Most of us live highly mobile lives. But what is the range and purpose of our movement? We go to work and school, we go on vacation. Some of the themes that we have been investigating is this program are broad sweeps of movements and migrations throughout the region of South Asia, and this is what we are investigating in Nepal.

In fall quarter, we explored the rise and spread of Hinduism (roughly 1900-1400 bce) and of Buddhism (5th century bce) from south Asia throughout Southeast Asia and beyond, and the spread of Islam from the Middle East into surrounding regions (arising in the 7th century ce). The intersections of these sweeps of religious tradition have felt effects in people’s lives today. The ethnography Rituals of Ethnicity by Sara Shneiderman explored ways that a highly mobile ethnic group, the Thangmi people, live part time in Nepal, migrate to India for work opportunities, and sometimes migrate into Tibet as part of annual circuits seeking opportunity. The resulting syncretism in terms of their religious practices is a unique combination of Buddhism, Hinduism and shamanism. And how they negotiate their ethnic identity is a multifaceted, political as well as cultural process.

In winter quarter we have been investigating the flows of money and labor throughout these broad regions. Katherine Boo’s book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, offered an intimate and heartbreaking look at life in a Mumbai slum. Contiguous to the Mumbai airport and luxury hotels, Anawadi slum dwellers live in an “under world” and provide essential services such as sorting trash, sweeping streets, and serving food at elaborate events, making the lives of conspicuous consumption in the “over world” possible. Boo’s analysis of “opportunity”—whether in the form of hard work, bribery or manipulation—demonstrates ways that almost no one is exempt from complex networks of leveraging one’s position. This reading has prepared us to recognize ways that systems of opportunity are at play here in Nepal as well. Donations of diapers or washing machines to orphanages disappear, just as Boo described in Mumbai. Good intentions of volunteers—whether local or foreign—are drops in streams that may be moving in different directions. Students grapple with their own abilities to leverage their contributions and their time here.

With an open border to India, it’s common for many people to travel back and forth. David Gellner’s recent address, The Idea of Nepal, offers a great analysis of ways this trans-border mobility affects constantly shifting notions of ethnicity. But more broadly, I’ve been surprised by how many people I have encountered in Nepal who have ties to Dubai and other international cities. Pardis Mahdavi wrote about the migrations of laborers from South and Southeast Asia to the city of Dubai looking for work opportunities. In her ethnography, Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai, Mahdavi describes a complex range of laborers, from hotel housekeeping, to nannies; from construction workers for the burgeoning cityscape to sex workers. “Trafficking,” Mahdavi argues, may apply to a vast range of opportunity seekers, not just sex workers. And all of these laborers operate with varying degrees of freedom and agency, in search of their own opportunity.

Up near the tiny hamlet of Tutung, Nepal, families had sons and daughters in far flung places, working and sending remittances back. Such ties were visibly evident in villages with larger, and newer homes for some families popping brightly on the landscape, compared to much more modest vernacular homes for others. The owner of my guest house in Kathmandu, recently retired after decades of his own international journeys working for UNICEF, invested in the hotel to provide a job for his son in order to keep him local. A preemptive act against out-migration that most do not have the means to provide. Even so, one of his daughters lives and works in India.

And in everyday ways, people pile into buses, shared vans, taxis and onto motorcycles to traverse the city and the mountains in sweeping, endless, dusty flows. Bricks, concrete, and ri-bar are transported all throughout the hills for reconstruction after the 2015 earthquake. Human laborers break rocks, mix concrete, stack and align to re-inscribe road edges, property, homes and businesses. Cauliflower, potatoes, greens and onions bounce their way from bright field into dusty city markets. And criss- crossing all of this, our students are going out to placements daily, working with kids in orphanages, individuals who have been caught up in the worst sort of trafficking, schools, elder care facilities and more. They are connecting with others, editing grant proposals, writing reports and articles for local publications, reading, cooking, and reflecting. They are finding their way, geographically, intellectually, emotionally, and as a community.

During these first ten days I have been living with a local host family. Neeru, Didars, and their mother Sita keep a beautiful home only a ten minutes walk from where I’m volunteering, Pashupatinath. As a Brahmin Hindu family it seems like the prime area to live being that Pashupati is known as the “Mecca of Shiva-worshipping Hindus”. Both in their early thirties and yet-to-be wed, Neeru works as an emergency call responder and Didars is a banker, while Ama tends to the home. I’m learning a lot  about the modern Nepali way of life and more than I realized has to do with social media, mainly Facebook. We do our laundry by hand and hang it on the rooftop which fills a satisfaction I usually don’t experience back home. We eat dal-bhat for most meals and cookies with milk chiya as snack. The picture to the right shows a groomsman’s attire at a Nepali wedding, equipped with a family heirloom of a 100 + year old sword. Below, stands Ama and Neeru in their wedding party attire which I also had the privilege to attend. My favorite part of the experience thus far has been my dancing buddy, 3 and a half year old Satsang, because fun is universal!

For my first ten days, I have been working at Pashupatinath Elderly Ashram alongside a few of the nuns from the Kathmandu Mother Theresa home. Every morning I meet Sisters Tonitika, Mona Lisika, and Myriel at the convent then  together we walk down to the elderly home. 

Along the way, we are greeted with smiles and namastes, people love their presence. The work we do at Pashupati includes laundry, feeding, and cleaning up after their morning meal. I am in reverence of the way the sisters carry themselves, they bream with a child-like glee towards the many monkeys that surround the place as well as bring a dedicated serene quality when attending to their work. It truly is an honor to work alongside them.  After Pashupati, I go over to the Mother Theresa Home, Santi Bawan. There we meet a spectrum of women in need: elderly, mentally, and otherwise physically impaired. I help to serve them lunch and observe the differences between a government run home and a privately run one. The most obvious one to note is the cleanliness factor as well as the implications of the differing religions.

The elderly home at Pashupati has over 150 tenants and while we help with about 60 of the most in need, there are plenty of areas in which there could be cleaner measures taking place. Unfortunately, I have witnessed more abuse-like behavior at the Mother Theresa home including hitting, withholding food, and mean-spirited teasing.  And still, I have inklings of what goes on when “no one’s watching”. This simple fact is why I hope to bloom compassionate action within the homes and help to reflect the light that is seen in the eyes of those who dwell there.

            The first person I met at the Blue Diamond Society (BDS) was Bhumika Shrestha. She’s known as the face of the transgender movement in Nepal, was the first person to change their gender to “other” on their passport, and is the first officially sworn transgender member of the Nepali Congress.

Bhumika Shrestha from  http://queer-ink.com/an-interview-with-bhumika-shrestha

           I knew of her long before my trip to Nepal and I was thrilled to meet her. She introduced me to everyone in the building and immediately made me feel welcome. There I officially met Parsu Ram, the deputy director of the Blue Diamond Society and the person I interviewed last quarter about transgender activism. I spent my first day discussing possible projects with him and another volunteer there. It was decided that the other volunteer, Kawin, and I would spend the next few weeks working on an article for the Himalayan Times about marriage equality. When we went to discuss the legal aspects of marriage equality with the BDS lawyer, we were informed that he received an email from Nepal’s Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare; a branch of the government that is concerned with disadvantaged groups. They asked BDS to provide information, research, and sources that would be persuasive of legalizing marriage equality. The lawyer passed this task on to me and Kawin. This week I will be completing a response to the Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare, finding people to interview for the article for the Himalayan Times, and attending meetings for future projects.

             The Blue Diamond Society can sometimes feel chaotic with the various projects taking place, overlapping timelines, and last minute assignments, but every person I’ve encountered there is extremely passionate and committed to creating a more inclusive Nepal and works together like a family. I’m very excited to continue working with BDS and to see what opportunities lie ahead.

As I began my journey to my first placement at the Bal Mandir Infant Orphanage I wasn’t sure what to expect. I started off on a very crowded Micro bus where I quickly learned the ways of traveling locals. Then a somewhat chaotic exchange onto a larger bus that took me the rest of the way to Bal Mamndir. Once used to the dusty roads and wild traffic, traveling with the locals was pretty fun and has made me feel very independent.

Approaching Bal Mandir, I can see the large building in which they used to inhabit. A large, beautiful structure, once owned by royalty until it was donated to become the largest run government orphanage in Nepal. Because of the devastating earthquake in 2014, the building has been severely damaged and deemed unsafe for the children to live in.  For now, the children are set up in temporary housing behind the original orphanage. From what I can see there is a room for the toddlers, infants and they’re “caretakers”, a room for the older boys, a room for the older girls, a cafeteria and a classroom. The housing I work in is the infant center, which is a room split into two sides, one with beds for the toddlers and one with cribs and blankets for the infants.

The blankets are rarely washed, and because most of the babies are sick, they are covered in snot, vomit and often feces as well. Because the permanent care takers for the infants do not want too much laundry, the babies often wear the same clothes for days at a time (though there are piles upon piles of donated clothes available). Additionally, when changing nappies (which are a very thin layer of burlap) we are asked to wipe the baby only with the dirty diaper, in order to avoid extra laundry. Because the diapers are such a thin material, anytime the infants wet them it leaks through onto their bed, blankets or the floor… which doesn’t get cleaned either. One of the volunteers bought some reusable, washables nappies that don’t leak, but the next day when we came back all of the new nappies had disappeared. It is still not clear if they were taken home, sold, or simply thrown away. Because of the dirty blankets, the room is infested with flies that culminate the babies cribs. Because the caretakers spend most of their day napping outside on the trampoline, the other volunteers and I have requested permission to bring our own buckets and soap and wash the blankets and clothes ourselves. I am very eager to report back next week with good news regarding clean and happy babies. 

My goal is to visit students in their various field placements, and yesterday we set off for Tutung. After a gruelling jeep ride from Kathmandu through winding, bumpy, steep roads into Newakot District, we finally got stuck and abandoned the jeep because it could go no further. My partner in adventure, Shreya, and our poor driver Hira, headed on foot in the general direction of “up.” We walked along the edges of people’s terraced fields, up their footpaths through a winter landscape of green potato cultivation, onions, winter wheat, bright yellow mustard, and many fallow fields. We asked various school kids and people we encountered directions to Tutung, as we had done dozens of times from the jeep on the drive up. Tutung isn’t a town, or really even a village, but a tiny cluster of a few homes and a school on a bend of the hillside.  A very sweet family welcomed us, and went to fetch Nick and Shiloh from the local school where they were wrapping up teaching English to grades 4 and 5. We visited and toured around their place while the family cooked us a very welcome lunch of rice, dal, a sauerkraut-like pickle, and spicy potato and cauliflower, over which they drizzled warm ghee. This plus the welcoming cup of chai helped to restore us. We deliberated about staying overnight or heading back down. Since our driver was worried about the jeep we’d abandoned, we toured the school, said good-bye and headed down–a trip that went remarkably much faster than the walk up. Our drive back to Kathmandu took another four hours of tight, steep turns, honks, dust, bumps and motion sickness. Urgh.  

Nick and Shiloh seem to be thriving. The grandfather in their host home is a shaman, and people come by daily for healing and care. The students have been able to observe his different approaches, from herbal treatments to divination. Shiloh received a treatment from him. It was heartwarming to meet the kind, generous and good-humored family they are staying with. These two will stay at this placement for another week, and then come down to join us for a mid-session retreat. 

Some of our students stayed at the Volunteer House at Volunteer Nepal, others stayed at Nirvana Home, a fifteen minute walk through neighborhoods that are under construction. Navigating these construction sites–which change daily–was especially fun at night!

We all arrived in Kathmandu on January 29 and 30th. Our hosts from Volunteer Nepal took us through a full two days of orientation including visiting the Swayambhunath temple; Buddha’s Park, where our group is pictured above; and the Pashupahinath Temple complex.  Students had numerous workshops on safety, cultural appropriateness, and how to navigate Nepali culture in general. This included language lessons to kick start their efforts in Nepali.

On February 1st, all students began their field placements. They are working in a variety of places both local to the Kathmandu Valley, and farther out into rural and mountainous areas. Each of them will be reporting here on their field placement experiences.

In late January, 2017, a group of nineteen Evergreen students in the academic program Movements and Migrations: Sustainability and Change in Religion and Culture, are setting off for a month of Study Abroad in Nepal. In the fall quarter of our program, students chose areas of interest in which they conducted research. Through consulting scholarly sources, media sources and by conducting ethnographic interviews, students learned about many aspects of Nepalese culture, including agriculture, sustainability, Buddhism, education, reproductive rights, women’s health, environmental and cultural effects of trekking industry, trafficking in women and children. and much more.

We then worked with the organization Volunteer Nepal to help place students in volunteer field positions linked to their areas of interest. In the weeks ahead, students will post updates about their field situations on this site.