Deaf Nepal

Please Read!

2009-04-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

Issue #4 of Kiss-Fist, an online deaf magazine in the U.S., just came out today. Please check out Pages 88-94 for my article on deaf culture in Nepal. Here's the link:
http://read.kiss-fist.com/issue-04/

Jiri to Khumbu with Tendi

2009-04-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to think of ways to encapsulate my trip to Solu Khumbu in writing, but so much happened over the course of the month and it's difficult to include it all in one blog entry. From the perspective of my research, the best part of the trip was forming a friendship with Tendi, who is deaf, and going from being conversational in Nepali Sign Language to being relatively fluent. We spent time in his village, and I got to know his family and stay with them, and the whole experience provided a great deal of material and inspiration for my writing.

From a personal perspective, it was one of the best trips I've made in my life. The long days of walking were the kind of physical challenge that I enjoy. In villages between Jiri and Chaurikharka, I asked about and met deaf people in the area. We had fabulous views of some of the world's tallest mountains, including Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Cho Oyu (that's four of the top six). At lower elevations, the rhododendrons were blooming-- lovely red, pink and white blossoms. At Tengboche monastery, in the shadow of Ama Dablam, I went to morning and evening pujas, and had a crowd of curious monks watching Tendi and I curiously while we signed in the courtyard. All along the trip I marveled at the way Tendi was able to communicate with other people, and how willing many others were to sign with him. It wasn't Nepali Sign, but more basic gesticulation, and yet he was able to communicate so much. Perhaps the most important aspect of that communication is a sense of camaraderie and community, which can be so difficult for many deaf people to attain in the hearing community.

Tendi's community extends well beyond Chaurikharka; while he knows few people along the route between Jiri and his village, he has many friends throughout Khumbu, from his village all the way up to Gorak Shep, a small outpost a few hours away from Everest Base Camp. From Jiri, the walk goes through valleys of pine forest and terraced wheat fields, through villages of stone homes and gompas, past long rows of mani walls and porters carrying goods between Jiri and the market town of Salleri. Working our way to Chaurikharka, the valley becomes steeper and narrower, with pine forests extending high above us. It's a one day walk from Chaurikharka to Namche Bazaar, a large Sherpa town that has been profoundly affected by tourism. This stretch to Namche has been overdeveloped. An unsustainable (or soon to be so) number of visitors visit each year; about 35,000 people visited Sagarmatha National Park (Sagarmatha is Everest's Nepali name; the Tibetans call the mountain Chomolungma). While the number is nothing compared to places like Yellowstone, there are water and food shortages in the high country. Long trains of porters and yaks are constantly carrying supplies up to the villages and beyond, and the Everest expeditions literally need hundreds of tons of goods brought up each year.

Beyond Namche and then Tengboche, which is half a day's walk further, the walk moves into the high country, above tree line, where scrubby junipers prevail and there are fabulous mountain views. Above 15,000 feet, it becomes harder to breathe and to walk long distances without being exhausted. Though I never had problems with AMS, by the time I was above 18,000 feet, I felt like a dead man walking.

Because we began our trip so early in the spring season (late February), we were finished before the mid-March-April rush of trekkers. When I went to the morning puja at Tengboche, I was only the westerner there. During the long days of meditative (and often exhausting) walking, I had insights into the stories I was working on that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I wrote longhand in the evenings since I didn't have my computer with me.

The mountains seemed like gods rising above me, each with its own distinct presence. There is Ama Dablam, which reminds me of a wizard, perhaps the most anthropomorphic mountain I've ever seen, but which from a different angle turns into a gorgeous jagged peak. There is Cholatse, which looms over the valley, leaning forward ominously, as if about to fall at any moment. There is Island Peak, which sits calmly by itself in a valley, and near it, Lhotse's south face, which is one of the biggest and steepest in the world, and is covered with luminous veins of limestone. Nuptse, viewed from Lobuche, looks like an immense crouched creature with wide shoulders. From a slightly different aspect, it appears that there is a black throne in the mountain, covered with pale veins, which looks lovely at sunset. Pumori, not far from Everest, is an elegant cone, and nearby is another mountain which has a band of white stone around its midriff, as if it's haloed in light. And then there is Everest, a black pyramid rising above the snowy peaks around it. There is something ominous in its lack of snow, reminding me think of the Zen koan mentioned in The Snow Leopard: "All the mountains are covered with snow, why is this one bare?"

In the case of Everest, the wind is blowing so hard that the snow never has a chance to settle. So the black pyramid of Everest, at the roof of the world, always seems to have clouds trailing from the summit, as if it were a volcano, the wind knifing away snow and cloud in a long, elegant plume.

Leaving for the Solu Khumbu

2009-02-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

This will probably be my last post until the end of March. This week, I will be taking a bus to Jiri, and walking through Solu to Khumbu, the Everest region. I will be traveling with Tendi, a deaf Sherpa guide, one of four deaf guides in Nepal. He is a graduate of the Naxal School, and apparently, I am the first deaf person he has ever led into the mountains. Usually, he communicates with trekkers through written notes in English, but I am looking forward to a month of focusing on Nepali Sign Language. The route from Jiri was used by the old Everest explorers, such as Edmund Hillary, and is rarely used anymore. As a result, it hasn't been as profoundly impacted as Khumbu, and there are more opportunities to see "traditional" village life. Tens of thousands of trekkers fly into Lukla each year, bypassing the Jiri section of the trail (Jiri is about a week's walk from Lukla). Tendi Sherpa will be introducing me to other deaf people in the area, and I look forward to visiting his village, Chaurikharka, which is near Lukla. From there, we will be doing excursions into Khumbu. I plan to fly from Lukla back to Kathmandu at the end of March.

Kavre School art project

2009-02-21T20:19:00.000-08:00

The best part of being back in Banepa was the Rotary Club's art project with the Kavre School. The Seattle Rotary Club funded all the materials, which included paints, brushes, and pottery from Bhaktapur. All of the students painted their own designs (I'll upload pictures when I return from the Solu Khumbu next month). There was a magic show for the kids, a dance performance by a group of girls from the school, and a fabulous Newari feast cooked by a member of Kavre's deaf association.

Back in Banepa

2009-02-21T20:04:00.000-08:00

This past week, I made two visits back to the Kavre School in Banepa. It was the first time I visited the school since September, my first month in Nepal. In September, Melissa and I stayed in Dhulikhel, a small Newari town on the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. I wondered if the narrow streets and brick buildings would seem as magical as they did then, after five months here. I wasn't disappointed. I'm at the halfway point of my Fulbright experience, and returning to this place provided a sense of continuity for me.

Two visits to the school: my first to help prepare for a Rotary art project, under the supervision of Robert Rose (www.trifc.org), and my second was the art project itself, which included about a dozen American Rotary volunteers. Robert was instrumental in helping me get letters of affiliation for my project, and even wrote one himself. Robert has also been a dedicated volunteer in Nepal for more than a decade. Most of his projects benefit Nepalis who are deaf or have other disabilities. I had the chance to meet a blind Nepali woman named Nirmala, who did a Fulbright in Colorado a few years back. She is now working at a Bhutanese refugee camp in eastern Nepal. While I'm not a Rotarian myself, I was impressed with the community spirit of all the volunteers, many of whom have also volunteered in places as far flung as Guatemala and Ethiopia. Robert has projects both at the Naxal deaf school and the Kavre deaf school, as well as at the Durbar Newlife Center for children with disabilities.

This past Thursday, we made a visit to the Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre for Disabled Children in Nepal (hrdcnepal.org). Set on a hill above the town of Banepa with a view of the Himalaya, the center treats children from all over Nepal. Club foot is the most common ailment. Babies have their legs in casts to correct this condition, and their mothers sit in the sunny courtyards, breastfeeding them, or carrying them in slings. Other children have more serious conditions. Doctors were using a power saw to release a girl from her full body cast, and I could only wonder how long she had been imprisoned in there, and how she felt to be free again. There was a boy in the physical therapy room, standing between two bars for support, looking at a mirror. What does he think of his two prosthetic legs, or the fact that he was missing one arm? His therapist told us that this was the first day he'd ever been able to stand on his own.

Writing...

2009-02-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks, I've spent my days at Boudhnath stupa, a large, whitewashed dome where Buddhists from all over Nepal (and elsewhere) come to pray. Many of the women wear traditional Tibetan dresses, and in particular, the clothing of various mountain people are on display as worshippers make koras (circumambulations) of the stupa. It's a beautiful and peaceful place, my favorite in Kathmandu, and my preferred location for the more introverted part of my project: the writing of stories.
I am gradually putting together a collection of short stories about my experiences here, almost all of them pieces about the deaf in Nepal. While they are fiction, all are based on real stories in one way or another-- the isolated deaf Tamang farmer I met near the Tibetan border, the young woman at the Naxal deaf school who was terrified at the prospects of getting new hearing aids, or the Naxal student who was a child soldier in the Maoist army before escaping (eating only leaves, practically starving, with a dwarf as his guide). These are stories you can't make up. As a writer, fiction allows for a different kind of reality, a conflation of events, a liberal dose of imagination-- but my hope is that these stories will ultimately ring true to some part of the deaf experience here.

I recently had the opportunity to workshop my first finished story with several writers: two American expats as well as Manjushree Thapa, the author of a novel, short story collection, and non-fiction. They all offered excellent advice, and I'm looking forward to getting involved in Kathmandu's literary community, even if I'm only on the periphery.

Bhaktapur School for the Deaf

2009-01-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

Students in classes 1-5 line up in front of the school before going home. The Bhaktapur school is the smallest that I've visited, with only 25 students and three teachers (one of the tree teachers is deaf and is secretary of Bhaktapur's Deaf Association). The students have three rooms of a larger school. The NGO that funds the deaf school also funds a nearby school for students with severe mobility disabilities. However, there is no funding for next year for the deaf school, at least not yet, and the school may end up closing down. After finishing Class 5, students continue at the Naxal School for the Deaf in Kathmandu or at a hearing school just up the hill in Bhaktapur, which provides sign translators. Unfortunately, many students end up dropping out of school after just a few years.

Students in Class 2 play Memory with homemade cards.

My mother, after visiting the Bhaktapur school, decided that she wanted to help and bought notebooks, pencils, sketchbooks and crayons for all of the students! The woman on the left is one of the school's three teachers as well as the de facto principal.

Srijana Deaf School in Pokhara

2009-01-17T01:20:00.000-08:00

Students at the Srijana Deaf School in Pokhara, after a day of exams.

Srijana students with the Annapurna range behind the school.

A few of the students demonstrate their acrobatic abilities with backflips off the wall of the field next to the school!

Deaf Bargaining

2009-01-12T23:33:00.000-08:00

A deaf man in Pokhara bargains for a taxi fare by writing on his hand.

Gorkha Association of the Deaf

2009-01-08T23:36:00.000-08:00

Ram Kushal Pant was born deaf, and of the seven children in his family, he is one of four born deaf. His two older deaf siblings never had a chance to get an education and know very little sign language. But Ram went to the Naxal School for the Deaf in Kathmandu, received his SLC (School Leaving Certificate), and became the first, and only, president of the Gorkha Association of the Deaf (GOAD). He's been the president for 14 years, and has been re-elected to his position five times. He and his wife Sanita are the only deaf adults living in Gorkha; most of GOAD's 35 members are scattered in villages around the province. Ram himself was born in a village five hours walk away from Gorkha. Sanita also finished her education at the Naxal School and became a teacher at the Shree Manakamana Deaf School (the Gorkha school), where she teaches Class 0. Now they have their hands full with a beautiful 18-month old daughter, who is hearing.

In the past, deaf people in Nepal rarely got married. They received very little education, had no way to communicate, and a marriage to another deaf person was believed to perpetuate a cycle of "negative" karma. Ram and Sanita are only one of several successful deaf couples I have met. However, all of these couples have hearing children (a CODA, in American deaf parlance, is the Child Of a Deaf Adult). In American Deaf culture, having a deaf child is cause for celebration. I wonder how deaf parents here feel about their children being hearing. It's a paradox for deaf parents; on the one hand, their child has access to opportunities that the deaf often do not have. On the other, a CODA will not carry on deaf culture in the same way a deaf child would, and there may be a rift in communication later in life between deaf parents and hearing children. Many deaf children do not have close ties to their hearing parents, who may never bother to learn sign language or to treat their child's difference as anything but a disability. By this token, having a hearing child may bring up painful memories of a deaf parent's own childhood, and fears that the same thing will happen with their own children.

Both Ram and Sanita told me that they would've been happy regardless of whether their child was born hearing or deaf. They plan to send their child to a hearing school in a few years, and they don't intend to teach her sign language. The little girl is just learning to talk, and she does know a few words of Nepali sign-- ball, milk, and eat, among others. Does she realize yet how her parents are different from her, and how will she feel about it, in a culture that often considers deafness to be a curse?

From left: Ram and his daughter, myself, my mother, and Sanita.

Visiting the School for the Deaf in Gorkha

2009-01-06T01:04:00.000-08:00

The hostel for Gorkha's deaf school. Girls live on the top floor, and the boys have the lower floor.

Students at the Gorkha school.

The "classroom" for 1st graders at the Gorkha school. After exams, they moved into their new location by the hostel, where there's enough room for each grade to have a classroom.

A few days ago, I visited the School for the Deaf in Gorkha, which is about a five hour bus ride from Kathmandu. Gorkha is the former capital of the now-exiled Shahs (the royal government). It's a sleepy little town with little to recommend it other than incredible views of the Himalaya from the old royal palace.

About five kilometers from the city center, away from any villages and surrounded by beautiful forests with a lovely view of the valley below, is the Gorkha School for the Deaf. The school began in 1999 with only 4 students, and now, ten years later, there are 66, with classes 3 through 8 crammed in a single large room, and the younger kids studying outside. There's a class zero, for a handful of kids who have just arrived and haven't learned sign language yet. Few of the students ever see their parents, who are too poor to make what might be a journey of many days to the school.

I try to imagine what class zero was like ten years ago, in the middle of the Maoist insurgency, with just four students in the entire school. Though Gorkha, being a symbol of the Shahs, was often a target of the Maoists, the school was never affected. It seems like a little island, with its hostel, dining room and school all in this small clearing in the forest.

Things have changed tremendously, and are about to change more. With help from Hong Kong, a new building has been built, and students will move into the classrooms after they finish their exams. As I write this, they have probably already started in their new building.

The students who began ten years ago are now in class 8. Next year will be the first year that the school has taught a class 9.

Another Fulbright Perspective

2009-01-06T00:54:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that I'd like to encourage other deaf/hoh people to apply for Fulbrights. I've been told by the Fulbright Commission that they are actively encouraging Americans with disabilities to apply. Last summer, before starting my project, I met Molly Lubin, a deaf/hoh Fulbrighter who had just finished her project in India. She has graciously allowed me to post a brief on her project. Molly focused on a more auditory rehabilitation-based approach, while I have focused more on sign language and deaf culture. I think both approaches have much to offer.

"During a nine-month Fulbright Scholarship in India, I set out to explore the ways in which Indian society was addressing the needs of hearing impaired children. This included research into available auditory therapy, hearing technologies, and parental counseling. I focused mostly on the parents of these young children, since it is they who invest the most money, time, and energy into dealing with the hearing impairment. I based myself in New Delhi but also spent a month each in Mumbai and in Kalimpong, West Bengal, where I interviewed parents and also gained a broader sense of the country.

I spent extensive time at private auditory clinics for the hearing impaired, at the state-run auditory training institute and clinic for the deaf, and at an NGO for hearing-impaired children. My research showed that parents of all socio-economic groups experience difficulty as they attempt to help their child, but that this was especially true, not surprisingly, for low-income parents. For this group, the problem begins with obtaining a diagnosis of hearing loss, as physicians in the overcrowded and under-funded government hospitals often tell parents that a deaf child is merely slow, or is experiencing a mild ear infection that will go away. Because the parents are relieved to hear that the problem is only temporary, they rarely press for more testing. As a result, children are often of school-age by the time they are diagnosed. At this point, parents and doctors have already squandered crucial years of the child’s language development.

Once the reality of hearing loss sets in, parents must begin the struggle to obtain viable hearing aids and auditory therapy. Many parents in Delhi, especially those who are illiterate or speak neither Hindi nor English, never learn of the existence of the state-funded National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped, which can provide both aids and sessions with an audiologist, free of cost. Often, however, even this is not enough. Through a volunteer association of American women that supported a charitable school in a slum area, I learned of a 12-year old boy who seemed to have profound hearing loss, at the school of three-to-five year olds. His father had died years ago and his mother was a rag-picker. His hearing loss had never been medically confirmed and his mother had not known how or where to seek professional help. Along with other volunteers, I took this boy to the National Institute where, after days of waiting, he was examined and fitted with hearing aids.
Unfortunately, utilizing the free services at this Institute will not solve a low-income family’s problems. The hearing aids that he received were of low quality and hardly functional; the free auditory therapy lasted for an insufficient period of time. The son of the rag-picker received therapy only for a month. This was hardly enough to make amends for a lifetime of no hearing. Gaining little benefit from his hearing aids, he now no longer wears them.

One NGO in Delhi called Suniye (Hindi for “Hear!”) provides additional language and listening training to hearing impaired children, the majority of whom come from indigent families. I observed all of the 30 children who were enrolled in Suniye at the time. Out of 14 sets of parents whom I interviewed in depth, ten reported a monthly income of less than USD $130. The children of these ten sets of parents had all received their hearing aids from the National Institute. Despite their good fortune in obtaining additional services at Suniye, these children could barely speak and relied solely on lip reading, as they wore hearing aids so limited in function.

I organized a conference in Delhi for parents of hearing-impaired children and for professionals in this and related fields. Over 50 people attended the conference, many of them parents from disadvantaged backgrounds. The primary purpose of the conference was to bring together parents and professionals, and to let them discuss common issues, questions, concerns, and areas of miscommunication. Several parents delivered talks on difficulties that they had had in obtaining correct diagnoses, learning to accept their children’s hearing impairment with little or no emotional support available, and gaining school admission for their child. Group discussions at the conference focused on ways of increasing parent’s knowledge of services available to their child, ways of raising awareness of hearing impairment among primary care physicians, government, and society at large, and ways for working to lower the cost of hearing technologies.

In addition to giving a presentation at this conference, I delivered various talks on my research findings throughout the course of my time in India. I spoke to a group of western anthropologists at the International Trust for Traditional Medicine in Kalimpong, to 150 Pakistani college students at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, to a group of Indian scholars at a Delhi-based research institute, the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, and to students undertaking a training program in audiology at the National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped. Raising awareness consists of helping society to understand the needs and capacities of hearing impaired people, and helping the hearing impaired find paths to successful lives and thus become advocates for other hearing impaired individuals."

Shanti Sewa Griha

2008-12-31T01:11:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to visit Shanti Sewa Griha with one of my deaf students. There are two students in the picture, both in Class 5. The student on the right lives at Shanti Sewa Griha. SSG is a residential and rehabilitation center for Nepalis with disabilities. Most of the patients are lepers or have spinal problems. This student is the only deaf person at SSG.

When I first came to Nepal, I met an older German man who had been in the first class of Fulbrighters to the U.S. in the 1960's. He has been working with this student and SSG (a Nepali-German joint venture) for quite some time, though he lives in Germany now. He warned me a number of times that I should be mentally and emotionally prepared before visiting SSG.

And yet I was not disheartened by what I saw. The author Paul Theroux once described a leper colony in Africa as being one of the most cheerful places he'd ever visited. While I wouldn't call SSG cheerful, it's absolutely amazing what's being done there. Their mission is to become entirely self-sufficient. They have several organic gardens which supply the majority of their food. They have crafts shops, a silversmithing shop, and a furniture shop, all with the mission of leading to sustainability. They also pick up paper waste around Kathmandu and convert it into fuel, which is particularly significant considering the amount of litter, the lack of recycling, and the rate of deforestation for firewood throughout Nepal.

Melissa and I at the performance

2008-12-31T01:08:00.001-08:00

The Grand Finale

2008-12-31T01:05:00.000-08:00

The older students staged a grand finale. It was like something out of a music video, with the sound turned off.

Dance Program

2008-12-31T01:01:00.000-08:00

There was a dance program at the Naxal School the last day before the holiday. The program included skits, modern and traditional dances. I remember two of the students using their lunch breaks to rehearse their moves. The program was informal-- no traditional or modern costumes, just school uniforms. One student did a karate demonstration, a few did acrobatics, but most were dances.

Pictures of America

2008-12-31T00:56:00.000-08:00

My mother is visiting, and I took her to the school on the last day before the winter holiday. I asked her to bring photos and postcards, which I showed to the students. There were postcards of Indiana, where my mother lives, and which somewhat resemble Iowa, where I'm from, as well as Colorado postcards, where Melissa lives. The Colorado postcards are of the beautiful Maroon Bells Wilderness, and one of the students told me that her home village looks like this wilderness.

Nepal's Deaf Culture

2008-12-20T00:11:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine wants to know why deafness is so prevalent in Nepal, and why Kathmandu has become a hot spot for deaf culture. The answer is a combination of many factors. There is a much higher incidence of deafness in Nepal than in the developed world. This is partially due to physical factors, such as poverty, lack of adequate health care, contaminated water, and illnesses such as meningitis, untreated ear infections and rubella.

Less than fifty years ago, deaf Nepalis were incredibly isolated and had no access to sign language or deaf culture. In the 1960's, the Naxal School for the Deaf, Nepal's first deaf school (where I teach), began in Kathmandu. Nepali Sign Language was developed with the help of Peace Corps volunteers from the U.S. Because more isolated villages, both in the mountains and in the Terai, have no resources for deaf children, the children are sent to deaf schools in major cities such as Kathmandu, Pokhara and Gorkha. There are students at the Naxal school from Nepal's isolated far west, the southern Terai, and the mountainous Himalayan region, as well as the Kathmandu Valley and elsewhere.

Deaf culture thrives in deaf schools. This is the case in America as well, where places such as Gallaudet University and deaf boarding schools become incubators for the deaf community. The Naxal School is the same way. It's a boarding school, and students become assimilated into Kathmandu's thriving deaf culture. After finishing school, there is no incentive to return to their villages, where they have few resources. The downside of this is the potential erosion and loss of their traditional culture. For example, a deaf person from a Tamang village may become distant from the Buddhist practices and other traditional rituals of his or her home village.

Because Nepali sign language is a relatively recent development, and factors such as lack of education and poverty limit many older deaf in rural Nepali settings, there is a whole generation of "lost" Nepali deaf. For example, in my first few weeks here, I met a seventy-year old deaf tailor who was learning sign language for the first time. In Tamang villages in the Langtang Himalaya, I met middle-aged and older deaf people who use only a few rudimentary signs to communicate. They will never get married, and they have very few opportunities. And yet in the poorest of these villages, there are many others with disabilities, and even the most able often lack opportunities as well.

The current generation of deaf people have a whole new world of opportunity. Now there are deaf marrying other deaf, which would've been unheard of in the past, because it was believed that a deaf couple would not be able to provide for themselves, and that their karmic misfortunes would be compounded and passed on to their children. There are more than a half dozen locations for the Bakery Cafe, a restaurant chain with deaf waiters and cooks. There is a deaf politician in the Constitution Assembly. Deaf people have become trekking guides and run their own shops. There are regular parades, speeches and even protests on behalf of deaf rights.

Part of what makes Nepal's deaf culture so vibrant is its relative youth. Like deaf culture in America, it is in a constant and dynamic state. There is truly a wonderful opportunity for cross-cultural exchange between deaf in America and Nepal, and I hope that more deaf Americans can find ways to visit Nepal, and vice versa.

Loadshedding

2008-12-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

One of the more frustrating things about living in Nepal is "load-shedding," or regularly scheduled blackouts. Nepal receives most of its energy from hydroelectric dams, which run at full power during the summer monsoon and gradually lose steam throughout the dry season. As a result, the load-shedding hours gradually (actually, not so gradually) increase, and just recently, were upped to 63 hours without power a week.

In other words, six days a week, there are ten hours without power, and we have one day where the power is only out three hours. Most nights, the power is out from when it gets dark until nine or so. And the power is usually out in the morning as well, which means it's difficult to schedule a hot shower around our electric water heater.

Nepal is second in the world in hydroelectric potential, after Brazil, despite the fact that the entire country is only the size of Arkansas. And yet mismanagement, a poor power grid, a civil war and corruption have all left the country literally in the dark.

We read and cook by candlelight in the evenings. As an environmentalist, a big part of me likes my low-impact lifestyle. The water heater is on at most a half-hour any given day, as opposed to 24 hours a day for most homes in the U.S. But 63 hours a week is beyond the point of inconvenience. It makes me realize how much our modern world is reliant on electricity. We are approaching the winter solstice, and never has the longest night seemed so long as it does now.

Oralism versus Sign Language

2008-12-17T05:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, one of the hearing teachers at the Naxal School, after looking at a picture of Melissa, said, "Your wife is very beautiful. She has the skin of a Brahmin. It is because you speak so well that you have married her."

It is interesting that for many hearing people working in deaf education, the ability to speak is still equated with success and intelligence. Less than fifty years ago, deaf students in America, even at deaf schools, were forced to follow the "oral" method of education as opposed to "signed" education. Students weren't allowed to use sign language, and in severe cases, their hands were tied behind their backs.

I went to a "mainstreamed" school, and I learned to speak well after many years of speech therapy, and because I happened to have powerful hearing aids and a little residual hearing. The oral method doesn't work for everyone. A whole generation of deaf was lost in America because of forced oralism. So much time was spent trying to force them to speak that other aspects of their education were neglected.

There are very few students at the Naxal School who use speech. They are eloquent in their sign language, and read and write both English and Nepali. One of the older students believes that people in Kathmandu are quite accepting of the deaf community, and there are several deaf Sherpa guides who lead treks into the Himalaya, using handwritten notes to communicate.

Rav Bir Joshi is the only deaf elected politician in Asia, and he is able to do his job with the help of a translator. Rav Bir Joshi and Ramesh Lal Shrestha, among others, give eloquent speeches in sign language.

Of course there are advantages to being able to speak a language, but the same could be said of indigenous groups learning to speak English. Speech allows for a wider circle of communication, and an opportunity to converse with the world at large. But sign language is just as effective and useful a form of communication as any spoken language; it is just that not as many people speak it.

The President of NFDH

2008-12-14T04:47:00.001-08:00

Ramesh Lal Shrestha is the president of the Nepal Federation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (http://www.nfdh.org.np/). Within NFDH, there are 24 deaf associations throughout Nepal, from the Terai to the Annapurna Himalaya to the Kathmandu Valley.

Ramesh was just elected to a two-year term a few months ago, and he is also president of the Kavre Deaf Association, located on the rim of the Kathmandu Valley in the same area as the Kavre Deaf School. Now he and his lovely wife live in Kathmandu, and work in the hostel and the kitchen of the Naxal Deaf School, making lunches of chappatis and chickpeas, samosas, Newari soup, or momos.

Ramesh is one of busiest men I've met in Nepal, between his work for the school and NFDH. It's no surprise to me that he was elected to be the NFDH president. In addition to many years of being a leader in the deaf community and teaching sign language, he is a gifted speaker with a great sense of humor.

Pokhara Parade

2008-12-14T04:45:00.001-08:00

Girls from the Shrijana Deaf School dressed in traditional costume. They will be performing dances for the Asia Regional Deaf meeting.

Parade of Shrijana Deaf students and other Pokhara deaf, with a few 25,000 foot peaks in the background.

The last time I visited Pokhara was seven years ago, in 2001, and every night there was a curfew because of the Maoist insurgency. It was very quiet then, and my strongest memory was being on a boat out on the lake at dusk, the water and the sky silvery, and the Annapurna Himalaya looming above me. I didn't know what to expect on my return, seven years later... how would it have changed? In the last seven years, Kathmandu has become an even bigger city, sprawling to the corners of the valley and choked with the fumes of motorcycles and trucks.

Pokhara didn't look anything like I remembered it. Is my memory really so bad, or was I simply not observant then? Usually something becomes bigger in our imagination, but the lake that I remembered as small and picturesque was actually large and picturesque; there was a new pagoda on the hill above the lake, built by Japanese monks, and I didn't even remember how Pokhara, too, had elements of a sprawling Nepali city beyond the quiet confines of Lakeside.

It is wonderful to have a chance to go deeper into a place, and to meet people not as a tourist but as someone who knows at least some of the language... everyday, I had the chance to practice my beginner Nepali language, which I can speak much better than understand. But then, I often have a difficult time even understanding English with a Nepali accent.

My NSL is much more fluent, and I had the opportunity to meet the members of the Gandaki Association for the Deaf, who were preparing for this week's events: the World Federation for the Deaf was holding its yearly Asia regional meetings here. Hence the parade, which both welcomed the World Federation for the Deaf, and was also an opportunity to increase awareness in the community about deaf issues.

The marchers in the parade included GAD and students from the Srijana School for the Deaf in Pokhara (http://www.deafschool.edu.np/). One of the signs in the march read:

"Deafness is a natural disaster, not a curse."

From my American perspective, it's a strange, even amusing way of looking at deafness. I don't consider deafness to be either a natural disaster or a curse. But in Nepal, it's a common perception that deafness (as well as other disabilities) is a sort of curse bestowed by the wheel of karma. From this perspective, seeing it as a "natural disaster" may be a big step forward in terms of awareness.

Parade for World Disabilities Day Dec. 3

2008-12-03T04:52:00.000-08:00

Students from the Naxal Deaf School as well as others in the deaf community marched in a parade for World Disabilities Day. There were also people representing many other disabled communities-- one of the prominent examples is Shiva Santa Griya, a leper colony and home for people with disabilities. (One of my class 5 students lives at Shiva Santa Griya, but he is the only deaf person there.)

We marched from Basantapur Square (near the historic temples of Durbar Square) down Kantipath, one of the busiest streets in Kathmandu, to the Tundikhel Parade Grounds. After the parade, some of the older students met back at the school to play cricket.

Naxal Cricket Players

2008-12-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

Two of the top players for the Naxal School's cricket team. Next year, they will be going to New Zealand to play in an international deaf cricket tournament with teams from as far as England, South Africa and India. The tournament happens every four years, and in 2005, the tournament was in Mumbai, India.

Most days, this courtyard by the school is used for soccer, but sometimes it's used for cricket practice. The chairs are the wickets. On certain practice days, they set up actual wickets and a batting net for practice. Then the players have the opportunity to really let lose and launch the ball as far as they can.

Starkey Hearing Aid Project

2008-12-01T04:42:00.000-08:00

A student from Naxal's deaf-blind unit is fitted with a hearing aid.

Getting fitted with a hearing aid while another student looks on. At least a few of the students were worried about getting hearing aids, and one girl told me she couldn't sleep the night before. When I came to the school that morning, there was a young girl crying in the hallway, because the new sounds she was hearing were so disorienting. Watching the kids get fitted with hearing aids was a strangely emotional experience. While I don't remember what it was like when I got hearing aids at the age of two, my parents told me that I hated them at first, and that I used to hide them in the sandbox. And yet now, both my hearing aid and cochlear implant have given me opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise. Some of the kids love their new hearing aids, some don't. By the end of the day, many of the kids have already taken their hearing aids out, preferring to have silence instead.

Audiologists from India, America and Canada came for two days to fit a thousand hearing aids in both students and in others with hearing loss or deafness. I had the chance to see the Kavre students for the first time in a few months, as they took the bus down from Banepa to get fitted with hearing aids. Members of Patan's Rotary Club had been volunteering for months to set up these two days, helping the kids get hearing exams and fittings for hearing aid molds.

The first day of the project took place at Kathmandu's main Rotary building, and I watched as both old and young were fitted with their new hearing aids. More than one dazed older person had to be helped off as they tried to contend with the new sounds they were hearing.

Class 2

2008-11-25T04:58:00.000-08:00

After my first experience teaching class 2 how to draw a sad-looking, cross-eyed rat dog, I knew I had to be more prepared. Even with my art background, I'd never really learned how to draw animals, and the techniques I was teaching the older kids were too complicated for class 2. Using the internet, I taught myself how to do cute cartoon drawings of dogs and cats. I even taught them some of the drawings I was doing for the older kids-- they loved learning how to draw rockets.

Before I started teaching at Hopkins while working on my MFA, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, but I realized that I absolutely loved it. When I began teaching the kids at the Naxal School, I wasn't sure if I would like teaching kids, but in some ways, I've enjoyed it even more than teaching college students. The kids have boundless energy, and at the end of teaching, when I am walking by the little pond and down the back paths of my neighborhood in Hadigaon, I find myself incredibly happy, and feeling tremendous love for all the children, as if they were my own. I'm sure if I spent all my time with them that my patience would be tried, but in class their enthusiasm gives me energy, too.

I enjoy playing soccer with the boys during the lunch break, or kicking around a bundle of rubber bands tied into a hackysack. After school sometimes, I talk with the older kids, and they teach me new Nepali Sign words while I teach them American Sign.

Class 4

2008-11-20T04:54:00.000-08:00

The boys of Class 4. Girls always sit on one side of the classroom, and the boys on the other, but I still doubt that it really minimizes distractions.

The final product of learning how to draw a landscape. All the techniques I've taught are displayed here: the five basic three dimensional shapes (cylinder is the trunk of a tree, cone is the mountains on the horizon, etc.), shading and perspective with a vanishing point.

Class 5

2008-11-14T04:56:00.000-08:00

I've been teaching class 4 and 5 basic drawing techniques. I started with teaching them how to draw three-dimensional shapes, such as the cone, cube, cylinder, sphere and pyramid and then showed them how to shade each object to give it more depth. Then we discussed all the different things that could be made with each shape. A cylinder can become the cones for binoculars or a telescope, the pillar of a temple, or even a person's fingers or arms. From there we began to combine the shapes-- a cone and cylinder to make a rocket, a cube and a pyramid became a house. I wanted to show them how they could learn to combine these things themselves, instead of copying them by rote. Then I showed them how to combine these buildings once again to make a city or a village landscape.

2008-11-11T01:19:00.000-08:00

I visited the main hostel for the Naxal School yesterday. It is in Handigaon, less than ten minutes from where I live, at the deadend of a quiet alleyway near the Bhatbateni Supermarket. I stepped through the door in the metal gate. There was a pingpong table in the middle of the dusty courtyard, and a group of kids gathered around. One of the kids from the second grade class, a small chubby kid with solemn brown eyes, is the scorekeeper for the game. A few moments after I step in, there are faces peeking at me from the windows. A woman asks if I want tea. Both of the students I met in Langtang come out to say hello, and a group of insistent kids charge me, pulling my shirt and asking my name. The kids I already know ask if I remember their names, and as much as possible, I try to show that I do, though by this point more than 75 new names are dancing into, and mostly out of, my head. A first grader signs the Z at the end of my name with a smile and a shout, then leans forward and traces the design of the leaf on my shirt.

The kids at the Naxal School, both at the hostel and while in class, seem to get along incredibly well, as if they are one huge, jostling family. Though there are clearly groups of friends, none of them have the exclusive feel of cliques. The older kids get along with the younger, the students share their snacks with each other, and I haven't seen a fight yet, though I'm sure they do happen. It may be an idealization, and I'm not an insider yet, but these kids know they have to stick together, and being deaf, just as it does in America, creates a strong bond.

Around the kids I feel almost overpowering feelings of affection and camaraderie. We share this bond of deafness, and while we come not just different ethnic cultures but different deaf backgrounds as well, I know they respect me not just as an American but particularly as a deaf American, just as I respect them for the challenges they face, for their incredible enthusiasm, and for our common bond.

I'd like to strongly encourage other deaf Americans to consider working with deaf Nepalis. It's a strong, vibrant community, but it's also one with many needs. There are deaf schools in Kathmandu, Kavre on the rim of the valley, Pokhara, Gorkha, and Bhairawa, near the birthplace of the Buddha, among others. There are many more deaf associations. And while there are whole new generations of deaf being born with more opportunities, one that includes sign language, schooling, and prospects of work and marriage, there is an older generation of deaf people that has been left behind.

Teaching at the Naxal School

2008-11-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

Today I began my second week of teaching, and my first sessions with Class 4 and 5A. It's a challenge to keep up with all the different sign names. After trial and error from last week, I have a basic introductory first lesson in place. I start by introducing myself and the students, and then I sketch a map of America on the board, marking a dot in the heartland, near Chicago, where I was born and raised. After finishing university in Iowa, I moved to Portland, Oregon, on the west coast, and I tell the students that I lived there for 5 years. Then I moved to Baltimore (of interest to the students because it's near Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., the only all-deaf university in the world), where I completed my M.F.A. From the midwest to coast to coast.

Then I asked them what they wanted me to teach them. What did they want to learn how to draw? Everything from tigers to tears, villages to the Statue of Liberty.

I've also had the opportunity to tell them about Barack Obama's historic win as president of the United States. Yesterday, when I visited the school in the afternoon, I hung out with a half dozen of the older boys, who all had questions about America, including our new president. Did I like him? How old was he? Does he have children? Yes, he's 47, he has two children. Why did Islamic militants attack the U.S.? Wasn't Obama friends with the terrorists, one student asked. I couldn't answer the first question, but the second was an obvious no. Why was Abe Lincoln assassinated? I tried to expain as best as I could, with my limited Nepali Sign Language, the reasons for the Civil War.

Aside from their misconceptions about Obama, the students are excited about him. It's significant even here that our country elected a black man, and I think Nepalis sense a major paradigm shift, not just in America, but in this part of the world, too. While Obama's of a different race than Nepalis, he's of a similar hue. The students also want to know if Americans like Nepal, and I tell them that Americans know about Mount Everest and the tallest mountains in the world, but not much else. How many deaf people are there in America? And of course they want to learn American signs, too.

Teaching has been trial by fire, which I learned last week after the kids asked me to show them how to draw a dog. While I studied studio art in college, my experience was mainly with drawing people. Here I was, in front of more than twenty excited second graders, expected to draw a dog.

I've been trying to encourage creativity, so I showed them different ways to draw the ears-- floppy like Spot or pointy like a wolf? But my attempts to have them draw a dog using their imagination, and with several different templates, fell flat. I drew two cartoonish cross-eyes, and then a rat-like snout with whiskers. It was a terrible drawing, and I could hardly keep from laughing at myself. Meanwhile, the kids were dutifully copying my drawing exactly as I'd made it, holding up their notepads and asking for my approval. Still, I sensed some disappointment that I hadn't drawn much of a dog.

I was asked to teach this class on two days' notice, and only now, in my second week, am I beginning to formulate a plan. I want to teach them basic artistic techniques, such as shading, three-dimensional objects and perspective. A cylinder can become a vase, and a cube and pyramid a house. Cylinders and cubes can be as grandiose as castles. My eventual goal, if this is possible in two months' time, is to teach them to draw the human face and body using their knowledge of basic shapes, which is also made up of cylinders and spheres. I hope that I can use these techniques to teach them not to draw from memory but from observation and imagination.

At the Kavre School

2008-10-30T05:01:00.000-07:00

Here I am giving the first of two speeches in Kavre, though at this point, I hardly know Nepali Sign Language! This is a special program called "Human Rights Through Sign Language," and this afternoon, a deaf motorcycle rally made its way from Kathmandu to the school in Kavre. Deaf people are technically not allowed to have driver's licenses in Nepal, and the rally was designed to raise awareness on the lack of equal rights.

Dancers from the Kavre School wearing traditional costumes.

The students performed traditional Tamang and Sherpa dances for the audience. That's me in the background looking on, along with other guests of honor, including Rav Bir Joshi, member of the Constitution Assembly and the only deaf elected politician in Asia.

Deaf Tamang Brothers

2008-10-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

In a traditional Tamang town near the Tibetan border, we met an 80-year old woman with two deaf sons. Her first two children had died. She sat in the yard of her home, where her sister-in-law was sifting corn and another woman took an occasional pinch of snuff and leaned back on her bamboo stool. The mother told us that she was afraid of dying with no one to care for her sons. Her older son was 60, her younger son 45. The older son was working in the fields, while the younger sat by himself under woven baskets in the corner of the yard. He was hidden from sight, and his mother led him by the arm into the courtyard, where he refused to look at us. He wore a tattered red tunic and had a shaggy mop of black hair. He was very shy and seemed depressed. When she let go of his arm, he retreated into the house, his head low, still not looking at us. We were told that he was afraid of new people, and when he returned to the doorway, he sat looking over the courtyard with an expression of abject sadness.

A few minutes later, his older brother returned from the fields, a wide smile on his creased face. He was literally bouncing up and down with excitement, and he pantomimed that he worked in the fields while his younger brother wouldn't work. Like the deaf man above the village, he knew only basic hand signs and gestures. The brothers personalities' couldn't have been more different.

On the hillside before reaching the town, we'd met a deaf man with an empty bamboo basket slung over his shoulders. In his belt he had a khukuri, a traditional Tamang knife, and he carried a long stick of bamboo, which would be stripped into rope for bundling firewood. Later that day, he would hike the steep descent back to the village with a heavy load of wood.

I tried to sign with him, but he only looked at me in confusion. One of our guides knew a few words of “sign,” words that were self-explanatory and used in rural villages all over Nepal. By snapping his thumb and middle finger and pointing his forefinger in the air, he was able to ask the man where he was going and what he was doing. The man gestured up the hill, and made a chopping motion with his palm to indicate that he was gathering firewood.

I signed to him that I was also deaf, and he began to laugh at me. He simply couldn't believe that we had this thing in common. I pointed at the hearing aids in my ears, and he laughed and pointed. I wanted to laugh with him-- we could share this at least, but clearly he was also confused and uncomfortable. What could this white man with a big fancy backpack have in common with him?

He continued up the hill, and we went further down, where a group of young girls was cutting grass for fodder. We asked if they knew the deaf man and what his name was, and they giggled, too. He was called Tuku, and I wondered if he knew his own name.

Gatlang

2008-10-14T01:37:00.000-07:00

These villages are due west and northwest of the town of Shyrubesi. Shyrubesi is the starting point for the popular trek into Langtang Valley, which is to the east. While thousands of tourists visit the Langtang Valley every year, few make their way to these traditional towns, though that is slowly beginning to change. While villages such as Gatlang and Thuman are old Tamang towns, their isolation has also led to poverty and few opportunities for the people who live there. In each town I inquired about deaf people, and there were always three or four working in the fields. In one town, I visited a deaf man's sister-in-law. Her husband had died and now the deaf man owned the house.

“Do you want him?” she asked us. “You can take him.” She couldn't understand how anyone could have any interest in the “limpia” who lived with her.

In these towns, deaf people have very few opportunities. I met none whom where married, and their families consider them burdens, though they seemed to put in an equal share of work in the fields. In another home, an old woman and mother of three deaf children showed us her paralyzed legs, which were covered with a skin disease. Clearly everyone has hardships here, though the children run laughing through the streets, chewing on stalks of sweet corn, climbing trees and watching us curiously.

Above the village of Gatlang, men and women in knee-high rubber boots hauled loads of grass fodder, firewood and ferns. The ferns are mixed with manure to make a natural fertilizer. In the terraced fields, dzo, a male cross between yak and cows, pulled plows through deep, muddy furrows, and I watched as the men struggled to keep the furrows straight and the dzos moving in a direct line. Here there were shelters covered with blue plastic tarps, or small stone huts with roofs of bamboo, temporary lodgings for farmers during the growing season, with the remnants of fires with blackened tea kettles resting on them. Dawn was rising over 24,000 foot Langtang Lirung at the head of the valley, and already, many of these farmers had probably been in the fields for several hours. Which of these men were deaf? In the village below me, how many men and women were struggling with illness and disability, like the paralyzed woman who could no longer move from her porch? Because of the smoky fires in each home, cataracts, blindness and respiratory illness are not uncommon.

I sat by a chorten as the sun rose. Chortens are stone structures, often with prayer flags strung from the top, and stones with Buddhist inscriptions line their sides. Our guide told us that communities would come together to build these structures in the belief that they would gain merit for future lifetimes. Sometimes the ashes of a revered lama are stored inside. Most of the chortens are older, though. Nowadays, it's hard for villagers to set aside the time to build them.

Kavre School

2008-09-30T01:22:00.000-07:00

In late September, after Indra Jatra and before the Dasein holiday, I visited the deaf school in Banepa for the first time. The Kavre Deaf School is on the rim of the Kathmandu Valley, on the outskirts of town near shimmering green rice paddies. There are hills just beyond the paddies, and a few miles further up the road, tremendous Himalayan views from the Newari town of Dhulikkhel.

The Kavre school is a concrete two story building with about forty students. Laborers were building a brick walkway from the rutted road to the courtyard. In the monsoon, the yard was a slurry of mud. The older students were in a classroom on the second floor, making candles for Dasein. The wax was mixed with coloring and then poured into a mold. These candles would be sold in the marketplace and the proceeds would go back to the school. While the students made candles, an old deaf man stood in the doorway, watching us. He was unmarried, living on his own, and he'd made his living through menial labor-- farming land belonging to others and portering loads. Though he had many brothers and sisters, I had the feeling that he couldn't rely on them. He stood in the doorway as if watching from an another world. In comparison, these students have much better prospects.

One of the things that most intrigues me is this gap between generations of deaf here in Nepal. The experiences of this older generation resonates with me. While I've been incredibly fortunate in this life, I still recognize the feeling of isolation in these older deaf Nepalis, who are just now struggling to learn Nepali Sign Language. Because I was “mainstreamed” growing up, I was the only deaf student in my school. Deaf schools are a strong foundation for Deaf culture in both America and Nepal, but as the only deaf student in a hearing school, I grew up profoundly aware of how I was different and how being deaf often created barriers between myself and others. It's a moving experience to meet a seventy year old man who is learning NSL for the first time, as I did during my first few weeks in Kathmandu. He'd been a tailor, and when I was told that he'd started learning sign language in August, a month before, I thought I was misunderstanding. I can only imagine what it must be like to finally be able to communicate after all that time.

After the Kavre students finished making candles, they started on lunch. Three of the girls prepared dough and rolled chapatis, while one of the older boys, whose sign name means “yawn,” boiled potatoes. They cooked a meal for forty students using only two burners-- a simple but delicious chickpea and potato curry.

In the afternoon, I had the chance to see the traditional dances that the girls were learning. The principal, who is hearing, played the music on a tape recorder and used her hands to indicate the beat. There were both Tamang and Newari dances.

It's amazing how enthusiastic the teachers are; currently they only have enough funding for two teachers, which is being split between five people.

Deaf Students at the Kavre School

Why Nepal?

2008-09-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

When I first began researching Fulbright opportunities more than a year ago, I knew that I wanted to combine two crucial aspects of myself: deafness and creative writing. I've been writing since I was eight years old, and I've been deaf since I was born, though with the help of a hearing aid and now a cochlear implant, I've mostly lived in the "hearing" world with occasional journeys into the "Deaf" world.

I ultimately decided to apply for a Fulbright in Nepal because of the thriving deaf community here. I also formed a special relationship with this place after studying abroad in Mysore, India, as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa.

That was in 2001, the year the towers went down in the U.S. and the royal family was murdered in Nepal. The political situation was tense and the Maoist war was in full swing. But still there was a magical Venetian light over Kathmandu; a street child named Raju who was blind in one eye; an ex-Gorka soldier who warmly taught me about Nepali culture in the Shivapuri hills; a portal of light above 25,000 foot Dhaulagiri that seemed to lead to a "beyul," or hidden land.

I knew I wanted to come back and do something more meaningful. Since that time, I've become more involved in Deaf culture and American Sign Language. I spent two years doing community service with AmeriCorps in Portland, Oregon. I worked on stories and a novel and completed my MFA at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, which included two years of teaching English literature.

Now, with the help of a Fulbright, I have the opportunity to combine these three things: deaf culture, creative writing, and Nepali culture. I've been here almost two months and it's been an incredible experience so far.