I was sitting there, eating goat curry and raita and paneer with hot chilies and perfect, perfect jasmine rice, and I thought to myself, "Damn, I will miss this."
It was my last evening to hang out with the Upreti family before I flit off to the California mountains. I painstakingly wrote out my mailing address in clear lettering, and urged them to write. And then all I could do was try to savor the next few hours.
I feel the same way many Peace Corps volunteers do, in that I've fallen in love with these people. Though now I have known them for almost six months, I still sometimes stare at them, transfixed by their coriander skin and glossy black hair and how small they all are. They are best described by a phrase I read in an article about people in the third world, "small but healthy persons." Americans are huge by comparison to most of the world. Part of me wonders if Tara's baby will outgrow them all, raised on American abundance, albeit in Nepali-food form.
They ask me to go shopping with them, which I love. Six months ago, I was the one driving them around and explaining prices and quasi-translating their heavily-accented English for store employees. Now Padma has a car and all the shopping savvy he needs, and I am just along for the ride. We go to the thrift store, the first place they look for anything (which really, makes the most sense for anyone), and Padma picks out three-dollar shoes for work. At Fred Meyer, they peruse fishing poles for their son, Bikash, but put off buying one for another day. As always after shopping with them, I think to myself, "I spend too much money on crap I don't need."
In the late evening, sitting in the living room with Padma, drinking tea with about three tablespoons of sugar dissolved in it, we fall into conversation about religion, my all-time favorite topic with him. His mind is so quick and deep, but his English is still relatively shallow, and so he has to express large thoughts in small and simple words. "If heart is good, it is good," he says, "if outside is different than heart, no good." The matter of sincerity is one he returns to whenever we talk about faith. And this focus on sincerity comes from a man who sees no problem with being a Hindu and worshipping at a Christian church. I'm always trying to ask questions about specifically "Hindu" theology, but Padma has a way of sidestepping those questions and jumping straight to the bigger picture. The sincerity he talks about has little to do with adhering to a specific theology at a specific church. It's a sincerity that starts between man and God, and then person to person, and it has more to do with basic decency and empathy than any specific theology. It's more about relationships, about maintaining ties with family and being open to new friends, about feeding whoever finds their way into your home and sticking close to the person you marry. I noticed early on that both Bikash and Shrijana would refer to friends/cousins/aunts/uncles in Nepal as "my sister" and "my brother," calming ignoring the Western fascination with precise labels like "third-cousin" or anything "in-law". I don't know if it's Hindu theolofy or Nepali/Bhutanese culture or just life in a refugee camp with bamboo huts that connect wall-to-wall, but they see basically every person in their life as family. In my Americanness, it took me a while to realize that included me, as well. But I love it. From now on, I have two sets of family members to visit whenever I am in Idaho. I am looking forward already to Christmas and being able to introduce them to more of the people that they constantly ask me questions about, like my sister and my boyfriend.
I never foresaw being adopted into a family from the other side of the globe when I moved back to small-town Idaho last fall, and now I honestly can't imagine not knowing them, not being a part of their lives. Cheesy? Perhaps. But true.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Esau's feast.
you are a summer's worth of produce.
you are the spring's first asparagus, surprisingly sweet and tender
you are cannelloni beans with olive oil.
gazpacho with crumbled feta,
naan hot from the oven,
cool yogurt and cucumber
you are everything green and fresh,
a thousand tastes, complex, interesting
you are seven grain toast every morning for breakfast,
and chai tea with honey every night before bed
you are a little more work than a pint of haagan daz,
a little less lustful indulgence
not a paper-cup mocha with too much syrup
no dairy-and-sugar stomachache or caffeinated insomnia
you are not overpriced pastries behind windexed glass,
all air and hydrogenated oil
a few sweet bites that leave a bitter stickiness behind
you taste of the earth that you came from,
rooted and genuine,
a little salt, a little oil, a little time,
and all your flavors come out
a steaming bowl of lentils worth trading a birthright for,
an earthy sensuality,
and a satisfying savor.
you are the spring's first asparagus, surprisingly sweet and tender
you are cannelloni beans with olive oil.
gazpacho with crumbled feta,
naan hot from the oven,
cool yogurt and cucumber
you are everything green and fresh,
a thousand tastes, complex, interesting
you are seven grain toast every morning for breakfast,
and chai tea with honey every night before bed
you are a little more work than a pint of haagan daz,
a little less lustful indulgence
not a paper-cup mocha with too much syrup
no dairy-and-sugar stomachache or caffeinated insomnia
you are not overpriced pastries behind windexed glass,
all air and hydrogenated oil
a few sweet bites that leave a bitter stickiness behind
you taste of the earth that you came from,
rooted and genuine,
a little salt, a little oil, a little time,
and all your flavors come out
a steaming bowl of lentils worth trading a birthright for,
an earthy sensuality,
and a satisfying savor.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Silly republicans.
Seen on a mass-mailed envelope from the Idaho senator, Mike Crapo:
THE WESTERN STATES ARE THE NEXT TARGET FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATES. THEY HAVE A NATIONAL STRATEGY TO DEFEAT CONSERVATIVES LIKE ME AND IN ORDER TO ASSURE VICTORY, I MUST BEGIN BUILDING UP MY CAMPAIGN TODAY!
Target? What, are the democrats stockpiling nukes? The hyper-emotional, contentless claims of the republicans continue...
THE WESTERN STATES ARE THE NEXT TARGET FOR THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATES. THEY HAVE A NATIONAL STRATEGY TO DEFEAT CONSERVATIVES LIKE ME AND IN ORDER TO ASSURE VICTORY, I MUST BEGIN BUILDING UP MY CAMPAIGN TODAY!
Target? What, are the democrats stockpiling nukes? The hyper-emotional, contentless claims of the republicans continue...
Friday, March 20, 2009
Pizza and exploitation.
Tonight I hung out with the Upretis (my refugee family) and taught them how to make pizza, which their ten-year-old daughter is obsessed with. When it was finished, she kept bringing out a piece on a plate, one at a time, cutting it in half, and insisting that I eat the other half. It was like being at a bar with someone who keeps ordering shots for you. She ate me under the table, quite easily. Relative to body weight, I'm pretty sure pre-teen girls eat the most of any species on earth.
The dad, Padma, is now working as a housekeeper at a hotel/casino in a Nevada town right across the Idaho border. He's grateful to have a job, but it's obvious he knows the situation is less than ideal. He is paid seven dollars an hour, and though they still receive certain kinds of assistance, he is basically trying to support a wife and two, soon to be three, children on that income. Most of his coworkers are from Mexico and speak in Spanish all day, which is less than helpful to his own efforts to learn English. On the upside, Padma now has a used car so he doesn't have to take the bus, which saves some time in his day. I'm glad about that for my own reasons. An Iranian refugee befriended him on the bus, and I met this character, and he worried me a little. He's pretty cynical, and his favorite phrase in English is "Oh my Gohd." It was starting to wear off on Padma and even his daughter. Maybe I'm just still too Protestant, but it bugged me.
A new refugee couple have moved in to the apartment next door, and the husband came over to visit while I was there. I would guess he is around thirty years old, and in Nepal he worked as a teacher in a private school. His accent is thick, but his English is nearly perfect. He told me something that I hope is a rare occurrence. Apparently, a couple who own a small hotel, around twenty-five rooms, came to the refugee center seeking a refugee couple to hire as live-in managers. They offered the position to him and his wife, and handed them a paper describing the duties, which were basically to clean all the rooms, do all the laundry, and man the front desk from seven in the morning until eleven at night. Every day. In return, they would have free living quarters within the hotel (obviously with the expectation that whatever a guest needed at three in the morning, they would have to take care of it) and would be paid a grand total of...wait for it...one thousand dollars a month.
I quickly do the math. Two people, working sixteen hours a day, the equivalent of thirty-two working hours, seven days a week, the pay rate works out to--a dollar an hour. Awesome. Is it legal to offer someone a job on those conditions? Why did the refugee center even let these people try to sucker someone into taking it? One thousand dollars a month for food, medical insurance, car payments and insurance, gas, etc, etc, etc.
Maybe in this economy, something is better than nothing, but honestly, it struck me as really kind of slimy and exploitative. My mom and I did a quick estimate of how much a hotel that size might gross in a month, and the figure was over $30,000. Someone who does feel desperate will probably take that job and scrape by and not complain, but doubtless they will know what kind of money they are pulling in in receipts, and how very little of it is coming back to them.
And yet. I feel like I'm an observer of the life refugees lead, and it isn't all sunshine and roses. They are dealing with learning English, some of them from scratch, looking for work with less than perfect English in a pretty rough recession, living in small and dilapidated housing, often two families to an apartment. They've left all their possessions and most of their family on the other side of the world, and don't know who they might see again or when. Still, they always tell me, ALL the time, that they like America. They even claim to like the cold weather, which I personally find difficult to believe. I know that compared to living in bamboo huts in a UN-run camp, they are moving up in the world, but from my perspective as a typical, middle-class American, I see how little they still have, in the midst of a country of almost absurd wealth, and how hard they will have to work to catch up. In a way, I love that knowing the Upretis has changed my own perspective and made me want to live in a simpler way--to own fewer clothes, eat less meat, buy fewer things brand-new. Still, I have my mental list of what I want for them--a better apartment with decent heating, a better job for Padma, a faster, more intensive way for them to learn English. Maybe these things just take time, and maybe I am impatient. The future will bring opportunities I can't foresee. Maybe I am in fact helping them toward a better future. But I always wish I could do more.
The dad, Padma, is now working as a housekeeper at a hotel/casino in a Nevada town right across the Idaho border. He's grateful to have a job, but it's obvious he knows the situation is less than ideal. He is paid seven dollars an hour, and though they still receive certain kinds of assistance, he is basically trying to support a wife and two, soon to be three, children on that income. Most of his coworkers are from Mexico and speak in Spanish all day, which is less than helpful to his own efforts to learn English. On the upside, Padma now has a used car so he doesn't have to take the bus, which saves some time in his day. I'm glad about that for my own reasons. An Iranian refugee befriended him on the bus, and I met this character, and he worried me a little. He's pretty cynical, and his favorite phrase in English is "Oh my Gohd." It was starting to wear off on Padma and even his daughter. Maybe I'm just still too Protestant, but it bugged me.
A new refugee couple have moved in to the apartment next door, and the husband came over to visit while I was there. I would guess he is around thirty years old, and in Nepal he worked as a teacher in a private school. His accent is thick, but his English is nearly perfect. He told me something that I hope is a rare occurrence. Apparently, a couple who own a small hotel, around twenty-five rooms, came to the refugee center seeking a refugee couple to hire as live-in managers. They offered the position to him and his wife, and handed them a paper describing the duties, which were basically to clean all the rooms, do all the laundry, and man the front desk from seven in the morning until eleven at night. Every day. In return, they would have free living quarters within the hotel (obviously with the expectation that whatever a guest needed at three in the morning, they would have to take care of it) and would be paid a grand total of...wait for it...one thousand dollars a month.
I quickly do the math. Two people, working sixteen hours a day, the equivalent of thirty-two working hours, seven days a week, the pay rate works out to--a dollar an hour. Awesome. Is it legal to offer someone a job on those conditions? Why did the refugee center even let these people try to sucker someone into taking it? One thousand dollars a month for food, medical insurance, car payments and insurance, gas, etc, etc, etc.
Maybe in this economy, something is better than nothing, but honestly, it struck me as really kind of slimy and exploitative. My mom and I did a quick estimate of how much a hotel that size might gross in a month, and the figure was over $30,000. Someone who does feel desperate will probably take that job and scrape by and not complain, but doubtless they will know what kind of money they are pulling in in receipts, and how very little of it is coming back to them.
And yet. I feel like I'm an observer of the life refugees lead, and it isn't all sunshine and roses. They are dealing with learning English, some of them from scratch, looking for work with less than perfect English in a pretty rough recession, living in small and dilapidated housing, often two families to an apartment. They've left all their possessions and most of their family on the other side of the world, and don't know who they might see again or when. Still, they always tell me, ALL the time, that they like America. They even claim to like the cold weather, which I personally find difficult to believe. I know that compared to living in bamboo huts in a UN-run camp, they are moving up in the world, but from my perspective as a typical, middle-class American, I see how little they still have, in the midst of a country of almost absurd wealth, and how hard they will have to work to catch up. In a way, I love that knowing the Upretis has changed my own perspective and made me want to live in a simpler way--to own fewer clothes, eat less meat, buy fewer things brand-new. Still, I have my mental list of what I want for them--a better apartment with decent heating, a better job for Padma, a faster, more intensive way for them to learn English. Maybe these things just take time, and maybe I am impatient. The future will bring opportunities I can't foresee. Maybe I am in fact helping them toward a better future. But I always wish I could do more.
Monday, March 16, 2009
no title.
I've been reading my own blog, and realizing how interesting it really is. Or, was, before I stopped really writing in it.
I think I've been sucked in. That kind of life that I found dull and insipid, that I railed against and sought desperately for a way to avoid? I think I'm living it. I have an office job, and a car, and I buy groceries at a supermarket, and I don't go out and meet random people and have adventures. Partly because small-town Idaho isn't the greatest place to do so, and partly because I'm comfortable. I make a lot of small-talk, with people older than myself, and I spend time with family, doing normal, family-ish things.
There's a certain draw to normality. It's a big, soft pillow, a place to rest from uncertainty and the more intense side of your mind.
I miss the more intense side of my mind.
I think I've been sucked in. That kind of life that I found dull and insipid, that I railed against and sought desperately for a way to avoid? I think I'm living it. I have an office job, and a car, and I buy groceries at a supermarket, and I don't go out and meet random people and have adventures. Partly because small-town Idaho isn't the greatest place to do so, and partly because I'm comfortable. I make a lot of small-talk, with people older than myself, and I spend time with family, doing normal, family-ish things.
There's a certain draw to normality. It's a big, soft pillow, a place to rest from uncertainty and the more intense side of your mind.
I miss the more intense side of my mind.
Friday, March 13, 2009
a short phone call from california.
It was supposed to be the next big step. It was supposed to be the bridge to somewhere else. It was supposed to be one of the grand adventures of my youth.
It is none of those things.
I am an "alternate"--meaning that at some point, if someone breaks a leg or just drops out, and if another alternate isn't called in first, I might get an invitation. At which point I'm supposed to drop everything, order all my gear on a moment's notice, and show up? I guess it's possible.
But really, it's just a way of saying, we liked you, we sort of wanted you, but we wanted other applicants more.
So now, of course, come the mental gymnastics, in which I try to figure out where my application was weak, what unimpressive thing I said or experience I didn't have. And of course, I don't know.
I'm just disappointed.
It is none of those things.
I am an "alternate"--meaning that at some point, if someone breaks a leg or just drops out, and if another alternate isn't called in first, I might get an invitation. At which point I'm supposed to drop everything, order all my gear on a moment's notice, and show up? I guess it's possible.
But really, it's just a way of saying, we liked you, we sort of wanted you, but we wanted other applicants more.
So now, of course, come the mental gymnastics, in which I try to figure out where my application was weak, what unimpressive thing I said or experience I didn't have. And of course, I don't know.
I'm just disappointed.
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