The Expat circus

I keep meeting all these expats. I don’t know if it’s that there are a lot of them here. Or that something about me means I’m more likely to find them. Or that normal tourist numbers are so reduced because of the recent problems – so the expats stand out.

But I like them anyway. You know how often, travelling, you’ll come across weird, unlikeable people, and you think, ‘It’s obvious why you’re travelling, ‘cos no-one wanted to talk to you at home.’ And the nice travellers will be going round warning each other about these people, and ducking under the table when they pass by.

I raise this to point out the difference with the expats. Some of them come across as a little strange to start off with, but actually they are nice, easy to talk to and interesting company. Even the most droning one I’ve met still seemed to understand conversational turn taking and allowed one to make one’s excuses gracefully, unlike some of the boorish travellers one meets.

Some of them may well have drink problems, or have left behind difficult situations to come here. But they fit here. They are functional. They aren’t misfits or losers.

And of course, I’m no stranger to people who come across as a bit weird or drink too much. It’s just like Edinburgh really!

Let me tell you about some of the people I’ve met in the last couple of days.

The Mad Old version of Rarg.

For those of you who don’t know, Rarg is the consort of my dear friend Abi. He’s one of nature’s happy sprites, with an immense beard. (Which I believe he has shockingly shaved off in honour of Beltane, but is going to grow again ready for the World Beard and Moustache championship 2007.)

Last night I got back to my hotel late and drunk (of which more later) to find an old French guy and the nightwatchman watching Arsenal vs Man U on the telly. The French guy had an enormous beard and looked like a cheerful (aged) sprite.

I said hello, and got chatting and it turned out that the old man, Jacques, lives in India. He works as a jungle ranger and has done for many years. He’s got something wrong with his leg and is going back to Europe for an operation. He works here for local wages.

He reckons, because he gets bits of extra work with tourists, etc, because of his fluent French and English, that he doesn’t do too badly, but that maybe half the Indians are better off than him. ‘But for me, what is important is to live in the jungle, care for the jungle, I don’t really care so much for the money’.

He seemed an immensely happy person. With one of those twinkly smiles and a jaunty Nepalese hat. ‘This is one of the easiest jungles to work in in the world. I am an old man now, with a dodgy leg. For me, now what matters about a jungle is that it is hard, or not so hard. Some jungles are very hard. This one, not so much.’

He feels the local rangers don’t care about the jungle. ‘The people here, they do not think about it as we do. They would never think to themselves, “I want to go for a walk in the jungle”. They would never think of it. It is not their way.’

He told me he came from Clermont Ferrand in France. I expressed amazement and said that I’d been there – on the school French exchange at the age of 14. He asked where, ‘Nowhere there is big like Nottingham, for make the jumelage!’ I couldn’t remember the name, but said it was a small place and all I could remember was that Hector Berlioz came from there. ‘Aha,’ he cried, ‘La Cote St Andre! Ah, it is not an interesting place, the people, they are not interesting, apart from Hector Berlioz.’

I was forced to agree and confess that I’d spent the summer playing babyfoot and card games. We laughed about the trials of youth and he twinkled, took his leave kindly and hobbled off like a gentle little gnome.

The Nepali Dudes

Earlier in the evening I’d ended up drinking with some well-off Nepalis. They’d insisted Maria and I join them in Maya’s, and when she left, pleading having to work early, I judged them to be harmless and stayed, because it was interesting.

The guy I was mainly talking to worked in his family firm which supplied equipment for government contracts. Suppliers/brokers, rather than manufacturers. I suspect they must be quite big, because he (and all of them) spoke utterly perfect English, and that’s a very expensive education in this part of the world. I asked him if the family firm had to bribe a lot of people and he half admitted that they had to, while changing the subject with a laugh.

It was one of the guy’s birthdays and we ended up drinking tequila. Even they were broadly supportive of the democracy movement, my guy was saying that he was very hopeful that democracy would come this time, because the leaders know that the people are watching, and have realised their power. Although he claimed that many of the demonstrators came out at the point of Maoist guns, and that the Maoists were really behind the demonstrations. It’s a not unusual point of view so I suspect there is something in it. But the Maoists didn’t infiltrate the banks or the Home Ministry or the Supreme Court.

He had a lot of fascinating things to say about Nepali politics and Nepali people and culture and I kept wishing I could just whip my notebook out and write it all down. He was brought up a Hindu but now describes himself as aestheist/Buddhist. He told me about an epiphany he had in Bhutan. He had studied in Delhi and had an India student card, which was easier to travel on, but he was being given hassle by an official who suspected he was Nepali. A group of Indians there had stepped in, protected him and sorted it all out.

‘Suddenly I understood what Buddha had said and that people are all the same and all of the same worth, and that even every creature, a tree or an ant crawling on your arm like this, they all have the same worth!’ He likes to try and live his life like that, but you have to look at things a different way when you’re doing business. If the present political situation turns to shit again he’ll leave the country and take his family to America, where he thinks they welcome immigrants and treat you well.

I tried to disabuse him, but he wasn’t persuaded. And frankly, rich, light-skinned Nepalis who speak cut-glass English and have excellent contacts in emerging markets are probably given a much warmer welcome than illiterate Mexicans or young black males.

And then a weird thing happened. Or not that weird a thing, really. A fight broke out. Ours was the last table left in the bar. The bar staff obviously wanted to go, but these were rich, well-connected young men, used to getting their own way and they weren’t taking much notice of that.

Suddenly one of the guys at the table leaped up, shouting, and threw his glass on the table, smashing it, and another glass that got in the way. I grabbed my glass, as instinct demands whenever the stability of a table is compromised – either by drunkenness or violence, or, as is often the case, by both together. By this time the man he was shouting at was also on his feet, more glasses were smashed, a chair was smashed, although I’m not sure how, and the rest of them were all on their feet, wrestling them apart.

This all went on for some time. At first the bar staff were hanging back and letting them handle it, then they started stepping in more and pointing out to less riotous members the smashed chair. One of the bar staff came and apologised to me. And I could tell also, although they were speaking in Nepali, that some of them were berating the guy who’d started it for being such a dick in front of the English girl.

I sat there trying to look polite and calmly finishing my rescued drink while everyone alternately shouted and wheedled. One of the two combatants had been bundled outside by a coalition of bar staff and friends when he wouldn’t stop trying to start again. It was all quite funny really – male bonding in action.

One of them was despatched to apologise and keep me company. I said not to worry, that this sort of thing happens everywhere – it’s men and drinking. He wouldn’t tell me what the fight was about, just that one of them was always bringing up something that happened a long time ago which it would take too long to explain. Of course I was utterly intrigued, but decided it was time to make my excuses and leave.

One of them insisted on walking me down the road, but I refused his offer of a further drink at a late night bar. And told him they should really go back tomorrow and pay for the chair, which he admitted.

What was weird about it was that it was so sudden, to me. Because they were all speaking in Nepali I’d had no warning at all of the fight brewing. At home I’d have had my pint off the table much earlier in the proceedings!

Sam’s Bar

The night before all this excitement I’d gone to Sam’s Bar. I intended to write more about this, but it’s all so long now already…

I met a delicate, studious-looking Indian girl, who ‘came to Kathmandu on holiday and never left.’ She was very charming and I was impressed by the independence that must have taken for someone from her culture. Although she also spoke very expensive English, so probably had a lot more freedom than someone growing up in a traditional village home. She works as an editor, but she used to be an English teacher and loves ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’.

I spent most of the night talking to an old man called John. He came to Kathmandu from Hertfordshire 20 years ago, for mysterious reasons. Despite the question marks raised by this mystery, I liked him. He’d taught English here but now lives on his pension, as ‘False Grandad’ in the home of a Nepali man he taught many years ago. He also used to own the first bar in Nepal, which he’d opened years ago in Thamel. It was called ‘Spam’s’ as that was his nickname.

We had a very interesting chat about Nepali politics and the nature of political change. He thinks that part of the antipathy to the present monarchy is that because so many people disbelieve the official account of the Royal massacre, people cannot accept the present King as the ‘real’ king. So he just doesn’t command the reverence usual for the monarch.

John joked around a bit in that way that pub regulars do, but spoke in a very genuine and somehow engaged way to the other patrons. Despite being an old man sitting drinking at the bar, he wasn’t a bore or a sad sack or a lecher and said we should save the Indian girl from the old drunk who’d sat on the other side of her. When I left he said that I seemed alright, and that if I ever got in trouble here, or needed anything, they had his number in the bar and I should get in touch with him. He did this very gracefully, and I was quite touched.

Well, I’ve gone on loads again. Hopefully in the next few days I’m getting out of Kathmandu, to a little village in the mountains, which should be cooler, less humid and polluted and an ideal place for chilling. I probably won’t be able to post there, so I’ll write lots and store it up for some huge feast/deluge of travel trivia in a few weeks time. But I’ll let you know when I’m going.

Much love,

Soph