Why I gave my goatskin jola to my mother.

I had been in Nepal for perhaps a bit too long. LAX looked formidable to me. There were more cars in the parking lot than in the entire country of Nepal. Everybody looked white, fat and healthy rather than dark, skinny and sick. The airport looked huge and sterile and had rest rooms that even had toilet paper available!

My no-fee US passport compliments of the US Peace Corps got me through immigration with no problems but it was a different matter with customs. The inspector gave me a suspiscious look and went through with grinding meticulousness every item I was carrying. He even sent the garlands of flowers I was wearing around my neck, given to me by friends and relatives at Tribuvan in Kathmandu upon departure, to some room in the back for testing. After an hour he grudgingly set me free to enter the US. This process usually took me two minutes rather than an hour. Why?

Later that afternoon I found myself at a shopping mall in Orange Country. I was buying two Levi jackets which I had promised friends back in Nepal I would send upon my arrival back in the US. I happened into a Penny's store. The sales girl looked at me, saw the white goat skin jola I was carrying and said, "OH! I LOVE your purse!"

The alarm bell went off in my head. I went to a full length mirror and here is what I saw. A man who usually weighed 180, weighing 140. I was wearing a "paijama", the long knee length shirt you see Indian and Nepali men wear -- this with jeans underneath and a pair of blue and gold Nikes. Around my neck hung five or six wilted leis. My hair was too long and I needed a shave. I had been travelling for 24 hours. And, hanging also from my neck was my white goatskin jola. I suddenly realized that I had been gone too long and had slowly taken on the customs, dress, and philosophy of a Nepali Buddhist. But now, in Orange County, USA, when I looked in the mirror I saw myself as an American saw me and it did not work for me here as it had back in Nepal.

This was the last time I ever wore a jola or paijama in the US.
 
C

Cliff Stamp

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Based on that post, I would have a fair amount of difficulty getting out of Nepal.

It is interesting in how radically different two cultures can judge identical appearances.

-Cliff
 
It is interesting, Cliff. The thing I found most interesting is how "native" I'd become without really realizing it.

Bill
 
GIF! GIF!
smile.gif


-Cougar Allen :{)
 
You better not be asking to see a gif of me, there is only so much you can even ask machines to take.

-Cliff
 
I have never seen them but they are probably hiding. You think they would be a bit friendlier with their own kind wouldn't you?

-Cliff
 
There's an idea, I'll try leaving it at home for awhile and see if I can convince them I am not that dangerous.

-Cliff
 
Ha, Ha; I can remember that joke about Cliff.-- The Yeti probably just feel a bit intimidated by someone bigger than them.

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Bill,

since, unfortunately but what else could you expect from the one of my kind, I have forgotten my own password, I could't resist the urge to join this discussion about going 'native' under my husband's one.

I've been working for UN peacekeeping mission for the past seven years... going 'native' was perhaps the worst qualification you could ever use for someone who finally got the hint about what was really going on in the exotic troubled location where the mission had been established.

To make the long story short, going 'native' usually ment a one way ticket back home. Noone was supposed to go 'native' and still be able to perform his duties as planned.

The best example for that beeing a noble English nobleman (a real one) who could not stand the misery of hunger in the besieged Sarajevo and decided to open the PX store to the 'natives' so that they could at least feed themselves and their kin - needless to say, he was sent back home before he realized what happened.

Going 'native', Bill, sometimes means no less than beeing a real hero, one of the kind we all know does not exist any more.

Love,

Nastasja
 
Of course my testosterone level would never let me carry a purse, but...

There's this Christian bookstore that carries zippered Bible covers with Currier and Ives style pictures on the front by a guy called Thomas Kincade. I like them a lot, especially the blue one with a picture of an angel on it. The large size will hold a Glock longslide, but unfortunately not a 12" Sirupati.

------------------
Russ S
 
Hi Nastasja:

I'm very pleased to see you back and thanks for your usual intelligent and insightful post.

"Going Native" in Nepal was a very natural, sure, slow, progressive evolution for me. Nepal gave me Buddhism which has brought me great inner peace. Nepal gave me my wonderful wife, Yangdu, who brings joy into my life on a daily basis. Nepal gave me friends and adopted brothers who gave me unconditional love. It seems only natural that I became one of them. When I was introduced to strangers by friends they would always comment, "Bill is at least half Nepali. Do you understand?"

Nepal and its people gave me more than I asked, more than I expected, more than I had hoped for. That beautiful and serene Himalayan land, troubled and poverty-stricken, gave all that it could give. Anything I have done, do, might do, to help the country and its people is simply trying to repay a debt that I know I will never be able to repay. They have given more to me than I will ever be able to repay in a hundred years. This does in no way make me a hero. It makes me a debtor trying to get even on an impossible debt.

Bill



[This message has been edited by Bill Martino (edited 21 March 1999).]
 
Bill,

In your "Pricing Policy" thread you said you knew what I felt when I looked into a young beggar’s eyes. I wasn’t sure you did know when I read your reply, but after this last post I believe you did.

Sometimes I wonder if we wealthy and powerful ones aren’t the dunces and the laggards on the wheel of life. Perhaps the poor and downtrodden are volunteers, helping us slow learners by giving us lessons like they gave to Nastasja’s English acquaintance.
 
Howard, I had a guru once who used to tell me many things. He would make a statement. No arguements, no discussion. This is wisdom, he would say. Take it or leave it. If you are not ready for it perhaps you can keep it until you are.

One of the many things he told me was this: Never search for a guru, your guru will find you and you may be surprised at who it is. Your post confirms him to be right as I have come to discover he always was.

Another thing he told me was this: Jesus said if you cast your bread upon the waters it will come back fourfold. He said, Jesus was correct in his philosophy but wrong on the return factor. It is not fourfold, it is tenfold, or a hundredfold, or a thousandfold but never as little as four. He was right again.

I had two friends in Nepal who were professional beggars. When the time is right I will tell their story.

Bill
 
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