Dispatches from Nepal, Part 2
Arjun’s Note: Here is part 2 of my good friend Dougal’s dispatches from his semester abroad in Nepal. I hope you find it interesting. You can find part 1 here.
- A story: One of the program directors is this guy from eastern Nepal. When his dad was like twenty, so maybe fifty-ish years ago, to get to and from Kathmandu, there was no way to do it but by walking…which took three or four weeks. Not an easy walk, either — a not insignificant portion of the people who tried never made it. His dad went, though, to look for a job. Once he finally made it there, he had to wait in line to actually get a job offer. The way they did it, apparently, is that they would have a wood-chopping or long-jumping contest — to get a clerical job. He did win one of those long-jumping contest, but then he couldn’t read or write, which makes clerical jobs a little harder. So, he went out and learned how to, and then by the time he retired, he was a judge.
- The temples are amazing, and we saw like ten million monkeys around one of them. Also some musk deer, which are tiny — there was a baby musk deer and a baby monkey running around next to each other, and they were the same size.
- Two of the kids on the program just walked past on their way back from Kathmandu. They were on the bus there and some guys were trying to collect money for some political organization. Nobody gave them any, so they got mad and started beating up women and old people, as in punching in the face more than once, before jumping off the bus. We drove past some Maoist youth group yesterday marching down the street.
- The caste stuff is pretty intense, though some of it I’m sure is just cultural differences that make it seem worse. We went on a tour of Patan yesterday, and the (high-caste) tour guide dude just stopped and pointed out things related to (low-caste) people’s cultural things — how some of them had tatoos on their legs, etc. He was grabbing at one guy’s ear talking — in English — about his earrings, and didn’t even talk to the guy until afterwards. He did know his stuff though, and it’s hard to tell whether that was actually really offensive or not. I just know that we were all really uncomfortable about it.
- We also saw these artist people, who make amazing metal statues, and saw a little bit about the process and stuff. So cool.
- There was a bat circling in our room the other night, and a giant spider outside one of the girl’s room’s today. Both left (or were coerced into leaving) peacefully.
- Prices here are weird — a 150ml soda, about the size of a can in the US, is 15 rupees; a 650ml beer, twice the size they are in the US, is 135.
- We’re moving into our Nepali families tomorrow, which could be as much as an hour’s walk away. I’m kind of scared — we really speak very little Nepali, and there’s so many little things I’m going to do that are going to be offensive. But we also went to a “village dinner” the other day with one of the host families, and that was a lot of fun, and the food was also amazing, so we’ll see.
- Apparently they teach us how to make traditional food stuff before we go — very excited about making that this summer, when there’s no Sharples.
