Where In The World Is Vincent Giannotti: Diplomacy is Best Served with a Shuttlecock

As shown through this blog, I have been extremely fortunate with my travel experiences. I know that I am in a small minority of the population of this world that has such types of opportunities and I try not to forget that. When visiting, or in this case, living abroad I always try and learn the local language as a tool for better cultural exchange. But as Nepali is showing me, that doesn’t come as quickly as desired. This can create some difficulty and frustration when it comes to interacting with the host culture. But one of the ways I have been able to overcome this in the early days, besides copious amounts of hand gestures (excessive even for an Italian), is through sports (or as one of our potential future president might say, ‘the sport’). In Italy I played bocce ball with men who had so much precision in their art and were so old that they could have invented the game. In China I was humiliated playing people my grandparents’ age playing in flip-flops at ping pong, and then again on the basketball court by students of mine who were a foot shorter than me. In Botswana I took on my host family and extended family in soccer, where I proceeded to be taught how to truly play, by my 12 year old cousin. Embarrassments aside, these were incredible resource for us to bond over, we were able to substitute the lack of a mutual spoken language through the language of sports.

After nearly five hours on some of the more treacherous roads I have been on in my life (imagine the recklessness of Kathmandu driving, on roads traveling three times as fast, with even more livestock, more freight trucks and busses, and sheer cliffs to one (or sometimes both) sides of the road), we reached Gorkha. Perched on what only a country which has the Himalayas could call a hill, the town overlooks an expansive valley, filled with rolling hills, rice paddies, and a big river. Upon arrival, I quickly began to explore, weaving through alleyways until I found myself in the older section of town. I peaked my head around the corner of an ancient shrine to find tucked between the shrine and some small store fronts on cobblestones, a badminton court painted into the square. Four men, all in flip flops, were battling it out. I use the term battling in an entirely serious manner, for those of you that have never seen badminton played before by enthusiasts, not by 7^th grade PE students, it is an intensely fast paced competition, that should not be taken lightly. I stood there and watched for a few minutes, but intimidated by their prowess sneaked off to snake my way through more alley ways.

But I was drawn back to the court and seeing the much less intimidating kids play, I decided to ask to join. I had some experience with racket sports from countless sunny Saturdays spent at Grandma and Papa’s house playing paddle board and thought how hard will it be to play some little kids? I was very wrong in my judgments, their small stature was incredibly misleading, their quickness and precision of accuracy was humbling. Surprises aside, I was back in my element. No longer did I feel like the awkward foreigner wandering around the town, being able to speak with others with not much more than a “hello, how are you?” and “how much? Too expensive!” Now it didn’t matter that we couldn’t speak each other’s respective languages, we were united through competition, which is almost universal. This quickly opened us up to each other as we had this commonalty. More and more people from the town came to watch this foreigner take on various locals, and we in turn we able to practice the others language. It became an afternoon tradition; some ETAs and I each afternoon would head up the hill from our hotel after class and play badminton with whoever was there. Not only did I play with kids, but their fathers, and some of their grandfathers, who also put me to shame, although by the end of our trip to Gorkha, I was able to hold my own at least for some of the rallies.

There were a lot of great times spent on that court, and it was some of the most comfortable moments I have felt thus far in the country and interacting with Nepali. Although it was for the most part a happy situation it did shine some light onto the culture I will be immersing myself into. Over the several hours spent on the court playing or just watching, we only ever saw one Nepali women play, and it was only after Julie offered her the racket. There is definitely a stronger gender binary than in most of the circles I find myself back in the states, and it is something that I will be adjusting to throughout my time here.

We returned to Kathmandu last night after another harrowing bus ride (which just getting the bus to start was another story itself, this is best shown through one of my favorite movies, Little Miss Sunshine: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/mv-8B97a/no_one_gets_left_behind/). As I write this, I sit in a cafe in the Thamel district, where I before this met a family friend Jenny Putt, who is currently in the early stages of her 6 month world tour and you can follow her at http://avoidingtherealworld.wordpress.com/ .

During this writing process, the monsoon rain has been pouring down and a selected mix of the Titanic soundtrack has been on repeat. Tonight, we are keeping it low key and going to the Cinema to watch the Bollywood film we have been seeing advertisements posted up everywhere about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FfBzyiU0ZU

I also intended this to be a short blog post, but 3 milk teas later, two plates of momo (surprisingly after the challenge, I am not sick of them yet), and an order of naan, I am still writing. Looks like I must be enjoying myself here.

The old royal palace on the top of the hill above Gorkha. If the fog wasn't there the Himalayas would be visible. The district that Gorkha is in goes all the way to Tibet.