Abstract
A researcher on ethnographic dharma after disaster in Nepal.
I wasn’t in Nepal when their Great Earthquake struck. But I had just bought a plane ticket to Kathmandu two days prior. I was planning to go back to visit the communities where I did my dissertation fieldwork, reconnecting with them and collecting more data.
On Saturday, April 25, Nepal experienced a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. A second major quake followed on May 12. The epicenter was in Gorkha district, between the capitol of Kathmandu and Pokhara, a popular tourist destination, but the quake was felt across central Nepal and in India, China, and Bangladesh. Nepal is a hilly and mountainous country; there were landslides and avalanches, including a widely reported avalanche on Mt. Everest. Homes, schools, and entire villages were destroyed. The death toll stands at 8,000 and rising.
Nepal’s webs of social connectedness ensure that all Nepalis will be affected by the earthquake, even through what sociologists would term “weak ties.”
Now, many Nepalis are living in tents or temporary shelters, waiting for aid materials so they can rebuild. A friend told me her family in Kathmandu would go back into their damaged house only to cook, then race back outside.
The first time I went to Nepal, I was a graduate student. I stayed for five months at the Institute for Social and Environmental Research (ISER), a Nepali research and development center with a long-standing relationship with the University of Michigan. The women I studied, members of a new religious movement, welcomed me into their homes and the movement’s ashrams, hanging out, chatting, helping children with their English, and participating in daily life. With the ISER staff, too, I ate meals, played badminton, and took trips to local points of interest. Every morning before going to the ashram for religious services, I had tea with two elderly security guards who’d once been Gurkha soldiers in the British and Indian armies.
I did my research in the southern plains of Nepal’s Terai region. People living there were relatively fortunate. Both ISER and the religious group I study are busy sending relief supplies to other, more devastated areas. ISER is proudly sending rice and other supplies to northern districts.
To say the people I know in Nepal weren’t injured in the earthquake is not to say they weren’t affected. Nepal’s webs of social connectedness ensure that all Nepalis will be affected by the earthquake, whether directly, through friends or relatives, or through what sociologists would term “weak ties.”
I often feel I owe a debt to the Nepali people. Of course, ISER’s support and the generous women I interviewed made it possible to do my research, to graduate, and to get my current job. But I also feel a debt to people who helped me in more transitory ways: to every student who was surprised to see a White woman on a bus and checked to make sure I knew where I was going. To the children who sought me out so they could practice English, and the families who welcomed me into their homes and offered me food. To the brothers and sisters at the Kathmandu ashram who spent hours going over the history of their movement in Nepal. To everyone I stopped on the street to ask directions. Though I can’t know how they all fared, I am compelled to find the right ways to be generous to all of them.
I don’t know when I’m going back. As I write, Nepal is still shaking. I have no doubt that if I did use my plane ticket, people would welcome me generously and help me with my research. But the Nepali people don’t need another person to help right now. Now it’s my dharma, my moral obligation, to help them as best I can. When I left, after all, the women I interviewed asked me not to forget them.