a day of sacrifice to the god Durga. The half drunk baabaa now imitated how they would soon sharpen their kukuris (Nepali machete) and slaughter the beasts. I had to see it he said. I most certainly agreed.

Besanti didi (Rajan’s older sister and the eldest of baabaa’s seven children) said we should take a little walk, assuring me that we would make it back in time for the day’s events. Apparently this sacrifice was no small thing and many people would come and watch. It would not only be done here but at various places- up, down, over here, over there- throughout the village.

Before leaving for our morning walk I went with Rajan to pick some vegetables. Just in front of his house is a small stone courtyard where people gather in the morning to quantify and sell their milk and to play cards and other gambling games. Just around the corner is a diesel engine mill for grinding corn into meal/flour and next to that is a small store that sells small items like candies, toothbrushes, stale packaged crackers/biscuits, soap and the like. To the other side of the courtyard is a public water tap with ‘UNISEF’ carved into the concrete base. Here people come to fill up plastic tubs or copper vessels to bring water back to their homes, to wash clothes and so on. Chickens and goats run freely here in what the Lama family calls one of the main centers of their community.

Walking down from the water tap a goat was humping another and exposing a thin bright red facile prong- a color that would reoccur that day with no shame, regret or mercy. Just below the tap are a bunch of long, thick bamboo poles used now to hang laundry until they will be used for a house that is being built above the Lama family’s. Walking past the poles one walks down a steep, narrow path between two houses. The houses here are made of rocks, thick wood beams, and bamboo, with a mud concrete to hold it all together. Most of them are two floors with a steep stairway. The floors and walls are maintained with mud and manure that dries in an incredibly delightful way. The white, orange, and red colors come from natural dies and it all combines in a way that preserves beautiful living spaces for hundreds of years. The roofs are either thatched or made of longer lasting clay tiles.

Walking down between the two houses a cow peers its head around the edge of a house. The entirety of the enormous water buffalo is exposed as I reach the area below the houses where there are about five water buffalo and over a half dozen goats all munching on bundles of ghaas hanging from nooses. Most of the animals are tied to posts with a rope around their neck but some are free like the tiny baby goats that jump around, thrust at their mothers tits, and suck on human fingers and ears- enough to make anyone crack a smile if not burst into a raging laugh.

But we were on our way to pick vegetables so we didn’t play for too long, before continuing down the steep path I peaked my head into the small stone house. I saw an old couple inside and they immediately invited me inside wit some shock on their faces (white skin is not common here). The old lady was sifting through some turmeric which she had just ground as her husband invited me to sit on a small bench. They offered me some milk. I tried to explain that we were on our way to… -but the concept of being in a hurry is near meaningless here so I simply accepted their offered and enjoyed the thick, warm and sweet water buffalo milk. I couldn’t refuse a second glass of the glorious beverage and sank even more deeply into contentment.

Back on our mission, Rajan and I continued down the extremely steep hillside on the rocky path which winds through all sorts of shrubs, herbs, wild hot peppers, fruit trees, vines, and other sub-tropical vegetation.

Far older than most of the houses around here are the terraces that are the hallmark of the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. The steep path we descended looks out over huge mountains covered with forest and terraces of various sizes depending on the lay of the land. The first terrace we came to below the two houses, their animals and a reclined mountain of manure (used as fertilizer in the terraces of course) was a blossoming narrow poly-culture of mustard greens, kidney beans, tomatoes, hot peppers, okra and daikon radish. Despite the fact that this was only one relatively small terrace, it was overflowing with food at various stages of maturity. At the edge of the terrace are guava, papaya, charamoya and other trees. The vines of various pumpkins, squashes and green beans climb on shrubs, trees and the tall stalks of sunflower plants boasting face size flowers fully blossomed with seeds beginning to dry.

The next terrace bellow is a small sea of soft white flowers that will soon go to seed as buckwheat. The path is sort of lost here but one finds their way to overlook the next terrace of yellow flowers blowing in the sweet morning breeze. These yellow flowers will give way to mustard seeds which are pressed into a delicious pungent oil used for cooking and as a hair conditioner.

Looking further downhill, one sees more of the same- houses and terraced fields of various crops on the steep hillsides which eventually fall way down to the river below where many families have small shares of rice patties. Recently a village sold a large part of their patties and huge piles of rocks and pebbles tower in their place. The rocks will to be chipped (probably by hand paying people less than $35/month for their labor), sorted, and shipped away for use on whatever road or construction projects necessitate their industrial extraction. On the other side of the river rise more hills which stretch into the distance and overlap indefinitely with one another, eventually blending into the fuzzy horizon of clouds glowing subtle peachy colors contrasted by the misty greens and blues of the mountains glistening in the morning light. At this time of year such clouds hide the “himals” -the Nepali word for ‘mountain capped by snow year-round’ and the root of name the rest of the world is familiar with to signify to tallest mountains on the planet.

We brought back bundles of long green beans, a few bitter gourds (tita chorela), squash and pumpkins- there were a lot of people to feed, and we formed a small group for the morning walk Besanti had suggested earlier. We took a different relatively flat path cut into the hillside and reached a friend Kanchi’s house. ‘Kanchi’ means ‘smallest in the family’.

While sitting in the house Kanchi says “My house in no good.” John and I try to reaffirm that we think their houses and village is great and asked why they say the house is no good. “Because its old” came the answer. We responded saying that old doesn’t have to mean bad. “These houses are so beautiful and strong” Jon said as I rubbed my fingers over a wooden beam polished smooth by the years and blending into the rock and mud walls. I thought about to what extent we were trying to convince her to be happy and content with her house versus just being polite- either way both sides were pining for the greener grass on the other side.

Kanchi poked a pile of coals that sat in the mud stove where everything is cooked with wood. Smoke continuously rises up toward strings of dried meat hanging above the stove and moves slowly along the blackened ceiling to the other side of the room where a hardly noticeable current of smoke blows out above fresh air being sucked through the low doorway. Rays of sun pierce the swirling smoke in the room as sharp strokes of light which illuminate the huge pile of dried unhusked corn and an old woman (Kanchi’s husband’s mom) sorting through daal (lentils) on a bamboo tray to remove small rocks and sticks. Yes, certainly it is an old life, one which has been lived for hundreds if not thousands of years; but who is to authoritatively judge and give labels of ‘good’ and ‘bad’? Some would call this place backwards, other would call it marvelous. For now I am just trying to hear the thoughts of the people before I settle into any of my own thoughts or judgments which tend to positively align with semi-romanticized notions of traditional lifestyles.

We heard some voices rise and someone shouted something as they ran by. Borjyang is a Tamang Village and most people here speak the Tibeto-Burman Tamang language which is entirely foreign to me considering that Nepali is a Indo-European language. But our friends translated for us, telling us (in Nepali) that just up the road a sacrifice was about to go down.

Myself, Jon and some younger kids scurried to find our sandals next to a hand powered rock grain grinder shadowed by husks of corn and hurried up the road to find a crowd of people gathered around a small clearing in the path. Men stood excitedly waiting and holding blades of different shapes and sizes- a thick heavy slaughtering blade, typical Nepali kukuris (machete), and long swords. In the air was a buzz of excitement and chatter which only heightened as a bisy (water buffalo) was lead into the spotlight with a rope through its nostrils and around its neck. The bisy was tied to a small wooden post. Noticing the udder of the animal John said “I thought only males were killed”, something we had heard from someone from another ethnic group.

Things quieted down a bit and the bustle of people solidified into small groups, arms and hands tightly clasped. Sunita, Rajan’s cousin of about 13 years, leaned against me. We watched as a bundle of ghaas was thrown down from the terrace just above where there was also a small group of people forming.

The young man holding the thickest, heaviest blade took the bundle of greens and held it to the bisy’s mouth. Getting a taste of its favorite past-time the beast was tempted as the man threw the bundle between the bisy’s two front legs. The bisy’s neck bowed down lengthening, exposing and stretching out its long neck. The man held the enormous blade above his head, eyebrows up, all his focus on the beast’s neck which lifted and turned the other way before the man could yield a blow. The breath that everyone had been holding was released in an elevation of the excitement level now about to gruesomely explode. “Do you think he’ll be able to cut all the way through with one hit?” Jon asked. I merely shrugged, completely absorbed in watching the small nest of men with kukuris and swords trying to settle the bisy back into a good position.

The bundle of greens was again thrown between the two front legs and the young man stood poised holding the giant machete with both hands high above his head, waiting patiently for the right moment which seemed to never come until…

SHHHWAAP! Down came the mighty blade as a grey blur cast before a blue sky. I knew red was another color introduced now but a person’s head was blocking my view of where the blow had struck. Gasps of awe and shock clattered along with the wounded bisy whose neck quickly stumbled into my line of vision as a gaping red exposure of flesh breaching ¼ -1/3 of the way through the black beasts burley neck.

The bisy released a moan of pain and about five men stood with swords ready to strike again. A sword came down and cries rang out from small children who watched as blood burst into the air and the bisy fell to the ground with a great thud. A puff of dust settled as the men rushed to the fallen creature and gave a few more blows to the severed neck of the beast whose huge body was still kicking and shaking. The blows from the blades and the desperate movements of the decapitated body released more shouts from the cheering children and more blood which, unlike the cries that dissipated into the sky, was captured by a metal bucket.

All of this was overseen by the great god Durga who was appeased by the rivers of blood flowing through Nepal that day, blood that stained clothes, roads, hearts and minds for quite some time to come. Dossain is a holiday that celebrates the victory of good over evil. Durga is the god that is in many ways responsible for this victory. Durga is not the embodiment white shining love that we think of as "good" but rather is the ferocious, blood thirsty god that crosses polarized borders of good and evil in order to fight that which is most dark and evil in our world. How can evil be defeated by passive gods who are scared of violence and sitting on puffy clouds?

After the first bisy was sacrificed another was brought in to be slaughtered. This one took even longer to get the neck position right for the initial blow, but even more blood spilled.

Then we walked back to Rajan’s house. Along the way Rajan told me how ever since he was small he has never been able to watch the slaughtering. He told me how his uncle, a highly regarded Buddhist monk, had explained to him that killing anything is a sin in the Buddhist Darma, and so he tries to never harm anything. I asked him why he still eats meat then if eating it necessarily creates killing and therefore sin with the slaughter. I didn’t understand Raajan’s answer then, but later found out that many Buddhists eat meat because monks are able to bless the killers and remove the sins which they acquire while giving tasty and nourishing gifts death’s flesh to laymen and monks.

Back at Rajan’s house and sitting in the kitchen chatting, baabaa came in and called me. I went outside to see that the crowd of people that would otherwise be gambling had acquired more females and was now gathered around the foreground of the water tap.

A couple of men led up a male bisy from the yard below. It was the bisy I had been petting and admiring this morning on the way to pick vegetables.

The crowd of men, women and children erupted with cheers and cries as this bisy also lost its head in a violent, gory and yet sacred show of muscle, metal, blood and godly appeasement.

Baaba told me that the other femal bisies I had seen sacrificed were not suitable for puja (worship ceremony), but that this male bisy was. He told me that on this single day of the year hundreds of thousands of buffs would be sacrificed. The roads would be stained red to remind the people of their relationship with and obligation to their Hindu-Buddhist gods. Of course the holliday is also a great excuse to bring family together, feast, and exchange tikka.

As we ate a lunch of daal bhaat the headless bisy lay out in the late morning sun, its raw, gory neck covered with leaves to keep the flies off. When I went outside again men were throwing dry grass on the carcass and burning it to remove the hair. The parched skin was then scraped down with a kukuri blade and then the carcass was dragged to the concrete basin of the water tap and the butchering began.

First the front and hind legs were cut off and thrown onto a plastic tarp where other men cut up the meat. There were at least ten men involved in the process of dissecting the entirety of the animal, cutting, weighing and distributing the flesh, fat, organs and bones in six even piles to be given to the six families who jointly purchased the bisy.

It was amazing to see how every last bit of the animal would be eaten- skin, fat, organs, bones and all. The head was cut open with a hatchet spattering brains on the man hacking at the skull. The brain was removed and then the rest of the head was cut up to be eaten like any other meat (the word ‘masu’ means ‘meat’, but its definition is far different than what we think of as meat- muscle and some fat. Masu means any edible part of an animal, a.k.a. everything). The rumen and colon were turned inside out and cleaned thoroughly to be eaten like any other meat. The inside of the rumen (the huge stomach-like sack that cows use to ferment and digest ghaas) had a rough texture parts of which had an amazing pentagon pattern on it.

The whole process took a few hours, and then the masu was brought into the kitchen where the women cut it up further. Most of the masu was cut into long strips to be hung and smoke dried over the wood stove. Pieces of skin were thrown onto the fire just then and parched, cut into pieces and eaten plain. It tasted like what it was- burnt skin and a thick layer of fat. “Village bubble gum” Sunita (Raajan’s cousin) called it after chewing and chewing and chewing.

The liver was thrown on the fire in the same way and then cut into small pieces. I was able to one piece while it was still a bit rare/raw- very good stuff. The other pieces of tender liver were mixed with a salty and spicy paste and enjoyed thoroughly.

As the masu was cut we continued gnawing on chunks of charred fatty skin- the taste of which became tolerable but was never terrific by any means. For snack we had chiurra (pre-cooked, dry flattened rice) with blood prepared with spices and fully cooked until it congealed into a cottage cheese-like texture and the same fatty skin-fat masu that instead of being charred had been cooked more like a curry. The blood was tasty, but it was hard for me to chew through all that fat- and I think all that fat did my stomach in as well. Fat is a flavor we are not as used to in the west but is quite sought after here. It is very important to eat some fat with meat because not only is fat extremely energy dense, but it actually contains vitamins and minerals which make the protein from muscle meat more fully digestible. However, I cannot help but say that what follows is what I believe to be a better usage of the fat than the way we ate it that afternoon.

After lunch we went up to the top of the village where there was a lottery. The place was beautiful, next to the village stuppa (Buddhist temple) and school were prayer flags where people congregated as they waited through the long speeches that began the day’s events. The top prize for the lottery was a goat. Other prizes included a cell phone, scientific calculator, a large bottle of coca cola, a pressure cooker, Nepal topis (hats), and t-shirts. My roommate John ended up winning a fake ‘diesel’ shirt and was called on stage to have his face smeared red as is the tradition. People roared in cheers and laughter like you cannot imagine seeing this white giant on stage.

We returned back to the house walking along side terraced fields of potatoes, corn, mustard, peanuts, buckwheat and vegetables. That afternoon and evening the baju (a term used for the wife of the eldest son of a family who after moving in with the husband’s family is responsible for a majority of the housework) spent hours and hours stuffing cleaned out intestines with fat. The sausage looking contortions were also slowly dried and would be used as a cooking fat after a few months. The most popular way to use this preserved fat is to put a small amount of it in boiling water and then cook fresh greens with delicious spices and tomatoes- all freshly harvested of course. I had this incredible vegetable dish several times, except instead of using the preserved fat, they would boil the bones of the bisy to add a delicious richness to the greens. The bones could then be gnawed on and sucked and chewed as a healthy and enjoyable way to pass time.

Tis the Season

2008-10-25T22:33:00.000-07:00

There is a certain excitement in the air these days. The great festival of Dewali is approaching and people are stocking up on ghee lamps and lights to brighten their homes at night, they are buying fruit and walnuts to give in exchange for tikka and blessings given by older sisters, and every once in a while a fire cracker goes off in impatient anticipation for the week of celebration to come.

Yesterday evening I sat by the neighborhood Mandir (hindu temple) where neighbors gathered for the weekly singing and dancing session. They sing songs to different gods with harmonium, tabla, another drum, and chimes. Many people sing along and old women dance and clap with great joy radiating from their faces. The singer, a skinny guy in his 50s probably, has a great voice that effortlessly weaves through complex melodies nuanced with tones foreign but so sweet to my western ear. One song ended with a small chant of oooommmm, oooommmn, ooommm, and then chia (chai tea) was served and people were just really having a great time. Those who tried to leave were forced to stay and drink tea, eat biscuits and shoot the breeze during that auspicious time just following the sunset. I thought of church groups in the States and other communities that get together to sing. I tried to think about how this was different but I cant really say. People in their own neighborhood and culture getting together to make merry.

This morning after the breakfast I went to go play basketball at a court hosted by a library / community center not to far from my house. On the way i passe by the Lama Family fruit stand unusually loaded with goods. As always I was invited to sit offered a banana or papaya. Its hard to say no to such offers, but they come so readily from these great friends that it wasn't too difficult to just sit for a minute and then be on my way. Basketball was alot of fun and I hope to make a habit of it. But school starts again after Tihar, so I will have to figure out the right time to go.

After a few games of 21 with guys ranging from 10 years old to late twenties, i noticed a Community health clinic just there next to the court. In the evening time this court also becomes a bustling bazaar with full layouts of produce on the carpets and people selling right out of their basket outfitted bicycles they ride around yelling what they are carrying- fruit, garlic, ginger, potatoes, maybe milk. The health clinic was closed at the time so i went upstairs where their is a government office that deals with water issues.

There people told the clinic would open in 20 minutes, so I should sit down. I was talking in half Nepali half English with a young Nepali guy who had recently returned from Australia where he is a student of business. He said if the political situation of his country did not improve he would surely take his family there to live. After talking a bit longer I found out that his father had just recently died. His father had diabetes along with high blood pressure and other related health problems. His father had eye problems, kidney problems and leg problems. In the US diabetes is the leading cause of both blindness and limb amputations. Another woman in the office herself had high blood pressure and was worried about a chance of having diabetes. Her husband suffers from the disease. She was very curious about what foods he should be eating because she said their doctor had not said very much about this.

Recently i have been reading a couple different books about diabetes and food. One book called "Syndrome X" claims that the introduction of processed foods in conjunction with a sedentary lifestyle is the cause of insulin resistance. This insulin resistance, caused mostly by overloading the system with simple carbohydrates, then is directly related to a series of symptoms including hypertension (high blood pressure), irregular blood fat levels, obesity, and glucose intolerance all of which induce diabetes and heart disease if not treated by adequate exercise and a diet which the human body is adapted for, namely a diet of unprocessed, unrefined whole foods.

Other books I have read are much more reluctant to even mention the phrases "whole" or "processed" foods. Even books released by The Johns Hopkins medical group or other big names will rather suggest 'counting carbs' regardless of the form of those carbohydrates. In such books diabetes is noted as one of the leading causes heart related illness, but the two issues are still compartmentalized and treated separately. One such book talks alot about the importance of legumes and fiber in the diet and also includes a large recipe section. The recipe for the bean soup is very hard to find and calls for mostly canned or frozen ingredients. Much more prominent in the recipe section of the book are recipes to appease the diabetic sweet tooth. This includes recipes for brownies and cup cakes all of which call for crysco, artificial sweeteners, and processed flours. I cant help but notice how these books might be purposefully trying to depoliticize the issue of health by ignoring the issue of processed foods as harmful.

Meeting diabetics in Nepal is not hard and I think my research has alot of potential to investigate the links between development, change in diet and diabetes. The holiday season is just ending now so I will finally get the chance to meet with professors and doctors to talk about the issues and get some guidance in this research project which weaves together immense fields of medical and social studies.

Lama Family Series, Entry #1

2008-10-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

A couple minute walk down the street and just across from the Bhaatbhaateni mandir (Hindu temple) is a small shop that sells fresh fruits and vegetables and also makes fresh squeezed juices of pomegranate, pineapple and sweet lime. I remember the first time buying a couple pomegranates from the didis (older sisters) there and receiving the kindest smiles and encouraging remarks on how good these pomegranates were. I ensured them that if they were indeed good I would be back for more. That was a month ago and today the family that owns the shop has become my closest Nepali friends here in Kathmandu. I never seem to go a day without seeing them, and they become concerned if for whatever reason I don’t pick up my phone or don’t make it to their shop until later in the day. The way they have included me in their circle of friends and family is an incredible thing, and I will be forever grateful to them. It is now the holiday season so meeting with professors and other professionals to really get my diabetes reasearch going headstrong has been hard. In another week or so the holiday season will be wrapping up and i will find better direction within my proposed research field.

Spending time with the Lama family has given me an up close and personal experience from which I have learned so much about not only the intricacies of their family’s situation, but the general shared experience of Nepalis. They have opened up to me in ways I would have never imagined and treated me like family. I would like to share some of my experiences with them and their story that they have shared with me. This story has given me such a great insight into a sliver of contemporary Nepal. I say ‘a sliver’ because this is only one family of one ethnic group of a richly heterogeneous country. However going deeply into one story I think sheds light on thousands of others which have mismatching and overlapping shared experiences in this country and abroad.

After buying fruit from the shop a few more times, they started inviting me to sit and chat each time I cam by. One of the brothers, Rajan Lama Tamang, who is also in the family and works there is a very energetic, friendly guy who is also quite effeminate and a funny character. After chatting for a while one time with Rajan and his two older sisters Sharmilla and Besanti I learned that Rajan was headed for Dubai in two days. Despite this they invited me over for dinner the next day, I would eat there and they would also show me around Shwayambu (an incredible Buddhist Stuppa near their apartment).

That next day Jon and I had plans to go to Kajan Gumpa (another Bhuddhist temple) with a friend who works at the organic store nearby that sells organic, fair trade, and locally produced food and household items. So after going to Kajan Gumpa, seeing a beautiful view of the valley and walking through some of the more agricultural, smaller villages in the Kathmandu Valley, we were met again by the looming city where we took a bus to Swayambu and waited for Rajan to come pick us up. We waited as they instructed by the police station across from the entrance to the temple. But after an hour of confused phone calls and waiting, we learned that there are two entrances and two police stations so we took a cab to the other side of the enormous stuppa were we met Rajan and walked over to his family’s place.

The Lama (last name implying Buddhist monk) family stays in a typical city apartment building/house and just have two small, simple rooms. The rest of the house has other people living in it from their village a couple hours away- so their community stays together. Their family is huge, and at the time I couldn’t quite understand who was who but it don’t think it quite mattered. Informally, the word for cousin and brother / sister are the same (you call strangers brother / sister also). Rajan’s parents had seven children who now have children of their own.

In their apartment in Kathmandu there is a stereo and a TV that was on a lot- mostly showing music videos of American, Hindi and Nepali music. Nepali music videos are quite sappy with shots of people singing and dancing with the backdrop of beautiful terraced Himalayan foothills, others imitate western hip hop with girls ‘bumpin’ and grinding’ and guys in hip hop dressed flashing hand symbols. Hindi music videos are usually scenes of exotic women being admired by men in packed disco clubs.

They sat Jon (my roommate) and I down and offered us tea, roksi (locally made hard liquor), and snacks of cucumber, radish and peanuts while we waited for dinner- usually not eaten at their place until late, 9 or 10pm. There were a few younger boys, both students, one of them the ‘trickster’ who was too shy to showoff at the time, and a younger girl in the eighth grade. This girl spoke the best English of anyone in the family- she studied in a private school and apparently was at the top of her class studying on a scholarship (all free) and hoping to be a doctor I believe. The aamaa (mother of Rajan and grandmother of the younger kids) had just got in from the village and would be staying a few days in the city to see a doctor for her hurting leg. Dressed in traditional Nepali garb, she smoked cigarettes in the sitting room with everyone around and looked on silently as everyone did their thing. So we chatted with everyone, learning about the village and the city life. With their fruit and vegetable shop, very often they have to wake up at four or five in the morning to go to the wholesaler and buy produce before making it to the shop on the other side of town and have it open by seven. Then they work all day until 7 and come home and do it again.

Rajan’s bai (younger brother) is in a Tamang hip hop group (whose album release program I recently attended as a guest of honor!- quite an experience to see these guys rapping and such with an audience ranging from grandmothers in traditional Tibetan attire to every day local Nepalis) and dresses fully decked out with G-Unit brand cloths, a dew rag, baseball cap with the shiny sticker and all. I got to see some of this guy's break-dancing moves which I was quite impressed by. They also had a didi (older sister) who once also in the Nepali pop music industry and who I saw in one music video and a poster they have hanging in one of their rooms.

One of their bais (younger brother) is a Lama, studying as a Buddhist monk as I had been told one day in the shop. While we were snacking, he came through fully garbed in his red monk garb and didn’t really say hello, he had an electronic gadget he was playing with which emanated the sounds of Nintendo Mario Brothers. He was probably 17 years old and I learned is also really into youth Nepali hip hop culture; apparently on some of his free days he will get out of his monk attire, get decked out in some baggy hip hop style clothes and go to the clubs in the city to rap, dance and chill. Another older brother, a bit fat and quite heavy set, speaking a good amount of sloppy English with alcohol reeking breath, is a taxi cab driver and has been one for many years- mostly for tourists he said.

We ate a fabulous meal of dal-bat (rice, lentil soup and veggies) with goat meat as well. Apparently they don’t like goat meat all that much- they would prefer water buffalo or chicken- but I had once said I like goat meat, so they cooked it just for us. Everything was delicious, but the meat was especially flavorful and rich- an incredible curry broth. The only difficulty is that goat meat is ordinarily butchered here with everything intact. Of course the organs and what not are separated out, but the meat is attached to bones, tendons, fat, and fairly thick skin. But this is customary, so I just chewed through it all putting only the bones back on the plate.

After we had finished eating and talking for a bit my roommate Jon was busy learning about Ayruvedic medicine and herbal plants from everyone in the family(who has at least some knowledge about such things). I was just sitting and chatting, greatly entertained by the hosts who were great jokers and laughers full of sass, sarcasm and love for one another. Soon it was 10 pm and time to start getting ready to sleep. It appeared as though it was being assumed we would sleep there that night. Jon said he had some work he needed to do the next morning. One didi said she would be going to Bhatbateni early, so we could just go with her, but Jon insisted it would be easier for him to leave now. But taxis, they said, were not really available at this hour. So they spent the next 20 minutes on the phone finding a friend taxi driver to take Jon home. I figured I would take their invitation and not be in a hurry to get back home. I made sure to ask of course that I was not disturbing anything, especially because Rajan would be leaving for Dubai the next day and maybe wanted family time. They said “what disturbing?” as though there was no such thing.

People started getting in their beds which had acted as couches and benches just minutes before. In the kitchen probably 6 people slept, in the sitting room maybe 7 or 8- four or five on mattresses on the floor, and in the room I was in four slept including myself. There really is no such thing as personal privacy in Nepali culture. No one has ‘their own room’ or hardly even their own bed. The room I is rented by some college students who are not blood relatives, just friends by default of proximity. After playing some music and singing songs in Nepali and English alike (they especially loved hearing me sing the Nepali songs I know and a flamenco rendition of Hotel California- the most infamous American song in Nepal) I undressed to my boxers and said goodnight. Rajan was in the bed with me and two other guys shared the other bed in the room. The fluorescent light was on, one guy was playing a mini electronic keyboard and the other talking loudly. When one of them finally got up to turn off the light 15 minutes later he asked me why I wasn’t asleep, seeming confused.

It took me a while to fall asleep, Rajan was coughing and I was nervous and uncomfortable. I suppose I was not used to sharing a tiny bed with another guy that I hardly know, but to them all of this is completely normal. It really shows how family and community are at the center of life here. The individual is nothing without the family and the group and the way many people live here really embodies this sentiment. “One spit dries quickly, a thousand spits forms a river” a Nepali saying goes.

The next morning I woke up and sat in the sitting room where people were getting ready for the day. One of the didis that works at the produce shop had said she would be leaving at 5 am but it was already 7:30, plans change, things are relaxed- her sister was there so she would go with me and Rajan after we ate dalbat a bit later. I sipped some chia (tea) and then was fed chow-chow (Ramen-like noodles popular for kajaa (non rice meals/snacks)). I watched as all the young students ironed their clothes for the day, they had to be presentable to be allowed in the private school. They studies for their exams that day by repeating monotone phrases they had memorized in an English language hardly decipherable to me, whether or not they actually understood what they were saying is debatable.

Rajan and I left and he showed me around the Swayambu Buddhist stuppa. At the top of 365 steps leading up through the forest is an incredible temple and worship place with a great view of the capital city below as well. The place seems so old, and so well used with hundreds of people coming everyday to worship and tour. We circled around spinning the wheels with ‘om mani paame hum’ inscribed on them which were implanted into the main temple. Rajan explains that he spins the wheel to relieve sadness and tension in the heart, to ask for a life of peace and to make good karma. We saw the monkeys jumping from goddess statue to rooftop and we saw vendors selling incense, and jewelry, beads, ornate miniature statues, singing bowls, and so on to locals and tourists alike. We went inside the monastery where Rajan’s little brother studies and stays and went inside a private prayer room where we made offerings of rupees. Rajan bowed and prayed to a golden Buddhist statue kept encased by glass. Then we paid rupees to light three ghee (clarified butter) candles each in a room radiating heat and light and a pleasant aroma from the hundreds of glowing candles inside.

We walked under hundreds of Tibetan prayer flags hung from temple tops to tree branches. Each flag hung as a prayer for a family member or for peaceful dwelling. The flags swayed gently in the wind, the whole place emanated a rare sense of calm and peace. We came to the other side of the hilltop where there were monks chanting and playing their drums and blasting their horns and konk shells in a way that, although sounds chaotic, loud, screechy and very strange, is actually quite enjoyable and mesmerizing.

We walked down through the forest and saw monkeys picking out little bugs from each other's fur with lightning speed. We passed students walking on their way to school and Rajan told me this was a popular place for college sweethearts to meet. Down at the bottom again, we circled around the entire base of the stuppa, spinning the hundreds of prayer wheels embedded in a wall the whole way around. On the path we walked by people living in nearby shacks of plastic and sticks begging for money and we passed by people castrating themselves by bowing all the way down to the ground, laying belly down, and then pushing and standing back up over and over again countless times in worship. We talked about karma, bhuddism, and his life.
Rajan began telling me parts of his life story, which is becoming more full and clear to me each day. He has been through a lot and yet still remains incredibly positive and joyful. I hope to share a lot of that story here but it may take some time. Rajan is the most educated person in his entire family history having studying one year in college and then having to quit for work and money. Of his peers in his home village, he is one of three to be educated past what is available locally and he says most of his friends are married with children. He is 22, like me, and says that marriage at 15 or 16 is not uncommon in rural areas. While walking around the stuppa spinning the prayer wheels I remember him communicating some of his troubles, how his family has the produce shop but it is not enough for a modern life of buying food, paying for gas, water, clothes, books, hospital trips and so on. Rajan and his family struggle living a poor, hard life and Rajan often carries with him the stress and tension that this life induced upon him he says. So Rajan is on his way to Dubai to make money, travel and see other parts of the world and then what he cant say. He hopes for more education and the ability to bring greater opportunity to his family and fellow Nepalis.

We got back to the flat and had a meal of dal bat- incredibly delicious once more. Rajan had some work to do near the produce shop in Bhaatbhateni for his plane ticket, one of the other sisters was sick and thinking about going to the hospital, so the four of us needed a bus or taxi to get across town.

After walking a block from the apartment we hopped over a long pit being dug in the road- some kind of plumbing work maybe. Next we walked passed a plume of black smoke, the hot day was hotter next to a burning tire in the middle of the road. Continuing along, a few young men walked by dragging large smoldering logs behind them which left a smeared, charred black sooty trail behind. At the next intersection was a thick bamboo pole across the whole width of the road, a couple large pieces of cement had been placed there as well. This is how we found the city for the next 45 minutes as we walked toward Bhatbhateni- where their shop is and my flat.

That day there was a baanda, and so it would not be possible to take a taxi or bus. But walking through the city that day, I felt as though I experienced what it was like here thirty years ago, before the streets were overflowing with constantly honking, swerving, exhaust blowing automobiles. It was a nice walk and the city was quiet for once. The only other time you don’t hear traffic is early in the morning or late at night.

We walked through Asan- a very old part of the city where there is a huge busy bazaar- street vendors and shops selling all sorts of household goods and foods- almost everything what shut down. As we had walked I saw people posting up signs written in Sanskrit, I can’t read that too well yet (I still have to slowly sound it out like a first grader) but I got the jist from talking to people.

The baanda that day came from the Newaris. They have a certain festival they have been celebrating annually for thousands of years and it involves animal sacrifice, dancing, feasting, singing and so on. In the recent budget proposal from the Maoist government they felt their minority group was not well enough represented because their ancient festival was not getting enough funding. So most of the city was shut down, the next day the budget was reappraised and the Newaris got their funding.

When we got to a more open part of the city I was up on a pedestrian bridge when I saw a group of several dozen people marching down the street screaming “haamro sanskriti, haamro desh!”- “our culture, our country!” and some other things I didn’t understand. Just beneath where I was, I saw a mob of people form around an army officer on a motorcycle. They surrounded him and started throwing rocks and hitting him for no apparent reason that I could notice. Then a nearby group of police fully dressed with riot shields and batons broke up the mob and they continued down the street. Then the police seemed to say that the crowd couldn’t go the way they wanted so for a few minutes they negotiated and the crowd got their way and they marched along chanting “our culture, our country”, the riot police marched along side the crowd.
Not too far away we were able to catch a bus and we crammed into an impossibly tight squeeze. We made it to the produce shop and they fed me bananas, papaya and carrots as usual. Rajan met his other sister at the office for his travel business, and I found out later in the day that Rajan would not be leaving for Dubai for another month. Rajan was supposed to be leaving with a group of 10 other Nepalis, but with their big Nepali festival of Dossain coming up and the current festival of Ramadan in the Middle East, the journey had been postponed. “No big deal, just a month, plans change, things are relaxed.”

A few reflections on my relatively naïve holistic understanding of today's Nepal

2008-09-28T05:43:00.001-07:00

Arriving in Kathmandu, Nepal on September 15th, after my 11 days in Kalimpong, India, I took a taxi from the airport to the Fulbright office. On the way to the office we encountered an enormous traffic jam. The traffic is bad enough as it is in the city as a constant chaotic swarm of buses, vans, motorcycles, goats, pedestrians, bicycles, dogs, and cars, but this was different- we hadn’t gone anywhere in minutes and it was jammed up as far as I could see.

I asked the driver what the problem was and he said “baanda chha”- chha means ‘there is’ and baanda literally means ‘closed’. Baanda is one of the words used for one form of political strike / protest which is quite often now in the city. Over the past several years, and especially more recently, at any given time- from one day to the next without any notice at all- any part of the city or its entirety can be completely closed down to automobile traffic. By blocking specific and major intersections the city becomes closed. And many businesses will also close down in protest.

I asked the driver why there was a baanda today. He explained that recently the government had instated a curfew by which all shops, restaurants and bars had to be closed by 11pm. Tamel, considered the tourist district and party / club / bar / discotec center for Nepali Youth, is home to many businesses that would prefer to be open until the early morning hours. The workers of these businesses- waitresses, bar tenders, etc.- protested that day by closing down a few major intersections, what would happen to their jobs, their money, their livelihood with such a curfew which is to date heavily instated every night by a swarm of armed police who are not afraid to used their bats so I hear.

The taxicab driver explained that the government believes that a lot of crime emanates from these late-night alcohol serving establishments, and so the curfew. When I talked briefly with another Fulbrighter about the curfew, he also seemed to think it was a good idea. His notion came from the fact that he and his girlfriend didn’t like to see such westernization in Nepal- he still is searching for “the real Nepal” that he has not been able to find over the last two weeks in this bustling, rapidly modernizing yet simultaneously ancient city.

“The Real Nepal”- Buddhists and Everest and ancient ‘sustainable’ traditions. And where are the authentic Nepalis anyways? Why do they all watch TV and wear jeans and drive cars? “I came here to get away from all of that” I heard another westerner say. So what is “the real America”? Wallstreet and Hollywood, ritz and intellect, sex, power, whiteness and beauty? I don’t feel like a very ‘authentic’ American, although I fit the mold in many ways. Dreaming of authenticity is very dangerous and we must recognize our desires, try to trace their roots. Considering the circumstances, denying people ‘development’ can also be considered a form of oppression. To assume we should have access to observe or engage in an “authentic traditional” culture is another symptom of privilege with various roots and repercussions. But there is no denying the wisdom of ancient ways of life and the proliferation of western hegemony is definitely a source of their demise.

This issue of modernization is such a tricky one to be thinking about here in Nepal. After being here only 10 days I don’t feel especially educated about all of the recent history of the country, something I hope to change very quickly, but I can certainly say that right now I feel as though the situation is a tangled ball of yarn with dozens of different colored strings sprawling out from the congested center.

Kathmandu itself is the melting pot of Nepal. The Newari people are indigenous to the Kathmandu Valley and are the people who originally built the ancient cities and kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur- now the major cities in the valley. In the late 1700s the Kathmandu Valley was conquered (or “unified” as the euphemism goes) by the Gorkha Army and from there a Hindu Kingdom prevailed with overlapping caste systems in place (Newari and Hindu/Gorkha). Slowly people from all over the area began to settle in the Valley and today you find people of many different ethnic backgrounds residing in the Valley- Tamang, Rai, Tapa, Gurung, Sherpa, just to name a few. The ways in which these people were integrated into the hierarchical social order is fascinating and complex. Because they were neither priests (Brahmins), warriors (Chetris), merchants (Vishia), untouchables, nor Newaris they were jammed into the lower rungs of complexities oversimplified by the classical Hindu caste system theory. Modern Nepal still struggles with issues inclusiveness concerning the caste system, and class of course is another whole issue. Someone can be rich, but because they are of a low caste, be looked down upon. My foreign eyes are not tuned to notice the subtleties of caste discrimination and oppression but I am sure with time and education I will start seeing things more clearly. Even in the US one needs a certain focus in their vision to see the multiple ways in which race, economics, culture, and law interact and weave together as our grandly unequal and unjust social fabric.

So ethnicity, caste and class. There is one string of yarn.

The major issue in Nepal right now of course if development. Many people claim that people in the cities and in remote rural villages alike need more electricity, better education, better roads, better hospitals, better jobs, more economic power so that Nepal as a nation can prosper and become more powerful within the international community. For decades politicians have promised development programs, but nothing ever seems to happen with these policies. The people lost faith in their parliamentary / Monarchical bureaucracy which just seemed to gobble up money from home and abroad, keeping the rich and the poor poor but without the development and progress many people felt needed. For 15 some years a Maoist lead military force spread inspirational revolutionary rhetoric and anti Royal Army violence throughout the country. Thousands were killed, acres of land seized, hundreds of protests, strikes and other political maneuvers were taken, and eventually the King was ejected. Democratic elections took place about a year ago electing the Maoist to power. Today a constitution is being drafted and yet somehow the faith in government seems to be small. The recent national budget proposal calls for twice as much money as previous ones and includes monumentous goals like dam projects leading to electricity exports to India. Today the Nepal’s capital city loses power 36 hours per week. Many people don’t trust the Maoist either and expect more of the same from the new politicians, big ideas, little action.

So civil war, transition from monarchy to democracy, government, Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and development projects is another thread of yarn.

Education. In such a relatively economically poor, developing 3rd world country the education system is lacking. I have yet to see school in rural areas but I have heard they are usually little more than small shacks with small classrooms jamming in dozens of students for one teacher. In a town in the hills there is a 12 year old boy in the seventh grade who is at the top of his class. In the same grade are 15 and 16 year old kids. If this young boy was given a scholarship to study in a good school in Kathmandu he would be placed in the second grade. I recently met a women from Holland who is working with the Nepal Ministry of Education. Currently there is absolutely no teacher training necessary to become a government-school teacher. Graduating from high school is the only qualification. Of course there are certain text books and exams for certain grades. With this system people make up their own lessons and material that can be far from truth or actual reality; unified teacher training, pedagogy, and curriculum are far from sight. She said that they have created great models for putting such programs in place, but Brahmin men make all of the decisions at the end of the day she says. The bureaucracy seemed intolerable to her. From my experience the education system is also very traditional in the sense of not questioning the ‘guru’ who knows all, and memorization without true understanding is very common, especially for younger children. Another thing which shocked me is the Euro-American centrism that, from my limited experience talking with people here, seems to pervade the school system (not too surprising considering dominant forms of ‘development, progress and democracy- all hot topics in Nepal – arose from the West.

Education, another strand.

Media. Walking down the streets of Kathmandu today, media is everywhere. Advertisements mostly come from cosmetics (shampoo, etc) idolizing glowing fair skin as the symbol of beauty, alcohol companies boasting excitement, sex and prestige as the characteristics of these increasingly popular beverages considered entirely risqué to many less than a generation ago, motorcycles which “set millions of hearts aflame”, cell phones which seem to be just about everyone’s access to a personalized modern experience, and packaged food so that life can be fast.
Television of course is incredibly enchanting, addicting, and popular. Almost every Nepali family’s home I have been in boasts a TV on for several hours day and night. Here the glamour of the Western World is displayed in all of its undisputed fabulous glory and in comparison Nepal is oh so poor. Hindi and Nepali TV programs range from sitcoms, to music videos to the nightly news and often times have good local programming. I have spoke to many that say the aspirations and desires of the youth are planted by the media. A huge percentage of young Nepali men are abroad to make money.

Media, another pervasive strand.

Tradition. Hindu and Buddhist dharma are firmly rooted as the pillars of this society. The culture, the language, the daily practices, dress, religious ceremony and philosophies all interwoven as one. The balance that is kept by people entering the middle and upper classes between tradition and modernity is quite unique, many might consider themselves ‘suitably modern’.
Here in the city, it seems that a good proportion of people have their own gardens, they grow various vegetables seasonally to supplement having to buy. Just a couple blocks away from my apartment in the middle of the city is a rice patty in someone’s front yard. Squash vines are common ornaments to nearly every house, climbing on roofs, trees and power lines. The further one gets away the more agricultural land there is. In just a twenty minute bus ride I can be in the hills where the rice patties extend for acres and corn, potatoes, radish and mustard greens grow lusciously as a combination of food for the house and food to be sold for income. In this setting many families have their own cow or water buffalo to provide manure (fertilizer) and dairy for consumption or sale. It is not uncommon to see a 70 year old women or a 8 year old girl carrying a large bamboo basket overflowing with grass and shrubs- a portion of their cow’s daily feed- all of its weight strapped onto their head and draped on their back which leans forward up the steep hills and paved or dirt roads. Others carry loads of brick, dirt or absolutely anything you can imagine in these load carrying baskets.
Just an hour bus ride (10 miles) I can be in a completely rural setting. From the top of tall hills ones sees terraced hillsides interlaced with subtropical forest and green valleys as the foreground to the Himalayan mountains. These terraced hills have provided the sustenance of life to god-knows how many generations who lived in with these hills. Of course things have never been perfect, but the country-side can be very idyllic for someone passionate about healthy food, healthy environments and healthy people. The entire food chain is visible here as well as the incredible agro-ecosystem which people have induced for life. Eating a meals of rice, lentils, vegetables, fruits, wild plants, herbs and spices, fresh dairy and meat products- all from your direct vicinity is quite remarkable to me, not only to think about it, but to feel its pleasure and its nourishment.
But of course these traditions are suitably slipping away. In many villages young men are endangered- they have left to make money. Speaking to young men about these issues, it seems many would rather have money, ride a motorcycle and have the freedom to stay out at a bar past 11pm than to live in the footsteps of their forefathers. As my other Fulbright Fellow friend, studying democratization in Nepal, said yesterday “who wants to live in a mud shack after you have seen modernity?” In many cases, as a byproduct of overpopulation and socially unjust land distribution, the food that can be grown on a family’s land is not enough, as such they have to make money. So you can work for a dollar a day doing manual labor, or 4,000 rupees (65ruppees=$1, so about $60) a month in an office if you are lucky, or be 1 of 11 getting 3,000 rupees/month collecting eggs from a factory of 15,000 chicken (as I recently saw). But the young men will tell you that none of this is enough for the lives that they want.
Once, where rice could not be grown, millet, wheat, buckwheat and drought resistant rice where grown. Today corn, potatoes and other veggies fill the terraced fields that also now taste cheaply produced chemical fertilizers which give higher yield but devitalize and deplete the soil in the long term. A cash oriented system slowly replaces the old value system and as a result people no longer eat the old foods that used to fill their bellies in such good ways, one older Nepali man told me. The same old man, when I asked him why he thought so many young men leave their homes, families, and friends for work and money abroad, said that so many of them watch the television and it shows them the life of wealth- a fabricated illusion. But they think this illusion is a reality, he says, and so they leave to try to make it so. The grass is always greener on the other side.

Agriculture, development, desires, the changing food system, illusions and reality- another long, long yarn of thread.
Of course there are too many threads to be sorted but I am trying to get a holistic understanding of the situation before I choose one area to concentrate on. So far to me the notion of desire is very intriguing to me. It is tragic that so many young men leave the country now for work, and in my next entry, I will tell a story of a recent interaction I had with some young men not too much older than myself.

20 Minutes Around the neighborhood

2008-09-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

BLOG ENTRY 1 9/22/08 11am

There is nothing like a stream of cold water pouring down your back to bathe and wake yourself up in the beginning of the day. When I first got to my flat here in Bhat Bhateni, Kathmandu, Nepal one week ago the miniature hot-water-heater above the toilet was broken. Since then it has been fixed but I have yet to use it. I rather like the chilly water and the hot-water-heater takes twenty minutes to get ready anyways.

This morning I woke up and did some yoga and stretching in my bedroom, then I walked up stairs and greeted to sun on my flat’s rooftop. The view from the roof is not spectacular but one definitely gets the feeling that they are right in the middle of a big city, and that is where I am. Kathmandu with a quickly growing population of 1 million is one of three bigger cities in the Kathmandu Valley. A couple days ago I had hung up some laundry after washing it by hand under the same faucet that I bathe with (the showerhead is useless) and forget to bring it in before it rained last night- typical evening and nights showers for the end of the monsoon- but I was surprised that by 9am the powerful sun had already dried most everything.

Waking up at 8:30am like I did this morning is rather late for these parts and by the time I was done with some exercises on the roof John, another Fulbright Fellow who is my roommate for the time being while he finds a flat to make his own, was already cooking some breakfast. Ducking under a grapefruit tree hanging low with heavy green fruit I walked out of my typical little gated complex of five or so apartment buildings to my small neighborhood street. Directly across the way are two small shops that seem to do the same thing- sell kaajaa (food that does not include rice) and chia (chai / tea). They are tiny little shacks with a cozy atmosphere. Walking another 45 seconds down the street I pass two tailors working with old fashioned sewing machines with foot power capability (the city looses power about 36 hours/week) and a little general store selling packaged candies, drinks, soaps and other small goodies. The little corner store had people crowded around a small table drinking tea and chatting. I took a short cut down a small alley way hardly wide enough for a bicycle passing another tailor, a little western style bakery (muffins and shitty white bread) on the left and a small Indian restaurant on the left.

This alley takes me to the main street of Bhat Bhateni where I took a left next to a huge tree on a rock stoop, the base of the tree stained red from people doing puja (Hindu / Bhuddist religious worhip ceremony). Past the tree on the right hand side of the road is one of the most expensive restaurants in Kathmandu. The Roadside Cafe sells wood-fired pizza, hummus, and some Nepali snacks (I had the pasta pesto there which really wasn’t any good, but the pizza I tasted was excellent). Just across the street from The Roadside Café is a daadaa, a public water tap. Any time of the morning, day or evening you walk by there will be men, women and children bathing, washing there clothes, and filling up water jugs in stone open room fixed below the road where sometimes creepy men stand above and overlook the women bathing with a towel around them.
This busy street is loaded with traffic and movement. At any given time on any street there can be any or all of the following: pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, huge buses, small minivans, cars, took-tooks (small three wheeled automobile used for public trans), dogs, goats, cows, chickens, and of course trash. Its hectic, loud and scary at times with large plumes of black diesel fumes clouding the streets from the old vehicles in a country with next to no emission standards. There is no real order to the madness. For the most part people drive on the left side of the road but there is a constant battle for position on the streets and it is a constant colorful swirl of all forms of human transportation. It is incredible how many people fit into the public transportation vehicles. A small mini-van I road in the other day somehow crammed in over 30 people packed like sardines standing and leaning over each other, even hanging outside the side door. 12 rupees to go just about anywhere (70 some Nepali rupees to the dollar).

I walked past the couch mender, more tailors, an internet café, small shops a couple schools and many piles of trash to get to a small shop that I knew had the veggies I wanted to buy just a minute or two down the road. This shop like most others are small and open air with an array of goods sprawled out on the ground or behind the counter. I picked up two bitter gourds (I doubt you have ever seen this really bitter squash in the US unless you go to a south-asian market), two large cucumbers and a few tomatoes for 30 rupees (about 40 cents) and walked the other way back home.

I walked by another Fulbright friend named Eli who was on his way to the office, he gave me a fresh muffin from that bakery and said we might see each other tonight. Eli is studying the transition from Monarchy to Democracy currently taking place now in Nepal and thinks that drafting a constitution here will be no easy or small task, but more on that later. Again I walked past the water tap, but passed the alley this time to stay on the main road. Less that a minute walk from small alley a more major intersection. Standing at this intersection, before you is a large mall where things have fixed prices (so there is no bartering and haggling which is otherwise the sometimes fun and entertaining norm) and you can find just about anything under one roof. Its not a mall or even a huge department store by western standards but it is a very new and big shopping experience for Nepalis and the whole complex was started by one Gurung (ethnic group) woman as a small shop like any other but developing over the last 25 years to now have escalators and four stories of clothes, household goods, electronics and foods.

There are a few billboards at the intersections advertising antidandruff shampoo and White Mischief Vodka- “A little mischief, a lot of fun!”. Across from the mall and the billboards is the main mandir (Hindu temple) of the Bhat Bhateni neighborhood. There are a few ornate buildings and intricately carved and colored statues of gods with people handing out, doing puja, praying or just walking by. This is a medium-small mandir, but walking along the street, one frequently encounters mandirs stained red and other colors with people maybe doing puja, they range from a small statue the size of your hand built into the side of a wall or building, to a small brick room with a ganesh statue in it built under a gnarled pipal tree which looks hundreds of years old (like a mandir just down another street), to a huge temples considered word heritage sites.

I turn right at this intersection and stop briefly at a shop that sells fruits and vegetables. I have become friends with the family that owns the place. Every time I walk by they have a friend or customer sitting down and chatting. Whenever I walk by they invite me to sit down. Usually they will feed me fresh papaya, bananas of various assortments, pomegranates, carrots, and apples at the shop while we chat (they even had me over for dinner the other night- but that is a whole other story), but this time I just sat down a minute or two and then left telling them that I was cooking breakfast. I walked away with some cilantro they gave me for free- they have given me so much, they are so friendly, its incredible!

Walking away from their produce shop I am soothed by smell of incense burning at the mandir across the street. Within seconds the calming cent of incense is replaced by a thick, pungent aromas and a noisy machine rattling as it grinds spices of turmeric, coriander and cumin in a tiny shop with three women dressed in red saaris, squatting as they wait to by their share. My apartment is just a minute or two walk from the produce shop and along the way I poked my head through a open air curtain into a small restaurant I have been going to for khaanaa (food that includes rice) to say hello to the super friendly short and stout didi with a traditional nose ring (didi meaning older sister- everyone is either your younger or older brother or sister). Here they serve dal baat, the traditional Nepali meal of rice, lentil soup and vegetables eaten with the hands, of course food is not really considered food culturally and linguistically unless there is a mountain of rice on your plate. It’s a great place to eat as much as you want (they serve you as many times as you please) for 50 rupees (65 cents), and meet local people. The didi gave me a huge smile and asked when I was coming next as she washed saag (vegetable greens) under a faded poster of Avril Lavigne on the wall behind her and a funky feathered chicken scurrying at her feet.

Just around the corner some people said hello to me as I walked by. The two guys were standing in front of the neighborhood barbershop, one of them had shaved my beard the other day and they recognized me and asked how I was, have you had tea this morning, have you eaten yet? No I said, I was about to cook. I asked if they had, no they had had tea and kaajaa, but no food; they would soon go to the room they share nearby and cook and eat dal bhaat. At their barber shop a beard save is available for 30 rupees I got this combined a good face wash /message and mediocre back, head, arm massage- 45 minutes 100 rupees. Around the next corner I turned left into my gate shuffling by the white dog that is always hanging around at the foot of our gate. There are stray dogs everywhere sticking to their own territory and they are most active at night.
By the time I got back to the flat not more than 20 or so minutes had passed since I left to buy the vegetables, and I could have made it back in less. But what is the hurry? its nice having things close and friendly people all around. No one ever seems to be in a rush here and I am trying to get on that wave length- so different from the busy nature of American life.

John was adding beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes to the pressure cooker, later adding freshly stoned ground garlic-ginger-hot pepper paste and turmeric fried in pungent mustard oil. The 25lbs stone I bought for $3.50 is a great thing to have to grind spices and fist size rocks of pink Himalayan crystal salt sold in the bazaar. I cooked the bitter gourd with fenugreek, onion, and turmeric, cut up the cucumber and we made an acchar- a freshly made condiment also called chutney; although we think of chutney as a pickle here the two words are synonymous and can mean either. The acchar was of freshly ground coconut (I drank its water yesterday), lime juice, cilantro and salt. We ate the delicious meal with churri, a crunchy pre-cooked, flattened and dried rice popular for kaaja. I don’t know if I will ever be able to make food taste like the Nepalis do. I know how they cook, but there is just something they have, the right touch, the experience of cooking dal bhat their entire lives, that makes there food such as incredible experience to eat.