Patan, Kathmandu, Nepal
Basundhara, Kathmandu, Nepal
Can I Call You My Sister
How would one feel if a random ten year old girl, you met twenty minutes ago, asks you "Can I call you my sister?" Back home this remark would confuse or maybe even upset someone. Something as special as sisterhood is separated from friendship. Sisterhood, versus family, is arbitrary. One has friends and one has family. In Nepal there is a strong sense of unity within the community. Everyone is related. One’s best friends sister, well she is one’s sister as well. The simple feeling of being a foreigner in this country, the rush of emotions that arise, when a local girl asks "Can I call you my sister,"... that is an indescribable feeling. Although on the other side, if these children ran up to one, some might wonder ,are they going to be begging or trying to take my stuff ? In reality these children were wanted attention, all seven of them.
It began after a long day at the program house, when I had language class in the morning, a deep group discussion, then lunch, and another language class, writing script, and then ISP (independent study, I’m did photography). After two long hours talking to my mentor, it was over and already 4 o'clock and curfew is at 6, so my assignment from him was to go out and take photos in a street photography style, which gave me only had two hours to shoot. I just shot photos on my walk home which has plenty of interesting photo opportunities. So as I’m shooting this corner, a young girl walked out of her house right as I’m shooting the photo. In my head I thought, alright I got a nice candid action shot time to move along, so I continued walking past her. Right as I stepped away she turned to me and said, “Where are you from?” I told her I’m from America, and she asked, “is it pretty there?” And I responded in a way where I was not making it seem degrading, so I replied “Yes we have some nice parts of our country the same as you have nice parts of your country.” As we are speaking, another two young girls walked out. One, around the age of six, in just pajama pants, bare chested, with a shirt in her hand, and another girl who had to have been about 1 or 2 years old completely unsupervised except for the attention of this 10 year old girl. Naturally, I saw an opportunity for some photos. I asked if I can take their photo, and they smiled largely and exclaimed “Yes! Yes! “ so I did exactly that. As I was shooting them another girl came out, a friend of the first girl. She came along and I began to shoot her as well.
Then the first girls brother comes out in a blue Avengers shirt. I began to shoot him. Then another boy came out (I don't recall what he was wearing, which is my main form of description for these kids) and asked for his photo. I snapped a few, then I showed him also how to take a photo, so as the camera was around my neck, he went under the strap standing parallel to me and put the strap around his own neck as well, and began shooting photos of his friends with my arms around him showing him how to work the camera, all of us completely comfortable as if we’ve all known each other. This boy was 9-12 years old. As we were playing, another young boy in a yellow long sleeve shirt came out and wanted his photo taken as well, so I shot a few pictures. Then the boy shot a few and after we were all talking, kids pulling and tugging at my kurta for photos, the original ten year old girl,wearing a pink Mickey Mouse shirt, graciously invited me into their home for Chiyaa (tea) and I accepted.
She pulled my hand into a 7x7 cement room, with a pink striped curtain for the door, and she confidently showed me around their house (a single room). She asked me to sit on her bed. As I sat I was surrounded by little faces all asking me questions at once: How is America? How old are you? How many people in your family? What are your parents names? What do they do for work?, about everything all at once. While they shouted questions at me, another older girl that was in the room introduced herself. I don’t remember her name but she was 16 years old. We were in a small cement box with 7 or 8 kids. The eldest handed me the tea, I wasn’t sure if it was safe or not but I drank it regardless (and didn’t get sick), but I sipped tea and conversed in broken English and a little Nepali with these children. As we were talking boy two was still shooting photos all around their house, most of them blurry because the lighting and settings were off, but I still have documented evidence of the simple life some people live here in Nepal.
Coming from a higher class Nepali homestay family, I hadn’t yet seen this side of living in Nepal. The kids then went along asking me about my watch and earring and how much I had paid for all of them and where I got such luxurious things. I told them I got everything back at home, and the kid in the blue avengers shirt took the watch off my wrist and placed it on his, I helped him fasten it. He sat there observing the way it looked on his own wrist, and tried reading the numbers on the watch, which were upside down because he put it on wrong. Eventually, their mom finally popped in the room to see what all the chaos was, and I introduced myself to her. She introduced herself to me and tried asking me questions but only spoke Nepali so there was a strong language barrier, mind you again the young ten year girl spoke nearly perfect english which was very impressive. But we didn’t get past “what’s your name” between the mother and I, but we shared friendly gestures. The mom motioned to my hand (my left hand, missing two fingers, and scarred on the back from a car accident in 2010), and asked what had happened. I told the young girl what had occured, and then she translated to her mother, then they all surrounded me looking at and touching my hand. After finishing my tea, and meeting the mom the kids wanted to play with me, so I began leaving their house to go play with them outside.
As I sat down right outside the house to put my shoes on, I got dog piled by the kids again telling me to hurry and put my shoes on faster so we could play, (I told them I had to leave in ten minutes), so once I was able to strap my shoes on we stepped outside to an alley right around the corner from their house. They asked if I knew how to play two games, I forgot their names, but it basically was tag and hacky sack (I didn’t know that then until we began playing a bit later) , I said no, so she said “Ok come see my room”, so she showed me another fairly small room surrounded by cement by where she lived with her mom, brother and herself sleeping on a twin size bed. There was a small stove set-up to the left of the room with a bunch of dirty dishes on the floor tainted with daal bhat (daal is a type of lentil soup and bhat is rice) and potatoes. I took my shoes off when she ran into the room and quickly tried to fix up their room\house before I walked in, then once I entered she jumped on her bed and said “Come! Come! Look at my family!” She showed me her school photo and a photo of her dad which were the only decorations on the plain dirty walls of her house. These children were so proud and happy with how little had and really made me think of back home how I almost never seemed satisfied with the massive amounts of useless items I have.
Shortly after one of the little boys comes running into the room with a small plastic golden trophy and showed off his token of accomplishment and proudly pushed it into my hands with a big smile on his face. Again, such a small token of plastic meant something so great to this kid, and it was beautiful to see this firsthand. We then headed back outside and it was a tornado while I was trying to get my shoes on. As I bent down, the one year old girl put her hands up and grabbed my shoulders wanting to be picked up and the others were pulling my kurta forward trying to get me out faster so we could play. I finally got my shoes on and the ten year old girl explained the game, which ended up being tag, so we ran around screaming and laughing in the alley way chasing each other in circles. After a few minutes, of that I was out of breath and it was close to curfew, so it was time for me to leave. I informed them about my time for departure and I walked back to their house to retrieve my class books.
As I was about to step in the kid stopped me and told to wait one second, and the little boy darted in and in two seconds darted back out carrying all my books which were about half the kids size and handed it over to me with a smile all the way to his ears. The kids walked me to to the corner leading to the main road towards my house. I was holding hands with the ten year old girl, and the others were holding onto my kurta and sleeves. We got to the corner and the ten year old girl stopped and looked me in the eyes and said “Can I call you my sister?” Which took me by surprise but without hesitation I said “Call me Didi” which means older sister in Nepali. This experience I can honestly say has opened my mind in a whole new way. I have never felt so connected to another cultural community, in such a personal way.
