JOURNALS

Journals from Nepal





Rereading my journals from back then

About my Peace Corps journals:

I was not yet 23 years old when I began using my journals as a place to record every thought without censorship. A lofty and youthful goal, however, does not make very stimulating reading later. A frequent topic here is “Will I stay one more week or two years?” This trope is used in a self-soothing  ritual to repeat the illusion of choice. Each time, it does not get more revealing and so the journals were true to their ethos: the contents of a 23-year-old’s head without censorship or embarrassment.  While fascinating in it’s naiveté, it’s not always compelling reading for long stretches (though I admit I was up until 2:00 a.m. on the edge of my seat waiting for a more mature thought, a reflection with perspective.

Of course this is what I will be asking you, the reader, to not do as you read on: to NOT judge too harshly, not laugh at the prose or prosaicness of the 23-year-old’s inner dialogue.

Themes to watch for:

·         Crack up: Intimate living  quarters with ants, mice, and rats that over time seem to put younger James on the verge of a nervous breakdown, developing muscle tics, plotting each week to go back to America. This latter appears to be a coping device in order to stay the whole time the Peace Corps requests: two years. Reading these parts now it seems a thinly veiled strategy to cope with no serious intention to quit. Thus, it reads to me as not genuine but as a sign of a middle class suburban Caucasian far outside his comfort zone focusing on ants rather than the larger crisis of cultural awakening.

·         Isolation: Feeling connected, feeling alone. Travel with a friend to share your experiences; to travel alone is to meet the world. Sometimes I felt I had hundreds of new friends, other times I felt completely isolated by language, culture, distance from home, and a lack of people like me. But that’s the point! I found subsistence farmers (almost no money passed through their hands yet, by some standards, they led richer lives than those commuting on freeways to offices).

·         Career: In hindsight, the 23-year-old seems to wonder too much about what he’ll do when he grows up, what he will be, and whether he wants a career at all. Ironically, he is doing what I’m still doing: teaching students to educate them. But it wasn’t so clear back then, so a lot of ink gets spent on such questions ad infinitum.

·         Nepali folksongs: Many nights I stayed up late writing down Nepali folksongs in Nepalese which I later translated and eventually published in The Journal of South Asin Literature out of Minnesota. This counts, in a way, as musicology, ethnographic research (think Franz Boas or Conrad’s Marlow), or an invasion of cultural privacy. I had quite a list and could sing most of the songs, as well, especially as I was obliged to stay up all night drinking the liquor they were serving and losing the outside researcher’s objectivity, sort of going native to get the story—in the best possible light. I mean, this was embedded, deep research with no exit nearby. I could even be persuaded to dance the native dances at all-night wedding ceremonies. Anything to get the story.

Here are a few samples from 1974-1975 (be kind, dear reader. They were not meant to be scrutinized but to be an internal thinking aloud without regard to readership—there, they succeed):

·         Well, time’s running out here at training. I leave Feb. 8 [1974] for Kathmandu. We had our swearing-in ceremony and party today so I slopped together sandwiches this morning and by the Cali Cola River. There was plentiful food and volleyball, but all my friends came later to the family’s home where I was staying to sing and dance. All my friends danced, even if they were shy or didn’t know how. The Peace Corps knows how to pick go-getters!

·         I’m having a bad time in Sisuwa. I spend most of my time in this room which is infested with ants, mites, flies, rats, and, internally, amoebas. I have no friends in the village and am close to a nervous breakdown so have started a new relationship talking to myself. It’s a pretty interesting conversation and I wonder why I didn’t talk with myself before. The ants bother me more than you might think and along with the rats who leave droppings on my pillow in the night, are convincing me I should quit. Or I could kill every ant.

·         I wrote my first letter in 2 ½ months. I’m losing friends by not writing: Hank, Jeff, Spider, Mick, and anyone else who expects a letter from me. Gotta go run my stool sample over to the medical clinic in Pokhara so they can figure out what amoeba I have.

·         I started teaching at Sisuwa High School, and I don’t like it—whereas I love the three-month training. I might leave early from the Peace Corps.

·         Last night all my neighbors came over to my new home and sat and “guffed” (gossiped). After tha I knew I wanted to stay two or even three years. Afterwards I found ants, which I was dreading, and like a man possessed, I swept and swept into the night. I awoke to a rat stuck in my pile of dirty dishes. I was frightened and pissed off at the same time. On the inside of my left ankle I’ve developed a nervous twitch from nervous fatigue. I’m really on edge all the time.

·         I taught Sunday and it was a breeze. I just ignore all the noise the children make. I walked with my new friend, Bisa Nath, three hours into the Himalayas in the dark to his house with a splendid view of the valley. I really don’t like hiking and hardly notice the surroundings. But here I sat staring at the last light before the night sky with the strong warm breeze on my face and the vertical trees swaying and dominating, with the soft dark hills with their smoothly flowing curves, and the dark but slightly colored sky of sunset and one lone star just resting peacefully over the biggest hill. The wind pushed my jaw into a gently molded but firm-lipped smile that came from a deep, peaceful place within me as I leaned my body slightly forward resting myself by leaning into the pressure of the wind.

·         I’ve been basing too much of my happiness on material things of late. I’m really getting into having my own little house with an upstairs and downstairs, and a pot to carry my water from the village [ed: no running water, no electricity], and a Nepalese brass wick lamp, two stoves, a pressure cooker, and my own little [unrefrigerated] cache of milk, eggs, vegetables, chow chow, baking supplies.and Bourvita [a chocolate drink]. Yet then the clay water pot broke, the pressure cooker has a chip in it, and I became unhappy.

·         One of the daughters at the family I’m staying with is the most entertaining person to be around, playing games with the younger children. She’s always an entertaining person to be around, everyone listens to her. She doesn’t like to read or study. She’s so generous it seems absurd, with her money, her time, her work, her purchases, her attention, and her cigarettes.

·         I’m reading D H Lawrence’ Sons and Lovers. I love his style; if only my diary could read like that with his insight.

·         I taught a class Thursday and didn’t really mind. Maybe I can put up with teaching for one or two years for the sake of living in Nepal.

·         I stayed up late talking to Aamaa, the widowed matriarch with seven children in the family where I’m staying. She admits there are some cross-caste marriages now-a-days but says all parents are angry with these. She conceded she would also be “a little bit” [a translation from Nepali] angry if her daughter didn’t marry a Gugung [someone from her own tribe, a hill people]. Unspoken were the words, “She might be looking for a rich American.”

·         Parak and Dunne [two brothers in the family] slept outside in my tent last night and froze to death. I really enjoy my family. I went down to the river with them and we splashed each other and made a dam to catch fish, and we caught ten one-inchers for dinner! We explored a cave and went into the jungle looking for wild fruit. I slept on the dry, crackley forest leaves.