The people amongst whom I lived
Previous volunteers in Sundrawoti left behind a few articles about the Thami ethnic group, and reading them helped give me a better understanding of their culture. I thought some of what I learned was interesting enough to share, so this, along with a couple of upcoming posts will parcel out that information in digestible bits (and don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz at the end).
This post deals primarily with basic Thami identity, and is compose mostly of quotes drawn from Mark Turin’s Thangmi, Thami, Thani? Remembering a Forgotten People. ‘Remembering’ is a curious choice of words, since it makes it sound like the Thami are no longer with us, when in fact, the Thamis are a wonderful, living, and friendly people.
Turns out that previous sentence is, to the people it describes, insulting. Enter Mark Turin:
Faces of Bimeshwor
We saw about 20 faces in our time working with the Bimeshwor Youth Group – unlike in Mehele, it’s harder to break them down into regulars and irregulars:
Sundrawoti by the feet
Just for you, Michelle Kaplan
Priorities
Tonight is my last in Tevel B’Tzedek’s ‘Big House’ before I head home (though there is still a small backlog of posts, so please feel free to pretend I’m still in Nepal for another week or so). The Big House is in the Swayambhu neighborhood of the Kathmandu, which means our neighbors are mostly Buddhists and monkeys.
About a 5-minute walk from our house, and the first ‘tourist destination’ I visited when I first arrived in Nepal four months and one week ago, is Tin Buddha (literally ‘Three Buddhas’, but known in English as ‘Buddhapark’). To explain the name:
Photo courtesy of Dafna Satran
There is a sign posted by the entrance to the park that I would like to share with you (Photo evidence after the jump, if that’s what you’re into.):
This is to notify that the committee has been taking donation from the users to maintain clean and healthy environment around the area of this park. So, the users are kindly requested to help and make a generous donation on the following descriptions mentioned herein below particulars for using this park:
So far, so good. But we’re not done:
Particulars
1. For whole day worship inside the park, NRS. 4,000 /-
2. Film shooting (feature film), NRS. 2500 /-
3. Film shooting (Tele-Film), NRS. 1500 /-
4. Music video Shooting, NRS. 1000 /-
The sign doesn’t mention any discount for whole day worshipers disturbed by Tele-Film crews.
Funny, they’re not mentioned in Lonely Planet
Having seen the movie, and having just read the book, I imagine this ‘Adventure Travel’ company is a bit more Adventurous than what I’m looking for:
Maitighar
One day, I was wandering aimlessly on the road above Kalika Iskul when I noticed a woman I recognized from the area of the passals. I asked where she was going, she told me Maitighar, and invited me to come along. I asked how long it would take. An hour, she told me. I had a few, and I’d never been to Maitighar, so I agreed to tag along.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself in Maitighar. The houses in the area were much nicer than the ones I recognized from the Thami village in which I lived; I quickly realized that I was in an area populated by Brahmins. I stayed at the woman’s house while we waited out a rainstorm, hung out a bit with the headmaster of Jagaran Iskul in a nearby house, and finally headed for home.
That evening, Upama asked where I had gone. Maitighar, I told her, proud of my memory. A place called Maitighar? she asked. Yes, I assured her, confident I was getting the name right. She started laughing: Turns out, Maitighar is the Nepali word for the house in which a woman grows up. Yes, I had been to the woman’s Maitighar. But really, I had been in Sundrawoti, Ward 5, which is somewhat less exciting than a place that has a name.
Had I not learned the word Maitighar at that time, I might have been a bit confused when Rajkumari picked a song about a collection of a few houses near Sundrawoti as the second one her girls performed as part of their ECA:
Nepali menu
Take a look below for a fairly typical menu as far as Nepali restaurants go. Be sure to note the second-to-last item:
Whatever else you want to say about them, Nepalis definitely know their audience
Thami Dictionary
In Sundrawoti, we lived primarily among members of the Thami ethnic group. Some documentation left from past Machzorim, especially one article entitled Thangmi, Thami, Thani? Remembering a Forgotten People, by academic Mark Turin, helped me to better understand the community in which I lived. I will share a few of the findings of my reading adventures in short order, but in the meantime, this post is dedicated to my independent exploration of the Thami language.
The Nepal Population Census of 1991 found only 14,400 individuals who claimed Thami as their mother tongue. While this number is disputed (by, among others, Mark Turin), the essential point remains that few speakers of Thami are in existence today.
Because Thamis can generally speak Nepali, and outsiders generally can’t speak Thami, the two groups tend to communicate in the former. As a result, I picked up only a few words in Thami. The few words I did learn, however, I thought quite beautiful – and so without further ado, a brief Thami-English Dictionary, in which the author exhausts his Thami vocabulary:
English, Nepali, Thami
Good, ramro, hodu
Is, cha, cha
Is not, chaina, maho
Owl, [do not know], koolooloo
Please come, aunus, ra
Tasty, mito, sowhat
I would like to conclude with a bit of historical context gleaned from Mark Turin’s article:
In 1990, the Japanese linguist Sueyoshi Toba worked with informants to compile an 87-page unpublished [emphasis mine] Thami-English Dictionary. Whilst the list is but a cursory overview of the vast Thangmi lexicon, one must remember that it is still the first and only work of this type dealing with the Thangmi language.
What this means is that when I press ‘Publish’ on this post, I just might officially be the first person in history to successfully bring a Thami-English Dictionary to publication.
Parting shots
As our time drew near to leave Sundrawoti, the time also drew near to take a lot of group pictures by which to remember all the friends we’d be leaving behind. In my experience, the problem with being in a picture is that I tend to not be the one taking it. The problem is worse in a country where the average person I ask to take a picture may easily be doing so for the first time.
So in case you were curious, here’s what happens when a random resident of Sundrawoti is asked to take a group picture:
Second attempt (after a bit more direction):
And finally, Mehele Youth Group, courtesy of Upama (who nobly volunteered to play photographer):
Picture Day at Jagaran Iskul
Jagaran Iskul is the local primary school (nursery – Class 4) where I played teacher for a day. I came to take some pictures on the last day before a month-long break, when most kids had already stopped showing up so they could help their families plant rice. Let’s see if you can figure out what color the school uniform is:
Nepali 7-11
I can think of at least one brother who would strongly disagree with this advertisement
Note to copyright lawyers: I know here it’s with a ‘y’ and not an ‘ee’. In the Thamel, this is more likely a typo than a deliberate attempt to avoid infringement
ECA Group Picture
The field on which we played football and handball during ECA is – like everything else in Sundrawoti – gouged out of the side of a steep hill. That meant anytime the ball went out-of-bounds, it would end up 50 meters below. What came next, without fail, was easily the highlight of ECA. Around two dozen boys would immediately pitch themselves off the edge of the field in desperate pursuit of the ball. They rarely caught it before it came to a rest on its own, but at least they seemed to enjoy themselves doing so more than they did playing their stupid version of soccer. Or at least, I enjoyed watching it more than watching their stupid version of soccer.
At the end of Avigayil and Rajku’s big dance performance at Kalika Iskul, I called my boys together for a group picture. I lined up them along the edge of the field and counted down. The photos didn’t come out as I’d hoped – due too poor lighting and an insufficiently wide lens – but I’m mostly just relieved that nobody broke a leg:
Footbabalagan
One of my activities in Sundrawoti was Extra-Curricular Activities (ECA) at Kalika Iskul. At first, I went once a week with Avigayil to work with Class 4 and once a week with Tal to work with Class 5, and we did more or less the same thing both days of the week. I described a bit of what it was like in those early days here.
Then, we decided to introduce a bit of direction. We combined classes 4 and 5, and split them up by gender. Tal, Upama, and I took the boys to the enormous dirt field for a sports-themed ECA.
We began by playing soccer. This was, simply, a disaster. The rules of Nepali soccer are as follows: See the ball. Run after the ball. Kick the ball. No one plays defense – barely anyone tends the goal – because everyone is engaged in the same activity: trying to get as close to the ball as possible.
So our next time out, we tried running some soccer drills. The drills went well enough, but when we broke off to play an actual game, nothing changed. Playing soccer with Nepali boys was still stupid:
The next time we met, Tal was held up in Charikot by terrible weather, but Upama and I went ahead and ran ECA anyways. As an American, soccer isn’t really my thing, so I decided to try something else.
Alright guys, today we’re going to play handball.
Blank stares.
I understood. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t really remember how to play handball, since the last time I played was maybe 8th Grade. But whatever it is I taught, the game I introduced did wonders for cooperation. The key was the rule (I think this is handball, but it might only be only from Frisbee) that the player with the ball can only take up to two steps with it before he has to pass to a teammate.
At first, the boys began to play handball like they played soccer. They would get the ball, and immediately throw it at the opposing team’s goal. After about five minutes they realized this was stupid, and actually started to pass to one another.
Let me repeat that: they actually started to pass to one another. Something I hadn’t seen in the three or four times we’d played soccer took about five minutes to materialize while playing handball.
And moments later, another miracle. One of the teams scored. For the first time since we had started working with them – possibly, since soccer came to Nepal – one of the boys of Kalika Iskul scored a goal.
The elation on the boys’ faces – at least half of their faces – was evident. And it appeared twice more before we finished the game with a final score of 2-1.
Tal and I suddenly had a new plan for our previously-directionless ECA: we would teach the whole school how to play handball with the help of the fourth and fifth graders.
But first they would have to really learn the game. So we spent the next few activities playing handball. Each time out, we would introduce a new rule here, a new regulation there. No touching the person who has the ball. No touching the ball while someone’s holding it. No standing within X feet of the goal. All sorts of things to cut down on violence and encourage passing. And it was working. They were learning the game and having fun. We circled a date on our calendar on which we would introduce handball to the entire Kalika Iskul.
That day never came. We showed up a week before to discover one of the school’s balls missing and the other in the custody of students from a wide range of classes. When two balls were available, we would take one, and tell everyone else who wanted to play football to take the other and go elsewhere. But when we tried to take the one and only ball, for non-football purposes, no less, the disenfranchised students rightfully rebelled.
Tal and I headed home, our handball dreams dashed against the hard reality of the Nepali schoolyard.
In the meantime, Avigayil’s half of the ECA produced a two-and-a-half hour school-wide assembly bookended by dance performances choreographed by Rajkumari Miss:
At least someone from TBT ran a successful ECA.
Nepali Glossary, Hebrew Edition
Until I came to Nepal, the only languages I could even pretend to speak were English and Hebrew. Previous posts in this series primarily deal with Nepali as it relates to English. This post deals with Nepali as it relates to Hebrew.
I’ll begin with a few quick examples of mnemonics I could have only thought of because I know some Hebrew:
juk (Hebrew) – cockroach (roughly)
juka (Nepali) – leech
Unclear which species better encapsulates the essence of the shoresh ‘juk‘
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Kina (Nepali) – why
Kina (Hebrew) – jealousy
Why are you jealous?
It’s dumb but it works.
Bina (Nepali) – without
Bina (Hebrew) – understanding
You can read these mnemonics without understanding
Alternatively, without Rav Bina
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Hebrew helps me remember certain Nepali words without even bothering to find a mnemonic
Soap (English)
Sabon (Hebrew)
Sabun (Nepali)
Carrot (English)
Gezer (Hebrew)
Gajar (Nepali)
Buy (English)
K.N.E. (Hebrew)
Kine (Nepali)
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If a Nepali asks how you are doing, you can reply in one of many ways. Three of the most common are ‘tik cha‘, – OK – ‘sanchai cha‘ – healthy – and ‘ramro cha‘ – good. But if you are an especially hip and with it Nepali you can respond ‘babal cha‘ – awesome. If you are an especially hip and with it speaker of Hebrew in Nepal, you can take it a few steps further:
Mesibabal – awesome party
Babalagan – awesome mess
Sababal – awesome awesomeness
Babalaram – TBT’s farm manager in Sundrawoti
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In our early Nepali lessons, we asked Gopal if there are any English or Hebrew words we should steer away from in the presence of Nepalis. There is one, he told us.
Musika (Hebrew) – music
Musika (Nepali) – cunnilingus
There are a few other instances where it is important to be careful with your Nepali
Chekyo – hiding
Chikyo – having sex
And of course, cholne, the word our Nepali textbook said means ‘move’ but Gopal told us actually means לעונן
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English, Nepali, Hebrew:
Why, kina, lama/madua
Where, kaahaa/kohi, aifo
When, kehile, matai
Who, ko, mi
What, ke, ma
Which, kun, aize
How, kursary/kasto, aich
As you can see, Nepali question words start with K, English questions words almost all start with Wh, and Hebrew question words start with no discernible pattern whatsoever
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English – fish
Hebrew – dog
Nepali – matza
There’s just something about fish. Incidentally, if you say ‘fish’ with a Nepali pronunciation, it sounds like ‘piss’. So one of our big accomplishments in Sundrawoti was building a piss pond
Hami Yuva anthem
Every youth group that sent members to the Youth Seminar in Kathmandu a week and a half ago was responsible for sharing something with others who came. Our boys (and three girls) from Sundrawoti were responsible for penning a tune for the Hami Yuva (We are Youth) Youth Movement’s brand new anthem. So without further ado, I call on the boys and girls of the Mehele Youth Group to perform the anthem:
For those of you who want to sing along, Upama was kind enough to write me the lyrics:
Esrya garun duniya saralye
Garau bikash ye yuva saralye
Chariyeka yuva sathi, yek just vae lagye
K chahi hunna, hami sabai bikash prati lagye
Esrya garun… yuva saralye
Jimewari baadfaad gari
Karya pura garau
Yek jut vae samajlai pariwartan garau
Esrya garun… yuva saralye
Andhaviswas hatayera
Ritiriwaz jogau’Najanyelai sikaau sathi
Janye bata sikau
Esrya garun… yuva saralye
And for those of you who don’t speak fluent Nepali:
Even if the whole world is jealous,
Let’s do change through youth
If all youth are united
We can do development through youth
Even if… through youth
Divide responsibilities and
Complete the work
So let’s be united and change society
Even if… through youth
Remove superstition
Save the culture
Teach those who don’t know
Learn from those who know
Even if… through youth
The Prime Minister is coming!
The village was abuzz with the news. The Prime Minister is coming! Tomorrow. On his way to visit a hydropower project on the Upper Tamakoshi River, he would have to pass through Sundrawoti.
And the village was ready. The Sundrawoti Village Development Committee erected a sign to welcome him on his way through:
The sign reads:
2068-2-4 Upper Tamakoshi would like to welcome to our chief guest Prime Minister Jaganath Kanal and other guests
The big day came.
The Prime Minister did not. For some reason, he opted to take a helicopter to the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project over riding for ten hours along a bumpy, winding road.
Roxy lagyo
I took a day trip to Dolakha a few weeks ago. One of the highlights of my trip was visiting the Bimeshwor Temple, after which are named both the Bimeshwor Youth Group and the Bimeshwor Road (which runs from Dolakha, past Sundrawoti, to Singati), and which is home to some interesting iconography.
There is a very strict delineation between things that occur inside the gates of the Bimeshwor Temple and those that take place outside.
For instance, one activity that takes place outside the Bimeshwor Temple is taking pictures. Another activity that takes place outside the Bimeshwor Temple is wearing shoes.
One activity that takes place inside the Bimeshwor Temple is a lot of chickens losing their heads. But it wouldn’t do for all those chickens to bleed out inside the Temple, because then the entire inside of the Temple would be one big red sticky mess. So the chickens are removed to right outside the entrance to the Bimeshwor Temple, where I was standing with my camera permitted no entry.
So to recap, inside: no cameras, no shoes, and no bloody chickens. The outcome isn’t hard to see coming:
Given that this is Nepal, the most remarkable thing in this photograph is perhaps the brand of shoe. Rakshi (not to be confused with Rashi) is the name of local Nepal spirits. At one time I thought Rakshi’s distinctly gasoline-flavored palate was simply a mark of quality. I learned different when Micha showed up to our Purim party with a 5-liter container of Rakshi – that is to say, an old canister of gasoline. Rakshi, is of course, pronounced Roxy, and to be drunk in Nepali is to be rakshi lagyo.
I choose to mention this today because it happens to be the three monthiversary of Purim, and is directly related to my attempts at finding a Purim costume. As my costumes tend to be of the lazy variety, I decided that this year I would be rakshi lagyo: simple as finding a cheap Roxy knockoff somewhere in the Kathmandu, and I’d have time to concentrate on things I really wanted to do before Purim like writing a spiel. And if there’s one thing the Kathmandu does right, it’s knockoffs. Wrong
I spent an entire day walking around the Kathmandu, searching high and low for Roxy-branded items. Chaina. Seems Nepalis (unlike many Americans) aren’t all that interested in walking around with a shirt that proclaims them wasted.
So instead, I settled for the next lazy costume that popped into my head: nauseous. Or as you would say in Nepali, wak wak lagyo:
The mole on my face is for the sake of the aforementioned spiel
Sundrawoti before the Rain, Take II
We’ve already seen Sundrawoti after the rain, and Sundrawoti in the rain. Behold, for the sake of chronological completeness, Sundrawoti before the rain:
Nepali Glossary, Part II
In which I continue to share a few Nepali items of interest for those with little interest in learning Nepali
Hami – we
Hamro – our
Hamro radio – a cute name for a radio station based in Charikot (and, probably, in other places too)
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The best Nepali word (two below):
Color – Rang
Colorful – Rangychangy
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Dai – older brother
Bai – younger brother
Didi – older sister
Bahini – younger sister
Bihani/bihana – morning
Be careful when you say ‘in the morning’
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Agari – forward
Pachari – backward
Dui minet agari – two minutes ago
Dui minet pachari – in two minutes
In other words, two minutes forward means something that already happened, while two minutes backward means something that is about to happen
To my English-speaking sensibilities, these Nepalis have it all forward
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English – school
Nepali – eschool
This isn’t so much Nepali vocabulary as Nepali pronunciation of any s followed by a consonant. For example:
estop, estart, estrong, estar, esmart, estick, espeed (as in Jungle Espeed), estuck, esteer, estretch, estate, especial, estatus, estaple, estale, estation, esteam, estay, esteak, and so on.
Note: it is not that Nepalis are incapable of pronouncing s followed by a consonant at the beginning of the word.
Evidence: someone taught Rajkumari to say ‘stam’ whenever she doesn’t want to answer a question.
My favorite example of this eshtuyot is the Nepali word for lipstick, as listed in our dictionary: lipistik
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Chandra – Half moon
Jun – Full moon
Juna – Our next-door neighbor (girl)
Kira – insect
Junkiri – firefly, lit. moon insect
At the time we learned junkiri, the two words we knew were Juna and kira – discovering the other two forms in conjugation was a bit confusing
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I will conclude with an example that is a bit long and involved:
-ko – suffix meaning ‘s
Mordechaiko – Mordechai’s
Waahaa – him/her
Waahaako – his/her’s
Kun – which
Kun din – which day
Kun kun – which (plural), i.e.
Kun kun din – which days
Ko – who
Ko ho – who is it
Ko ko – who (plural), i.e.
Ko ko ho – who are they?
Now what if you want to say whose? So far, we’ve learned:
Ko – who
-ko – ‘s
So logically, you might try koko
But you would be wrong.
The problem is this sounds the same as
Ko ko – who (plural)
Solution: New word – kasko
Sano biralo II
My goal in mentioning the new cat was, of course, to give me an excuse to share pointless cat pictures. Unfortunately, since I chose to include single photographs in the above (or below, depending on how you look at it) post, I must now write about cats a second time in order to share a slideshow. Thanks, WordPress.
While I’m at a second cat post anyways, I’ll take the opportunity to share a related story:
I was in the chow mein passal when I noticed a pot of red stew (that red red stuff) I’d never noticed before. It looked vaguely like dal, but different enough that I had to ask what it was. Yo ke ho? I asked. What is this?
The answer from the kitchen made me jump back a foot. Biralo, he told me. Cat.
My mind flashed to my High School Hebrew Language teacher gleefully recounting how Tel Aviv solved its stray cat problem when Israel started importing foreign workers from Vietnam, but I didn’t think Nepalis were into that sort of thing.
Just to double-check, I asked one more time: Biralo ho? It’s a cat? Ho, he answered. Esko naam Happy ho. Its name is Happy.
I knew the chow mein passal had a cat named Happy who didn’t really take to people and mostly ran around underfoot. Now it seemed, had had.
Just then, a cat ran out of the kitchen, between my legs, and out the door. Happy.
The passal owner finally poked his head out of the kitchen, took a look at the pot, and confirmed, Dal. That made me Happy.
Here are a ‘few’ pictures of the new cat I took the day she appeared and the day after. I’ve done a good job not taking any more since, since the internet doesn’t really need more cat pictures:
Sano biralo
When we first moved to Sundrawoti, we quickly learned to fear for the safety of our food. So I suggested the only course of action I hoped would seem reasonable: we needed to get a cat, biralo.
As you might imagine, I had ulterior motives. There aren’t a lot of cats in Sundrawoti, which is puzzling because, really, someone should let them know there’s no shortage of mice.
I spotted one while we tramped around above Mehele for our water project:
I learned that the chow mein passal is home to a particularly unfriendly cat named Happy, and a visiting kitten spent one night trapped beneath a basket outside DBD’s house (I accidentally let him out; Timna helped me put him back inside before anyone noticed).
Suffice to say the situation was so dire that in Bandipur I stooped – literally – to play with three (admittedly cute) puppies:
All that changed a few weeks ago, when one of the passals that is not The Passal turned up a sano biralo (little cat):
Needless to say, my average trip to the Passal grew longer thereafter.
The poor cat has to put up with a lot, for instance a diet of dudh bhat (milk & rice), this:
and this:
I suggested to Tal that I might just take the cat home. He was clearly still thinking of our mice, since he pointed out we’re leaving in a few weeks and can’t really offer a stable home for a pet. I don’t think he quite understood what I meant by ‘home’.
Das big
One day, Dan Bahadur dai showed up at the house with a new tool to smack around his badmas kukuras:
I wonder if the chickens have some sort of genetic memory from 65 million years ago – that is, the last time ferns regularly grew to a size big enough to smack them around.
Eye of the Treiger 