29_Expansion

-A girl with whom I lived: People usually ask me about the tourist living in my house [laugh]

-Me: Don’t you dare to call me a tourist!

-She: True, I will tell them you are not a tourist, you are my sister. Ok? [smile].

My second fieldwork was so much about becoming a local.

I did not have problems of separating the worlds or understanding my identity in-between anymore. With some dose of curiosity and flexibility it is not hard to survive in a totally new social, geographical, political and physical setting. For me my whole first fieldwork (7 months in Nepal among which 4 months in the villages) was taken with a large dose of exotic excitement followed by deep philosophical establishment of myself.

On my second fieldwork this process was already over. I faced a new reality, reality of living there. Not just visiting, exploring, investigating, but simply living the way they do.

I expanded.

Part I A crazy local

They pointed to the landslide-like long vertical path down to the river saying: “Look at this, sister! This path is to die! You cannot go this way.”

And that’s true, there was a recent story of a guy who died falling into the river, because after roads were built all the paths down became very hard to walk.

I just asked them not to laugh at my descend with all fours.

Cutting barley

When we reached the field girls were screaming saying that I will cut my hands, getting worried that no one can treat me after that. They were just standing unwilling to show me the proper technique. Then I just grabbed a sickle and started working.

Cutting millet

They immediately screamed saying that I have cut myself [I didn’t]. I started. They were telling me that my arms will hurt and I just answered that they are humans and I am the same human, if they can I should also be able to. 

Separating seeds

I was working in barley fields, in millet fields, in potato fields and doing many other women or men jobs not just for few minutes for fun, but for several hours.

They were amazed, but so was I. My field work was really about work in the field J

Part II Expanding

Bedroom

With the exception of my trekking boots I was slowly giving up all my old habits. Bit by bit. My comfort zone was breaking/disappearing (or just expanding?) with the acceptance of new rules. During my previous fieldwork it seemed impossible not to have a bucket of water of any warmth for washing body after an exhausting walk. Now I was washing myself and changing my clothes only on Saturdays. Cannot say that was easy as the soap was often frozen and rubbing it against the clothes not always gave expected results. [I shouldn’t exaggerate though, days were always very sunny and even hot to walk in all my morning layers of clothes! And I bet Danes would die from jealousy knowing how much sun and tan i got daily]. But still, since most of the self-caring things were done in early morning I used to wash small things at the temperature of frost.
It didn’t feel hard not to have electricity. In fact, lack of it usually unites people around the fire and makes people so united with natural cycle of day and night.
It was rather disturbing to change houses and to pack bags too often (that’s why more clothes would be a luxury to carry!).

At some point weekly shower wasn't even bothering me anymore. To be honest, neither I cared about my look. In fact, I haven’t looked at myself in the mirror and I was thinking why do people have more than one set of clothes? Although maybe two would be needed, because to be honest at some point I started wearing all my clothes due to the cold and thus that was quite troublesome when I was washing them. I needed to freeze for the whole day.

Local beauties at football match

It is not that locals were like that as I describe, girls and boys still wanted to have nice clothes and to make fancy haircuts or to listen to songs from the phone.

It was just my identity, which was rather in research, in work, in people, in everything.

Was I losing myself or expanding myself?

…

I came back to Kathmandu on 16th. Immensely happy for warm water I was washing and re-washing my hair not believing that washing it for three times could take away all the dirt. Next day I put on a designer’s jacket, bought a new scarf and even dared to put make-up.

Am I regaining myself or coming back to limitations?

Whatever it is but I will have a shower every day from now on J