A Very Unamerican Fourth of July

While Americans were setting off fireworks and slow-roasting hot dogs from sea to shining sea, I was half a world away at a very different celebration: a nation-wide, all-deaf… well, the word “picnic” was used, but I can’t say I’ve ever been to a twelve-hour picnic! Nearly 70 deaf adults from all over Nepal gathered at a nearby village to spend the whole day in good company cooking, eating, and having a jolly good time. Besides shooting an overwhelming three hours of film, I reached several milestones in the Nepali and deaf communities. For one, I had my first sip of chaang, the milky-white, uncarbonated Nepali version of beer. All the men were urging me to take a cup, and all the women were vehemently refusing on my behalf, so we reached a compromise—they filled half of my shotglass-sized cup so I could have a taste without getting drunk. Chaang came up from time to time in the readings for my Introductory Buddhism class, so it was especially exciting to be savoring the same drink of the englightened buddhas of yore. I also broke out of my 11-year vegetarian stint to sample buffalo meat*, which was chewy to the max, but not unlike what I remember beef tasting like. In other big news, I had my first abstract conversation in sign language—I talked for over an hour with a total stranger about religious persecution, tolerance, and war while a half-dozen people looked on. It helped me to realize that although, yes, the isolation of living here probably stems in part from not having another Westerner to share these new experiences with, the real root is the loss of a fluent language and the inability to communicate deep and abstact thoughts. It will be something easily (though gradually) solved by continuing to learn Nepali Sign Language, especially if I come back to shoot a feature-length film (i.e. the current fantasy).

As expected (as the unexpected always is), the two-week summer vacation went nothing like planned. Two middle-schoolers wanted me to conduct extra English classes over the break, and who am I to deny eager beavers access to education? Of course, I agreed, and began teaching morning classes in the nearly-deserted school. By the end of the week, our class had quintupled from two students to ten, some of them taking the bus nearly an hour each way to attend! Their enthusiasm for learning was so refreshing, and it reminded me a bit of myself as a kid. I remember when there was nothing I loved more than learning and reading, and I can clearly recall bawling my eyes out on the last day of kindergarten when I found out I couldn’t go to school for three months. I can’t remember where along the way education became such a chore, but I hope to cling to their youthful idealism, and bring that zest for learning back to Harvard with me in the fall. It’s been infectious already, getting me exited to read film books and anthrpological essays… anything to improve my shooting, refine my focus and direction, and improve the film.

Compared to India, life here has been a breeze. I’m not facing any of the same challenges I had to deal with in Tamil Nadu. The teachers use sign language in the classrooms and don’t use violence as the main mode of discipline; the children learn English every single day, and each student has a Nepali-English-Sign Language dictionary; the deaf community is vibrant, thriving, and empowered… It’s wonderful! Almost too easy. The system is not without its problems, but most of the problems are well out of my reach, and it’s still leaps and bounds beyond anything I saw or experienced in Tamil Nadu. The toughest adjustment has been coming around to the Nepali sense of privacy and personal space, or lack thereof. My bedroom doubles as a library and dressing room, and my host mothers show no hesitation before bursting in my room at 5:30 AM to iron their kurtis (the Nepali word for churedadr: the long dress-like tunic and baggy trousers). Without knocking, no less—they never knock. Likewise, when my host mothers’ teenaged nieces barge into my room while I’m napping (undoubtedly making up that lost hour of morning sleep), instead of apologizing and leaving me be, they turn on the light and start a conversation! It’s exasperating! I’m working to turn negatives into positives, and working out ways to use these societal differences to my advantage. For one, I’ve started doing the majority of my logging (reviewing the footage, and recording what happened in each shot) in public spaces; instead of locking myself away and getting irritated when someone crashes my party-of-one and wants to watch, I’ve started going with the flow and expecting people to watch over my shoulder. It turns out, the older students and recent graduates are so enraptured by the tiny LCD screen that they’ve spent countless hours during vacation afternoons painstakingly helping me translate key pieces of footage. Most of the time, I’m so focused on cinematagraphy that I have no clue what I’m shooting; with such a limited knowledge of NSL and without the context of the conversation on film, it’s just as hard to translate in post-production. During one of our translation sessions, I discovered that a group of boys had picked up a Nepali newspaper and discussed the death of Michael Jackson right into my rolling camera, a full week before I found for myself! The translation sessions have been crucial for the development of the film—I found out that I actually have a story line buried in that mountain of mysterious conversation, and I’m starting to see the way these different puzzle pieces could fit together to build a strong film. It’s exhilarating to see the project start to fall into place, and with half of production still ahead of me (15 of 30 tapes left to shoot, 4 of 9 weeks left at my placement), I’m excited to get going again with a stronger sense of direction.

As for the future and things-to-come: I’ll spend the month of Shrawan (in the year 2065) finishing the film project. After that, I’ll travel around Nepal for a couple weeks with a rad American volunteer, Zach, and any other trekkers and volunteers we pick up along the way. I’ll fly out of Kathmandu at the end of August, and return to Boston the day before classes start. (Trust me, I’m already dreading the jet lag battle.)

* Don’t be so shocked! It’s not such a sacrilege, nor the first time I’ve sampled meat. I ate duck and snail at my cousin’s wedding and a bite of steak in Mississippi. My philosophy is that it’s better to make exceptions to self-determined ideologies than to live life a little less fully.