Is it Christmas or Halloween or…? Tihar!

November  / December 2020

All the houses decked with brightly coloured lights, lots of candles and decorations.  Special festival songs; kids going round the houses singing and asking for treats or money; preparing for a special visitor to come into your house – a visitor who somehow manages to visit every house on the same day and who appreciates certain treats that you leave out. 

In October or November Nepal celebrates a beautiful festival called Tihar.  Some things are similar to Diwali, the festival of lights which is celebrated in India, but the meanings behind it seem to be different.  In my first experience, it certainly had the feeling of Christmas because of all the lights on the houses – but last year it was only October so it seemed far too early!  Still, it’s the time to soak up the Christmas feeling of joy and celebration because when it comes to Christmas here, only a few Christian homes will have lights.  There are five days to this festival, each worshipping a different animal or person – crows (seen as messengers of death) then dogs , cows, the goddess Laxmi and finally brothers. For crows, dogs and cows people give them food (even though every other day of the year crows and dogs might be shooed away) and people they give tikka (a red powder on the forehead for a blessing) to dogs, cows and brothers and put mallas (circles of flowers) round their necks. 

For ‘bhai tikka’ – worshipping brothers – sisters give them tikka and also fruits and nuts while the brothers also give their sisters gifts. (For those who have changed religion it becomes difficult because they can no longer perform this family ritual.)  

And in the Newar culture which is dominant in the Kathmandu Valley, people also celebrate self-puja or self-worship on one day which is also the Newari new year – different to both the Western and Nepali calendars! 

This year somehow I noticed more comparisons with Christmas.  Laxmi is the goddess of wealth so everyone wants to keep her happy and have her come into her homes – sounds a bit like telling kids to be good so that Santa will come to give lots of gifts and somehow visit every home in one night.  To encourage Laxmi to come, this is the spring-cleaning season – people selling brushes do a good trade.  After cleaning the house, people put strings of marigolds outside their homes or shops which stay there all year.  At first they look very bright, before they’re covered in dust or dry up.  Inside they have a display of fruits and nuts for Laxmi and make a special ring snack called Sel Roti, made out of rice flour and looks like a donut (they also get made for Christmas or any celebration).  Outside the home there might be a mandala decoration made with coloured powder, and then a little trail with lights running all the way into the house to encourage Laxmi in.  And these days, many houses have so many lights outside – hung down in vertical strings.  Somehow they pop up almost overnight and disappear after only a week – unlike the month or more in the UK!

And along with lights there are some fireworks and firecrackers – just a few, but enough give the feeling of Guy Fawkes night.  And then, there’s the singing and dancing!  There are special songs used during Tihar and traditionally people go round the homes singing them.  This year I only saw one or two groups of kids going round due to corona restrictions, but they were having fun and kept singing and also making up songs hoping for money or sel roti or other treats.  Somehow it feels like a mixture of Halloween trick or treat / guising plus the traditional carol singing when they demanded Figgy pudding!  I think this song singing culture helps to explain why Nepal has a whole collection of its own Christmas carols and people love to go round houses of Christians to sing carols and then eat a feast in the run up to Christmas.  I’m happy I got to join that craziness last year as this year, unsurprisingly, we were not allowed to squeeze 50 people into one small home, singing and dancing away. 

So there you have it, the Nepali Tihar which feels like two or three British festivals rolled into one!  You even can see the influence of Tihar decorations in how people celebrated 16 days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence in November and December this year, through UMN’s work: www.umn.org.np/news/915

Winter in Nepal

Sunshine, freezing floors, fires and fresh-roasted peanuts – these are some of the features of a Nepali winter experience which feel different to the UK!  Last year was my first winter here, and now I’m rediscovering what it’s like – the joys and challenges.  We even recorded some winter experiences from UMN’s expat staff members which you can read here: https://www.umn.org.np/winter-stories .  Back at the end of November, my friend Clare messaged me from a field trip and staying at 2,300m (around 7,500 feet) saying: “I’m under two duvets with a hat, lots of layers and wearing my biggest down jacket” – at only 7:30pm!

On the streets we are getting lots of oranges and a return of carrots, sweet potatoes and saags (leafy greens).  A fun feature is freshly roasted peanuts – you get whole carts of them, roasted right there and served in a poke by a friendly person.  There are also red (and cream) poinsettia flower bushes (almost trees) rather than the small ones in pots which die off after Christmas – I love them but I never did manage to keep one alive! 

A big contrast is sunshine and the difference in temperatures between indoors and outdoors.  I don’t miss grey, wet windy UK winters one bit – it is a huge gift to have sun here almost every day.  So you see many people outdoors in the morning and daytime to warm up – drinking a cup of tea on the roof or street outside their home, standing in the sun.  Indoors is usually colder.  Many people have no heating or just a single heater. If you have a marble floor (like my flat in the hall, kitchen and stairs) then it becomes freezing at night!  And the bathroom too, since they are floored and lined with tiles. At night-time we frequently wear our coats indoors and often go to bed wearing extra layers.  Last year, I was intrigued that outside people would often light fires, not for cooking or burning garden waste but just to stay warm.  In villages, many homes use fires to cook too, and in winter this is really welcome (except for the smoke, which increases because you want to keep the windows and doors closed).  So, where would you prefer to live in winter?!

A woman’s work is never done…

Heating oil over the fan-assisted fire. Roti bowl in front.

January 2020

At the start of 2020 we finally did a village stay, in Bajhang in the Far West of Nepal. I had a room to myself in a concrete house with a comfortable bed and warm blankets. But the toilet was still outside, with no light and a low ceiling. The kitchen was in an old clay and wood building, upstairs, above the cow shed. There were two small windows, usually shut to keep it warm. I went there in the evenings to spend time with the wife of the family, learn how to cook and to stay warm! I enjoyed millet roti with nettle sauce! Very healthy apparently.  But my colleague couldn't cope to stay in there because of the smoke burning her eyes. There is no chimney, but everything is cooked on a wood fire. To bring gas for three hours along a bumpy road would be very expensive so it was rare. Cooking on a fire is perhaps more tasty (city people sometimes choose to do it occasionally) but takes twice as long - at least two hours often, because there is only one hob to cook rice then vegetables then daal, or vegetables and then roti breads. It requires fetching firewood, blowing the fire, smoke everywhere. The warmth was good in winter but wouldn't be so fun in summer. Our hostess laughed at first when we couldn't cope with the smoke. But after a few days she admitted she doesn't like it either, but what can she do, she has to cook! Morning and evening. 

When not cooking, there are always other jobs. Washing dishes, washing clothes, cutting and carrying firewood, cutting grass for the cows. Collecting firewood is a woman's job. Out of around 100 people we saw collecting firewood, only two were men. Some women get up at 4am to climb steep hills to get wood, returning at around noon and then selling a huge heavy basketload for less than £4. Sometimes they have to climb trees to cut it. Our hostess couldn't carry heavy loads after a difficult pregnancy and operations. She would collect a few bits locally and buy the rest.  Luckily her husband has a job so they had some money. She did have to cut grass though. In the dry season it took about an hour of scrambling up hills and past prickly bushes, cutting whatever grass or shrubs looked edible. I joined her one day and suddenly a patch of dry grass seemed a valuable item. The two young cows didn't even produce milk yet, only manure! And you can't eat cow meat here. 

What if our hostess was sick or had to go away to hospital, several days' travel away? Who would do all the work? Now she only has her husband and a son to care for. But in some families the wife had to work and cater for more than ten people including in-laws and everyone's negative comments. She can't afford to be ill. They can't afford to loose her. So her health may be sacrificed. And I haven't even mentioned work in the fields. In village Nepal, a woman's work is never done.