i sat in my office chair with a delightful middle-aged bhutanese man sitting across from me. no matter how hard i tried, i could not say no. "please. please ma'am. please come over to my house for dinner and to visit with my family," he said again and again. "i don't know, i just, i feel so happy when i come to see you," he continued, "you are like my daughter." i finally caved and agreed to stop by to visit him, his wife, and his three daughters the next day. but we agreed that i could only stay half an hour. as he got up to leave he pulled some asian candies out of his pocket and handed them to me: "this is our way. this is our culture. we give treats and kind things to others," he said. . .
. . .today i arrived at their home at 6pm, the agreed upon time. i heard nepali music playing as i walked up the stairs to their apartment. when i knocked on their door, his youngest daughter (grade 10) answered the door. she was the only one of her family home, along with a friend of hers. she explained that her sisters and mother had just left to go to the indian market. 'so much for just half an hour' i thought. i made myself comfortable, despite the ridiculous heat and the little roaches crawling along the walls (and at times my legs?). these i have become accustomed to, as i find that they greet me at just about every client's home that i visit.
soon after, the father returned home. i explained that i had to leave to be back by seven. "you americans. always just little bit of time to share. in my culture, if you ask me to your house, i stay for long time. that is the most important." yikes. true story, no?
his wife and two other daughters (mid-20s) return home from market, and the one daughter and i briefly discuss "work" matters - she needs direction/help to request financial assistance from the hospital for a recent ER visit that she cannot pay for. soon, however, she has pulled up her facebook page and is showing me all kinds of pictures. some of her job (she and her sister have been employed at the hyatt hotel as housekeepers for one full year now. others of her modeling her traditional nepali clothes ("we will dress you up in a sari! we will take your picture!" she says. maybe not.) others of her family and friends in the u.s., nepal, and bhutan. one picture is of her father hugging another of our bhutanese refugee clients. he asks "why in america is this not okay? man to hug man." "i don't know," i respond. another inexplicable cultural taboo. his daughter leaves to go help her sister and mother in the kitchen.
i ask her father about his two brothers who are still in bhutan. "why are they still there and you are here?" i ask. he proceeds to tell me his story... he worked as a postman in central bhutan. the government ordered him to move to the border and set up new offices there. when he and his family arrived, there were signs hanging there saying 'if you set up new offices, we will cut off your head.' and they would, he tells me. he knows of several people who experienced such a fate. he tells me about other friends who were imprisoned and tortured, in the case of one friend of his, to death. "on the one hand," he says," you have government telling you to set up office. and on the other hand, you have others saying don't do it. they will cut off my head. what am i to do? i think better to leave." he tells me about how he and his wife and then small four daughters fled the country to live in india with relatives for a short while. they then moved to nepal, where their ancestors were originally from before they moved to bhutan. he explains that upon moving to nepal, he went to look at the refugee camps there - "they were full of very very sick people. i thought, i do not want my family to live here. so we didn't." and for awhile the nepali government was okay with that. but a year later, they were forced to live in the refugee camps. "i live there for 18 years," he says. i cannot even begin to imagine.
as he finishes his story, i begin to smell delightful aromas coming from the kitchen. i ask if i can go see what they are cooking, and he eagerly leads me to the kitchen. his wife and three daughters are all hard at work. they insist that i sit. i ask what they are making, and i then get my first, brief, nepali cooking lesson. a blend of mixed cabbage, onion, and garlic is placed inside little circular noodle-type sheets which are then folded in half to make little dumplings. "it's called momo," they tell me. to us - dumplings. that delicious delicacy from the restaurants is apparently so easy to make! although i am extremely intrigued to learn more about cooking, they insist that i go back into the other room where the window ac unit is working extremely hard to try to make it cooler. "kitchen is too hot. please ma'am, please come in here."
soon after, a huge plate of dumplings, sauce, soup, and water are brought in and set right in front me. "eat! eat!" they all say, as they place a kleenex box next to me. i anticipate spicy. i ask if they will join me. they say this is all for me. soon after another course comes out. "it's good meat. good meat!" i choose to move past the fact that i don't really eat meat anymore, and i try it. it is good. it's not until much later that i make the realization that they are saying "it's goat meat," not "it's good meat." ah well. not my first experience with the chewy goat flesh (mexican weekend goat barbeque anyone?). they tell me it's called "mutton" in nepali and show me the box of masala that they use to make the delicious yellow sauce it's bathed in. we eat while watching nepali comedian videos on youtube.
after having eaten much more than i planned to, but still with over half the food they had given me still sitting on the plates in front of me, i tell them that i need to get going. "wait! wait!" they say, as they explain that another item is still being prepared. there's more? yikes. i suddenly feel like a customer in a restaurant as they take the food i did not eat and box it up for me to take with me. "share with your housemates," they say. "and if you and your housemates ever want good indian or nepali food - do not go to restaurant. call us! we make better." i will be sure to keep that in mind, i tell them. they box up my food, and toss in a huge portion of piaji (fried clumps of cabbage, onion, garlic, flour) on top. "breakfast tomorrow" they say.
i thank them for their hospitality and the delicious food. "perhaps you should open a restaurant!" i suggest. they laugh. "dhanyabaad" (DHAN-naii-bat) i say over and over to the family as i leave. "thank you, thank you." what a lovely saturday evening.
the leftovers i got to eat the next day .... yum!
