How Quickly We Move On

Last night, Bijata held a mass mourning. Wednesday has been declared a national holiday for the resting. Bijata messaged me tonight mourning her husband. I received apologies for mentioning my mother. Fascinating how our lives revolve around death.

This morning I was invited to aid in the originally two-person cleanup of the basketball court where the SDSS public mass mourning was held for the 70 people who perished in protest. As I stood there, once again unhelpful, I pondered the metaphor that throwing these flowers away and washing this chalk off represented. It was a painful way of stating how quickly the human race moves on, especially when not fully committed to that which they should mourn. Especially if that which they should mourn is a statistic. This beautiful presentation for the deceased should have been recognized and left for longer than 12 hours, but it was an imposition for others, so it needed to go. People's beliefs, people's opinions, people's loves and losses implicate others around them far too much these days. What does it mean to be human? How can you control a theory? There is a heightened amount of loss for oneself these days because hundreds of people are not allowing you to gain and keep any more of who you want to be. But this cleanup does also bear the question: how many people in the mourning actually mourned? Now, I take this as a true uncertainty for myself since, in Canada, it is quite unusual to witness strangers mourning other strangers, but I fear it is quite different here. All are quite innocent, all are family. Lose one person, lose every person, and ultimately, lose yourself. So therefore, choosing to clean up this dedicated memorial so quickly proves the lack of care towards those unjustly slaughtered. Perhaps.

The day continued on lazily, as all I did with the kids was not be with them. I organized cupboards and drawers the first few hours, and we splatter painted with the kids outside for the last, though they were less interested in this. Lately, however, getting up in the morning and attending the Jhilko Project has begun to feel more like a task, something I need to do as opposed to get to, and I have been dreading the job just as much as the thought of doing it. Perhaps that is the fault of the lockdown. My negativity and my introverted nature are working together to prevent the desire to hang out with these kids every single day for so long. Or, perhaps since the lockdown, I've felt comfortable being jobless, and I find it difficult to return. Whatever the reason, it gives me the sense I am spoiled, knowing full well these jobs are so difficult to obtain and that I should be grateful for where I am and what I am doing. I am using the excuse that "I need to take care of me," but I cannot tell if that is necessary or accurate in this case.

Bijata was kind enough to take me to lunch, or rather walk me there since I paid for us both, and we found ourselves to be the loudest in the tiniest café with our boisterous laughs and mocking stories. In the seat I was in, I faced a man of the same skin tone as myself, obviously a trekker but fooled me by the comfortability in where he was. I believed he'd been there some time. However, he got up to order and turned to face me, the only other white person in a room full of twenty people, and asked me to "watch his stuff." I nodded, for that was the kind of person I was, but was taken aback by the subtle racism I'd just been roped into. I had no clue how long this man had been in Nepal, but he was lacking openness. Not that I am stating he believes each person in the room was a criminal, but if you were in your own country, would you ask some stranger to watch your bag? It obviously wasn't because he thought I was pretty, because he never looked back. I was of equal distance to every other person in that coffee shop and yet he chose the woman of the same race to ask his demand. Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but Bijata said it best, that he was a traveler taught the wrong information and the basic 101 of trust no one unless they look like you. I don't know what to think.

While I ate dinner, I thought of the comment directed towards me last night about how I "eat well." I could not tell if that was referencing my use of a spoon among hand-users or the amount of food I consumed in front of the commenter. Now, I shall confide in you a thought that has crossed my mind several times when the Nepalis watch me eat, or worry when I don't eat their helping, or laugh when I want more/serve myself. I have survived a few years believing I needed to be skinny to be pretty because I was a teenager and that was the norm I saw all over North America, Europe, etc., and I decided I wasn't. Developing countries flaunted this all over the internet an impressionable mind scrolls on. Here, in Nepal, it is culturally necessary to eat as much as humanly possible because they celebrate food and culture over beauty and weight. I have been struggling with such a concept as I completely understand and feel as though I offend them with my lack of consuming, but whilst I consume, I know, in the back of my mind, that I am returning to Canada and I am returning to their thin norm and I cannot eat too much for fear of losing the confidence finally built for me. Would that be seen as an ED? Perhaps here. Unfortunately, at home, it is seen as normal. In the end, it is a question of whether I want to return to the comfort of "normal" and what I have been told it is, or do I want to explore the boundaries of newfound confidence? It does not ease my anxiety, no less, when I am asked the question of my kg's by Bischestaa, who is a child still and therefore stockier than people who could have raised her, as well as a social media addict. She is consistently on Instagram, or TikTok or what have you, watching these skinny women and girls talking about "how they lost weight" or doing things to flaunt their lack of fat. I despise speaking about my weight for aforementioned reasons, and watching Bischestaa's eyebrows raise and hearing her light gasp at the fact that I am heavier than her aided nothing. I tried to state it with confidence, trying to find some peace of mind or teach her that it is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to really think about, but I have never been the best teacher. I fear her teen years, the cruelty of the world, the greater comprehension of what she is watching, all of it. I hope this confidence sticks, but most of the time the confident children are the first ones to be silenced.

The day ended with simple badminton between a couple of the kids and climbing on the roof of the apartment and their shed in order to retrieve (by Santa, every single time) the birdie on the roof. I was excited to keep playing. It was interesting playing against Santa (my kidney failure bestie) because he was in a wheelchair, and I needed to be wise to continuously hit the birdie where he could reach it. Every time I did something, and every time I still do things, his catchphrase will be "talented." It is our ongoing joke, and we say it even if it was something that took no talent at all. However, tonight, I kept calling him talented for the way he hit the birdie just out of my reach or continuously scored on me or flipped the racket all fancily. He would brush it off and say, "No... me no talent." I always told him the opposite of what he thought. I tried to get it into his mind that he was talented and pretty amazing, but he ignored me altogether. Maybe he didn't want to be seen as different, believed he was merely normal, not playing badminton in a wheelchair and winning and therefore not "talented," but that was not at all what I was implying. After an hour, Santa stopped everyone from playing, asking us to sit in a circle so we could converse. I learned a few things in this time, the first being Santa has almost absolutely no idea what I am saying to him most of the time, but guesses the yes or no response right every single time. He's lucky like that, and I find it entertaining. I also gained renewed thoughts on poverty. The kids had asked if I'd been to Everest, and I said, "No, but I am hoping to," and they all gaped at me, calling me rich. They joked about them being poor, and I pondered this because, where I am now, I am quite wealthy. Perhaps not Bezos, but up there. However, in Canada, we are far from riches. I thought on this for a while, how these kids had nothing and knew nothing of everything, and that I take for granted just how much everything I really do have.

In the end, all I can say is be open and kind and love yourself. Three terribly difficult things to do, I am quite aware, but everything can change with merely an attempt at any, if not all.