In 2009 my mother, sister, and I left our home in the city of Kathmandu, Nepal to chase the “American Dream” in the States as so many before us had done and many more after us would have. I was leaving behind the only home and familiarity I knew as a 5-year-old. What I did not know then was that it would be a decade later that I got to rewalk the streets of Kathmandu.
In the summer of 2019, I got the opportunity to spend 2 months at the same boarding school where my uncles had grown up while attending classes with kids my age and teaching English to kids in 4th-7th grade after school every day for 2 hours and 4 hours on the weekends. At first, I was hesitant because as a 9th grader, I wondered how much I could teach but I never once thought about how much I would learn from them and how much more connected and comfortable I was going to be with my roots.
At this point in my life, I resonated much more with the American side of my identity as an Asian American. I thought I would feel like an imposter and had lost the ability to truly understand and claim my culture. But this experience was able to change that for me at a very formidable time of my life and made me aware and appreciative of all the little things that my mother had been doing throughout my life that kept me connected to my culture and heritage. Things that I didn't even realize had such an effect on me until I went back to Nepal and saw how easily I adapted and situated to my surroundings because I was always connected to my Nepali side I just suppressed it because I always lived in areas where I was often the only brown kid.
I went into this experience looking through the lens of an outsider but came out looking through the lens of an insider and am writing this through a lens of extreme nostalgia for the time spent in Nepal.
Coming from a very rural area of Maryland the sudden change to such a high-density populated urban area was a little overwhelming at first but much to my surprise I not only got used to it but felt heavy nostalgia for it. I found comfort in the bustle of small corner shops sprawled in every corner, the busy noises of cars, and the seas of motorcycles rushing and creating their own routes and shortcuts through the roads. There were obvious differences but those differences are what I loved most.
Budhanilkantha School is a boarding school with kids ranging from 2nd grade to 12th grade. It is a mixed-gender school and housing was separated by gender and age range. I was given the bottom bunk in a room of 13 girls in the Tilicho House for girls in 7th to 10th grade. I followed the same tight schedule they were given with expectations to after school where I would go teach the younger kids English through lessons I would create myself during the time the others would do homework. Being thrown into the routine that they had been living with for years now was a challenge but it quickly became mine as well. Connecting with the girls I lived with and the students in my grade was much easier than anticipated but I have my ability to speak Nepali fluently to thank for that. Communication is crucial since it is what spreads around ideas and knowledge and my near-perfect Nepali made that aspect quite fluid and enjoyable.
I soon realized that if I had never left Nepal this is the life I would have lived. I would have gone to this very school, had this exact schedule, and would have had these exact people in my class and that was a very odd feeling. You never actually get to experience the “what if” situation and I got lucky enough to. Although I had not walked these streets for 10 years once I returned it felt like I had never left.
Comments