Kasto cha? ... Tapaiko nom ke ho? -
(How are you?... What is your name?)
My first phrases to learn in Nepali. And I was saying it wrong for at least a month before I had my first official Nepali lesson and came to understand the correct grammar. My first few days in Nepal, I went to visit one of the many projects that Iris Nepal is involved in, Banquet House. They gather every Thursday to spend time with and feed lunch to a group of homeless people in Kathmandu. I didn't know how to help or say anything, but here I was with 50-100 Nepali people sitting around me and wanting to do my best to love them well or at least show some interest in them but I didn't know how to say a word. So I quickly reviewed and began to practice "How are you? …. What is your name?"
Then I began going down the row introducing myself and asking the same 2 phrases to each person and smiling and nodding with my best enthusiasm. I had no hopes of understanding their names at the time, but figured if I just started out, then eventually some of the names would become recognizable and familiar.
I used those 2 phrases a lot over the next few months. And did become better at recognizing names and was always proud if I remembered it thru the entire conversation and could repeat it to them as I said goodbye, and show that I valued them and remembered their name. Then one day, after saying goodbye to an elderly woman by name, my friend Sadhana explained to me that its actually not respectful in their culture to call older people by name. Its considered respectful to call them simply "Mom" or "Dad". And still weeks later, sitting around the cooking fire one night, Rabina explained, that its not even respectful to call peers by name, but by 'big brother or little brother or sister' respectively. So after all these months trying to honor people by remembering their names, I found that it wasn't honoring at all to them, and would have been better if I just forgot all their names.
Culture! What a challenge. And always so humbling to begin as a new baby in a foreign culture and learn how to communicate and how to love and honor well.
In Nepal compared to America, there is a higher value placed on family relationships than friendships. And there is a higher value placed on the relationship than on the individual. Hence, after making a friend there, you don't call them by name, you call them brother or sister. And there is a different title for each individual family member. For instance, there is not just one word for "aunt". There is a word for the 'older sister of my mother' or the 'younger sister of my mother' or the 'oldest brother of my father' or 'my father's brother's wife'. So effectively you can call them by their title as they are related exactly to you, and without using their name, you can know exactly which of 6 aunts you are referring to. And to call someone you are a little bit close to, friend, is almost slightly offensive, like if I were to refer to a friend in America as an acquaintance. It would create intentional distance in the relationship. But instead, in Nepal, you call your friends brother/sister.
Honor looks different where values are different. Its so interesting and challenging to learn to love people, not just in the way that seems best to me, but in the way that they can understand and receive it.
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| Rabina, me and Sadhana. Sisters :) |
