Motodaai

Its weird how after even just a short this place feels familiar. Kathmandu and Nepal has not lost it's charm, but how I view things have changed. I suppose I am quick to become accustomed to places. Because of my comfort level rising, I am finding it harder and harder to write about interesting things that happen here. Instead it feels like things are just happening. So I am going to try to talk about some of the interesting things I have observed during my now 2 week stay in this amazing country.

The first thing that comes to mind are the glue sniffers. These gangs of boys between the ages of 5 and 16 are all over the place in Thamel. Actually the seem to be located EXCLUSIVELY in Thamel. Here is the rundown on them. You see them sitting on the street breathing deeply from plastic bags. There are usually between 4 and 10 of them in any given group. And they have clearly established territories. They walk up to you one or two at a time and beg for money. Giving it to them is kinda pointless, because the moment they get a few rupees they dash off to a store and buy glue. If you instead offer to buy them some food they usually walk away or change what they want. See... They will ask you to buy something non-perishable so that as soon as you leave they sell the goods back to the shopkeeper for a little less than what you paid for it, and THEN they buy glue. Which is another part of the problem.

The shopkeepers are accomplices in their addiction. Actually most of the shopkeepers are in on any of the street scams that happen in Thamel. Another popular street scam is a woman will approach you clutching a baby. She will beg you not to give her any money, but please come with her to a store and buy some canned or powdered baby formula. Well if you buy it for them ($10) they will wait for you to leave, and sell it back to the shopkeeper for a nice little profit. After some snooping (and eventually asking Michael) it turns out that many of the women just share a baby to beg with, and hand it off after they have made enough money for the day.

Some other advice for the would-be traveler to Nepal, Don't get hit by a car/bus/truck. I know that seems like very straight forward advice, but here it can be even worse than just the injury received from an accident. In Nepal the law is if you injure someone in an accident, you must pay for ALL their medical bills until they reach 100% recovery. If you injury someone in a way that will require constant medical care, you will have to pay for that. However. However, if you simply kill someone in an accident, you only have to pay a flat price to that person's family. So, sometimes, when someone gets hit by a car/bus/truck, they will back over them, or try to hit them again just to kill them because it will cost them less in the long run! I repeat, DO NOT GET HIT BY AN AUTO IN NEPAL.

Last night I officially got my Nepali nickname. Here I am now referred to as Motodaai. Loosely translated it means Very Big Brother. Translated exactly it means Fat Older Brother. I actually really like the nickname because they don't mean the fat part in a big way. They are just unabashedly, totally, brutally honest here in Nepal. They tell you exactly what they think about anything. And there is no motivation behind it other than communication. David Driver (46) got the nickname Grandpa because he looked a little weary and hard-traveled.

Here they don't have the same sense of "proper" conversation that we have in the west. Actually I think we suffer from it in the west. Here what people think is what they say to each other. It lacks the complexity of western interpersonal relationships. The best way to describe the way they communicate is "refreshing."

Motodaai Out.