Ich bin ein Nippler...

Brother and sisters of Nepal, embrace me as one of your own! I have been here only a month but I feel your pain, I know your thoughts, we are the same you and I. I too eat with my hands, licking my fingers clean with relish and leaving the steel plate as clean as the day it was forged. I too eat dal bhat until I can taste the tasteless mush in my sleep. I too squat over hole in the ground toilets ignoring the screams from my thighs. I too use your roads like I was the only one on them, weaving and swearing and ringing my bell with great self importance. (That's me, on the local bike with the curved in handlebars, no foreign mountain bike for moi.) I too speak english very badly. I too walk in the rain without a jacket and pretend its only a shower as cars float by. I too drink chai and eat momos in little greasy spoons outside of the popular areas where the, pah, tourists go.





Yes my knobbly bare knees knock against my handlebars cos the bike frame is too small. Yes I use toilet paper (but only because the other way I kept getting my pants wet, given time and maybe some sort of pamphlet I will learn.) Yes I know only four words of Nepali, dal bhat, namaste, dhanyabad. Yes if there was a McDonalds I would go. Yes I say thank you too much. Yes I occasionally wear white linen shirts with shorts and sneakers. Yes I am as white as your snowcaps. But being Nepali is, like, totally a state of mind. Embrace me to your obscene Himalayan bosom, mother Nepal, thank you please.