mileshoney-blog

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Language

I am a big proponent of the idea that you can deduce a whole lot about the way a people thinks and behaves from the language that they speak. I do not mean this in terms of the Sapir-Warf hypothesis which holds that the grammatical structure of a language fundamentally effects the way that you think (which has been proven, experimentally, to be false) - but rather that by understanding an individual's choice of words, especially when translating into another language, you can understand a massive amount about the thought processes behind these choices. If Wittgenstein was correct and culture is but a language game, then by looking at the language people use we can see what rules each culture is playing by.

In Nepali there are a few aspects of the language that have stood out to me as revealing a great deal about their culture, and especially a kind of deep pragmatism that is evident throughout. This pragmatism is obvious when it comes to the way that Nepalis work, but listening to the way that they speak and interact with others I can see that this is not only contained to the work environment; it shines through in so many other situations.

The first thing I noticed in this vein was the way which my Nepali friends would respond to me saying that I was going to do something with "you can do that". This was really odd at first; it sounded like they were giving you permission when you didn't need or want it from them. E.g. I would say to my counterpart "I am going to take a shower" to which he would reply "you can go". The more I picked up on this the more I realised that it was a response that all of the Nepali guys would have for pretty much every statement of intent. Although it seemed to me as a native English speaker as them giving permission for something, to the Nepalis this is merely a way of showing positive assent.

This constant use of "can" not only showed me the direct, to the point pragmatic attitude the Nepalis had, it also revealed an aspect of English I had not given much thought to: our heavy reliance on conditional statements. Without thinking a huge amount of the questions we ask of each other are phrased as conditionals - e.g. "could you pass me that?" or "what would you do?". This speaks to our own cultural tendency towards both individualism and politeness, it seems to me that the questions are phrased in such a way as to invite another to give their own opinion on things, even when it is not warranted or necessary.

It is worth noting that conditional phrasing is one of the more advanced aspects of any language and I am conscious of the fact that some of my Nepali friends may not be aware of how to use this grammar - however there are some that definitely do, and even still it is rare for them to use an open ended conditional question. I do not believe I have once heard them ask if I "could" do something, it has always, without fail, been a "would you..." question. This shows just how uncompromising this Nepali pragmatism is, that even when using a "more polite" way of phrasing a question these are still direct calls to action and not an open ended opportunity in the way that we would use the same language.

When learning Nepali myself, a thing that struck me is the apparent lack of a word for "please". This is not strictly true of course and there is a whole host of grammatical aspects of Nepali to convey respect and politeness - but there is no one word that can be directly translated from "please". The closest words would be dinus (pronounced din-oos) meaning "please give me" or, more accurately, "can I have". I find this interesting as it again speaks to the sense of pragmatism inherent in Nepali culture. Often English is admonished abroad for our overuse of Ps & Q's, and I have drawn a few laughs here for thanking people for small things, but the Nepali does stand in contrast to the English equivalent. "Dinus" is not as empty a platitude as "please" is. Dinus serves a genuine, not merely linguistic, function.

There is a final aspect of Nepali I have recognised just recently that is also very interesting. In the vernacular there is effectively a lack of any way to say that you are in need of something. For example where it would be common for us to say something like "I need sleep" or "I need food" - to directly translate this would mean that you are making a formal request from someone for these things. If you said "I need food" to someone in Nepali it would not come across as expressing hunger, but a genuine mortal need to get food from the person you are talking to. So in everyday conversation when we would say that we need something as a request, e.g. "I need the pliers" the only way to say this in Nepali would be "please give me the pliers". Again this just shows how direct and to the point these people are.

Language is such a wonderful window into the culture of a place and a people, moreso than anything else, yet it is also the most complicated thing to truly appreciate. You can learn so much about any culture by looking at the way that the people talk; even your own. If you have never thought about it, maybe try to take a minute to think about the way you talk, and how much you can see about your own culture by doing so.

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Impact

As I sit and watch the blue-green flames lick up from the pile of burning plastic I cannot help but think about the impact I am having on this place. I shift position to avoid the noxious carcinogens billowing up into the air from the rubbish fire we lit about half an hour ago. We have yet to burn through one of the four large black bags of plastic detritus picked from the ground around the community in the past weeks. As more and more of the plastic catches the smoke grows thicker, penetrating my face mask filter. I cough, splutter, and must move away to find fresh air. I do not. All around us stinks of the unmistakable acridity of burning plastics.

It is hard not to feel hypocritical when burning litter after talking to the local community about the devastating effects of climate change and the causes of this, not least plastic pollution; but there is simply no other way to get rid of the rubbish. There were no public bins here when we arrived, with each household dealing with their own waste as they see fit. Unfortunately, the only options available are to burn it or dump it. There is a recycling system for glass alone here, and that is only collected once every 6 months. It is an unfortunate and completely unforseen impact of industrialisation that, because most consumer goods now come in plastic packaging, communities like this one are now drowning in said plastic.

It does feel especially hypocritical talking about climate change to a group of people that I have flown thousands of miles to be able to talk to. Knowing how much of a carbon footprint I have left getting here it is not without guilt that we must admit that a lot of the community's recent problems have absolutely nothing to do with them - yet they must deal with the impact of a changing climate regardless.

Despite this knowledge, the community members I have spoken to do not begrudge the outside world for bringing problems to them. They rather stoically accept the problems as a fact of life and instead of dwelling on them, strive for a practical solution. It is honestly staggering the extent to which we have found the community devote themselves to the project work. I can only hope to face my problems in such a forthcoming and direct manner.

In truth, learning this is one of the main motivations I had for coming to Nepal. I did not set out with the soul goal of having a great impact on the community here, and I think that is the point of this program - how great of an impact can this community have on me. My main reason for volunteering here has always been to learn from the community how they deal with their problems, and so how I can use the same approach in my own community and my own life.

In this respect, already this place has had such a huge impact on me. I never know how much we can accomplish with so few resources, that you can do so much against all of the odds, that you can have so much and yet own so little. This place also goes to show that it is possible to live without the insane impact we have on nature daily (an impact we are very dimly aware of). Given a bit of thought, we can live, and live well off locally grown and sourced produce. You do not need to have such an impact on the environment. All it takes is a little thought, a little compassion, and a little more awareness of what is around you.

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What am I doing here?

After spending a few weeks now on placement I finally feel able to properly explain a livelihoods project, it's impact and why it is so important. This may sound odd, how could I have come here not knowing these things? Well as I shall try and elucidate, the more you understand about the concept of a livelihood, the deeper and more esoteric it becomes.

So what is a 'livelihood'? Undoubtedly you will have heard the term before, probably to refer to your own means of income, but this is not the whole story. 'Livelihood' refers not only the income or the means but also says something of the profession. It lies somewhere between profession, lifestyle and raison d'etre. Think of the term 'Doctor' for example: this term does not simply describe their job, but also their way of life, background, upbringing, education and even their personality. Now compare this to 'Farmer'. Again the term implies so much about the person, even of the stereotypes to our eyes are somewhat negative. The difference in these stereotypes, iregardless of their truth, shows how the concept of a livelihood not only tells us about a person's life, but also contains a qualitative judgement on that life. So to improve a person's livelihood is, in effect, to improve their life

I am volunteering with Raleigh International, a sustainable development charity aiming to create change in the world through affecting the youth. In Nepal, Raleigh is partnered with Goreto Gourkha, a government funded charity initiative that aims to directly improve the livelihood and therefore lives of the rural subsistence farmers of this region. It is from Goreto Gourkha that we receive the tools, resources and targets to deliver the livelihood projects.

A Livelihood project is shorthand for livelihood diversification, which aims to help local subsistence farmers to start profiting off their farming work. Subsistence farming is, to put it simply, farming to survive. This is not in any way a negative thing, indeed it is the way the vast majority of the human race lived for thousands of years prior to industrialization, so we must be careful of our western biases when I talking about communities like Duree. Farming here is so different to the large scale commercial farming done in Europe that it is not a fair comparison to try and think of them in the same way.

We also must be fair to the communities in how we refer to them. These are not "poverty stricken" areas as you may see in so much of the marketing for large NGOs in the west, but rather due to economic and natural limitations, the communities are simply less or under-developed. It is a misnomer to call the villages 'poor'. Indeed Nepal as a whole has a huge potential for 'wealth' through its abundance of natural resources, but these have not been tapped yet due to many factors. We also must be mindful of the urbanised, industrialised, western lense we are using to look at the communities and their challenges.

Most of the challenges and issues faced by the rural communities of Gorkha can trace their origin back to the fact that they have been thrust into a rapidly industrialising world when they do not have the infrastructure to cope with all that this entails. One issue is that it is extremely difficult to actually turn a profit from subsistence farming.

As I said above subsistence farming is farming to survive. If you include all labor costs, the majority of people in my community are either breaking even or actually turning a loss. The main produce of this community is corn, millet and rice. The rice they eat. The millet they brew into alcohol and drink. The corn they make into feed for their goats, which they raise, then eat with the rice. There is prescious little time left over when farming these things, and nowhere near enough time for more profitable activities.

Now talking about profits may seem contradictory to what I have said above about the western lense - however, subsistence farming has some major issues that this would eliviate. For example, if you are farming rice to feed yourself, and the rains come very late like they have this year, then less rice can be planted, less rice can be harvested, and your family has less food until the next harvest. When we have conducted surveys with the members of my community, not a single respondent said that they had enough food for their families for the full 12 months last year. If they had also had a cash crop available, then the families would have been able to use the profits from the sale of these to then buy more of their food, and rely less on their harvests.

With the changing climate the world over, the fact is that these harvests will become more and more unreliable. The community members know this already, they are seeing less rain in the monsoon season, hotter summers and more unpredictable weather than they ever had before, so they absolutely require more economic stability. Hopefully through our shared efforts we can help the community gain this stability they so desperately need.

But how?! I hear you ask. This livelihood project aims to bring the tools and resources to rural farmers needed for them to start growing cash crops, and so to turn their way of life into a business venture. We are currently working on building polytunnels - essentially giant greenhouses - which will be used to grow crops such as tomatos. These will be harvested in the off season, which means that the farmers will be able to enter into the market against larger and more established farms without great difficulty.

This is not all however: these tools And resources shared with the community are also mental tools, including training and mentorship (provided by qualified trainers, not the volunteers) which will strengthen the knowledge and skills of the locals to help them turn their way of life into a profitable business venture.

It may seem strange from the western view, but it is true; most of the locals here do not see their farming work in an economic sense. It is not a livelihood to them. Not yet.

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Monsoon

The monsoon has come.

Monsoon rains reign over local heads, local lives, dry river beds released and relief flows through us, carried on a cool gentle breeze. The sounds is a wave cresting in slow motion, as the pitter-patter turns to a steady clatter I feel the ease spread throughout the community. Not the promise of relaxation but rather more toil, as finally they can break the soil and plant their very souls deep down in the sodden, flooded ground. The rainfall grows louder now, drowning out all other sound, and it is clear, there is power there, floating in the air. Each drop is part of a larger force, containing the promise of life yet to be brought forth into a world where people live or die on the promise that these clouds will cry.

My condolences go out to the families of those who have lost their lives in the recent flooding.

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7 Days in Dudee

Or, Acclimatisation and difficulty doing so.

Usually 'steping out of your comfort zone' really means stepping into somebody else's. This placement is anything but. I am confronted with an entirely different way of life with no choice but to adapt; which has proved a greater challenge than I ever imagined. Not that this is a bad thing, it is just so incredibly different to the mode of life (privilege) I am used to.

Waking up at first light here does not mean dawn; it means you wake when dawn is yet a blush on the horizon, when the very first rays of daylight creep over the hills, when the haze of night gives way to an array of surreal purples and deep violets. And you must wake up at first light of you stand a chance of getting any work done before the heat hits - and oh boy does the heat HIT.

Waking up early is hard enough for me anyway without the restless nights that inevitably precede morning. A thin straw-filled mat is all that separates me from the rough, uneven wood that juts out from the frame of the bed. It's like the princess and the pea if there were a hundred peas and the peas were splinters. Extreme fatigue, it seems, will be the only path to a good night's rest.

But I am happy. I could suffer all the sleepless nights in the world to be able to watch the mists roll up these hills every morning. And I do mean up. As we walk down the hillside to the centre of the community we see the surrounding trees perspire, giving off huge wafts of vapour. These collect in thick reams of fog that, caught in an updraft, drift into the heavens, attempting to summit the cliffs above us, but they do not quite reach. The clouds separate from the hills and float away listlessly, suspended in the air as if hung there. They seem impossibly low, lower even that the houses of the community.

The community itself, while very small, does somehow still feel crowded. It is spread out, and yet built up. The clusters of houses are set so far apart that from one end of the village the blue tin roofs of the other clusters are just barely visible, specks of vibrant colour poking up from the cornucopia of greens of the dense forest around them. Within each cluster of houses though the buildings are all well within spitting distance of each other, as I hear the hwock of tobacco chewers from my room as they pass through the narrow pathways that criss-cross between them.

The households are closer even still. Beginning our project work with surveys we find that everyone living in the the cluster in my direct vicinity is somehow related to the family 'Ale'. This is not true of the entire village however - it is easily apparent that the divides between housing clusters extend well beyond just geographic separation. There is ethnic family and economic divides that are all mixed up with the extremely complicated and highly sensitive traditions of the caste system.

The rains still have not come, but they will, and soon. The clouds have been growing by the day, the winds more menacing. The morning mists seem thicker, more dense, almost pregnant. The locals are waiting with baited breath; they are already several weeks behind on planting their rice fields, and for a subsistence farmer this could very likely result in a poor harvest, and going hungry for months on end. This is a very real threat the people here have to live with, and one that I am seeing first hand.

We really do not know how lucky we are in the west, not to have to worry about our own food supplies. This is something I am still trying to come to terms with, but hopefully working with the locals to deliver this project will help to create some lasting economic stability for the community as a whole. I am very much looking forward to working together with the villagers in the weeks to come.

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First impressions of Dude (pronounced "doo-ray"), the village I am living in for the next 9 weeks

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Kathmandu

Beauty in everything, even the seemingly hideous, packed roads prickle senses, the buildings tall almost tempting to fall, distant mountains shadow distant dreams, temples to this goal on every street promise escape through education. By the river incense in the air barely covering sick smells of sewage and sadness for lost summers of a nations youth, truth of the devistation writ large on the face of this city. Exposed brick covered with colour, with dust. The dust, the dust, the everpresent dust, a still bleeding wound from the ripple in the earth's crust, still felt, still feeling.

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Big up Tango group 3, good luck out there in the wilderness!

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Packed and ready... Next stop Nepal!

Big thank you to the Avnet family for my new boots! 😁

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Welcome

Hey welcome to my tumblr! I will be using this to post about travel and adventures and all that good stuff. 

Tomorrow I will be leaving the UK for Nepal for 3 months, doing an ICS volunteer placement with Raleigh international. 

Stay tuned for updates, insights and pictures from my travels.

Thulo Sansarama!

(which loosely translates from Nepali to mean “Into the big wide world”)