Nepali Nuances
We’ve now been here for 7 months….can’t believe it! We’ve learned a little about Nepali culture – some which we love, some which…we may grow to love?
1) Yocking spit in the street and blowing your nose so that the snot sprays out onto the road. It is a common experience to be walking along the road and hear the sound of someone sucking back their phlegm in their throat and spitting it out on the ground. Sometimes you see them, sometimes they are behind a wall. The worst for our unaccustomed eyes to this cultural habit is seeing ladies do it. A beautiful young woman in a brightly coloured sari looking great in the morning sun, until…suck it back and spit it out! Or walking towards an old lady, looking cute and cuddly in an old woman kind of way as she walks slightly bow-legged down the road, makes a sound which you think could never come from such a small frame, and spits out a big golly beside her. On a cultural note, many Nepalis believe that they need to get rid of the pollutants inside of them – and it is definitely better out than in. As part of Hindu culture many people get up each morning and get rid of their phlegm as an act of ritual purity. A side note to the fact that many Nepalis do not use handkerchiefs and tissues for their snot is that the idea of keeping dirty body fluid in your pocket is wrong….I can see their point kind of…in the west we politely blow the snot into our tissue and then leave it in our pocket for the rest of the day (possibly even reusing the same tissue)…maybe there is something in just getting rid of it from the body once and for all? But I won’t try it…Zoe would kill me!
2) Time for relationships. Nepalis have more time for each other. The pace of life in Nepal is much slower than back home. Perhaps part of it is the work ethic. But people seem to have much more time for family and friends. It is common at all times of day to see groups of people sitting outside a house or shop sitting and chatting. Saturday is the Nepali ‘day off’ and most shops are shut, the streets noticeably quieter, and there is a sense of community as people mill around their houses together. It is something that we have lost in Australia by not having a ‘day off’ in common without work. Quite apart from God giving us a day of rest to enjoy fellowship with Him and others, it makes heaps of practical sense to slow our pace of life a little so that we can stop and smell the roses in bloom around us. The pace of life in Sydney is manic, and I too often had many tasks to do, but not enough time for people. Will that change when we get home, or will I slip back into the culture of busyness?
3) The place of healing in church culture….In Nepal there is no question of whether God heals today. Since the beginnings of the growth of the Nepali church in the 1950s there have been many cases of healings going hand and hand with the preaching of the Gospel. In many cases, as it was also with the early church, healings have been a tangible witness to the in-breaking of God’s kingdom into the world, and a sign of what is to come at the end of this age. Our pastor shared with us today about a man who has become a member of our church who was paralysed in hospital and who died – was wheeled to the morgue – but the church was praying for him to be healed…a nurse noticed his hand twitching, wheeled him back to the ward, and after our pastor met with him and prayed for him, he was fully restored with all paralysis gone! Healings have been a sign that Jesus has power and in a nation of many gods it is a clear witness to his sovereignty, causing people to give their lives to following Him. This is a positive thing. Western medicine is not a bad thing – in fact it is means that God has provided for healing, but maybe we should follow the example of Nepali Christians by being more expectant and active in prayer for healing? Maybe as we share the good news of what Jesus did through his death and resurrection we can share the good news that healing is also possible in his name? (But what of those who are prayed for and not healed…I don’t have an answer…but praying for healing is better than no praying for healing).
Anyone want to play chicken?
4) Driving…DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT! That is the rule. If you make eye contact then you have to give way, and you shouldn’t have to give way! People will literally pull out from the side of the road without looking, and you have to dodge them. People will do a u-turn in the middle of the road, blocking all traffic, without regard to what is happening around them. If you need to pick someone up a short way down a street, afterwards you reverse all the way out of the street. If you need to stop your car to get something from a shop, stop it and just leave it, don’t worry about parking properly, everyone else will go around you. If your taxi’s tyre blows, no need to move the car to the side of the road, leave it where it is, get out your jack, change the tyre and everyone will go around you. The pecking order in terms of right of way is truck, SUV, car, motorbike, bicycle and pedestrian. Bicycle and pedestrian are pretty much on the same level. Coming to an intersection, the idea is not to make eye contact with anyone and get across. Luckily most of the time you are doing a maximum of 40km/h so braking quickly is not too hard. There are no working traffic lights anywhere in Kathmandu. That is not to say that there are no traffic lights – there are – probably donated by some well-meaning European country with visions of precision. But they don’t work. Instead small groups of traffic police armed with whistles and white gloves direct the mayhem as best they can.
5) Nepalis are friendly people! We have found that most Nepalis are very welcoming and happy to help you. When we first arrived we thought the opposite. The natural way for a Nepali to hold their face is impassively or even to look unhappy. But when you make eye-contact and smile at a Nepali they smile back! I had a day after being in Nepal for about 2 months when I was starting to think that Nepalis were not friendly people. In fact I was thinking about that as I walked up the road to the shops. Next thing I know the guy who works at our local DVD store rocks up next to me on his motorcycle with a big grin and asks me if I want a lift up the road. I got on the bike and on the way thanked God for the lesson he had just taught me! Nepali looks can be deceiving! Nepalis are sweet people underneath the hard exterior enamel.
T
