Moving house and cultural adjustments

I have been reading this book lately called ‘Culture shock nepal’, which was written about 20 years ago by someone who was a Peace Corp Volunteer in Nepal. Peace Corp for those of you that don’t know is an American Government run organisation for young people to volunteer overseas. Peace Corp often get compared to VSO as they have a similar approach in terms of trying to integrate their volunteers into the community, but I always like to point out that we VSO volunteers are professionals and our organisation in an INGO not government led, slight rant.

So in this book I got right to the end of it and written in the last few pages, it talked about the different stages that foreigners go though in adjusting to the culture here and in the second stage it said, “During the next period those rose-coloured glasses you’ve been wearing slip off and shatter. From the highs of living in Shangri-La, you suddenly find yourself in purgatory. The country is the pits, your stomach hasn’t been right for a week, you can’t get a pizza, a newspaper, a letter. You can’t bear to look at another plate of rice. There’s dirt everywhere, no one understands a word you say and people can’t do anything anyway.” And I realised I had reached the second stage and thankfully was now entering the third stage, “you start to regain your even keel. You see the good and bad in Nepal, in your job, in yourself. Things about Nepali Culture interest you again, but you look at them with clearer eyes, taking in both the beauty and the ugliness. You even start to think you understand a little about what’s going on around you. You start to make judgements, not just react to things as terrific and terrible.” Whilst over the past few months I had riding the waves of euphoria, it kind of wore off and I was left feeling almost exactly as the book described. Moving house into this peaceful enclave has given me the mental and physical space to think about where I am at in terms of adjusting to the culture here. The culture here is incredibly complex because there are some many different ethnic groups and tribes which make up the population of Nepal each with its own language and cultural beliefs, some of which over lap some of which don’t and the caste system, which was abolished over 50 years ago is still very much practiced. Every thing is about status, if two new people meet in this culture one of the first questions will be about surname, as this will signify a persons caste and they will be able to work out who has the higher caste and thus the higher status, less so in the younger generation living in urban settlements, but very much practiced still in villages here.

To understand the difference in culture here I have to understand my own, the other day I was commenting on how loud the temple was blasting out its music (in my old house) at 12:00 at night and again at 4:00am and my friend said well that’s our culture and I thought, well our culture is binge drinking but it doesn’t make it right! Although I am respectful of Nepali culture there are some nonsense parts I don’t agree with. Like women who are menstruating having to sleep outside or in barn outside the house and not being able to cook for four days. And Brahmin’s only being able to eat rice which has been prepared by a fellow Brahmin (highest caste). The whole marriage thing I just can’t rationalise, either marrying who your parents want you to marry, usually of equal status, or deciding an age to get married and then start looking. The other day my friend (22) asked me if I thought he was too young to get married, I told him to wait until he was in love and then get married, he hadn’t thought about doing it this was round and was quite pleased with this idea.

I have an inquiring mind, maybe that’s part of British culture and I don’t accept things the way they are just because that’s the way they have always been done, but the majority of people do here. The western mind is trained to operate in a completely different way to that of Nepali people, so it takes a while to adjust to their way of thinking and to understand their rationale for decision making, for example its perfectly acceptable to not go to work if its raining, you can wait until it stops and then come. There are still some things I find difficult to do in this culture, communication is one of them, can you imaging working in a foreign country where simple communication is a challenge, like going to the shop to buy something, trying to be understood at work, because Nepali language is difficult for me to learn, I study nearly every day both language and the devanagari script and although I have made a lot of progress, I still have moments when I really get frustrated and can’t understand and feel myself breaking out in a sweat. And this is every day life.

“The only way to really overcome culture shock is to jump into the new culture and experience it. We can read and study about the new culture all we want, but the only way to really understand human relations is to take part in them, to become active members of our new community and culture. We can only truly learn and understand a new culture by experiencing it”. So over the next month I am going to set myself a few cultural challenges of doing things I feel uncomfortable doing, e.g. walking to work-yes I normally cycle to work because its faster and it reduces staring time but I am going to start walking once a week and see how that feels. So lets see where the next stage takes me, being the eternal optimist, probably some where fantastic and amazing, though even my optimism has recently been put to the test!

(Top photo is in Kathmandu in the 'Garden of dreams' and the bottom photo is taken in Tikapur park at a picnic I was invited to)