Notes from the Field

Yesterday was a pitch perfect day, and one I relished, after so much frustration with the computer and desk-based part of my research. I have been spending untold amounts of time indoors right now, finalizing decisions about my research plan, timeline, and most importantly, field sites, hovering over three topo maps of Kaski District (in which Pokhara and the Institute of Forestry are located), for more time than I’d like to admit, with less to show for it than I expected. I wasn’t down, per se, but I needed a good day. And that is exactly what I got.

At long last, I feel like I’m starting to get there with my fieldwork prep, and am hoping to spend much less time on my laptop and indoors as of late this week, when I’ll head into the field to do a practice run on my sampling methods, and see how it goes, how long it takes, and what I need to change. The forests are so close I can taste them. Kind of.

Yesterday started out pretty normally, what with me being forced out of bed by the intense and oppressive heat, which seems to seep in through the windows and under my door shortly before 8 am every day. I generally try to begin my day at 7, so as to maximize my time before breakfast at 10. Everyone else calls the first meal of the day “lunch,” but since it’s all daal bhaat all the time, you may as well call it dinner for all it really matters. Despite two fans going at all times, sucking up Nepal’s limited electricity and spitting it back at me in the form of regular waves of warm air pulsing in my direction, I haven’t managed to stay in bed past 8. The sun comes up at around 5 or 5:30 in the morning, so the day is bright and well-begun by the time I can bring myself to roll out of bed and under the showerhead, where I briefly rinse off before beginning my day. Most of the Nepalis have by this time been up since the dawning of sun, and many will have gone for exercise, walking or jogging through the streets of the city while they’re still quiet, or to the little temple adjacent to my building, for Puja (prayer). Sometimes both.

I spent a little bit of time posting two excessively long old blog posts, answered some email, and downloaded a proposal I’d promised to edit for a professor friend here. I am becoming quite the editor of various faculty and administrators’ writing, and as I type there sits next to me on the table what I understand to be a newspaper article, titled ‘Agriculture in Nepal,’ which awaits my review. I’m not spending an excessive amount of time doing this editing, but it seems to me that to help with something that comes so easily to me is to do a very small favor for a community of people who have welcomed me very warmly. And so, I edit. A lot.

After daal bhaat (and it was paneer daal bhaat, which means a type of cheese – score!), I returned to my quarters and did a bit of editing, becoming restless (and sweaty) as the morning and the heat proceeded, hand in hand. I was thinking about how I needed to find somewhere else to go to do writing and work, sometime soon, because as it is now when I stay here in the guesthouse apartment to do work on my computer, I am attached to the wall by ethernet cord (an unfamiliar feeling for an American), making me feel glued to one particular seat in our common area, which in turn makes me even more agitated than I might otherwise be. The tables here are short, coffee-table-style, so there are few good ways to set up a computer for typing, and I often end up with my laptop on my lap, which is simply torturous for the amount of heat the thing gives off. Way to go, Apple.

But yesterday, shortly after completing the proposal review – on which I think I did a very good job, to be truthful, and through which I realized how much I’ve learned this year – Professor Singh-sir, one of the professors who has been kind and accommodating in helping me out around campus, came by and helped me think through my field site selection a bit (I am looking to sample twelve different forests, and they have to be of approximately the same species composition, facing the same compass direction, at approximately the same elevation, and reasonably close to one another – no mean feat), which was exactly what I needed as I sat struggling to push through a mental block in my thinking on sites. Professor Singh-sir helped me outline my next steps and filled in the blanks on who I would need to talk to to do so, and then invited me to a gathering at his house at 5 (by which he meant 6 in Nepali time) of the academic community’s “women’s group.” He made clear to me this wasn’t a gathering of the students, but of the women of the community – mostly professors’ wives, but with a few professors and female staff members thrown in as well.

I was touched and pleased to be invited, as my own company has been a little redundant, at present, and decided that since almost all of the professor’s wives would be wearing kurta suruwal, the traditional dress of a long shirt (it goes to mid-thigh), balloon-like cotton pants, and a scarf worn backwards over the shoulders (so the ends are both hanging down your back and the middle curves around your neckline, almost like a necklace made of wispy scarf material), that I would, too. I had purchased three kurta suruwal the last time I was in Nepal, so that I could wear them in the villages while doing my field research. I’m unclear at present as to whether this is a necessary and beneficial step, but was relieved at present to get out of my sweat-soaked jeans (which I’ve been wearing rolled to just below the knees, for propriety), and into some billowy cotton fabric which would breath much more easily. I had been contemplating wearing kurta suruwal for days, but the students here dress very much like students would in the contemporary US (with the exception of a “New Kids on the Block” t-shirt I caught sight of in the cafeteria this morning – a little behind on the times) and the young women do not themselves wear kurta. So it seemed a little bit bizarre to wear one myself among so many young women who dress like me, the bideshi.

At the appointed hour, then, I donned my very pretty aquamarine blue kurta, pinned up my hair, matched a set of earrings that were a gift from Kathayoon for my birthday, and quite self-consciously strode out and down the little row of professors’ and staff apartments, which are arrayed as condos would be along a narrow street, each constructed after the same exact model but enhanced and adorned by the owner’s plants, motorcycles, and children playing in the yards. As I went I was very conscious of the members of various families stepping to the front doors and windows to see the campus bideshi wandering down their way in her kurta, probably wondering how I had come across one in such a large size. I kept my shoulders back, and head up despite my slight self-consciousness, and met Professor Singh outside his apartment, where he helped to re-connect me to one of the young women scientists here, who is very, very good at what she does, and whose father is on the staff at IOF. It was very nice to see her (although I felt a bit goofy and oversized in my American-size kurta), and with Professor Singh-sir’s encouragement, we both made our way into the women’s group event, which turned out to be a mothers’ group.

Mothers’ groups are ubiquitous in Nepal, particularly in the villages. Becoming a member (and thus a mother) is a point of incredible pride in Nepali culture, and in fact the word for “woman” is traditionally not applied to a woman until she is married. So if you never marry, or you marry late in life, you would traditionally still be referred to as a “girl.” The same goes for men, who are boys until they marry. So you can have a 35 year old “boy” and a 16 year-old “woman,” but I, who have been referring to myself as a “woman” since a particularly thoughtful decision when I was 23 or 24, am still a “girl” here. I actually took the time to explain to my friend Deepak (a boy) the other day whereabouts the line is between “girl” and “woman” in western culture, and why calling an independent, confident, competent woman like myself a girl is a little bit insulting, when it happens in my own country. When it happens in Nepal, though, it’s obviously just fine.

So with little ceremony but a lot of jittery nerves, Neeru and I stepped out of our own shoes and past the large pile of shiny flip-flops and sandals that mark the doorway of a women’s gathering, and stepped into a dherai garmi (very warm) room fully of happily chatting, kurta suruwal-clad women, sitting on the floor with legs folded, leaning up against one another’s knees, and generally sprawled throughout the room in a little grouping of happy motherhood, catching up with one another and chatting animatedly until we entered, and the room fell silent. It was a little like being adopted by about twenty “aunties” at once, as I looked around and saw to my relief the familiar and friendly faces of professors’ wives I’d already met, including three I know somewhat well. Neeru shepherded me towards a seat on the fringe of the group, and very kindly took questions from those who had not yet met me, to give me a moment to gather my thoughts (and speaking skills) before debuting some pretty mediocre Nepali in front of all of these wonderful, beautifully dressed older women.

But debut those mediocre Nepali skills I did, and stammered through a weak introduction of myself in Nepali, while they all sat quietly listening and observing, until Neeru very generously took over, and added the relevant details I’d neglected to mention, like that I’m a graduate student, I’m here for research, I’m from “Ale University,” etc. The women there were all very warm and friendly, and as I watched and normal conversation resumed, they took turns making contributions to a fund they use to do charitable works and to learn crafts, writing each contribution down into a large book, and putting their 200 rupees monthly donation ($2.60, or half the cost of a full day’s work by a field assistant) into a plastic bag at one woman’s feet. It was pretty interesting, to tell the truth, and I honed in on as much of the Nepali conversation as I could.

Adults in Nepal are much more flexible than in the United States, easily and comfortably sprawling on the floor or leaning up against a seated friend’s knees while sitting in a group. Nepali men and women, boys and girls, are much more touchy-feely than Americans are, which I think is tremendous. Boys here walk around holding hands, or, cuter, with their arms around each other’s shoulders and waists, as a sign of friendship, as do girls. Men and women would generally not walk holding hands or arm in arm unless they were married, but they do so extensively with their own gender. It seems like it would make friendships within your own gender closer (try arguing with someone you just had your arms wrapped around, or were holding hands with), and probably fills in the gaps in touch and human contact that Americans fill with lovers and boyfriends before marriage. I find it really nice, and was always really grateful when Kanchan would take my hand in hers in Kathmandu before we crossed the street. Without that hand to hold, I may well have taken a taxi to the other side, my first few days in Nepal, and would definitely have risked being hit by one of the dozens of motorized and quasi-mechanized conveyances that Nepalis employ. Beyond safety, though, its just nice. Human contact is never really a bad thing.

At the women’s event I sat quietly next to Neeru for awhile, making conversation and straining to catch the rapid-fire conversation of my Nepali hostess and her friends, which turned out to be the problem of disposing of plastic, and how to manage garbage here. A subject after my own heart (ah, garbage!), it is always great to hear people talking about how to resolve environmental issues in their own communities, and it was a lot of fun to kind of “listen in” on. While we listened and chatted we were brought little metal plates called thali full of all kinds of Nepali khana (food): a kind of beaten rice that ends up dry and crunchy, about the size of popcorn; a thin, dry, papery bread akin to what you’d have in Indian food restaurants, which is my favorite because it is surprisingly flavorful; three totally American-style store-bought cookies with vanilla frosting in the middle; and a final small Nepali item that eludes me at the moment. It was a lot of food, and was accompanied by sliced mangos (of which I ate a whopping five yesterday!); ciya, or tea with milk and more sugar than I care to acknowledge; and glasses of “juice” that were really water with something akin to Tang mixed in. It was absolutely lovely, and I ate all of it.

After a short while I filled the women of the community in on Rajesh, one of my peers and a friend from the Forestry School, who had emailed me that he had shaken the hand of Hillary Clinton at Yale’s graduation. We had a funny moment when I asked if the women gathered knew of Hillary Clinton (as I knew they must), and everyone looked confused until Neeru “translated,” affecting a Nepali accent and translating ‘Hillary Clinton’ from English, to English. Upon which everyone smiled knowingly, and proudly. I was glad to be able to share news with them about a member of their community of whom they are so proud, and it has been fun to see how everyone here and there is connected. Another friend from my class is half Nepali, and one day I was eating breakfast at the house of a faculty member here, and he said he went to the University of Maine Orono, where that classmate’s father is on the faculty. On a whim, I asked him if he perhaps knew a Professor Pendse, or his daughter Sabina, and fifteen minutes later I was staring at a very current photo of my friend from the US, who I later emailed at her internship in Italy to tell her I’d seen the picture, and that I’d met the family. It is indeed a small world, after all.

After eating at the party Neeru and I took a walk to a lookout point that I don’t know how to spell but which is pronounced “Too-toong-gah,” a deep gorge formed by the Setikhola (Seti river) carving its way through Pokhara. It’s a pretty lookout point at which many people gather as the day ends, and we sat there happily talking about field research and field inventories in our kurta suruwals, connected by our dorky passion for measuring trees. Neeru is a pretty, diminuitive woman with nervous eyes, who absolutely comes alive while discussing forest science. This woman is so capable. I am in awe of her, and many of the other students here. She pulled facts, measurements, dimensions, and tree species out of thin air, is familiar with the Village Development Committees (VDCs) managing the community forests all over the valley, and just really knows her stuff. It’s an amazing thing to watch someone who has really found their space in the world as they so completely own it, and I am incredibly glad for her guidance and companionship.

As we sat there a younger male student named Bishwa came along, who had invited me to that same spot earlier in the day, but who I assumed had forgotten to call me before he came, when in fact he was just operating on Nepali time. Bishwa looked perhaps a little bummed I hadn’t accompanied him to see Tootoonggah for the first time, but cheered up a bit when I asked him to join us in the sitting, and inquired as to how he liked his new American music. A day or two before Bishwa had traded me a pirated copy of ‘Caravan,’ a gorgeous movie filmed in Nepal that was, as any Nepali you bring it up with will tell you, nominated for an Academy Award (as well it should have been). I in turn gave Bishwa some funky music (Aretha Franklin and Ani Difranco) and some of the pop I’ve gotten from Kathayoon this year, because he kept asking me questions about American bands and pop culture I hadn’t heard or listened to since high school – Linkin’ Park, anybody?

I gave him what could easily be termed the “Anti-V-Day playlist,” for those who know what I’m referring to, which is to say a mix compiled for a party the girls of my house threw this past Valentine’s Day. It’s a saccharine sweet, pop-princess meets electronica mix that’s fun to dance to, which I thought would suit his tastes well (Bishwa told me he likes Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and I think Celine Dion when I first met him – I really didn’t know what to say in response). I exercised just enough tact not to pass along such 827 favorites as “I Kissed a Girl” and “Take Me on the Floor,” but did give him a sampling of Lily Allen, including “LDN.” And let me tell you, it’s an unfortunate moment when a sweetheart of a Nepali kid (he’s 22) asks you to translate the lyric, “fella lookin’ dapper when his sitting with his napper then I see it’s a pimp and his crackwhore.”

Regrettable lyrics aside (thanks Lily), it was a really pleasant, nice ending to an enjoyable afternoon, and I was delighted to be reunited with Neeru, and to have coincidentally met up with Bishwa. Upon returning to campus I headed off to the cafeteria to catch the tail end of dinner, and met up with Professor Abadesh Singh-sir and his wife (my hostess in the afternoon), and walked with them in the cooling air, a distinctly Nepali habit. All the professors and their wives (who dress up for the occasion) go out walking in the evening, strolling through the campus and sometimes out onto the main streets as well, to get some exercise and enjoy the air. Professor Singh-sir had that day gone to the locksmith to get me a set of keys to his program’s office, which was created with Yale’s support, and where I am now pleased to be able to work.

And the night went on this way. From Neeru I had joined Professor Singh-sir, and from Professor Singh-sir and his wife I encountered the M.Sc. students who are my level and who dined in the cafeteria at the same time I did. We’d just begun to become friends when they’d invited me to stop by earlier this week, to my great delight, and on this night I ran into Deepa, one of the women, and two of her male friends. I felt a little bit nervous because I was still in my kurta and they were in a tshirt and jeans, but they said hello and told me my kurta was nice. I told them I had wanted to wear one of the kurtas for days, but felt silly wearing one when they themselves didn’t, at which Deepa came over and took me by the hand, and told me they had just been discussing how beautiful I looked, like a proper Nepali. And my heart just soared. Not because of looking beautiful in a kurta, or being a proper Nepali (okay maybe a little about being a proper Nepali), but because it was just the most wonderful day from top to bottom. I feel so at home on this campus, where I so obviously was not actually at home in the least, and so glad to have ended up here.

From Deepa and her friends I went to the cafeteria, and the cafeteria ladies I had met earlier in the day greeted me with excitement about my kurta, asking me where I had purchased it, telling me it was very nice, etc. It was such fun. After a quick dinner of daal bhaat and a few more kind comments from the cafeteria staff (who think I am either very, very, funny, or a little bit weird – perhaps both), I headed back to my guesthouse, where I was met by Deepak, who had been calling me to no avail, as that particular kurta was sewn without pockets. He called into my open door while I was washing some clothes in a bucket in the bathroom, and when bid to enter came in to encounter me there, sweaty, doing laundry Nepali-style, and clad in a kurta, and was, suffice it to say, very surprised. He told me I made a “Ramro Nepali keti” (good or nice Nepali girl), and we decided on impulse to take his motorcycle for a ride in the dark (very slowly, he promised) and go buy some beer to bring back to the guesthouse.

Fifteen minutes later we were gliding slowly through the dark of night, stars clear in the sky above, motorcycle creating little cooling currents of wind, me in a kurta suruwal, and it was all I could do to think, “Is this really my life?” I put my head back and looked up at the stars as we rolled around through the dark of a rare cloudless night in Pokhara, cool breeze blowing through my hair, passing looming pipal and bari trees, under which the people usually come to rest and talk,. Cows slept, huking dark masses along the sides of the streets, dogs barked lazily in the lanes, and the occasional other motorcycle passed quickly through the dark. It was, suffice it to say, absolutely perfect. All I could think while on the back of the bike was how much I wanted to hold onto the perfection that was that afternoon, and savor it as a memory worth coming back to time and time again.

-M-