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Trekking Through the Life of a Guide
I'm sitting at a tiny, dark, and dingy café tucked away in the busy streets of Kathmandu, having milky Nepali tea with Ang Sherpa, a 24-year-old young man who guides tourists through the tortuous terrain of Nepal's soaring Himalayas and captivating hills. If you've ever been to Nepal, you'll have seen tenderly young Nepali child laborers. Yet Ang, who does not 'look' disadvantaged and is older, tells me a story mixed with politics, economic insecurity, and familial obligations that most tourists would never know unless they asked. At an age when most in the US are expected to 'invest' in their future by attending college, for Ang, working is investing in not only his future, but that of everyone else in his family.
Ang, who is a Sherpa (a Himalayan ethnic group which is prominent in high expedition trekking), is the second oldest of eight children. Along with two of his brothers who have been working in Dubai and Saudi Arabia for the past three years like thousands of other Nepali migrant laborers, all three work full-time to support their unemployed, 52-year-old parents and a Buddhist monk brother. They also pay the private school fees of their two younger sisters, their brother's English and tourism classes, and an ex-Buddhist monk brother's English language classes. Ang works as a full-time trekking guide, an industry that compromises 8 percent of Nepal's Gross Domestic Product, though it is certainly not a steady income throughout the year, because trekking seasons runs from September to May-after and before the monsoon season. . During the off-season, Ang doesn't work because jobs are hard to come by: the unemployment rate is estimated to be at least 42 percent, and young people are particularly hit hard since 38 percent of the working age population is composed of youths.
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Hyphenating
In this day and age, wearing your race and religion on your sleeve has become the current fashion. We identify ourselves as Indian American, Muslim American, Sikh American, African American, Mexican American, and even Hindu American. It's easy to feel left out if you don't have some sort of religious and/or racial tag, because everyone's got one!
A lot of this comes from the ideology of multiculturalism. Remember Multicultural Week in elementary, high school, and college, where we celebrate "diversity"? We're brought up on a diet that America is a "mixed salad:" each of us has a distinct flavor, color, and classification; those of us who are "ethnic" are ingredients that spice things up in this enormous American salad.
Often, this multiculturalism encourages us to publicly display ethnic culture and identity. You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been around a cultural club booth on a college campus. We're taught by well-meaning teachers, friends, and the media that differences exist, and those of us who are not white and Christian can put on a show for everyone else so that they can learn about these differences. But these "differences" are usually superficial, innocuous, and easy to consume: food, dress, and music. Rarely do we actually learn about the politics, history, and social dynamics of a non-US geographical location.
The other source comes from forces beyond us. Consider what happens when there's a major national news event and a nonwhite and non-Christian culprit's race and/or religion is highlighted: The group is singled out, stereotyped, and thrust onto center stage in our media and politics. For instance, Muslim Americans had to make it known that they did not condone 9/11, even though many did not identify as Muslim Americans prior to being actually tagged as such. Korean Americans had to stress that the Virginia Tech shooting appalled them. These events create a modern day piazza where a supposedly homogenous group is branded, scrutinized and tried in full view of the public. Is it any wonder that we feel forced in one way or another to either assert a label and/or defiantly redefine and wear it loud and proud?
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Neha Inamdar is a nomad. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she lived in Italy and roamed around for four years before returning to the US to get her Masters at the University of Chicago. When her stint as a Senior Editorial Fellow with the Mother Jones magazine is over, she'll be migrating once again -- this time to Nepal.