so, i spent the last few days out schlepping around the valley rim...in the mornings and early afternoons anyway. late afternoon and evening was cold beer and reading/studying nepali/admiring the (stunning) views time. this means, among other things, that i finally finished "forget kathmandu: an elegy for democracy" by manjushree thapa. a little of everything-- memoir, reportage, historiography-- and more than the sum of its parts, it provided an interesting narrative counter-point to the straight academic history in the whelpton book from my previous post. the books starts with the apparent 2001 drug and drink-fueled massacre of the royal family by the crown prince. thapa uses this moment of upheaval and confusion (conspiracy theories about the massacre abound) in nepali political life to give a brief overview of the rest of nepal's admittedly tumultuous political history. thapa doesn't pull her punches, dishing out equal blame for the repeated failure of democracy to take hold in nepal post-1950 on the royal family, the squabbling political parties, and "the kathmandu bourgeoisie," in which she includes herself. (in fact, thapa brought the heat so much that when the king established absolute control in 2006, revoking almost all established civil liberties, thapa felt compelled to flee the country). the meat of the book comes in her 2002 trip through a few districts of the crushingly poor and conflict-affected western nepal. there, although she, like so many others, found herself incapable of proffering a solution to the crisis, her despair and frustration crystallizes, and she offers valuable observations and insights into the root of the problem for conflict resolution and democracy: the desperate state in which so many rural nepalis live.
coming here almost three years after a formal peace agreement was signed, despite the daily newspaper reports of the conflicts among political parties and the CA's struggle to meet the it's constitution-writing deadline, it's actually easy to forget that the events of the last 10 years are not, in fact, distant history. walking alone through places (while they were never maoist strongholds) where red, spray-painted sickles remain on concrete walls and reading this book, with its intensely personal view of history and reportage of the horrors of the conflict, was an immediate and sometimes anxiety-inducing reminder that that "history" very much remains this country's present.
you can read an excerpt from the book here.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
photos
so i realize that there are people who read this blog who don't actually have this facebook that all the kids are dancing to these days. for you, i've added links on the side, to my facebook photo albums. i should probably just do flickr or something, but i'm just so lazy, you see.
Friday, September 25, 2009
“trekking” and the process of forming a healthy resistance to metonymic thinking
it’s hard to know where to start this one, mostly because admitting failure is, frankly, such a bitch.
so, for the dasain holiday week, i made plans to go trekking with my friend, annie. after a few changes in plan, we finally settled on helambu, a mild (?) seven-day trek that you can actually begin and end in the kathmandu valley (a major advantage when your other option is getting up at 4:30am to battle hundreds of nepalis trying to go home for the holidays for a couple seats on the crowded roof of a bus).
on the one hand, going into this, i definitely had some reasonable doubts. annie is from colorado and hikes at least once a week. i, however, have spent pretty much my entire life at sea level, and have not, so far as i can remember, been on a trek, hike, or even gently uphill walk that extended beyond a single day. camping has always seemed like some sort of perverse, bourgeois exercise in bug-infested masochism (or as i’ve also heard it put, “white people—what the f*ck?”). my instincts? not those of a sportswoman, per se. it’s a bad sign when you’re debating what to leave out of your pack so that you can include some light reading. Infinite Jest or 20th Century Land Ownership in Nepal, perhaps. in general, i exercise dutifully, at best.
on the other hand, while i refuse to feign actual relish in a lack of plumbing, i really do enjoy being outdoors. although i don’t think i project it, i AM the kind of person who goes for long walks in the woods to clear her head. i’ve even done some things that people would call “hikes” before, some of them even NOT on junior high school field trips. even though, between work and nepali lessons, i’ve pretty much been riding a desk for a month, i was working out before i moved here; now, i walk everywhere, and i do it briskly, even in the pollution of kathmandu. my coworker even told me i’ve lost weight, although i’m “still very fat” (more on what might be considered that rather remarkable statement, later). and i had been looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about--why people come half way around the world literally just to walk up and down hills. and not just foreigners, either. i mean, you don’t catch nepalis trekking just for “fun” (as far as i can tell), but every nepali who i told about the plans was happy that i was getting out of the city and going to see “real nepal.” (in theory, that line is as odd to me as it is consistently expressed. i happen to like kathmandu, right down to the pollution and the traffic, but i get what they mean. i desperately want to see how the 90% of the population in non-urban areas lives here; it’s the whole reason i’m here, after all). at the end of the day, i pretty much operated as i always do when faced with the prospect of something new and mildly scary: i focus on minutiae and logistics--iodine tablets or chlorine drops for water purification?--and try to keep the big picture only in the proverbial corner of my eye.
anyway, bags packed, route picked, guide acquired, we took a taxi to the base of the trail. i chatted away in nepali with our guide and the taxi driver, and annie and i made plans to spoil ourselves with mud packs and sushi after we got back. the city bustle (and smog) dissipated, and the hills became visible above the startlingly bright green rice terracing. The landscape was punctuated by the ivory spire of a small buddhist stupa here, and the gold embellishment on a crimson hindu temple, there. at a store by the side of the road, a little girl mimicked the dance of a bollywood chanteuse playing on a small grainy TV. “this is going to be AWESOME,” i thought. now i know better. now i think: “hey, false confidence-reinforcing bilingual good cheer and insanely bucolic scenery? yeah, you. screw you.”
i probably should have sensed trouble when i realized that our guide’s description of the trail as “ukaalo,” far more so than my nepali-english dictionary would suggest, means “STEEP SO VERY VERY STEEP OH SWEET JESUS.” within 15 minutes, i was sucking wind and dripping sweat, although annie was plowing ahead with great enthusiasm. “mm,” i thought, gamely, “this is, ah, bracing.” a little while later, i paused to let an old woman with a mattress lashed to her forehead and back breeze by me. as i took the opportunity to grab some water, our guide reassured me, “it’s ok, we can keep going slowly, slowly.” this would have been a more effective platitude if i had actually been aware that he considered this a leisurely pace. he kept an increasingly concerned eye on me as we went, and, when, a little while later, he insisted on switching his lighter pack for mine, i finally expressed to the rest of the small party, grudgingly and between gasps, my growing doubts about the wisdom of the whole adventure. after a brief discussion, we decided that i could figure it out when we got to chisopani, the first overnight stop, in a few hours. well before that, though, my doubts were becoming cemented into serious regret.
at the entrance to the conservation zone, annie looked at me doubtfully. it was, so to speak, the point of no return. if i decided to turn back, it was a short walk back to buses and taxis to kathmandu. if not…well, there was a week ahead, the first three days of which at least, i had been reassured earlier, were pretty much “ukaalo” as well. “i really want you to come,” annie said, “but i don’t want you to be miserable. do you really want to keep going?” at that point, trekking buddy, guide, and handsome conservation zone checkpoint guard waiting expectantly, i had to admit that i didn’t. in fact, beyond not wanting to, was simply not going to physically be able to. “but i told everyone i was going…” i said plaintively. but, when it comes down to it, pride isn’t really a sufficient reason to make myself and two other people miserable for a whole week. i waived my two erstwhile companions off, and set off back down the trail. quickly, though, i found myself needing to sit down to catch my breath, this time, not from exertion, but from panic. slowly getting control, i had to figure what it was about this that meant that not doing it, literally, knocked the wind out of me.
i put the pieces together on my only slightly more dignified descent, as i passed chain-smoking old men on their way up, and got trod upon by a herd of goats (my only consolation, in my bitterness, was the fate awaiting the goats during dasain. they are such important traditional sacrifices that a shortage in kathmandu this year inspired a national radio campaign urging farmers to sell their stocks to traders in the city). the issues are myriad, i think.
pride, certainly, is a factor. failure to accomplish something one starts is, as i said, a total bitch, and not just considered in the eyes of others. for me, not known for my tendency towards moderation or gradualism, being unable to just dive into what i (think i) want to do is like a serious personal affront.
but, more than that, i think my panic and shame results from the metonymic role i had allowed this trip to play in my understanding of my professional and personal accomplishments in nepal.
much like my long neglected interest in learning about wines, on some level i DO want to be one of those people who actually really enjoys trekking and other such rugged athletic expressions of personal health and vigor. it feels like some sort of serious character deficit that i don’t. i wanted to come back from this week not only having DONE it, but LOVING it, my opinions on trekking/camping completely reformed. it’s not like the perverse pride i felt in going to florence and not seeing the david. it’s just so hammered into you that trekking is an integral, if not most important, part of being in nepal. it feel wasteful and shameful not to be gung-ho about it. what am i even doing here? do i even have the right to say i like it here if i don’t trek?
more practically, i viewed this as a dry run for field trips I’ll be making for work to MUCH more remote parts of the country. so much of what i love about the organization i work for is their deeply community and field-based (dare i say ethnographic) orientation. it’s the kind of thing i would feel good about doing for the rest of my life. just like speaking nepali, though, how can i possibly contribute if i can’t do this sort of thing? and, by extension, how much does this abortive excursion cast doubt on my ability make a career in a field-based area like development or anthropology?
and, because no bout with self-doubt would be complete without a dose of class-based guilt, i realized, as i sat, a white face conspicuously alone in a van whose counterparts were filled to the brim, that being so spectacularly out of shape while wearing such spectacularly expensive hiking shoes, is a profound statement on privilege. as a young man chatting with me said as we walked around boudha stupa this morning on my way to meet annie, “you’re from america, right? everyone gets an education there. and you get to go international. you are very lucky.”
in an effort to be philosophical about this, i know this wound to my pride and self-concept as intrepid traveler will heal. i’m not willing to write off trekking just yet. i’ll just have to take a more gradualist approach, doing shorter, milder hikes that are more my current speed, and work up to being able to do what i feel like i need to do. you know, training… like, oh, normal people with well-managed expectations of themselves do. and, at the end of the day, if i still can’t find the joy in trekking, and feel like shlepping up and down hills is still just a way to get to my field sites, then so be it. that doesn’t make me a bad person or less capable (or deserving) of appreciating the beauty of the places and people around me. this week, i’ll enjoy my vacation, do some of those hikes around the valley, and maybe go to pokhara and do some yoga. i’ll build on strengths, and practice nepali and do some work. i’ll tweak my veggie momo recipe and play with the dogs where i’m housesitting.
anyway, enough of that nonsense. as everyone knows, you should wash a wound before it heals, and i’m off to wash this particular wound with a hot shower, and a stiff whiskey/isley brothers combo.
so, for the dasain holiday week, i made plans to go trekking with my friend, annie. after a few changes in plan, we finally settled on helambu, a mild (?) seven-day trek that you can actually begin and end in the kathmandu valley (a major advantage when your other option is getting up at 4:30am to battle hundreds of nepalis trying to go home for the holidays for a couple seats on the crowded roof of a bus).
on the one hand, going into this, i definitely had some reasonable doubts. annie is from colorado and hikes at least once a week. i, however, have spent pretty much my entire life at sea level, and have not, so far as i can remember, been on a trek, hike, or even gently uphill walk that extended beyond a single day. camping has always seemed like some sort of perverse, bourgeois exercise in bug-infested masochism (or as i’ve also heard it put, “white people—what the f*ck?”). my instincts? not those of a sportswoman, per se. it’s a bad sign when you’re debating what to leave out of your pack so that you can include some light reading. Infinite Jest or 20th Century Land Ownership in Nepal, perhaps. in general, i exercise dutifully, at best.
on the other hand, while i refuse to feign actual relish in a lack of plumbing, i really do enjoy being outdoors. although i don’t think i project it, i AM the kind of person who goes for long walks in the woods to clear her head. i’ve even done some things that people would call “hikes” before, some of them even NOT on junior high school field trips. even though, between work and nepali lessons, i’ve pretty much been riding a desk for a month, i was working out before i moved here; now, i walk everywhere, and i do it briskly, even in the pollution of kathmandu. my coworker even told me i’ve lost weight, although i’m “still very fat” (more on what might be considered that rather remarkable statement, later). and i had been looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about--why people come half way around the world literally just to walk up and down hills. and not just foreigners, either. i mean, you don’t catch nepalis trekking just for “fun” (as far as i can tell), but every nepali who i told about the plans was happy that i was getting out of the city and going to see “real nepal.” (in theory, that line is as odd to me as it is consistently expressed. i happen to like kathmandu, right down to the pollution and the traffic, but i get what they mean. i desperately want to see how the 90% of the population in non-urban areas lives here; it’s the whole reason i’m here, after all). at the end of the day, i pretty much operated as i always do when faced with the prospect of something new and mildly scary: i focus on minutiae and logistics--iodine tablets or chlorine drops for water purification?--and try to keep the big picture only in the proverbial corner of my eye.
anyway, bags packed, route picked, guide acquired, we took a taxi to the base of the trail. i chatted away in nepali with our guide and the taxi driver, and annie and i made plans to spoil ourselves with mud packs and sushi after we got back. the city bustle (and smog) dissipated, and the hills became visible above the startlingly bright green rice terracing. The landscape was punctuated by the ivory spire of a small buddhist stupa here, and the gold embellishment on a crimson hindu temple, there. at a store by the side of the road, a little girl mimicked the dance of a bollywood chanteuse playing on a small grainy TV. “this is going to be AWESOME,” i thought. now i know better. now i think: “hey, false confidence-reinforcing bilingual good cheer and insanely bucolic scenery? yeah, you. screw you.”
i probably should have sensed trouble when i realized that our guide’s description of the trail as “ukaalo,” far more so than my nepali-english dictionary would suggest, means “STEEP SO VERY VERY STEEP OH SWEET JESUS.” within 15 minutes, i was sucking wind and dripping sweat, although annie was plowing ahead with great enthusiasm. “mm,” i thought, gamely, “this is, ah, bracing.” a little while later, i paused to let an old woman with a mattress lashed to her forehead and back breeze by me. as i took the opportunity to grab some water, our guide reassured me, “it’s ok, we can keep going slowly, slowly.” this would have been a more effective platitude if i had actually been aware that he considered this a leisurely pace. he kept an increasingly concerned eye on me as we went, and, when, a little while later, he insisted on switching his lighter pack for mine, i finally expressed to the rest of the small party, grudgingly and between gasps, my growing doubts about the wisdom of the whole adventure. after a brief discussion, we decided that i could figure it out when we got to chisopani, the first overnight stop, in a few hours. well before that, though, my doubts were becoming cemented into serious regret.
at the entrance to the conservation zone, annie looked at me doubtfully. it was, so to speak, the point of no return. if i decided to turn back, it was a short walk back to buses and taxis to kathmandu. if not…well, there was a week ahead, the first three days of which at least, i had been reassured earlier, were pretty much “ukaalo” as well. “i really want you to come,” annie said, “but i don’t want you to be miserable. do you really want to keep going?” at that point, trekking buddy, guide, and handsome conservation zone checkpoint guard waiting expectantly, i had to admit that i didn’t. in fact, beyond not wanting to, was simply not going to physically be able to. “but i told everyone i was going…” i said plaintively. but, when it comes down to it, pride isn’t really a sufficient reason to make myself and two other people miserable for a whole week. i waived my two erstwhile companions off, and set off back down the trail. quickly, though, i found myself needing to sit down to catch my breath, this time, not from exertion, but from panic. slowly getting control, i had to figure what it was about this that meant that not doing it, literally, knocked the wind out of me.
i put the pieces together on my only slightly more dignified descent, as i passed chain-smoking old men on their way up, and got trod upon by a herd of goats (my only consolation, in my bitterness, was the fate awaiting the goats during dasain. they are such important traditional sacrifices that a shortage in kathmandu this year inspired a national radio campaign urging farmers to sell their stocks to traders in the city). the issues are myriad, i think.
pride, certainly, is a factor. failure to accomplish something one starts is, as i said, a total bitch, and not just considered in the eyes of others. for me, not known for my tendency towards moderation or gradualism, being unable to just dive into what i (think i) want to do is like a serious personal affront.
but, more than that, i think my panic and shame results from the metonymic role i had allowed this trip to play in my understanding of my professional and personal accomplishments in nepal.
much like my long neglected interest in learning about wines, on some level i DO want to be one of those people who actually really enjoys trekking and other such rugged athletic expressions of personal health and vigor. it feels like some sort of serious character deficit that i don’t. i wanted to come back from this week not only having DONE it, but LOVING it, my opinions on trekking/camping completely reformed. it’s not like the perverse pride i felt in going to florence and not seeing the david. it’s just so hammered into you that trekking is an integral, if not most important, part of being in nepal. it feel wasteful and shameful not to be gung-ho about it. what am i even doing here? do i even have the right to say i like it here if i don’t trek?
more practically, i viewed this as a dry run for field trips I’ll be making for work to MUCH more remote parts of the country. so much of what i love about the organization i work for is their deeply community and field-based (dare i say ethnographic) orientation. it’s the kind of thing i would feel good about doing for the rest of my life. just like speaking nepali, though, how can i possibly contribute if i can’t do this sort of thing? and, by extension, how much does this abortive excursion cast doubt on my ability make a career in a field-based area like development or anthropology?
and, because no bout with self-doubt would be complete without a dose of class-based guilt, i realized, as i sat, a white face conspicuously alone in a van whose counterparts were filled to the brim, that being so spectacularly out of shape while wearing such spectacularly expensive hiking shoes, is a profound statement on privilege. as a young man chatting with me said as we walked around boudha stupa this morning on my way to meet annie, “you’re from america, right? everyone gets an education there. and you get to go international. you are very lucky.”
in an effort to be philosophical about this, i know this wound to my pride and self-concept as intrepid traveler will heal. i’m not willing to write off trekking just yet. i’ll just have to take a more gradualist approach, doing shorter, milder hikes that are more my current speed, and work up to being able to do what i feel like i need to do. you know, training… like, oh, normal people with well-managed expectations of themselves do. and, at the end of the day, if i still can’t find the joy in trekking, and feel like shlepping up and down hills is still just a way to get to my field sites, then so be it. that doesn’t make me a bad person or less capable (or deserving) of appreciating the beauty of the places and people around me. this week, i’ll enjoy my vacation, do some of those hikes around the valley, and maybe go to pokhara and do some yoga. i’ll build on strengths, and practice nepali and do some work. i’ll tweak my veggie momo recipe and play with the dogs where i’m housesitting.
anyway, enough of that nonsense. as everyone knows, you should wash a wound before it heals, and i’m off to wash this particular wound with a hot shower, and a stiff whiskey/isley brothers combo.
Monday, September 21, 2009
further reading 9/20/09
so, i've already mentioned john whelpton's history of nepal, below. as i said, it's a very readable one-volume political history of nepal. actually i think it's, like, the ONLY one-volume history devoted to nepal. in any case, it's good background and worth a read. focus on post-rana period, 1951-1991. full of nifty tables and genealogies and such.
nepali nibble: film south asia 2009
so, on saturday i went to the film south asia festival and spent an blissful afternoon ensconced in air conditioned darkness, watching documentaries, and not trying to speak nepali to anyone. i managed to catch three films, two of which i would for sure recommend to people.
the first film, "out of thin air," in hindi and ladakhi with english subtitles, was about leh, ladakh in the indian himalayas, "last india", as the townspeople call it. more specifically, it's about ladakh vision group, a small production company that was worked the small miracle of displacing bollywood in the local film market (a not insignificant market, once the winter snows come on). lvg is made up entirely of teachers, taxi drivers, cops, monks, and homemakers, all of whom take time from their regular jobs to shoot during the scant summer months in ladakh, just for love of doing it. it was fifty minutes of pure charm, and i want to move there and be best friends of all of them. (you can read more about the documentary here and here)
the other great film, which was rescreened the next day, selling out both times, was "in search of the riyal", a documentary that traces the journey of a few of the thousands upon thousands of nepali migrant workers who go from their home villages to work in the gulf, via frequently corrupt "manpower brokers" in kathmandu. their remittances provide 17% of the nepali GDP. this documentary puts a deeply human face on the phenomenon of exploitative international migrant labor, but, helpfully, it does not proselytize or moralize. on the one hand, a scene where a young man recounts, in meticulous detail and with a bit of wonder and no small amount of anxiety, the training he had received on airplane protocol ("the tray is in front. you fold it down, and put the food on it, and eat it.") is heartbreaking to a member of an aware audience. we know, as this young man only suspects, the sometimes lonely and often dehumanizing conditions he will be entering, at great expense and for seemingly pitiful reward, far far from home. it is tempting to feel as one audience member clearly did, demanding during the question and answer to know where the "social outrage" is at this "modern day slavery". in response, the filmmaker articulated the important point. we should be absolutely be cognizant of and indignant about the exploitation that exists in the system; people should work to reform labor laws and regulate the international labor industry. however, we shouldn't let this blind us to the reality that, at the end of the day, 10,000 Nrs over four years is infinitely better than no rupees over four years. although we, the "aware" and very privileged audience, will probably never have to consider selling ourselves to get that 10,000 Nrs for our families, some people have to. in doing so, they are not only supporting their families (and, collectively, the nepali economy), they are exerting their agency as humans, and for that, deserve our respect and consideration.
anyway! check out both of these if you can get your hands on them.
the first film, "out of thin air," in hindi and ladakhi with english subtitles, was about leh, ladakh in the indian himalayas, "last india", as the townspeople call it. more specifically, it's about ladakh vision group, a small production company that was worked the small miracle of displacing bollywood in the local film market (a not insignificant market, once the winter snows come on). lvg is made up entirely of teachers, taxi drivers, cops, monks, and homemakers, all of whom take time from their regular jobs to shoot during the scant summer months in ladakh, just for love of doing it. it was fifty minutes of pure charm, and i want to move there and be best friends of all of them. (you can read more about the documentary here and here)
the other great film, which was rescreened the next day, selling out both times, was "in search of the riyal", a documentary that traces the journey of a few of the thousands upon thousands of nepali migrant workers who go from their home villages to work in the gulf, via frequently corrupt "manpower brokers" in kathmandu. their remittances provide 17% of the nepali GDP. this documentary puts a deeply human face on the phenomenon of exploitative international migrant labor, but, helpfully, it does not proselytize or moralize. on the one hand, a scene where a young man recounts, in meticulous detail and with a bit of wonder and no small amount of anxiety, the training he had received on airplane protocol ("the tray is in front. you fold it down, and put the food on it, and eat it.") is heartbreaking to a member of an aware audience. we know, as this young man only suspects, the sometimes lonely and often dehumanizing conditions he will be entering, at great expense and for seemingly pitiful reward, far far from home. it is tempting to feel as one audience member clearly did, demanding during the question and answer to know where the "social outrage" is at this "modern day slavery". in response, the filmmaker articulated the important point. we should be absolutely be cognizant of and indignant about the exploitation that exists in the system; people should work to reform labor laws and regulate the international labor industry. however, we shouldn't let this blind us to the reality that, at the end of the day, 10,000 Nrs over four years is infinitely better than no rupees over four years. although we, the "aware" and very privileged audience, will probably never have to consider selling ourselves to get that 10,000 Nrs for our families, some people have to. in doing so, they are not only supporting their families (and, collectively, the nepali economy), they are exerting their agency as humans, and for that, deserve our respect and consideration.
anyway! check out both of these if you can get your hands on them.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
banma baa:darharuko dherai bhandaharu bhandaa bandaaharu chha, or, a brief(?) and incomplete(!) introduction to nepali language.
ahhh yes. the best summary of my language skills so far is this: despite at least 25 hours of intensive one-on-one lessons and at least as much time studying over the past three weeks, i am suddenly much more like a stroke victim with a severe aphasia than i ever wanted to be.
when i speak nepali*, i know what i want to be saying. i don’t expect to have great grammer, but, hey, i’ve got, like, nouns and pronouns and verbs, and i’m stringin’ ‘em together…that’s BASICALLY understandable…basically… right? and yet, inevitably, whether i’m speaking to a coworker who’s gamely letting me practice or asking directions of a shopkeeper (or, really, addressing anyone except my nepali teacher with anything but the most basic pleasantries), the responses are almost always a bewildered but encouraging smile, and a sort of desperate glance at someone nearby to see if they had, possibly, deciphered my garbled grammar, heinous mispronunciation, and/or apparent non-sequitor. (eg the time i cheerfully responded to my officemate in nepali that yes! i have many pens! so glad was i to be able to extend a helping hand, office-supply-sharing our way over the language barrier. in fact, he had asked me if i wanted the fan on…in english. as he said later, “we have communication problems.”)
caveat: i wrote this first bit above about a week ago. since then, i think i’ve gotten over some sort of hump, whether it’s just a matter of relinquishing my last bits of self-consciousness or it’s actually a skill-based breakthrough. in any case, when i first meet nepalis now, they are generally impressed by how much i speak after a month here (“hajur? ek mainaa matraai?”). this could very well be because relatively few foreigners learn more nepali than absolutely necessary, particularly with the ferocity that i’m attacking the task (given that my work is paying for me lessons, i feel obligated to give them a return on this significant investment); or because they’re just being nice, which would be typical. now my problem is more commonly being credited with too MUCH language skill…i get a coherent sentence out, and people graciously and mistakenly assume that i’ll understand rapid fire nepali. what i’m trying to say is that this place in the anti-france.
whatever. my mom says i’m good at languages. or maybe more to the point, i shouldn’t expect to be fluent after three weeks of studying a language that is wildly, WILDLY different than any of the other five languages i have forgotten…er, learned, at some point in my life.
ANYWAY. the vagaries of learning nepali: on the one hand, nepali is an indo-aryan language closely related to sanskrit…which means complex. for instance, you get things like FIFTEEN 3rd person subject pronouns, based on number, physical proximity to the speaker, and level of formality [there are three levels for 2nd and 3rd person pronouns, as opposed to the two levels in the 2nd person address you find in french (tu and vous), for instance…more on the implications of this, another time.]
for a native english (or french or spanish) speaker, word order is pretty counterintuitive as a result of postpositions and verbs. postpositions are prepositions, just more, er, after the fact. verbs go at the end of the sentence, often after convoluted appositives (i’m sure there are ways to avoid this that i just haven’t learned yet), and conjugations have both a postive and negative conjugation, rather than the appendage of “not”, “ne…pas”, or “no”, as in english, french, or spanish.
eg the sentence “today after work i am not going home. i am going from the office to her house” is “ajaa, kaam-garepacchi mero gharma jaadina. officebata wahaa:ko gharma jaanchhu:”…
- TO someone’s house is ghar(house)+ma(to, in, at)
- one kind of possessive is formed by attaching KO to the end of a pronouns, as in wahaa(he/she)+KO. mero (my) is irregular.
- AFTER work is kaam-garnu(to work) + epachhi (AFTER), dropping the –nu infinitive ending
- the two endings of jaanu (to go), above, indicate both subject (i) and positive or negative action (i do or do not go).
on the bright side, almost all plurals are formed by the addition of –haru to the noun, and verbs are pretty regular, only getting tricky when it comes to appending certain non-postposition structures.
then there’s the pronunciation. while not tonal, like chinese, there are lots of distinctions in sounds that we just don’t recognize in english. for instance, there are four ways one would pronounce the each of the english letters “d” and “t”, best envisioned on a two-by-two grid. on one axis you have aspirated (with a strong release of breath) and non-aspirated (without breath); on the other is “dental” (pronounced with tongue against upper teeth) and “retroflex” (pronounced with tongue against the hard palate). there are also aspirated/non-aspirated versions of “b”, “p”, “k”, “c”, “j” and “g”; and a few kinds of “s” and “n” that i’ve got even less of a grip on. for me, though, the REAL kicker were the “a”s. one a, written आ in long form, is transliterated as “aa” and pronounced “ah”. the other, written अ in long form, is transliterated “a” and pronounced as “uh”. ON TOP of that, vowels are often “nasalized”, meaning you kinda close down or add a light “ng” to the vowel. this changes how they are written in any number of ways, and is transliterated with : or ~.
on the bright side (?), there are different written characters for each of these distinctions. in that way, it’s more directly phonetic than english. it makes total sense…if, y’know, you’re a native speaker…otherwise, still a total bitch to get the hang of.
just to give you a sense of what a huge difference this makes when you’re speaking: the root of pretty much every word in the title of this post, until about a week ago, sounded roughly like “banda” to me. however, pronounced properly, it reads (i think?) “in the forest, monkeys have more cabbages than political demonstrations/strikes.”
hey, the more you know, right?
…on the other hand, the ethnolinguistic composition of the nepal (92 languages were officially recognized in the 2001 census) means several things…
1) there are fascinating issues of language and identity going on
2) many nepalis i’ve met speak anywhere from 2-6 languages. they are like the dutch of south asia. a common repetoire might include: at least a little english (if they’re talking to me), nepali (the lingua franca of the country), hindi (often at least understood, picked up from bollywood movies or other media), their “mother-tongue”, and maybe another non-nepali lanaguage, just for kicks. certainly makes all the english-nativist rhetoric floated around in the US look absurd.
2.5) although demographics are shifting these days towards more primary nepali acquisition, for about 50% of nepalis, nepali is their second, or even third language. the “mother-tongue” is the language spoken at home and in a family’s village or region of origin. many are in the tibeto-burman language family, there are other indo-aryan languages, and there are even some apparent isolates, for good measure**.
3) as a result of 1-2.5, commonly spoken nepali is way more simplified than literary nepali. for instance, i get away with learning only about half of the 3rd person pronouns, and their accompanying conjugations.
this post turned out to be quite a bit longer than i had imagined, so sorry about that…long story belatedly short: it’s a huge relief to be making progress. the professional necessity of my learning nepali aside, i find myself really discomfited by being unable to speak the language of the place i’m visiting/living, on several levels. it strikes me as vaguely disrespectful, for sure, but i also find it profoundly alienating. i don’t feel like i can possibly connect with the people around me, if i can’t understand how they speak…and by extension, think and exist. anyway, looking forward to learning more about nepali and nepalis as my time continues.
* there are some significant language politics issues in nepal. my use of “nepali” to describe the lingua-franca of the political entity of nepal is not meant to be normative. nepali is most commonly used to describe the language that I’m stumbling my way through. however, among newars, for example, the newari language is often referred to as “nepal bhasa” (“language of nepal”). maybe more on language politics and language and the state in another post.
** so for some probably mildly to moderately inaccurate context gleaned from nowhere more reliable than wikipedia, idle conversation, and other dubious sources: indo-aryan is sort of a spectrum of languages in south asia that grew out of sanskrit (having varying degrees of persian/arabic influence thanks to the mughals), similar to the way romance languages all developed from latin. urdu/hindi/nepali are as mutually intelligible as spanish/italian/french are. tibeto-burman is nowhere as coherent as a grouping, and these are more likely to be mutually unintelligible from each other than indo-aryan languages. the t-b languages in nepal are of the “himalayish” subfamily.
if you want a non-dubious source: i’ve been working my way through John Whelpton’s “A History of Nepal” (2005, Cambridge U Press), which is pretty much the only up-to-date, single volume, historical survey i’ve managed to find. although it focuses on political history since 1950, the first few chapters are a dense, but well-written and comprehensive review of the history of the area to that point, including some notes on linguistic history. and if you're ever looking for MAD political intrigue, you can not do better than 17th-early 20th century nepal.
when i speak nepali*, i know what i want to be saying. i don’t expect to have great grammer, but, hey, i’ve got, like, nouns and pronouns and verbs, and i’m stringin’ ‘em together…that’s BASICALLY understandable…basically… right? and yet, inevitably, whether i’m speaking to a coworker who’s gamely letting me practice or asking directions of a shopkeeper (or, really, addressing anyone except my nepali teacher with anything but the most basic pleasantries), the responses are almost always a bewildered but encouraging smile, and a sort of desperate glance at someone nearby to see if they had, possibly, deciphered my garbled grammar, heinous mispronunciation, and/or apparent non-sequitor. (eg the time i cheerfully responded to my officemate in nepali that yes! i have many pens! so glad was i to be able to extend a helping hand, office-supply-sharing our way over the language barrier. in fact, he had asked me if i wanted the fan on…in english. as he said later, “we have communication problems.”)
caveat: i wrote this first bit above about a week ago. since then, i think i’ve gotten over some sort of hump, whether it’s just a matter of relinquishing my last bits of self-consciousness or it’s actually a skill-based breakthrough. in any case, when i first meet nepalis now, they are generally impressed by how much i speak after a month here (“hajur? ek mainaa matraai?”). this could very well be because relatively few foreigners learn more nepali than absolutely necessary, particularly with the ferocity that i’m attacking the task (given that my work is paying for me lessons, i feel obligated to give them a return on this significant investment); or because they’re just being nice, which would be typical. now my problem is more commonly being credited with too MUCH language skill…i get a coherent sentence out, and people graciously and mistakenly assume that i’ll understand rapid fire nepali. what i’m trying to say is that this place in the anti-france.
whatever. my mom says i’m good at languages. or maybe more to the point, i shouldn’t expect to be fluent after three weeks of studying a language that is wildly, WILDLY different than any of the other five languages i have forgotten…er, learned, at some point in my life.
~nerd alert~
many normal humans might find the next couple of paragraphs of linguistic detail less than thrilling. short version: nepali is kinda hard to pick up. (however, if you stick with me, i’ll tell you what the post title means).
many normal humans might find the next couple of paragraphs of linguistic detail less than thrilling. short version: nepali is kinda hard to pick up. (however, if you stick with me, i’ll tell you what the post title means).
ANYWAY. the vagaries of learning nepali: on the one hand, nepali is an indo-aryan language closely related to sanskrit…which means complex. for instance, you get things like FIFTEEN 3rd person subject pronouns, based on number, physical proximity to the speaker, and level of formality [there are three levels for 2nd and 3rd person pronouns, as opposed to the two levels in the 2nd person address you find in french (tu and vous), for instance…more on the implications of this, another time.]
for a native english (or french or spanish) speaker, word order is pretty counterintuitive as a result of postpositions and verbs. postpositions are prepositions, just more, er, after the fact. verbs go at the end of the sentence, often after convoluted appositives (i’m sure there are ways to avoid this that i just haven’t learned yet), and conjugations have both a postive and negative conjugation, rather than the appendage of “not”, “ne…pas”, or “no”, as in english, french, or spanish.
eg the sentence “today after work i am not going home. i am going from the office to her house” is “ajaa, kaam-garepacchi mero gharma jaadina. officebata wahaa:ko gharma jaanchhu:”…
- TO someone’s house is ghar(house)+ma(to, in, at)
- one kind of possessive is formed by attaching KO to the end of a pronouns, as in wahaa(he/she)+KO. mero (my) is irregular.
- AFTER work is kaam-garnu(to work) + epachhi (AFTER), dropping the –nu infinitive ending
- the two endings of jaanu (to go), above, indicate both subject (i) and positive or negative action (i do or do not go).
on the bright side, almost all plurals are formed by the addition of –haru to the noun, and verbs are pretty regular, only getting tricky when it comes to appending certain non-postposition structures.
then there’s the pronunciation. while not tonal, like chinese, there are lots of distinctions in sounds that we just don’t recognize in english. for instance, there are four ways one would pronounce the each of the english letters “d” and “t”, best envisioned on a two-by-two grid. on one axis you have aspirated (with a strong release of breath) and non-aspirated (without breath); on the other is “dental” (pronounced with tongue against upper teeth) and “retroflex” (pronounced with tongue against the hard palate). there are also aspirated/non-aspirated versions of “b”, “p”, “k”, “c”, “j” and “g”; and a few kinds of “s” and “n” that i’ve got even less of a grip on. for me, though, the REAL kicker were the “a”s. one a, written आ in long form, is transliterated as “aa” and pronounced “ah”. the other, written अ in long form, is transliterated “a” and pronounced as “uh”. ON TOP of that, vowels are often “nasalized”, meaning you kinda close down or add a light “ng” to the vowel. this changes how they are written in any number of ways, and is transliterated with : or ~.
on the bright side (?), there are different written characters for each of these distinctions. in that way, it’s more directly phonetic than english. it makes total sense…if, y’know, you’re a native speaker…otherwise, still a total bitch to get the hang of.
just to give you a sense of what a huge difference this makes when you’re speaking: the root of pretty much every word in the title of this post, until about a week ago, sounded roughly like “banda” to me. however, pronounced properly, it reads (i think?) “in the forest, monkeys have more cabbages than political demonstrations/strikes.”
hey, the more you know, right?
~mild nerd alert~
well I think the next couple of paragraphs are interesting, but if you’re feelin’ all incurious and shit…short version: nepali is kinda hard to pick up, but not as bad as the stuff written above would indicate. molly clearly loves to complain.
well I think the next couple of paragraphs are interesting, but if you’re feelin’ all incurious and shit…short version: nepali is kinda hard to pick up, but not as bad as the stuff written above would indicate. molly clearly loves to complain.
…on the other hand, the ethnolinguistic composition of the nepal (92 languages were officially recognized in the 2001 census) means several things…
1) there are fascinating issues of language and identity going on
2) many nepalis i’ve met speak anywhere from 2-6 languages. they are like the dutch of south asia. a common repetoire might include: at least a little english (if they’re talking to me), nepali (the lingua franca of the country), hindi (often at least understood, picked up from bollywood movies or other media), their “mother-tongue”, and maybe another non-nepali lanaguage, just for kicks. certainly makes all the english-nativist rhetoric floated around in the US look absurd.
2.5) although demographics are shifting these days towards more primary nepali acquisition, for about 50% of nepalis, nepali is their second, or even third language. the “mother-tongue” is the language spoken at home and in a family’s village or region of origin. many are in the tibeto-burman language family, there are other indo-aryan languages, and there are even some apparent isolates, for good measure**.
3) as a result of 1-2.5, commonly spoken nepali is way more simplified than literary nepali. for instance, i get away with learning only about half of the 3rd person pronouns, and their accompanying conjugations.
this post turned out to be quite a bit longer than i had imagined, so sorry about that…long story belatedly short: it’s a huge relief to be making progress. the professional necessity of my learning nepali aside, i find myself really discomfited by being unable to speak the language of the place i’m visiting/living, on several levels. it strikes me as vaguely disrespectful, for sure, but i also find it profoundly alienating. i don’t feel like i can possibly connect with the people around me, if i can’t understand how they speak…and by extension, think and exist. anyway, looking forward to learning more about nepali and nepalis as my time continues.
* there are some significant language politics issues in nepal. my use of “nepali” to describe the lingua-franca of the political entity of nepal is not meant to be normative. nepali is most commonly used to describe the language that I’m stumbling my way through. however, among newars, for example, the newari language is often referred to as “nepal bhasa” (“language of nepal”). maybe more on language politics and language and the state in another post.
** so for some probably mildly to moderately inaccurate context gleaned from nowhere more reliable than wikipedia, idle conversation, and other dubious sources: indo-aryan is sort of a spectrum of languages in south asia that grew out of sanskrit (having varying degrees of persian/arabic influence thanks to the mughals), similar to the way romance languages all developed from latin. urdu/hindi/nepali are as mutually intelligible as spanish/italian/french are. tibeto-burman is nowhere as coherent as a grouping, and these are more likely to be mutually unintelligible from each other than indo-aryan languages. the t-b languages in nepal are of the “himalayish” subfamily.
if you want a non-dubious source: i’ve been working my way through John Whelpton’s “A History of Nepal” (2005, Cambridge U Press), which is pretty much the only up-to-date, single volume, historical survey i’ve managed to find. although it focuses on political history since 1950, the first few chapters are a dense, but well-written and comprehensive review of the history of the area to that point, including some notes on linguistic history. and if you're ever looking for MAD political intrigue, you can not do better than 17th-early 20th century nepal.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
nepal nibble 9/15/09: yak attack
so, as i've mentioned to some people, my schedule here is pretty nuts right now (full time job, about 20 hours of nepali/week) so my time to sight see, take pictures, and write well-thought out, informative, and entertaining blog posts (not to mention sleep) is limited. HOWEVER. i do run across all kinds of odd, sometimes delightful, often disconcerting, tidbits: nepal-related nibbles, if you will. so i'm going to post these more regularly while i write the others incrementally.
so the first thing i wish i had known coming to nepal:
yaks. not sort of hairy, harmless buggers, it turns out. according to my coworkers, who i'm pretty sure (?) were not just messing with me, if you end up in a meadow with a yak (bull), it will definitely charge your sorry butt. you can run if you want, but the only way you're avoiding this is if you can actually find a tree to climb, as yaks have incredible speed and endurance running over hills. i was told this shortly after being told i'll be going to the field in western nepal soon-ish, a place i now imagine to be 80% livid, charging yak by volume.
in the mean time, be sure to enjoy the nepal news links on the right, and this bonus video of an inexplicable yak situation.
so the first thing i wish i had known coming to nepal:
yaks. not sort of hairy, harmless buggers, it turns out. according to my coworkers, who i'm pretty sure (?) were not just messing with me, if you end up in a meadow with a yak (bull), it will definitely charge your sorry butt. you can run if you want, but the only way you're avoiding this is if you can actually find a tree to climb, as yaks have incredible speed and endurance running over hills. i was told this shortly after being told i'll be going to the field in western nepal soon-ish, a place i now imagine to be 80% livid, charging yak by volume.
in the mean time, be sure to enjoy the nepal news links on the right, and this bonus video of an inexplicable yak situation.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
cutting my own hair during a power outtage
...with two elastics, a bobby pin, a pair of bathroom scissors, and a headlamp. yeah. not something i do. sure, it was getting a little bit unmanageable...but i do NOT do rash things with my hair. i pay $40-$50 a chop just to be guaranteed not to look like that that chick from dilbert or this.
all i can chalk it up to is the sudden realization i had today that i've jumped into a job where workplace competence can be measured in part by the ability to identify remarkably picturesque, exceptionally tall and snow-covered, but otherwise more or less non-descript mountain peaks in a language closely related to sanskrit, AND THEN CROSS THEM if necessary.
so i guess i figured, damn. if you can't even do a little thing like cut your hair on your own, dead ends are the least of your problems. and it turns out, you just kind of take it curl by curl, feel out the parts that are dry and give 'em a little snip. i'd like to think that even if it had turned out terribly, i'd have been philosophical about it, but let's be real, i probably would have sobbed for an hour and hidden under the covers all weekend. fortunately, though, when the lights came on, it had all turned out pretty well.
all i can chalk it up to is the sudden realization i had today that i've jumped into a job where workplace competence can be measured in part by the ability to identify remarkably picturesque, exceptionally tall and snow-covered, but otherwise more or less non-descript mountain peaks in a language closely related to sanskrit, AND THEN CROSS THEM if necessary.
so i guess i figured, damn. if you can't even do a little thing like cut your hair on your own, dead ends are the least of your problems. and it turns out, you just kind of take it curl by curl, feel out the parts that are dry and give 'em a little snip. i'd like to think that even if it had turned out terribly, i'd have been philosophical about it, but let's be real, i probably would have sobbed for an hour and hidden under the covers all weekend. fortunately, though, when the lights came on, it had all turned out pretty well.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
in which the heroine goes for a walk.
puru, the business manager for TMI and one of the nicest people you could hope to be greeted by upon arrival in a foreign country, met me at the airport. after we maneuvered my approximately one billion pounds of luggage (75% shampoo and bras by volume) into his car, we began the process of actually getting out of the parking lot. “it is too bad that this is the first impression people have of nepal,” he lamented, as we dodged loiterers, seemingly randomly placed traffic cones, and cars oncoming from no particular direction, “there is no order.”
with respect to puru, it wouldn’t matter if the parking lot of tribhuvan international ran with the precision of an austrian music box. assuming visitors actually planned on leaving the airport, the game would be up within ten yards of the gate. although puru clearly had things well in hand, it was only my jetlag that kept me from becoming seriously alarmed as we plunged headlong INTO a chaotic stream of cars, motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians…or as they plunged into us. it’s a little hard to make that call when there are no speed limits or right of way. on the other hand, as there are relatively few fiery wrecks littering the side of the road, i suppose the system works
after sleeping for about 20 hours straight, i figured i’d head out from my hotel for an early sunday morning walk to explore the neighborhood*, blithely disregarding my brief experience with traffic from the day before…and this is when I discovered that one of the most radically immersive, and seemingly most death-defying, experiences you can have in kathmandu is just walking down the street (an experience you probably couldn’t avoid if you wanted to). and of course, perversely and in defiance of all sense of self-preservation, it’s one i’ve come to relish.
really, you need no fewer than six sets of eyes and ears to comfortably navigate the streets of kathmandu. first, there’s the terrain. "sidewalks" range from uneven brickwork (around the palace/museum complex) to the unofficially designated pedestrian strips of varying and insignificant width situated next to open gutters filled with unidentified brown and green fluids (everywhere else). underfoot, you should be aware of trash piles of varying sizes, which get collected relatively regularly with wheelbarrows pulled or attached to bikes, and prolific droppings from dogs, cows, and the occasional goat, not to mention the actual animals which wander, sleep, and eat relatively free range.
as you pass other pedestrians (in both directions), you never, EVER step out without checking over your shoulder. the lack of traffic laws, as well as lanes that seem to function as the merest of suggestions, mean that traffic comes from any direction, including over actual sidewalks. the solution that’s evolved, especially turning corners, is to honk loudly and constantly to alert the other drivers of your presence. cars and taxis abound, as well as full size buses and shorter micros, but by far the most popular (and probably most practical) are the scores of motorcycles and scooter weaving at high speed in and out of all other vehicles. crossing streets is like trying to jump in on a game of double dutch played with razor-embedded jump ropes. hesitation is not an option. it’s incumbent on the pedestrian to walk confidently but unhurriedly across a perilous hellscape of black-masked**, shiny-domed, two-wheeled demons bearing down on you at high speed while belching smoke, amidst a cacophony of blasted warnings. i’ve resourcefully adopted the strategy of following the little schoolgirls and cane-using old men who do this with an total lack concern.
the trade-off is, y’know, being in kathmandu. the sensory experiences of being on the street more than compensate for the perceived threats to your life (which, after a couple of weeks, actually go from terrifying to thrilling to almost mundane). i’ve heard an expat acquaintance who spent most of his childhood here wax rhapsodic about the “spiciness” of the air. i would say that doesn’t really do justice to the, mm, say, “robustness” of the mix of odors that permeates the city, not all of which you always want to take a deep inhalation. my reluctance to romanticize the difference overmuch aside, i’ll say: even in cities in the states, you just don’t get the dizzying combinations of sensations that you do here. there’s exhaust and garbage and excrement, but there’s a cloud of cumin from a spice grinding shop mixed with motor oil from the cycle repair shop next door. there’s the back of the mouth tangy smell of blood from the goat’s hindquarters flopped over the butcher’s counter, with its hooves sticking out into the street, and the smoke from the incense at the hindu sidewalk shrines, where commuters ring the bells and mark themselves with tikka powder as they do morning puja on their way to work.
“spicy”, “robust”, or whatever you want to call it, the jumble of odors, both identifiable and unidentifiable, really do require a certain intentional shift in attitude. it’s sort of hard to articulate clearly, but, in the states, for instance, you can focus on a single set of sensory inputs, by virtue of them being comparatively few. if they’re bad, you register that, and if they’re good, you appreciate that as well. here, if you did tried to single out, or identify and process all the sensory input you get all the time, you’d strain your ability, and your nerves, to the snapping point. the trick to the sensations, just as the traffic, seems to be unconscious awareness. you have to relax your brain enough to absorb what’s going on without trying to actively foreground or background anything. it’s not like commuter autopilot, or really like anything else i’ve had to do in the states, it’s a new and not entirely easy process, especially when you realize that the goat’s (?) blood’s dribbled on your foot, but like so much else in kathmandu, i find that the more time i spend adapting to the different way of being that the city inspires, the more i come to appreciate it.
*a brief note on directions and neighborhoods in kathmandu: there are (almost) no street names in the city. well, there are designations of sorts on the blue and white signs posted around, but these are almost universally ignored. to get around, you generally ask for landmarks or major intersections, which do generally have names. for instance, right now, if i’m lucky, i can get away with saying i live near tangal marg (minor intersection)…but more likely to get me where i need to go is saying i live across from the police station near bhat bhateni, next road down from the ganesh temple, across from the trekking company parking lot. neighborhoods, like baluwatar, where my office is, are loosely defined areas which take the name of the largest proximate street or intersection. maps. they would be essential.
**many people, especially riding bikes or motorcycles, wear black woven masks to filter out the pollution.
with respect to puru, it wouldn’t matter if the parking lot of tribhuvan international ran with the precision of an austrian music box. assuming visitors actually planned on leaving the airport, the game would be up within ten yards of the gate. although puru clearly had things well in hand, it was only my jetlag that kept me from becoming seriously alarmed as we plunged headlong INTO a chaotic stream of cars, motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians…or as they plunged into us. it’s a little hard to make that call when there are no speed limits or right of way. on the other hand, as there are relatively few fiery wrecks littering the side of the road, i suppose the system works
after sleeping for about 20 hours straight, i figured i’d head out from my hotel for an early sunday morning walk to explore the neighborhood*, blithely disregarding my brief experience with traffic from the day before…and this is when I discovered that one of the most radically immersive, and seemingly most death-defying, experiences you can have in kathmandu is just walking down the street (an experience you probably couldn’t avoid if you wanted to). and of course, perversely and in defiance of all sense of self-preservation, it’s one i’ve come to relish.
really, you need no fewer than six sets of eyes and ears to comfortably navigate the streets of kathmandu. first, there’s the terrain. "sidewalks" range from uneven brickwork (around the palace/museum complex) to the unofficially designated pedestrian strips of varying and insignificant width situated next to open gutters filled with unidentified brown and green fluids (everywhere else). underfoot, you should be aware of trash piles of varying sizes, which get collected relatively regularly with wheelbarrows pulled or attached to bikes, and prolific droppings from dogs, cows, and the occasional goat, not to mention the actual animals which wander, sleep, and eat relatively free range.
as you pass other pedestrians (in both directions), you never, EVER step out without checking over your shoulder. the lack of traffic laws, as well as lanes that seem to function as the merest of suggestions, mean that traffic comes from any direction, including over actual sidewalks. the solution that’s evolved, especially turning corners, is to honk loudly and constantly to alert the other drivers of your presence. cars and taxis abound, as well as full size buses and shorter micros, but by far the most popular (and probably most practical) are the scores of motorcycles and scooter weaving at high speed in and out of all other vehicles. crossing streets is like trying to jump in on a game of double dutch played with razor-embedded jump ropes. hesitation is not an option. it’s incumbent on the pedestrian to walk confidently but unhurriedly across a perilous hellscape of black-masked**, shiny-domed, two-wheeled demons bearing down on you at high speed while belching smoke, amidst a cacophony of blasted warnings. i’ve resourcefully adopted the strategy of following the little schoolgirls and cane-using old men who do this with an total lack concern.
the trade-off is, y’know, being in kathmandu. the sensory experiences of being on the street more than compensate for the perceived threats to your life (which, after a couple of weeks, actually go from terrifying to thrilling to almost mundane). i’ve heard an expat acquaintance who spent most of his childhood here wax rhapsodic about the “spiciness” of the air. i would say that doesn’t really do justice to the, mm, say, “robustness” of the mix of odors that permeates the city, not all of which you always want to take a deep inhalation. my reluctance to romanticize the difference overmuch aside, i’ll say: even in cities in the states, you just don’t get the dizzying combinations of sensations that you do here. there’s exhaust and garbage and excrement, but there’s a cloud of cumin from a spice grinding shop mixed with motor oil from the cycle repair shop next door. there’s the back of the mouth tangy smell of blood from the goat’s hindquarters flopped over the butcher’s counter, with its hooves sticking out into the street, and the smoke from the incense at the hindu sidewalk shrines, where commuters ring the bells and mark themselves with tikka powder as they do morning puja on their way to work.
“spicy”, “robust”, or whatever you want to call it, the jumble of odors, both identifiable and unidentifiable, really do require a certain intentional shift in attitude. it’s sort of hard to articulate clearly, but, in the states, for instance, you can focus on a single set of sensory inputs, by virtue of them being comparatively few. if they’re bad, you register that, and if they’re good, you appreciate that as well. here, if you did tried to single out, or identify and process all the sensory input you get all the time, you’d strain your ability, and your nerves, to the snapping point. the trick to the sensations, just as the traffic, seems to be unconscious awareness. you have to relax your brain enough to absorb what’s going on without trying to actively foreground or background anything. it’s not like commuter autopilot, or really like anything else i’ve had to do in the states, it’s a new and not entirely easy process, especially when you realize that the goat’s (?) blood’s dribbled on your foot, but like so much else in kathmandu, i find that the more time i spend adapting to the different way of being that the city inspires, the more i come to appreciate it.
*a brief note on directions and neighborhoods in kathmandu: there are (almost) no street names in the city. well, there are designations of sorts on the blue and white signs posted around, but these are almost universally ignored. to get around, you generally ask for landmarks or major intersections, which do generally have names. for instance, right now, if i’m lucky, i can get away with saying i live near tangal marg (minor intersection)…but more likely to get me where i need to go is saying i live across from the police station near bhat bhateni, next road down from the ganesh temple, across from the trekking company parking lot. neighborhoods, like baluwatar, where my office is, are loosely defined areas which take the name of the largest proximate street or intersection. maps. they would be essential.
**many people, especially riding bikes or motorcycles, wear black woven masks to filter out the pollution.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
welcome to nepal
so, it's my second full day in kathmandu (sort of), and i already feel behind on what i should be writing...i expect this will be a pattern. unfortunately, i won't be able to post pictures for a little while, but should be able to get them up in a week at the latest. until then, everyone will just have to make do with my weak prose.
one of the many things that is truly mind-blowing about coming to nepal is the sheer distance. seeing a 30 hour travel itinerary on paper and actually doing it are two wildly different things...it defintely does not compute in theory and barely does even when you're in the midst of it. incidentally, i definitely recommend jet airlines...the layovers may have been long (3 hours with delay in brussels and 8 hours in dehli), but they are totally worth it for the individualized video consoles and menus that allow you to start and stop your own movies, both hollywood and bollywood. mmm...trash viewing...delicious in any language.
my travel experience also got a major boost by getting quasi-adopted by a small cadre of nepalis in the dehli airport. on arrival, everyone going to kathmandu got shunted into this fairly barren transfer area; there was as much nescafe as you could drink, but not much else in the way of creature comforts between 10pm and 6am. however, i ended up spending most of the time talking to a guy returning to kathmandu from getting his master's at washu in st. louis. in addition to some great discussions about the state of development in nepal, he and two older couples (in translation and between naps), fielded some questions about life in kathmandu, and even withstood my crude attempts at nepali greetings and pleasantries. one thing definitely made an impression for me, though: seeing how elegant and comfortable the two women looked in their light kurta salwaar, compared to my own bedraggled and sweaty state, made me even more determined to get some of the light tunic, trouser, and scarf ensembles made.
the flight from dehli to kathmandu was only about an hour and a half, and i will say, without reservation, that the early morning view coming into the valley made the previous 30 hours of travel, the layovers and airline food and general exhaustion, worth it. at some point, you look across the cloud cover at some odd, sharp formations in the distance and go, "huh. those aren't clouds". no, indeed, they're the snow capped jagged heights of the himalayas cutting up through the clouds. it's beautiful and jarring and distinctly unsettling, especially if you've gotten complacent about the kind of superiority of human innovation represented by, say, airplanes. humbling, i suppose, is the term. then, as you break through the clouds, you descend along the green "hills" that rim the kathmandu valley. these are not what those of us on the east coast would think of a "hills"...you know, the things you roll down in the summer and sled down in winter? no, these are freakin' mountains, with occaisional winding dirt roads and spotted with small buildings clinging to the sides.
as we got closer and closer to the ground, we were flying over more and more heavily developed landscape which covers the valley floor, and eventually as we pulled into the airport, i caught first sight of the colorful, dirty apartment buildings, spotted with billboards and laced with crowded streets full of careening cars, trucks, motorbikes and pedestrians. kathmandu.
anyway, internet time is almost up and i feel a jet lag nap coming on, so i'll talk more about my first day on the ground later.
one of the many things that is truly mind-blowing about coming to nepal is the sheer distance. seeing a 30 hour travel itinerary on paper and actually doing it are two wildly different things...it defintely does not compute in theory and barely does even when you're in the midst of it. incidentally, i definitely recommend jet airlines...the layovers may have been long (3 hours with delay in brussels and 8 hours in dehli), but they are totally worth it for the individualized video consoles and menus that allow you to start and stop your own movies, both hollywood and bollywood. mmm...trash viewing...delicious in any language.
my travel experience also got a major boost by getting quasi-adopted by a small cadre of nepalis in the dehli airport. on arrival, everyone going to kathmandu got shunted into this fairly barren transfer area; there was as much nescafe as you could drink, but not much else in the way of creature comforts between 10pm and 6am. however, i ended up spending most of the time talking to a guy returning to kathmandu from getting his master's at washu in st. louis. in addition to some great discussions about the state of development in nepal, he and two older couples (in translation and between naps), fielded some questions about life in kathmandu, and even withstood my crude attempts at nepali greetings and pleasantries. one thing definitely made an impression for me, though: seeing how elegant and comfortable the two women looked in their light kurta salwaar, compared to my own bedraggled and sweaty state, made me even more determined to get some of the light tunic, trouser, and scarf ensembles made.
the flight from dehli to kathmandu was only about an hour and a half, and i will say, without reservation, that the early morning view coming into the valley made the previous 30 hours of travel, the layovers and airline food and general exhaustion, worth it. at some point, you look across the cloud cover at some odd, sharp formations in the distance and go, "huh. those aren't clouds". no, indeed, they're the snow capped jagged heights of the himalayas cutting up through the clouds. it's beautiful and jarring and distinctly unsettling, especially if you've gotten complacent about the kind of superiority of human innovation represented by, say, airplanes. humbling, i suppose, is the term. then, as you break through the clouds, you descend along the green "hills" that rim the kathmandu valley. these are not what those of us on the east coast would think of a "hills"...you know, the things you roll down in the summer and sled down in winter? no, these are freakin' mountains, with occaisional winding dirt roads and spotted with small buildings clinging to the sides.
as we got closer and closer to the ground, we were flying over more and more heavily developed landscape which covers the valley floor, and eventually as we pulled into the airport, i caught first sight of the colorful, dirty apartment buildings, spotted with billboards and laced with crowded streets full of careening cars, trucks, motorbikes and pedestrians. kathmandu.
anyway, internet time is almost up and i feel a jet lag nap coming on, so i'll talk more about my first day on the ground later.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
pre-departure update!
my lack of posting over the past months had much more to do with me blithely ignoring the reality of moving across the world, and much less with a lack of actual developments in my plans... having snapped out of it and realized that i am, in fact, moving IN A MATTER OF DAYS (and having received a few inquiries about those developments), i thought i'd put out an update (y'know, instead of packing).
travel: at this point, i've pretty much got visas, vaccines, and tickets under control. i'll be leaving falmouth on the 18th and traveling to kathmandu by way of new jersey (family time), new york city, brussels, and dehli. tragically the only place i'll be spending more than 8 hours is jersey (no offense, jerz). my actual trip clocks in at just over 30 hours, which is more or less par for the course; it's just really really not easy to get to kathmandu, it turns out. (however, it appears to be CAKE compared to getting to sikkim, where i will also be spending some time this year. i haven't done full due diligence on that yet, but, lacking an airport AND train tracks, it looks like i'll have to take a bus from west bengal...which should be interesting. more on that, below).
accommodations: upon arrival, i'll start apartment hunting, with lots of help promised from the director, brian, and the rest of the mountain institute (hereafter, TMI) staff. (side note: brian and the staff seem like the kindest, most helpful group of people. the communications so far make me think that i'm heading into a really close, supportive work environment...no nepalese devil wears prada action, kind of a relief in any new work situation). anyway, from what i can tell, kathmandu is composed of LOTS of little neighborhoods. my office is in baluwatar, across from the PM's palace, so i'll probably look for a place within walking distance, either in lazimpat or bhat bhateni. both are pretty ex-pat heavy neighborhoods; lazimpat is known for its proliferation of embassies, and bhat bhateni (among other things, presumably) for its supermarket. this supermarket is apparently one of the major reasons why you can really find anything you need in kathmandu (no bringing a year's worth of tampons), except for things like contact lenses, and, oddly enough, ziploc bags. go figure. i'm hoping to find a roommate, for the sake of having someone to help me get off the ground, socially, if nothing else. regardless, i've been told this process isn't exceedingly difficult, and i've set aside a couple of days before i start work to recover, acclimate and start looking for an apartment.
language: as i think i've mentioned, the lingua franca of nepal is nepali, although given to the incredible ethno-linguisitic diversity of the country, it's only about 50% of the population's mother tongue. the script is devanagari (the same as hindi), which, due to the fact that the only guide i could find for a while required its users to become literate as they become conversant, i've learned to read and write haltingly. that's less impressive/useful than it sounds, given that a) i don't have any idea, for the most part, what i'm reading or writing and b) only about 50% of the country is literate anyway. ah well. in any case, i'm getting more and more vocab and grammar now, and brian has said he'll help set me up with some language lessons, so hopefully those skills will shape up quickly. unfortunately, i'm leaving without most of the phrase that my mother has decided will be the most important for me to know: "excuse me (elder) brother! subhya deen [good afternoon]. could you tell me where i might acquire treatment for this rabid monkey bite? dhanyabad [thank you]"
work: who is the dirtiest hippie in all the land, and super excited about it? this guy. for starts, some people have asked me what sustainable development actually means. my understanding (from a class at the forestry school and some strategic googling) is that sustainable development aims to balance the goals of preserving environmental resources with promoting the economic (and social) well-being of communities who are locally dependent on those resources (see handy wikipedia venn diagram below? WOOHOO VISUAL AIDS). TMI works on several projects in the region, but it seems like the one i'll be working on most is sort of a suite of projects operating in a geographically distinct, transboundary region of exceptional biodiversity in eastern nepal and sikkim, india. partly as a result of this multi-country mission, and partly for visa reasons, it looks like i'll be spending a few months in the sikkim office during my year at TMI. one project, more in sikkim than nepal, is about trying alternative livestock management techniques that allow for a reduction of herd size, and thus pastureland, which is otherwise an important habitat for the threatened red panda species (cute little devils, but not what you'd imagine, i discovered). the project also develops livelihood opportunities for the same herders as caretakers and shareholders in sustainable ecotourism projects in the region. the part of the project more in eastern nepal than sikkim, focuses on getting farmers to cultivate medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) instead of harvesting the quickly disappearing wild stocks. the next step in this process is forming a farmer's cooperative, to give these farmers greater collective bargaining power in the market. to be totally honest, i'm not sure what a lot of this entails, but i'm doing what i normally do in such circumstances: gathering a bibliography. nerd alert.
anyway, i think that's more than enough for now, but i will post again when i get to kathmandu and get some internet access.
travel: at this point, i've pretty much got visas, vaccines, and tickets under control. i'll be leaving falmouth on the 18th and traveling to kathmandu by way of new jersey (family time), new york city, brussels, and dehli. tragically the only place i'll be spending more than 8 hours is jersey (no offense, jerz). my actual trip clocks in at just over 30 hours, which is more or less par for the course; it's just really really not easy to get to kathmandu, it turns out. (however, it appears to be CAKE compared to getting to sikkim, where i will also be spending some time this year. i haven't done full due diligence on that yet, but, lacking an airport AND train tracks, it looks like i'll have to take a bus from west bengal...which should be interesting. more on that, below).
accommodations: upon arrival, i'll start apartment hunting, with lots of help promised from the director, brian, and the rest of the mountain institute (hereafter, TMI) staff. (side note: brian and the staff seem like the kindest, most helpful group of people. the communications so far make me think that i'm heading into a really close, supportive work environment...no nepalese devil wears prada action, kind of a relief in any new work situation). anyway, from what i can tell, kathmandu is composed of LOTS of little neighborhoods. my office is in baluwatar, across from the PM's palace, so i'll probably look for a place within walking distance, either in lazimpat or bhat bhateni. both are pretty ex-pat heavy neighborhoods; lazimpat is known for its proliferation of embassies, and bhat bhateni (among other things, presumably) for its supermarket. this supermarket is apparently one of the major reasons why you can really find anything you need in kathmandu (no bringing a year's worth of tampons), except for things like contact lenses, and, oddly enough, ziploc bags. go figure. i'm hoping to find a roommate, for the sake of having someone to help me get off the ground, socially, if nothing else. regardless, i've been told this process isn't exceedingly difficult, and i've set aside a couple of days before i start work to recover, acclimate and start looking for an apartment.
language: as i think i've mentioned, the lingua franca of nepal is nepali, although given to the incredible ethno-linguisitic diversity of the country, it's only about 50% of the population's mother tongue. the script is devanagari (the same as hindi), which, due to the fact that the only guide i could find for a while required its users to become literate as they become conversant, i've learned to read and write haltingly. that's less impressive/useful than it sounds, given that a) i don't have any idea, for the most part, what i'm reading or writing and b) only about 50% of the country is literate anyway. ah well. in any case, i'm getting more and more vocab and grammar now, and brian has said he'll help set me up with some language lessons, so hopefully those skills will shape up quickly. unfortunately, i'm leaving without most of the phrase that my mother has decided will be the most important for me to know: "excuse me (elder) brother! subhya deen [good afternoon]. could you tell me where i might acquire treatment for this rabid monkey bite? dhanyabad [thank you]"
work: who is the dirtiest hippie in all the land, and super excited about it? this guy. for starts, some people have asked me what sustainable development actually means. my understanding (from a class at the forestry school and some strategic googling) is that sustainable development aims to balance the goals of preserving environmental resources with promoting the economic (and social) well-being of communities who are locally dependent on those resources (see handy wikipedia venn diagram below? WOOHOO VISUAL AIDS). TMI works on several projects in the region, but it seems like the one i'll be working on most is sort of a suite of projects operating in a geographically distinct, transboundary region of exceptional biodiversity in eastern nepal and sikkim, india. partly as a result of this multi-country mission, and partly for visa reasons, it looks like i'll be spending a few months in the sikkim office during my year at TMI. one project, more in sikkim than nepal, is about trying alternative livestock management techniques that allow for a reduction of herd size, and thus pastureland, which is otherwise an important habitat for the threatened red panda species (cute little devils, but not what you'd imagine, i discovered). the project also develops livelihood opportunities for the same herders as caretakers and shareholders in sustainable ecotourism projects in the region. the part of the project more in eastern nepal than sikkim, focuses on getting farmers to cultivate medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) instead of harvesting the quickly disappearing wild stocks. the next step in this process is forming a farmer's cooperative, to give these farmers greater collective bargaining power in the market. to be totally honest, i'm not sure what a lot of this entails, but i'm doing what i normally do in such circumstances: gathering a bibliography. nerd alert.
anyway, i think that's more than enough for now, but i will post again when i get to kathmandu and get some internet access.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
quick catch up
hmmm so i still can't figure out how to export individual blogposts...however, here are the three brief ones about nepal that i had on my other blog.
a fresh space
some few of you may actually read my other blog...and if you do, you know i'm not always particularly good with updating it. this may make starting a second blog seem a bit like killing a pet cactus and deciding to have a kid. however, i'm assuming that there are those to whom i'm planning on sending this who might, inconceivably, not actually be interested in reading my more or less uninformed thoughts about pre-mixed seasonings (bomb them) or the latest mos def single...there does seem to be some interest in hearing about my next year, though. so here we are. (if you DO happen to enjoy my little self-indulgent brain gobbits, though, dial-a-ttante will remain alive and well)
for those of you just joining me, trust me, you haven't missed much. a very long and blood-pressure spiking story short, i've been lucky enough to get a princetion in asia fellowship to go to nepal, and even luckier to get one of the ngo fellowships that they offer. for the next year (at least), i will be learning a new language, navigating a new city, and working in a completely new kind of job at the mountain institute. i've never done development work before, or really, something that isn't academic or activist-oriented, but i'm absolutely looking forward to new challenges.
in response to the questions i've gotten so far...
- no, i don't know when i'm leaving just yet, but at this point, i am assuming the end of july/early august.
- no, i don't know where i'll be living. kathmandu housing doesn't seem to be such a big problem though. subletting from a member of the (relatively large) expat population seems to be a popular choice.
- no, it's not actually that cold. or, to be precise, kathmandu has similar winters to san francisco. the kicker there being that there isn't anything in the way of central heating...at all. so, y'know, if you're thinking about a goodbye present, i'm going to suggest long underwear.
- yes there was a bit of a civil war, and yes, the communist party nepal-maoist now has a majority in the CA, but it ultimately came about through an actual democratic process...so the country is a bit of a unique position. check this out for more on the political situation.
- as far as i can make out, 'nepali' is the noun, 'nepalese' is the adjective.
- no, i am not going to start greeting everyone with 'namaste'. i think we can all agree on that one.
and, of course, everyone's got an open couch in kathmandu starting in august!
for those of you just joining me, trust me, you haven't missed much. a very long and blood-pressure spiking story short, i've been lucky enough to get a princetion in asia fellowship to go to nepal, and even luckier to get one of the ngo fellowships that they offer. for the next year (at least), i will be learning a new language, navigating a new city, and working in a completely new kind of job at the mountain institute. i've never done development work before, or really, something that isn't academic or activist-oriented, but i'm absolutely looking forward to new challenges.
in response to the questions i've gotten so far...
- no, i don't know when i'm leaving just yet, but at this point, i am assuming the end of july/early august.
- no, i don't know where i'll be living. kathmandu housing doesn't seem to be such a big problem though. subletting from a member of the (relatively large) expat population seems to be a popular choice.
- no, it's not actually that cold. or, to be precise, kathmandu has similar winters to san francisco. the kicker there being that there isn't anything in the way of central heating...at all. so, y'know, if you're thinking about a goodbye present, i'm going to suggest long underwear.
- yes there was a bit of a civil war, and yes, the communist party nepal-maoist now has a majority in the CA, but it ultimately came about through an actual democratic process...so the country is a bit of a unique position. check this out for more on the political situation.
- as far as i can make out, 'nepali' is the noun, 'nepalese' is the adjective.
- no, i am not going to start greeting everyone with 'namaste'. i think we can all agree on that one.
and, of course, everyone's got an open couch in kathmandu starting in august!
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