Yesterday I learned a phrase, "Hawaa lagyo", which means "Taken by the wind", and is used to describe the effect of globalisation and Westernisation on Nepal. Nepal opened its borders around 60 years ago, there are many people alive here who remember when it could have been described as a medieval kingdom. Kathmandu is progressing and Westernizing like an avalanche, unaware of where it's heading and completely unable to stop. Hawaa lagyo.
I've been reading a book of Nepali folk stories. They are delightfully random, and often contain no discernible lesson or moral. Refreshing. Probably my favourite so far is the story of why monkeys do not talk. Basically, there once was a man who had a loyal and intellegent monkey companion. This monkey could understand everything that was said to him, and this made the man perplexed: he wondered why the monkey would never speak. He contrived a way to make the monkey talk by setting him an elaborate task, involving minding a bowl full of Buffalo butter which sat in the sun. The man hid nearby and watched when, as planned, the monkey could bear it no longer and called out "Sir! Sir! The butter is melting!" And at that, his head exploded.
And that is why monkeys do not talk. The end. Shaun and I have been talking about making a stop-frame animation of this and other Nepali folk tales.
I woke at 5 this morning, so that I could watch the gymnastics training that some of my circus students undertake. There are concerns from some of the caretakers at the refuge that doing gymnastics at 6:30a.m. then going to school all day, and then circus training in the evening, might be a little too much strain. My initial stance on the issue was that if the kids want to go to gym so badly, then they should be able to. Nothing is uncomplicated here, and I've since heard that the gym class is causing falling grades at school, and a couple of kids are missing breakfast in their determination to take gymnastics class. On the other hand, one of these kids has been rated amongst the top gymnasts in the country, and would have been sent to the Beijing olympics if he had come from the right family. Also, some of the circus students have been getting injured at gym class. The only thing to do was to go and see for myself. So I woke before the sun and made my way to the hall where the national gymnasts train, a ramshackle little room, stuffed full of mats, rings, high bar, etc. It was arranged by the people upstairs that a certain gentleman ex-Gurkha would accompany me. He has a politeness and a presence which commands respect, and of course the Ghurkas here have an almost celebrity status (their name decorates walls throughout Kathmandu, my favourite one "Show me a man who claims not to fear death and I say he is either a liar or a Ghurka"). Unfortunately, he never showed, partly my fault for not mustering the courage to call so early in the morning to confirm that he was coming. Partly I guess I wasn't really sure what I was doing there, what I would say to the gym coach, wanted an excuse to bail on the whole thing. So rather than meet the gym coach and say all of those things I thought of afterwards, I tried to talk to the circus students for a while, about being responsible, careful, safe, about the importance of school, about all kinds of things which I was the least qualified person on Earth to be preaching about. They got suitably defensive, and I felt like a real twat. So I shut up watched training for a while. What I saw was that the two circus students were there with their friends, were away from the refuge in the hills and in the heart of Kathmandu. I saw that they were having a great time. I left, feeling like I had made a complete mess of this supposed meeting, and that I would have to answer for it to my pseudo-military pseudo-bosses, but on reflection I can say that if nothing else, I got to see the circus students there at the gym class, being away from the refuge, amongst friends, having a great time.
There is a cafe near the office, which I frequent, espresso coffee and a small machiatto-stain of guilt. The place is nice and cool, has comfortable couches, and therefore it is usually full whitey bidesi folk, from the vast array of NGOs that pepper this part of Kathmandu. The owner of this cafe is a nice guy, with an interesting story of returning to Kathmandu after living in England for some time, so that he could grow his own coffee and live his own version of the dream. He was telling me that a Swiss NGO has offered to send top-shelf bakers to his cafe, to train up the staff there to make croissants and other such delicious pastries. These pastries would go to the mouths of the NGOs, and was therefore a wonderful real life allegory of the Trouble with NGOs. I do not know the name of this NGO, but it occured to me later that "Let Them Eat Cake" would be an excellent name.
I reflected on all of this as I sat in Cafe Soma this morning, after leaving the gym where I couldn't pluck up the courage to cross those cultural barriers and language barriers and try to talk to the gym coach, try to call the gentleman Gurkha, try to do all of those things which should have been so easy. I sat, drinking good coffee and eating a delicious brownie in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Someone told me that there are literally hundreds of NGOs here whose aim is to clean up the Bagmati river, but none of us have seen a single person actually picking up rubbish from that festering stream of junk. This is among the nicer NGO stories I've heard. That's enough stories for now.
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