back on the blogging horse

Hey there folks. So this blog definitely seems to have fallen off the agenda in the last year. BUT as many of you likely know, I’m back in Nepal for another year. I want to do a better job maintaining this, and doing more writing about Nepal in general, rather than just my experiences here. When I was home for a visit, I was psyched to find out how much people were interested in the country and culture. However, I’m going to start out with more a “personal” “entry”…also known as my 6-month report for my fellowship (handed in at a cool 10 months…oops). I figure it will give people at least a rough idea of what the last year was like. (I didn’t realize it was supposed to be in narrative form until I’d done all the questions separately, so sorry that it’s kind of choppy/awkwardly transitioned!). I also realize there’s not a whole hell of a lot about my job in here, so I’ll do another post on that later.

Also, in case you don’t have facebook, I’ve got public links up to some of my photos from the last year, just to the right in the sidebar.

For better or worse, I always come over all cynical whenever someone claims to be doing something in order to “find themselves.” It’s sort of like the inherent contradiction when someone uses the term “classy” un-ironically. If you’re saying it, you’re probably missing the point of what the term is supposed to convey. Did I go to Kathmandu to hone the personal and professional skills in a new and challenging environment where I could meet people and see things that I wouldn’t have otherwise? Yes. Did I go to “find myself”? Why don’t you just excise $160,000-in-tuition’s worth of self-righteous (and yet elitist) class warriorship from my brain, and call it a day. Did I, nonetheless, find out the true meaning if the phrase “finding yourself”? Surprisingly, yes. Did I do so by actually pooping myself? Oh, you betcha.

It was spring, when the hills of the Kathmandu valley are covered in blooming flowers, and the waters are filled with blooming parasite populations. We were all down with something those days, and I did what every foreigner I know in Kathmandu does when faced with gastro-intestinal issues: firebomb your system with a cocktail of anti-diarrheals, heavy duty antibiotics, and a parasite-killer for good measure (all available over the counter!), and stay near a damn toilet. Well, I did it for a few days, anyway. And then—I got cocky. I was leaving a meeting fully across town from my apartment, looking for a café from which to work with a friend. We were turning around at a dead end, and my stomach began to gurgle ominously. No sooner than I thought, “Man, was drinking that coffee a bad idea,” I stopped dead.

“Roger” I hissed at my friend. He turned around. “I just…I just POOPED MYSELF” I whispered, overwhelmed with a sense of horrified violation.

“Well, do you, uh, need a bathroom?” He asked with remarkable aplomb.

“I’m pretty sure it’s too late for that one, dude.”

We hustled (or, in my case, waddled damply) to the first cabs we could find. In my second great shock of the afternoon, the cab driver agreed to put the meter on, rather than make me negotiate a price. I didn’t wish to question my good fortune, but it did present me with a dilemma. Since the nice man had given me meter, actually sitting down in the seat seemed, well, karmic-ly injudicious. And so I spent twenty minutes making polite conversation in Nepali made all the more stilted by fact that I was hovering not terribly casually an inch above the seat…only to discover that my road was closed, the cabbie didn’t have change, and that I was beginning to get leakage down my leg. I threw almost double fare at the cabbie, waddled as quickly as possible through my neighborhood, past my landlord’s demon dog, and up four flights of stairs, only to discover that there was no water in our apartment—at all. At this point I called a neighbor and friend whose apartment had unusually consistent water supply, and confessed my problem. “Oh,” she said, “happens all time, lovely. Come on over and shower.” I received similar confirmation from other friends to whom I related the story, over (many) beers. (“Happened to me twice last week” ) And so occurred a major moment in my journey of self-discovery, a rite of passage, it seems—the realization that no matter what age you are, or where you’re from, you should never, EVER take for granted being able fart with confidence.

Realizing that, in other parts of the world, discussing your bowel movements is NOT the conversational equivalent of commentary on the weather was only one of many small adjustments I had to make when I came back to the States for a visit this summer. I didn’t even realize how many things were just normalized for me in Nepal until I came back and people asked me about “culture shock”. I guess don’t know what “culture shock” really means. When I first got to Nepal, I suppose it meant feeling like everything was a little bit more difficult, or that everywhere I went I went with an air of incompetence palpable enough to be conspicuous across the street. I called them my “big, stupid bideshi [foreigner] days.” The reverse culture shock was those little, quotidian things that you internalize until they become instinctive, because that’s, y’know, just what one does where one happens to be. When I came back to the States, it took me a while to adjust back: drinking the tap water felt like secret agent-level sexy danger (look ma, no parasites!), and ditto eating unwashed vegetables; wearing a sundress made me feel self-conscious in ways I haven’t felt in skimpy clothing since sophomore year of high school; and, speaking of feeling naked, I totally did without my cell phone fully charged and a second computer battery in my bag, even in the carnival of infrastructure that is the USA.

And just when I’ve stopped reflexively “Namaste-ing” every time I get to the check out counter, I’m heading back to do it all over again. I imagine it will just be a matter of slipping back into familiar patterns. People ask what my life is like “over there”, and seem to expect some really wild answers. In fact, it’s a lot like my life as a young professional anywhere else in the world would be: work and friends, eating and drinking, paying bills and getting out of town for a weekend…I just do it with a lot less electricity. Being back in the States for a month really clarified how much, for better or worse, Kathmandu doesn’t feel like “an experience”; it feels like home. Moving there was like moving anywhere else, a series of relatively minor adjustments and accommodations that eventually add up to sneaky feeling of belonging.

As much as I appreciate how normalized my life IS there, I do want to do a few things differently the second time around. This past year, I did a yoga class here, an afternoon at an orphanage there, but I really haven’t consistently been involved in much. I was just at the National Gallery of Art in DC with a friend who lives there, and we both agreed how much living in a place makes you stop “taking advantage” of it. That said, now that I’ve got my life established in Nepal, I’m really going to start looking for ways to integrate other things into my life, especially: some form of exercise, and independent projects that will bring issues and complexities of Nepal to the States when I’m back (hopefully while raising some money for worthwhile organizations). I’m also going to work on designing and doing some research, and trying to get it published.

I suppose I did forget one significant extracurricular: my “Kollywood” debut. Some friends and I were involved in filming a Nepali movie where they needed some foreigners to be…well, foreign. Granted, we were playing “gangsters”, and “Kollywood” seems to be just as campy (“Kampy”?) as Bollywood, but, as a friend pointed out, we were playing un-ironically exaggerated versions of Nepali conceptions of foreigners. Women were dressed suggestively (by Nepali standards), those of us who were too “ethnic” looking (ie had brown hair and light tans) had blonde streaks put in our hair (with face makeup!), and my friend’s gangster “bling” was an enormous crucifix. So there you go: wealthy, promiscuous, blonde, and Christian (that’s the response I get when I try to explain being Jewish: ”so…you’re like a Christian?”… I usually just go with it). The assumptions that I, personally, run into most are the assumptions that get made about Western women. It can be exhausting and frustrating sometimes, but eventually you figure out ways to negotiate interactions and to ignore comments and interactions that you can’t defuse. And most importantly, like anywhere in the world, once you actually make friends with people, the assumptions tend to dissolve.

In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves has to do with the foreign conception of Nepal. At the risk of generalization, Nepalis are really very lovely, friendly, generous people; the mountain views are, in fact, stunning; and of course I’m aware that Nepal is not really of the greatest geopolitical importance. However, there’s this incredibly oversimplified, ill-informed notion of Nepal as this harmonious land of poor but smiling, mountain-dwelling Buddhists, all of whom are Sherpas--never mind that Sherpas are an ethnic group (one of over 100 in Nepal) and not a profession, that there was a civil war raging from 1996-2006, or that 80% of the population identifies as Hindu (in fact, Nepal was the world’s only constitutionally-defined “Hindu” country until 2008). In the news, for instance—despite the fact the world’s youngest democracy was on the edge of collapse this spring, you had to pull proverbial teeth to get international media attention about anything if it didn’t involve trekking, animal sacrifice, or festive ethnic garb. It all makes a very pretty postcard. However, aside from being good for tourism (which, when it comes to the Nepalese economy, is actually nothing to sneeze at), I find it pretty outrageous when people come to Nepal and don’t bother to educate themselves enough about the country to recognize the complexity, diversity, sophistication, and, yes, conflict that is represented there. Those are the things that make Nepal an amazing place to live, not the nuns with nunchucks (yes, this was actually a news piece).

Although my life may seem to be all glamour, what with the poop and the blackouts and the makeup in my hair, I actually work, too! As the only native English speaker in the office (aside from the director of the NGO), a fair amount of my job has been editing and proposal writing (in fact, researching and writing grants was the majority of my job description for the last three months I was there). On the one hand, it’s not the most thrilling work. On the other hand, there was something satisfying about using skills I already have (strong writing and logical thinking) and applying them to gaining fluency in the grant-writing jargon/skill set. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it (we’re batting about .500 for major grants so far), and, maybe more importantly, I’m doing something no one else really can. I’m also proud that my coworkers trust me to help them improve the presentation of their own work. It leaves them more time to do the things they’re really good at, many of which are based on knowledge and skills that I don’t have, at least not yet.

The major project I worked on (an enterprise-development opportunity assessment) was also interesting, and I did the best I could with it. Honestly, my spoken Nepali and subject knowledge was probably not initially (in the fall) at a level to make the most of it. I also didn’t know enough organizationally (or, again, in terms of content, since I’ve never been exposed to this kind of work before) to contribute to or question the way the project was structured. During my first year I’ve learned a lot about the kind work I’m doing (both through direct work experience, and by attempting to read things and engage with people outside of the office in a way that will extend my development “education”), the organization I’m working in (what its strengths and weaknesses are, and how to exploit or compensate for them), and about the language and cultural milieu of Nepal. I think this will allow me to take a more proactive role in the program design and monitoring components of my work, which is something I’m really looking forward to.

In fact, as I head back to Kathmandu for another year, I’m looking forward to many things. It has really struck me, both coming and going this summer, how incredibly lucky (dare I risk my cynicism street cred by saying “blessed”?) I am to feel at home in multiple places. I feel as excited about going to one place as I do sad about leaving another, by virtue of being able to be with people whom I love in both locations. Except my colon, of course. We still aren’t on speaking terms.