While I'm sure Gumda is not the middle of nowhere for the people who live there - in fact, I'm sure it's the centre of everywhere - anywhere that is two days walk from the nearest bus stop counts as fairly remote to me.
In my last entry, I started talking about understanding some things without being able to speak the language, and now I add one more to the list: comedy. Mispronouncing word so badly that you end up saying something completely different to the delight of the whole room, for example. This is very, very easy in Gurung dialect as it is tonal, nasal and seems to be entirely made up of just a few sounds. You don't really need to know what you actually said to understand why a roomful of people are laughing so hard that they're clutching their stomachs, you just know that it's funny. Actually, even if you get it right, chances are they'll laugh anyway. They seemed very amused that anyone would want to learn their language and laughing is generally a form of encouragement. But back to comedy. Old ladies waging eternal battles with chickens to try and stop them coming in the house is pretty funny. Chickens escaping from the rituals of which they are the focal point, but that's a story in itself so I'll come back to it. Tall people banging their head on the door frame.
Ah yes, tall people. I stand at a mighty 5"4 in my boots and, in Nepal, I count as very tall. I bang my head on door frames and occasionally ceilings, my feet hang off the end of the bed even when I lie diagonally. I tower over the local population. Add to this my mop of flaming blonde hair and you have yourself a walking, talking freak show. Ever wanted to feel like a film star without going to all the hassle of making a number of hit movies? Go to a remote Nepalese village. Even walking up to Gumda, everyone yelled 'namaste' (literally 'I salute the god in you', but is used to mean hello and goodbye) in greeting as we passed and every child stopped to stare until we were out of sight. Even after being in Gumda for a month, I still got a procession behind me whenever I left the house. On the one occasion I didn't tie back my hair, I almost caused a riot.
One Nepali word I learn early on is 'ramro', which means beautiful or good. The Gurung word for beautiful is 'joh' (not to be confused with the Gurung words for salt, eat or son which are almost exactly the same), which my new friends excitedly pointed out was the same as the first half syllable of my name. There is a good deal of racism in their perceptions of beauty, which made the "look, a foreigner!" phenomenon all the more pronounced. Nepal is a mix of many ethnic groups and tribes but the general rule remains: the paler your skin, the more beautiful you are. Bleached blonde hair is held up as exotic, the stuff of fantasy and natural blonde hair... wow. Words cannot express the excitement it caused.
When I arrived I was tired, dusty, sweaty and hadn't had a shower in three days. It is very difficult to take anyone seriously when they tell you that you are 'ramro', even when they go on about it at great length. My messy, desperately-in-need-of-a-wash hair is certainly not ramro, you are mistaken. No, my skin's not particularly ramro right now either. Nor is my nose or my ears or my hand. Er, but thanks anyway. This would be a little uncomfortable but not so bad if that was it, but the conversation always went, "Your hands are so beautiful and white. Mine are so ugly and dark. Look! Compare them!".
I hoped any misplaced auras of glamour could be dispelled, but I'm not sure I was totally successful. My baggy 'boy' clothes were entirely appropriate in terms of modesty - Nepali women only really show their lower arms and perhaps a bit of calf - but certainly not especially aesthetically pleasing. Oh and they hated my funky hat but I wore it a lot. It kept my ears warm as well as hiding my hair and making me look daft. When faced with long lists of beautiful body parts ("Your feet are so beautiful! Your neck is so beautiful! Your eyes are so beautiful! Look, yours are blue and mine are ugly and brown!), I settled for laughing a lot and telling them they had beautiful ankles, or nostrils, or whatever.
My first task on my first morning was the unglamourous one of making a toilet. While there are a few in the village, most people just used the jungle. On my first night, as the toilet had not been built, I was invited to use the barn. Clearly, as a Westerner, I was too delicate a creature to go to the woods and had not had time to attune my bladder to daily life in the village. The toilet we built consisted of a hole deep enough to contain a month's worth of waste, two planks with a gap between them (so you don't fall down the hole when using it) and some sticks to hold up the wicker walls. The construction was somewhat shorter than a Portaloo but with slightly more floorspace inside. Basic, yes, but build with my own fair hands and considerably better than the facilities at most rock festivals that I've been to.
This structure also doubled as the 'shower'. Showering in the village basically requires you to take a bucket of water, some soap and a towel and go for a walk to find a private spot. Such was the power of my magnetic personality (and exotic hair) that it was utterly impossible for me to find anywhere private, except the toilet. Even then, I had to be vigilant for the groups of small children who's curiosity often outweighed their fear.
Food was, well, also basic and daahl baat based. Lunch and dinner both consisted of white rice, some form of soup, spinach and smoked buffalo or occasionally chicken. Sometimes there was also egg. Breakfast was either noodles or a form of porridge. There was popcorn or soya beans to snack on. We drank tea or boiled water. That is literally the extent of my diet. I was very, very glad I found room in my backpack for that tin of drinking chocolate powder. Heh.
