A Week of Life in a Nepalese Home

Me with Timila and her parents on the terrace of their home.

In some ways, I can hardly believe that I’ve already been living with Timila and her family for an entire week and in other ways, I feel like I’ve been here for months. The experience of complete immersion into a foreign household is amazing, especially when it is for more than a few days. I thought that when I was in India I had to adjust to things, which was true, but our entire team lived together, first in a large house and then in a hotel. I’m currently living away from everyone else on the team, with Timila, a fourth year architecture student from Nepal Engineering College (NEC), and her family. 

Timila in front of her family's house, getting ready
for the daily walk to school.

When we were originally being assigned to our home-stay families, I was asked, “Claire, would it be okay with you if you had to walk 45 minutes to school everyday?” I think it was at that point that I realized that I was about to have a radical experience. I had no idea what to expect at that point, and I’ve found it much easier on this trip to have no expectations and just accept what happens. From what I had experienced so far in Southeast Asia, there is incredible diversity. There is a massive socioeconomic gap between the incredibly poor and the very rich, with a small emerging middle class in between the two, so I had no idea where I would land on the spectrum, what the people would be like, what the house and facilities would be like, or what kind of food I would be eating.

As it turned out, I got pretty lucky. I’ve been living with a wonderful family for the past week in Mulpani, a rural village about a 30-40 minute walk away from NEC. Timila, who is a year older than myself, is the only one in the home who speaks English, so communicating with her parents is quite difficult. Despite this language barrier however, they have been more than hospitable to me.

Me with Timila's mother (left) and grandmother (right)
in the front yard.

The food that Timila’s mother cooks is the best that I’ve had on the entire trip. It’s mostly dal bhat, which consists mostly of lentils and rice. We also usually have a vegetable such as sag, a leafy vegetable that is cooked, and every other day or so we have chicken as well. The food is wonderful, but the actual eating customs have been something that has taken some getting used to. Traditionally, much of Southeast Asia eats without utensils, so naturally when Timila asked me if I wanted a spoon, I said that I wanted to try to eat the way that they do. I tried and failed miserably. So much, in fact, that after that first night, I’m no longer allowed to use my hands to eat, and I’m required to use a spoon.

The living room where I slept.

I think the main issue was that I ate too slowly. They eat very fast here, taking care to consume the food while it is still hot. I struggled with this, as I am not accustomed to using my hand as a fork for rice and dal, which is a thick, though watery, sauce created from cooking lentils and beans. As I was about half way through my dish, Timila and her parents were finishing up. “Claire, you need to eat faster,” Timila said. A few seconds go by. “Claire, you really need to eat faster.” A few seconds again. “If you don’t eat faster, your food is going to get cold, and you’re going to get sick!” After that, I am now handed a spoon every night when we sit down for dinner.

Me wearing traditional Nepali attire. The shirt is called
a cholo, which Timila's family had custom-made for
me as a gift. The dress I'm wearing is her mother's sari.

Speaking of sitting down for dinner, Timila’s family, like many Nepali families, eats while sitting on the floor. No table is involved. There is a line of mats on the floor in the kitchen where we sit cross-legged to consume our meals. Dinner is not really a time for chatting, it’s solely a time for eating, and if you dilly-dally, your food will get cold, and as I discovered the first night, that is surely something to be avoided. Dinnertime, which lasts about 15-20 minutes, is around 8:30-9 each night. After dinner, the family usually begins to wind down, watches a little TV if there is electricity (they only have it for about 8 hours each day, and it comes at a different time everyday, so that it can be distributed throughout the entire city), and often times goes to bed very shortly afterwards. I still don’t quite understand the reasoning for eating a massive meal so late at night and then crashing almost immediately afterwards, but that’s the way they do it here.

The whole electricity thing has been something else to get used to. Eight hours of electricity is actually quite manageable once you figure out at what times there will be electricity and how to use those times effectively so you can get all of your electrical needs taken care of while there is power. Although sometimes it comes in the middle of the night, which makes it pretty difficult to utilize unless you simply need to charge something, which can just be plugged in when you go to sleep, and then it’s charged when you wake up in the morning. Even when there isn’t full electricity, Timila’s family has a battery that provides enough electricity for one bulb in each room. Nothing can be charged and the TV doesn’t work, but there is light if it is necessary.