A Public Affair

In the past 15 months, I’ve spent a lot of time attending a variety of official community events. Red Cross meetings, HIV/AIDS forums, mental health trainings, women’s rallies, new building dedications, latrine construction discussions, reconciliation center roundtables—you name it, I’ve sat through it. Sometimes I’ve been invited by the organizer, but more often than not I’m just wandering around obliviously when someone inquires, “Hey, are you going to this program? No? Well come along.” Typically, every program follows one of two protocols.

1) The Ceremony

Setting: Somewhere outside, a crowd is gathered in a large arc in front of a colorful cloth tent that has been rented especially for the occasion. At a podium or table before them stands the master of ceremonies, speaking through a microphone with the reverb turned all the way up (which makes his voice resound absurdly like an announcer’s in an enormous arena, when really he is just addressing a few hundred people in a field). In a row of plastic lawn chairs behind him sit the more distinguished guests, in whose company I will eventually, reluctantly, find myself.

 

I try to maintain a low profile upon arriving, but it’s only a matter of time before they find Waldo with his white skin and western dress. Without delay or regard for my protests, I am ushered up to the stage to sit in a chair with a bunch of people much more deserving of such special seats. Often they’ll give me a necklace of flowers, paint my forehead with vermillion, or pin a laminated certificate to my chest.

Now, the organizer may begin calling guest speakers. Sometimes, these speeches are the bulk of the program. A member from each major political party speaks (whether at a school board election or a child marriage seminar). I am usually invited to speak as well, to which I’ll sometimes consent.

Each speech begins with each speaker saying, “Today, we are gathered here together at” (at this point, each speaker turns around and reads the event’s name off the banner). From here, the script can vary somewhat, but it is sure to be filled with certain buzzwords determined by the theme of the event. Some may last for as long as ten or fifteen minutes. The speakers usually fall into one of four categories:

·      Those who pause between every two to five words for emphasis, though they may say nothing of substance

·      Those who mutter through the entire speech, whose insights are unfortunately lost in the hubbub of the crowd

·      Those who speak softly at first, but gradually grow to such a fervent pitch that you would think they were rousing a battalion for battle rather than enumerating the benefits of farmers markets

·      Decent public speakers

Some time between the speeches, there is certain to be a “cultural program,” which is always one or more dances of one of four kinds: a young girl dancing by herself to a Nepali tune, a teenagers dancing to a Hindi pop song, a group of ethnic minorities performing a traditional dance, or another traditional dance involving three men (two of whom are dressed as women).

At the dance’s conclusion, most of the crowd leaves. The remaining guest speakers say what they have to say. The dancers receive prizes of a few dollars. Finally, the master of ceremonies expresses his thanks and brings the ceremony to a close.

2) The Seminar

Setting: The assembly room of the village development committee building, the health center, or a school gradually fills with people arriving between an hour and an hour and a half after the designated starting time. The participants sit on plastic lawn chairs arranged in a half circle, with all the men on one side and all the women (and myself) on the other. If there are not enough chairs, some of the women sit on the floor. Everyone receives a pen and notebook, which will remain unopened on laps for the duration of the training. A register circulates to account for our attendance.

Approximately two hours after the scheduled time, when a sufficient number of participants have taken their seats and begun complaining about the delay (despite having arrived many minutes late themselves), the training begins with the official opening, in which the organizer expresses it his or her pleasure to start the event.

Next, someone delivers the welcome remarks, in which everyone is individually recognized for their presence. At a seminar this past week, the speaker personally acknowledged the president of the planning committee, the secretary of the village development committee, the representative of the hospital, the Maoist party representative, the Nepali Congress representative, the Marxist-Leninist party representative, officials from two NGOs, the president of the reconciliation committee, the president of the women’s cooperative, the president of the disabled persons committee, the president of the youth network, as well as mothers, fathers, older brothers, younger brothers, older sisters, younger sisters, children, our foreign friend (because I usually get a shout-out), and other attendees from wards one through nine. Lest no one feel unwelcomed.

Then come the participant introductions. Each person rises and states their name, village, and title. Despite introducing myself as “Ben Wagner, Peace Corps volunteer,” later I will still be referred to as “our foreign friend”.

There may now be an opportunity for a few guest speeches, which proceed as described previously.

By now at least an hour has gone by, and it is finally time to introduce the chief business of the event. Sometimes everything goes without a hitch, with the presenter conducting the lesson exactly as planned. There are always small disruptions, of course. Every so often, a cell phone rings and is answered, its owner carrying out a prolonged conversation that goes something like, “No, I’m in a meeting right now… Yes, very good, but I’m in a meeting… Oh, I did that this morning. Yes, I already told him. Ok, I have to go now. What? Why? What does it matter? Next week is fine…” A baby begins crying; to placate it, its mother pulls out her breast. Strangers spontaneously enter, greet everyone with a “Namaste,” sit for a few minutes, and leave.

But things can get interesting. A few minutes in, someone may mistake the lecture for a discussion and decide it’s a good time to share his or her personal views on the matter at hand. Someone else will vehemently disagree. Before long, half the room is engaged in an impassioned debate, and the other half is completely tuned out. The facilitator struggles to refocus, but there is no reconciling such ardor and apathy.

Just then, the snack arrives. The composition of the snack is a topic upon which everyone can agree: eggs and samosas are superior to chow mein or biscuits (though the latter have the advantage that they can be pocketed for later consumption). Steaming milk tea is poured into cheap plastic cups, which warp with the hot liquid.

After the snack, little is left to be said. After the discussion wraps up, somebody thanks everyone for attending and announces that the program has come to a close. The participants prepare to leave, but not until they’ve collected their few dollars of “allowance” for attending.

I bike home, wondering why I once again spent an entire day at another public program. At least the snack was decent.

Speaking in Tongues

During a puja last week, Ramesh, one of my best friends in the village, pulled me aside and gave me a kiss.

A Hershey’s Kiss (had you for a second there, didn’t I?). It had been many months since I’d seen one. I unwrapped the miniature cone-shaped morsel, popped it in my mouth, and let out a sigh.

“I had like thirty of them yesterday,” Ramesh said, beaming. “My cousin brought a lot. He’s visiting from America. You have to meet him.”

Two days later, after measuring a neighbor’s land to plant some pomegranate trees, I met up Ramesh and his cousin, Bahrat. Ramesh, who teaches at a local boarding school, is also a pandit (Hindu priest) and casual gardener. Bahrat has been living in Texas for the past two years and has returned to his homeland for a few weeks. He and his younger sister Radha, a forestry student living in Kathmandu, have come back to their village to visit their primary school, former home, and grandparents. They invited me to tag along. Before we left, Radha dashed back into the house and returned with a handful of Hershey’s Kisses and bite-size Three Musketeers for me, and then we set out.

And now for a long, rambling aside: Even after 17 months in Nepal, I often question whether people in my village always grasp the content and intent of the things I say. Despite my adequate vocabulary, I’ve found that trying to explain certain, complex things (like the germ theory of disease or evolved resistance to pesticides, for instance) is usually a hopeless undertaking. More than a lack of education, which a simple provision of new information could amend, gaps in knowledge have already been filled by speculation, superstition, and tradition, which can be very difficult to supplant. The importance of hand washing at proper times with soap and water (which, the Nepali government estimates, could cut rates of diarrheal disease in half) is marginalized when most people believe that their recurrent stomach problems are caused by the cold. In a country where rice is synonymous with a meal, encouraging people to eat fewer carbs is like trying to get a fat person to take up less room.

Well, I knew behavior change would be hard and slow, demanding a great deal of effort and for indeterminate results. But I was not prepared for the feeling of social isolation that comes with being a constant outlier. Some days I am the American expert on nutrition and agriculture, from a country of great wealth and knowledge; other days I am simply an oddity.

Why, for example, anyone would want to eat anything other than rice is a mystery. What do you want then, roti? Noodles? Trying to describe American cuisine (waffles, sandwiches, barbeque, spaghetti) is exhausting and futile—I doubt that the images my descriptions conjure come even close to the real thing. Even when it does, the sentiment elicited is incongruous. Take a salad: for many villagers, eating a salad for a meal—which contains no rice, no bread, but almost exclusively uncooked vegetables—is a foreign, unappetizing prospect. There is nothing to legitimize what I say, no one to nod their head and say yes, that is a salad, many people eat them, and they are delicious.

To come to the point, linguistic and cultural fluency are two very different things, and even when people understand me, I frequently doubt that they understand me. I’ve found that Nepalis who have spent some time stateside are far more likely to understand where I’m coming from (having been actually been where I come from). So I jumped at the opportunity to chat with Bahrat. We immediately began relating our experiences of moving to another country: dealing with culture shock, learning a new language, adjusting to the diet, and more. Call me ethnocentric, but communicating with a Nepali who knows the language of baseball and Christmas and Coldplay and pizza is oddly comforting.

We visited their school (where the headmaster solicited me to raise $40,000 to construct a new building), their old home (which was completely changed from their memories of it), and eventually ended up back at their grandparents’ house.

Earlier in the day, we’d visited another school where I’d given a mushroom training. As a token of thanks, the teachers had given me a large bag of mushrooms to take home. When we arrived at their grandparents’ house, I began setting aside a portion of the mushrooms to give to my friend’s family.

The grandfather, a Hindu pandit like Ramesh, walked over and commented that there was disagreement as to whether mushrooms were acceptable to eat for pandits, as they weren’t green.

“But that doesn’t make any sense, grandfather,” Radha said. “We eat all sorts of things that aren’t green.”

“All other plants are green at some point, so there is green within them” he replied.

I was already aware of some of the dietary restrictions for pandits: they cannot consume eggs, meat, fish, hot peppers, garlic, onions, or alcohol. But this was something new. Curious as to some of the other constraints and their justifications, I began peppering him with questions.

“Why aren’t pandits allowed to eat hot peppers?”

“Hot red peppers are red because of anger. They make the people who eat them angry,” was his matter-of-fact response.

“But you are allowed to eat other red things, yes?” I asked. “Like tomatoes?”

“We can eat large tomatoes, but not small ones. And not too many. Tomatoes are red because of greed.”

“What about pomegranates?”

“Pomegranates are actually very good,” he answered, “because (and then he said something I didn’t understand). People who eat a lot of pomegranates are very agreeable.”

“I see that we aren’t allowed to eat red peppers,” Radha, piped up. “But why aren’t we allowed to eat hot green peppers?”

The pandit considered this question for a moment. “Green hot peppers are concealing their anger, which is why they appear green, not red. But the anger it still there.”

“Are bell peppers acceptable?” I asked.

“Bell peppers are fine.”

“Why?”

“We are not supposed to eat things that make the tongue dry, because the job of a pandit is to say prayers and he cannot do so if his tongue is dry. Bell peppers don’t have that effect.”

“So what other things are pandits forbidden from eating that make the tongue dry?”

“During prayers for rice, we cannot have milk…”

“But grandfather,” interrupted Radha. “We have panchamrit (a five ingredient holy mixture that contains cow’s milk) during that ceremony. And isn’t there milk in panchamrit?”

“Once it is mixed with the other ingredients, it is no longer milk,” said the pandit.

Ramesh (who has studied a bit of science and on occasion will pull out phrases like “specific heat capacity” and “anaerobic respiration”) jumped in. “But grandfather, no chemical reaction that occurs, such as when sulfur is mixed with…”

His grandfather stopped him, “It is no longer milk.”

Risking sounding impertinent, I put forth, “So if you cook the mushrooms with four other ingredients—say, some oil, salt, cilantro, and cumin—would you be able to eat them?”

“Yes, I think that would be fine,” said their grandfather, with a big smile.

We all burst out laughing.

I hear him, I understand his words, but they are absurd. That night, I called a volunteer friend to relate the story.

“That’s crazy right?” I ask at the end.

“Oh my God, yeah. I feel like you should write that up. That reminds me of this ridiculous thing that happened to me last week…”

I am accepted, validated. But tomorrow I will be explaining something, in smooth Nepali, to some villagers and they will shake their heads, bewildered. Like the pandit, I will be outnumbered and will have no one to turn to.

It drives me crazy, but such is Nepal, and I am here.

Update on Sushil

I’ve been speaking with Sushil’s family every few days about his situation. So far, to my great surprise and relief, the news has been good.

Jail is not so bad, he says. They’ve given him two meals a day and his own bed, and the other prisoners seem nice. Compared to Nepali jails, and the trials he endured on his journey, it might seem like a hotel. He has received a few hundred dollars through the mail, which has allowed him to keep in contact with his family here.

His court date arrived, by which time his family had managed to find him a sponsor, a Nepali American acquaintance. A sponsor is requisite for Sushil to remain in the country. The judge set his bond at $15,000 (a pretty outrageous sum for bond, and even more so for a Nepali family).

Sushil’s family took out a large loan to raise the money. On February 8, he was released from the detention center in which he was being held.

Now, he’ll look for work. From his experience as a shopkeeper in the village, he knows how to deal with costumers, calculate the cost of goods, make change, and keep accounts. His parents propose that he might find an accounting job; I suggest becoming a cashier as a more pragmatic prospect. But maybe they are right to set their sights so high... it seems that I was wrong to limit their hopes for his release.

At a Loss

This is not a particularly happy post.

It’s been a fairly unfortunate past few weeks. After returning from a family vacation to Cambodia, I was stuck in Kathmandu for four days due to bandhs (strikes) throughout the country. My host brother in Sindupalchok (where I spent my three months of training) died suddenly of a heart problem. An old woman who lives down the road from me, with whom I drank tea several times a week, passed away after failing to recover from kidney stones. The farmer with whom I constructed a plastic greenhouse was impaled and nearly killed by one of his own oxen, although he seems to be recovering well. My family’s chickens all died from a mysterious illness (ok, maybe I’m a little happy about that. Never has my garden enjoyed such peace from their relentless digging and defecating). More than any of these deaths, though, I have found this story to be the most troubling:

I’m in a shop in my village bazaar, trying to make sense of all I’ve just taken in. A middle-aged Nepali couple sits across from me. I’d met their son, Sushil, shortly after I arrived in my village a year ago, and we became fast friends. Two years my junior, Sushil was of medium build, quick to smile, and full of questions about the United States. He’d married not long before I met him, but he spent most of his days sitting idly at the counter of his parents’ shop and staring off into the distance.

Early on, Sushil told me that he wished to move to the U.S. to continue his education. His English was decent and he seemed to be a quick learner. With the sheer odds against his obtaining a student visa, however, he took his chances with immigrating illegally and had since been on the road for several months. Two weeks ago, Sushil posted a plea for help on his Facebook page, followed by a link to an article about a group of illegal immigrants who had been detained by the Panamanian police. Having bribed the police officers for his release, Sushil continued on his way. Any day now—even as we speak, his parents say—he will be crossing the border and entering the United States.

Around the time Sushil was arrested in Panama, his wife, Saraswati, had been due to deliver their first child. Saraswati had studied at the local campus and played on the girl’s volleyball team before her pregnancy had progressed to the point that she could no longer hide it. Just a few days earlier, Sushil’s mother tells me, Saraswati had gone into labor. The doctors anticipated complications, so Sushil’s parents rushed her to a larger, better equipped hospital. Saraswati miscarried in the taxi. Weeks later, she is still recovering from the physical and emotional trauma of the ordeal.

Having little money, Sushil’s family had eaten sparingly on the road to and from the hospital. Nevertheless, between Sarswati’s care, transportation, water, lodging, and the occasional meal, they had spent beyond their means and their money had gotten very tight. A week later, Sushil’s mother is experiencing headaches and heart palpitations from the stress of it all. Speaking with a neighbor who has come to buy ginger, she laments at the family’s misfortune and wonders what they have done to deserve such bad karma.

Initially, I supposed this the end of the story. I wrote it up as part of an article and almost sent it to a friend of a friend to publish in a national Nepali newspaper, but I struggled to find a proper tone and theme. As a foreigner, praise of Nepal can come off as oversentimental and patronizing, criticism may seem ignorant and malapropos, and both can suffer from overgeneralization. Eventually, I buried it. The other day, however, more details came to light and I decided that it needed to be shared.

A few months later, after returning from a long vacation with my family, I am back in Sushil’s family shop. His father sits across from me, and I’m trying to make sense of all I’ve just taken in. A month prior, Sushil was been riding on a bus in Mexico when he and his two traveling companions were kidnapped by what his father describes as “the Mexican mafia.” They were bound, blindfolded, and transported into the jungle where they were kept in a shed until each of their families paid a ransom of $5000. After a week, when all the families had paid up, they were released.

Then, after many months of travel, Sushil finally made it across the U.S.-Mexico border—where he was shortly caught and put in prison. Between our language barrier and his family’s poor understanding of the American legal system, I’m having trouble understanding what will happen next. Sushil has a court date with a judge on January 26, by which time he needs to find a sponsor and something his father calls an “oyleck,” which will cost them an additional $3000. The family’s only contact with Sushil is the prison phone, which he uses infrequently because he is low on cash and, well, he’s in prison. His father asks me if there is work in jail, and says that if Sushil gets a job he can make $1 (an hour? a day? He’s not sure) with which he can call his anxious parents. I tell him I don’t know, having never been in jail in Texas.

Sushil’s father fiddles and stares off into the distance, even in extreme apprehension exhibiting the stoicism typical of a Nepali. I feel terrible. My stomach churns, battling its most recent bacterial tenant and digesting the knowledge that Sushil’s voyage has been (and perhaps always was) futile. I want to ask his father what he was thinking, sending his son across the world into such uncertain peril. I want to empty my life savings into his arms to restore their hope—no, not their hope, they still seem to hold on to some—my hope, maybe. I want to tell him everything will be all right, but I don’t think it will be. I want to do many things, but I do nothing.

Sushil’s father offers me milk tea, and when I make an excuse that the dairy will upset my sour stomach, he suggests lemon tea instead. Apologetically, I start say that I have to go; he asks me to sit. A woman comes and asks to buy some rice, but he brushes her off, telling her to wait because he’s busy talking with me. He starts asking me countless questions, one after the other: how much does a police officer make in the U.S.? What about a teacher? Are there mountains in America, and do people live on them? Are oceans, and islands, and deserts? Are all the roads paved, or are some of them dirt like the one in front of us? How do taxes work in America, because he’s heard that some people don’t pay anything at all while others pay a lot.

I answer his questions as best I can, and, seizing a brief moment of silence, excuse myself. Before going, I tell him that if I were back in the U.S., I would do everything I could to help Sushil. He encourages me that when I go home in ten months, I should.

As I rise to leave, my gaze catches on Sushil’s name, scribbled in marker on the wooden cash drawer of his family’s little shop. Thus far, Sushil’s endeavor has cost his family $40,000—a considerable sum even for an American, it is his family’s entire savings. In fact, they recently took out an additional $10,000 loan to support him through his imprisonment. My guess is that, in a few days, he will likely be deported— and then who knows what will happen?

For me, this story speaks volumes about the Nepal I’ve come to know in the past sixteen months. First, it is indicative of some of the country’s greatest shortcomings: the scarcity of opportunity and employment that drives its young and talented men, its fathers and husbands and brothers, to abandon ship, at great risk and expense, for the pipedream of a perfect life abroad; young girls who, by choice or custom, forgo their personal and professional lives to start a family before they reach eighteen; a healthcare system that, despite great strides in recent decades, still struggles to serve the rural, most at-risk populations; countless families who scrape buy on petty margins and struggle to make ends meet in times of greatest need. The list goes on.

It is, in theory, my responsibility to work to beat back these trends: to instill youth with the skills and attitudes to succeed; to empower young women to seize control of their futures; to expand the outreach of health information and services; to build the capacity of small businesses and entrepreneurs. Easier written on a job description than done, of course. In reality, these seem like insuperable forces, especially the one repelling young men from their homeland. I frequently argue with Nepalis about the merits of going abroad, but it’s hard to contend with the veritable plenty of America compared to Nepal. Even after totaling up the costs and risks, the prospect can seem worthwhile.

My community members love to ask me, “which is better, Nepal or the U.S.?” I don’t think such a comparison is fair or worthwhile. My ambiguous but honest answer is both, and neither. I’ve come to appreciate the freedoms and plurality of the United States, but there are aspects of American culture that I don’t miss. As for Nepal: even after a year of living here, the sight of the Himalaya still takes my breath away, the slower pace of life is at times maddeningly laid-back, and people continue to astound me with their generosity. While life may indeed be healthier, comfier, and perhaps even better in the United States, the path rarely proves so easy, cheap, or true.

In each of our trimesterly reports for Peace Corps, we are asked to report the one thing we wish Americans knew about our country of service. Today, I wish you all knew how greatly Nepalis look to the U.S. as the road to wealth and happiness, and how dangerous a thing that can be. So many like Sushil would forfeit all their possessions, leave their families, and risk their lives just for the chance to live on American soil. It should serve as a reminder how much we ought to appreciate all the freedom and fortune we have.