Laughing in a Nepal Village - Journal entry from 10/5

Today was my second day staying in Gopal’s village, the 9^th day of the Dashain festival.  Having grown comfortable at Gopal’s home and establishing it as a sort of safe zone, I felt more comfortable venturing outward through the rest of the village.  This led to one of the largest, most consistent WTFs of my life.

At around 7:30, I walked up to the water sprout to do some laundry.  On my way I passed a very welcoming and smiling family.  The mother insisted I sit down on her porch and she handed me a huge plate of some sort of buffalo cheese.  Suddenly, the entire village swarmed around to view my reaction.  I felt like a giant movie screen showing the climax of a summer Blockbuster.  Will Shia Lebouf somehow defeat gigantic evil robots!?  Will Doug like the buffalo cheese!?  All eyes were glued to the screen for the exciting conclusion.

And…

It was delicious!  I proclaimed to the crowd, “Mita! Mita!” (Delicious! Delicious!) and they went crazy, cheering in a frenzied jubilation.  As I ate the crowd dissipated a bit, but as I was forcing down my last bite one of the children went into the room and brought out a two sided drum.  He placed it around his legs and banged out a simple but catchy beat.  Out of the thin air the crowd grew again, all eyes turned toward me to see how this weird creature would react.  As I do frequently in uncomfortable situation, I danced.  An overjoyous roar of laughter and cheering consumed the crowd yet again.  I didn’t know whether the villagers genuinely enjoyed my company or if I was just some weird freakshow that happened to roll into town.  Either way, they were smiling and I was smiling, so I was happy to play whatever role they wanted.

After finishing my laundry and reading in my safe zone for a bit, I noticed all of Gopal’s family had left to mingle in the rest of the village.  So, with a chest full of confidence and pockets full of juggling balls, I ventured outward.

 I namaste’d everyone I passed, cracking smiles and namastes in return.  Finally, I mustered up the courage to gesture to a family that I’d like to sit with them.  With a huge smile they pulled up a chair and told me to sit.  Much to their amusement and pleasure, I asked them “How are you doing.” And “What is your name?” in what must’ve been awfully fractured Nepali.  After hearing their replies I did my best to tell them that I was doing well and my name was Doug.  Telling them my name was Doug arose an overflowing curiosity in all the kids around, who took turns trying to pronounce my name.  As weird as it for them to hear my try in vain to correctly pronounce a common name, it was bizarre to have 5 children all screaming, “Derg”, “Daug”, “Dog”, and their favorite “Daaaaaaaaaaaw?”, but never just “Doug.”

Having captured the attention of the youth by simply sharing my name, I decided now would be an ideal time to bust out the magically unifying juggling balls.  Once again, I was urrounded by a huge crowd, this time all the village’s children mystified by my ability to throw three balls in the air.  They took turns trying, laughing equally hard at their catches and drops.  Then it turned into some hectic, volleyball, hackeysack, baseball group play session with myself at the focus of everything.  After what seemed like hours everyone in the village started yelling, “Bing! Bing!” and ran down the steps to a rare flat spot in the hillside.

In a frantic yet synchronized effort, Nepali men sprung from every direction and dug four deep holes and hacked away at 50 ft. tall bamboo trees while the women threaded together budles of tall grass into long rope.  Up on the hillside I caught eyes with the kind mother who served me cheese earlier.  Sensing my complete confusion, she laughed, to which I shrugged my shoulders and laughed, which spiraled her into the uncontrollable laughing fit of a stoned 14 year old watching Pokemon.

Luckily, a 12 year old skilled in English had found my juggling skills as proof that I was the coolest person on the planet, and he stuck me like velcro for next few hours and narrarated the bizzare scene the unfolded.  Apparently, “Bing” means “Swing” and it’s tradition across the villages to build a huge bamboo swing for the festival.  With concentration and dedication that surpassed the deepest efforts of the monks at Kopan, the men cut down bamboo trees and anchored them into the dug up holes.  Then, men scurried easily up each tree and bound them togethers using the rope the women weaved together.  To get the trees to line up just right, the men on the ground needed to push the trees from the base, causing the trees to violently sway back and forth.  Thankfully, the villagers on the ground found the sight of four men, aged 15 to 50, grasping for life onto wildly swaying trees with their lives as funny as I did, and I could laugh hysterically without being culturally insensitive.

The completed swing was quite a spectacle to behold, easily five times the size of a standard American swing and utilizing much more bamboo and grass.  Like thie buffalo cheese before, the entire village was eager to see the Westerner’s reaction.  So, by no choice of my own really, I was forced onto the swing by a mob of villagers, and I started pushing.

While the swing is five times the size of an American swing, it’s infinitely more fun.  Within seconds my backwards swing brough me to a height that made me the tallest peak in the Himalayan range.  Upon reach such astronomical heights, I show my legs forward, blasting me like a missile through the crowds of cillagers, and back to dizzying heights perilously close to thick bamboo forests.  The whole time I was on this testosterone-infused swing, my screaming and laughter was drownded out by the wild cheering and laughter of the villagers.

Having enjoyed such a rush of emotions and adrenaline, it was nice to retire back to Gopal’s home for a healthy serving of daal bhaat.  As the family and I sat on the clay floor, stuffing rice and lentils into our mouths with our bare hands, for a guilty second I though of how from an outside Western perspective, the group of us on that clay floor could almost be seen as savages.  Yet, if the lack of utensils and tile floors make someone a savage, these are the nicest savages I’ve ever met.  For most of the year the family has only enough food to eat one meal per day, and they still only have enough food for about 10 months of the year.  If they’re lucky, they can sell some extra milk or cheese for enough profit to buy food for those hungry months, and if they’re unlucky, they take out a loan which traps them in debt for years.  Despite this, they take a rich foreigner into their home during the Nepali equivalent of Christmas and feed him plentifully without a second’s though.  I finished my meal with genuine gratitude.

After dinner, the village gathered around a skilled drummer, sang Nepali songs and danced.  My hippie wiggle looked no more bizarre than the children’s flailing dances, so for once I was simply a part of the scene instead of the focus of attention.  This quickly changed once the the somewhat English speaking children told me their parents wanted me to sing.  Everyone grew quiet and stared at me with anticipation.  I felt like a scared Freshman girl who was about to speak the opening lines at her first big high-school musical.  Obliging to the wishes of the villagers being my only real option,  I told the drummer to start up a beat, and to the surprise and delight of everyone, I belted out a famous Nepali pop song Gopal taught me on the trail.  On the last repeating line, “Ny nobunde lu” (“Don’t say no to my love.”), half of the villagers sang along, and the other half laughed and cheered in their most crazed, complete joyfulness yet.  That scared freshman girl gave the eager crowd the performance of a lifetime.

After about another hour of swinging and dancing, I now find myself in the perfect place.  My bed.  After adopting the roles of Emeril the master food-taster, Bozo the juggling clown, Evil Kineivel the daredevil swinger, gracious guest and the Nepali Ricky Martin, I’m glad to just be Doug, the exhausted, uneducated and bewildered yet speculative anthropologist.  It’s hard to make sense of the day I just experienced,  but I know that the villagers laughed a lot, I laughed a lot and laughing is good.  I think I’m going to go to bed now.  I wonder what the final day of the Dashain festival will bring.