On Sunday, I said
goodbye to my closest Nepali friend. He, like my closest friend before him, is
leaving the country to seek work outside Nepal. In my village, around a quarter
of males over eighteen are currently living abroad. On average, half of a
household’s annual income in my village comes from remittances. This relatively
recent, rising trend is threatening the sanctity of the Nepali family and stifling
the country’s potential development.
The traditional
Nepali family is samyukta (joined),
with several generations living in the same home or village. In rural areas,
these familial ties create a strong sense of community that is readily apparent
in times of joy (e.g. weddings, festivals), trial (illness, death) and many
other aspects of daily life. Increasingly, however, families are breaking apart
as the men leave home for work abroad.
For Nepalis, the
holy grail of foreign countries is the United States. I’ve been asked dozens of
times whether I might bring someone back to the states with me—some Nepalis
have even offered to work for my family as servants. Each year, a few thousand
Nepalis (such as my host sister) are awarded a direct visa through a lottery.
Some Nepalis tell me of relatives who’ve entered the U.S. illegally through
Mexico. With everyone knowing someone who has emigrated to America, many think
that the U.S. is full of Nepalis. I can’t even count the number of times
someone has encouraged me to continue speaking the language when I return to
the states and encounter Nepalis on the street (as if it would be perfectly
normal to start speaking a foreign language to a complete stranger). In
addition, geographical knowledge tends to be pretty poor. My host family first
told me that my host sisters live in New York; a few weeks later, they revised
this to Michigan. In actuality, my sisters live in Texas. In addition, many
people find it difficult to grasp the U.S.’s comparably enormous size and
population (Nepal is the size of Tennessee and has a population of 30 million).
Yesterday, for example, a man asked me if I had had ever met an American woman
who had once been his English teacher. Only by giving travel times or distances
do people (with widened eyes) realize the sheer immensity of the United States.
With the U.S.’s
tight immigration policies, however, most Nepalis have to settle for going
abroad elsewhere. Men who opt out will typically spend two or three years
working in countries such as Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, or India.
For study, Australia and the United Kingdom are popular destinations.
The process to
leave Nepal is often lengthy and expensive. Families may have to pay middlemen
and bribe officials to obtain the requisite papers, forcing them to take out
high-interest loans which, over time, will be repaid with a portion of the
earnings from overseas. Those with formal schooling and technical skills may
find decent white-collar work, but many find themselves in terrible conditions
working in factories, construction, and other unskilled labor. The
international news is replete with stories of Nepali men dying while working abroad.
By American standards, the pay is poor (just a few thousand dollars a year),
but for a Nepali family living on a less than $1000 a year, the benefits often
outweigh the downsides.
Most men do earn a
better income abroad, using the remittances to send their children to better
schools. But without local career opportunities, I fear that in a fear years the
thousands of Nepali children with remittance-funded educations will find
themselves in the same place as their fathers—underemployed. They, too, will be
forced to seek opportunities abroad. Furthermore, financial support from afar is
not an adequate substitute for a father’s presence in the home. Then again, the
paternal presence may not be missed, as many Nepali men play only a marginal
role in their children’s upbringing. Indeed, the lack of positive male role
models reinforces male entitlement and laziness that pervades village life.
There are exceptions of course, but after graduating from high school many
youth (particularly males) become little more than local loiterers. Seeing
little to do in the village, they spend their days playing cards, drinking
alcohol, and searching for a way out. For them, working abroad means travel,
money, and something to do.
It saddens me to
see people my age leaving Nepal, like rats abandoning a
sinking ship. Certainly, a large cause of emigration is structural—there aren’t
enough decent paying jobs in Nepal—but another is attitudinal. Many lament that
the country is “naramro” (bad),
blaming societal issues on government gridlock and corruption. While Nepal still
has a ways to go politically, in my view the country is developing at a
reasonable rate and has a bright future ahead. There is so much that these
educated, progressive youths could do to hasten the process—as teachers,
entrepreneurs, government officials, and even farmers. Those with creativity
and motivation have an opportunity to make a successful life in Nepal—if only
they can cast off the fatalism typical of generations past and take charge of
their future. It will be considerably more difficult for Nepal to advance on
the road of development so long as there is a slow, steady leak in the tires.
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