Strange White Folk

"England batta? Ko?" I asked, confused. It was the day after getting back from Labdong, a tiny rural village in Sikkim, and I had just returned from a trip to the bazaar. My hajuraamaa (grandmother in my host family), who is pushing eighty and has one tooth, had babbled something about people from England. I managed to get a few more details past her slur—they had phoned before, had been here that morning, and apparently they were going to come back—before she gave me a cup of tea and a pancake and wandered off.

I sipped my sugary drink confused. White people? Here, in my home? We occasionally see other westerners in the Internet café or on the streets around Kalimpong, but with a few exceptions it has been our habit to avoid contact with them. This is has been my experience everywhere I have been in Asia. No one wants to feel like a tourist, and other white people wearing similar clothes and taking the same pictures with the same kinds of cameras all serve to kill the sense that one is an adventurer, an explorer in the Mysterious Orient. Deep down, every travelling westerner wants to be Marco Polo, even me. So for the most part we all keep our distance, not wanting to break the spell.

But over time, as I have gotten used to things here and no longer feel so out of place, I have developed the same sort of staring curiosity towards white people that many Nepalis exhibit, albeit to a lesser degree. What are they doing here? Where are they from? What kinds of lives have brought them to the same place as me, here on the other side of the world? And, now, why the hell were they coming to my house, the very last place in the world that I expected to have to deal with other white folk?

They showed up again right as I was finishing, a whole pack of them. Heavy set mother in a hideous blue suit-dress, embarrassed fifteen-year-old son and shameless twelve-year-old daughter who poked at the dogs and chickens. They also had a middle aged Nepali man with them, who upon seeing me and the last of my tea called out "An err are oo um?" It took me a second to realize that he had actually spoken in English, but broken by a thick Welsh accent. Another second later and I had pieced back together the slightly accusatory question: "And where are you from?"

"America," I said. "New York."

"Ow are oo lick init ear?" How are you liking it here?

"It's great." I cast around the yard, hoping to spot some help, but there was no one. So I stood there, feeling more awkward than I have since my first days here when I didn’t speak any Nepali, and listened to the man explain that he and his family were from Wales, and that they are here in Kalimpong visiting family—which apparently included my hajuraamaa, his aunt. My hajuraamaa came out of the house and asked me to go get some chairs from inside. When I responded in Nepali, the father of the clan said "Oh look, he speaks Nepalese!" and leered at me as if I were a laboratory specimen. I got the chairs. We sat.

"How are you liking the food here?" I was doing better at understanding his accent now.

"It's great." Great.

"I ran the New York Marathon, you know. When I was in the army. And the Hong Kong Marathon. That was when I was in the army."

"That's great," I replied, grinning weakly. He chatted for a moment in Nepali with my hajuraamaa while his wife and kids looked at photo albums. It was a weird feeling, being one of the only ones to understand both sides of the conversation here---though their accents meant that I managed to pick up about equal amounts of Nepali and English. When his daughter showed him a page from Julianne's album, the student who stayed with my family last semester, he broke into a sudden and horrible rendition of "Country Road." The embarassed son gave me an embarassed look.

"It's important, inn'it, seeing how the other side lives?" The wife was talking to me. "Makes us realize how loocky we are. We have refrigerators and washing machines, and they have so little." I fought back a cringe. I had thought such thoughts before myself, but coming from her, talking about "the other side," they sounded wrong, dirty.

"Still a bit early in the day, inn'it?" She was talking to me again.

"Er, no. Is it? For what?" It was midafternoon.

"For brandy, of course!" the father said, and dashed into the house to find brandy.

At that moment my bhaai (younger brother) Ganess arrived home from school, and I quickly walked over to his room above the cowshead. I poked my head in, and Ganess nodded towards the house with a questioning look.

"AnauTho seto manche," I said by way of explanation. Strange white people. We stood there for a few seconds, not really wanting to go deal with them.

"Ghass katna man laagyo?" my bhaai said, his face brightening. Feel like cutting grass?

"Laaagyo," I agreed with a grin. At that moment cutting forty kilos of plant matter to feed the cows and goats seemed much more normal and much easier to face than chitchat with my host family's long lost Welsh relatives. We grabbed a pair of sickles and the large doko (basket) and headed out before we could get roped into further conversation.

Ganess isn't actually a member of my host family. He is sort of adopted. There is a practice in India and Nepal where children of poor families—and Ganess's family is very poor—will be sent to work for a somewhat wealthier family who can afford to feed them, house them and send them to school. How these servant kids get treated varies greatly, but from what I can tell Ganess has it fairly good with my family. My aamaa (host mother) and two siblings mostly treat him like a member of the family, albeit one that has to do more than his share of work in the house and fields. Of course, Ganess still loves his real family, and is always bouncing with anticipation when he gets to go visit them on holidays.

As we squatted amongst the weeds, grabbing handfuls of cellulose and cutting the stems with the battered sickles, Ganess t0ld me that he might be leaving the Karki's residence in a couple months, when the school year ends. He sounded excited at the prospect of living with his real family again, but it is a mixed blessing. Ganess is twelve, and around this age school starts getting expensive. If he goes home, the chances are good that this will be where his education stops. He has five siblings, and his family just can't afford to send him to school past his current grade or even feed and house him if he isn't spending most of his time helping keep the family afloat. I told him that he should continue going to school, that education is the most important thing, and he agreed. He likes school and wants to keep going as long as he can, but unfortunately it isn't really his choice.

On the way home, carrying the basket packed full of grass and leaves on my back, I got to thinking about the Welsh people, and what the heavy woman in the hideous blue suit-dress said. She was right, of course: it is important to understand how other people live. But not so that we learn to appreciate our washing machines and refrigerators. Don't get me wrong I think those things are great, and every day I see how much easier my family's life would be with them. Still, the way she said it felt slimy, intolerably judgemental. If there is one thing I have learned from living here, it is that there is no "other side." Us-and-them paradigms are never very accurate. For all the differences in culture and lifestyle, people everywhere are all pretty much the same, all just people.

But there is a reason to come here and see how the people live, a better one than coming back feeling warm and fuzzy and grateful for our wealth and our appliances. And that's because it sucks: it sucks that Ganess's life is not his own, that he is so limited by conditions he did nothing to create. I don't want to be preachy, but it is hard to know that I have so many opportunities and resources at my disposal and still feel helpless to do anything to help Ganess. If I started an NGO, got a job in development, what are the chances that my efforts would reach Ganess in any meaningful way? And if I could just give him money, found a way to put him through school or take him to America, there would still be millions of great kids just like him who would be left behind.

The white folk left not long after we got back, and my aamaa set down to cook a second meal for her, Ganess, and myself. It was late by the time we got to eating, and as the three of us chewed our food under the dim light bulb, we got to talking about gifts. To meet the Welsh relatives my aamaa had worn a dress that Julianne, the previous student, had given her. She loves the things that the other students have given her—clothes and jewellery, pretty things—but prefers to keep them safe and clean and rarely wears them. I asked what our visitors had given today. Money, she said, and smiled sadly.

Ganess grinned at me as he got up to wash off his plate. "AnauTho seto manche!" he cheered.

My aamaa grinned too. You're Ganess's favorite student brother, she told me fondly. None of the others talked with him much.

I felt a brief surge of pride as they both beamed at me, but I still couldn’t help but feel a bit sad and helpless. Ganess's situation still sucked. Even if I had been nice to him, went to cut grass and chat with him, it didn't change anything. Ganess's future was just as uncertain, and his situation just as intolerable. But it was something, I suppose, to have been a friend or a brother and not just another strange white folk.

I sucked it up and gave him a brotherly smile. "Ekdham raamro," I said. That's great.