I’m Thankful for… Kathmandu

First of all, I wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving from Kathmandu.

Now that’s not something I get to say every day.

This time next year, even, I surely won’t be able to say it.  My days in Kathmandu are numbered.

And I’ve been already feeling that, in silly overly sympathetic ways, like, “Today will be the last day I ever have a Thanksgiving meal with Nepali tea…”

You know.

But I’ve also had two great opportunities within the last week–I’ve visited two different schools here in Kathmandu.  Last week, I was talking about education and globalization in general; today, on the eve, I was talking about the American celebration called “Thanksgiving.”  I’ve explained the holiday to many other ESL students over the past few weeks and years, too.

If you ask me to rank my favorite holidays, I have to put Christmas at the top of the list.  Then Halloween.  And then Thanksgiving, at a respectable third.

But if you ask me my favorite holiday to teach about, I have to lean toward Thanksgiving.

It ties into everything I do in ESL so well.  A couple of years ago, I managed to tell the whole story of Thanksgiving–from “Pilgrims and Native Americans” to the modern feast, to a group of absolute beginner ESL students classified as “pre-literate.”  In a slow, careful lesson, I managed to build on what the students already knew:

“I am from America; You are from Burundi; She is from Burma… They [pointing to the picture of the Pilgrims in the book] are from England…”

And then I dragged my finger over the globe, just as I did for each of them on their first day in class, reviewing “You came from Burundi to America… She came from Burma to America… They came from England to America…”

“I live in America.  I was born in America, I was a baby in America… They [pointing to the picture of the Native Americans in the book] are from America…”

It just seemed to fit the entire theme.  I was teaching refugees who had just arrived in the United States a few weeks or months earlier, and suddenly a holiday arrived that commemorates a meal shared by people fleeing persecution 400 years ago who came to America and were welcomed by a group of Native Americans.  My students nodded soberly when I explained how the Pilgrims were cold, and didn’t have good food or houses, and many were sick.  They smiled and nodded when they saw the Native Americans teaching how to catch fish and plant corn.  They smiled wider when they saw the tall plants and slain ducks and deer, and the table laid out for the feast, and the pale-skinned and dark-skinned people sharing the food.  They were a bit puzzled by the new and difficult-to-say English word “prayer,” but when I folded my hands and solemnly bent my face toward the ground, and then paused before spreading my arms and lifting my fingers and upturned face to the heavens, abruptly lightbulbs went off in the eyes of every student, and the smiles spread again.  And I emphasized the simple English words they already knew, putting them into the context:  “Thanksgiving.  Give [miming how we practiced giving a pen, a paper].  Thanks [looking to different students in turn, with a grateful smile, as we'd practiced polite phrases].  Thank you.  I thank you.  Thank you very much!  Thanksgiving.”

It can be broken down that simply.  And people around the world can understand it.

Here, today, I wasn’t welcoming newcomers to America.  But I could still tell the story, with a new twist of a Nepali man interpreting after every few sentences.  But these students listened for every word even of my so-hard-to-understand English, and their hungry eyes absorbed every picture, whether printed or in a book or torn from a magazine.  Their fingers traced the path of the strange boat from England to America.  They blinked some when I explained my ancestors came from England, too, as well as from France and Germany, and they blinked even more when I pointed to the “Red Indians” in the book and explained I was also descended from them, from a group called the Cherokee.

The students packed the room, filling every bench.  They lined the walls, too, standing, to fill every free space.  They’d rarely seen Americans, and yet here one was, talking to them for an hour about a strange story they’d never heard.  And I’d been told by the Nepalis beforehand–the school was a government school, not rich, and the students came from everyday, working families.  For many of them, affording daily needs could be a struggle; my interpreter explained to me, with sad eyes, that some of the students might be unable to finish all the years of schooling, because their families might need to pull them out to send them to work, and their new boss might not let them continue going to school.

I looked at all those bright-eyed students, hanging on my every word, and as I explained that when Americans told each other what they were thankful for, they’d say “food” and “family” and “friends” and “good health”… and, for students:  “education.”

And I told them, honestly, that this year, one thing I was thankful for was the chance to come to Nepal.  I explained that most Americans never can.  And at the end of the talk, one girl asked in innocent curiosity, “Why do few Americans come to Nepal?”

And I was explaining how far away it is, a two-day trip even by plane.  And their eyes were wide again, contemplating the size of the world, and from how very far away their visitor had come.

So…tomorrow there’s the turkey, and the green beans, and the corn, and the stuffing, and the pumpkin pie.  There are friends and the only family I have here, and thoughts of friends and family far away.

But I still have that image in front of my eyes, of the thinking eyes of students, listening deeply to the old familiar story all Americans know, and pondering deeply, as they contemplate two different groups helping each other, and then giving thanks, even four hundred years later.

 

Nepali of the Day:

dhanyabaad:  thank you

dherai-dherai dhanyabaad:  thank you very much

dinu:  to give

dinchu:  I give

dinuhuncha:  you give

khaanaa:  food

pariwar:  family

satthi (haru):  friend (s)

paDnu:  to study

iskul:  school

makai:  corn

hariyo simi:  green beans