Kyle and I stayed at an NGO called EduVision in Hetauda, Nepal for a little over a month, and while we didn't completely immerse ourselves in Nepali culture and become one with the people, we DID have the opportunity to get to know about 30 Nepali kids between the ages of 12 and 18 while we were there. And these kids rocked. How, exactly? Here's a list with just a few examples:
1. Favorite Food
I asked a lot of the kids what their favorite food was, and the general consensus was a mango. Not Sour Patch Kids, or Doritos, or MacDonald's french fries, or corn dogs. But a fruit. They like this fruit so much that if you take a hike somewhere and there happens to be a mango tree along the way, they'll stop for a good 30 minutes trying to knock down as many mangoes as they can carry home. Ripe or not, any mango is a delicacy as far as these kids are concerned. If you asked American kids of the same age if they would consider any fruit as a favorite food, they'd most likely make a disgusted face and go back to eating Oreos and diabetes.
2. Favorite Hobbies
An interesting trend that's currently all over Nepal (and the rest of Asia) is to wear Angry Birds clothing. Guys, girls, children, adults- you see it on everyone. For the one or two people unfamiliar with Angry Birds, it's a video game available on just about any touch screen mobile device that allows you to use your finger to launch little cartoon birds at green pigs housed in collapsible forts. The game has become so successful that it's taken the entire world by storm, generating millions of dollars in game sales, merchandizing, clothing lines, and even a few sequels. And the best part about it is that in Nepal, nobody knows what the hell the game is. When I questioned one of the girls on the Angry Birds picture on her shirt, the conversation went like this:
Me (pointing to her shirt): Sabita, you like Angry Birds?
Sabita: Yes, it is an Angry Bird! I love.
Me: Yeah, but what about the game 'Angry Birds'? Are you any good at the video game?
Sabita (confused): Video... game?
My point here is that along with being the hapless victims of global marketing and merchandizing, Nepali kids don't know what video games are. Or they just don't play them. Television is occasionally found in a household, but it's not common. And the internet is something that's about as easy to locate as the Himalayan Yeti. (It's there, just impossible to find.)
In comparison, if you took away video games, television, and the internet from kids in America, they'd just about lose their will to live. But in Nepal, the kids find other things to do in their limited free time- things less mind-numbing. Like studying. And learning. And creating dance routines with their friends. And writing poetry. And stealing mangoes. And drawing pictures. And playing soccer. And playing chess. And volunteering at orphanages and old folks homes. And learning some more.
And it shows.
When matched up against two 20-something American males raised on Nintendo and Nickelodeon, these teenage Nepali kids schooled us in just about every category. Chess? Destroyed. Dance routines to Gangnum Style and Shakira's Waka Waka? Killed it. Proficiently speaking a second language with an entirely different alphabet at 15 years old? Cake. One 16 year old boy in particular, Saru, was already discussing advanced theoretical physics and calculus equations with us while we tried to act like our college-educated minds knew what he was talking about. He's currently on a mission in Kathmandu to go to an Ivy League university in America to discover a two-in-one cure for HIV and cancer.
So while Americans are watching the Kardashians or Jersey Shore on TV while they Instagram pictures of their dinner and then update their Facebook status about it all, Nepali kids are busy learning about ways to overthrow their Maoist government and save the world.
3. Attitude
Americans like to whine. Specifically, American kids. With the invention of the internet, suddenly these crybabies have a vehicle for ensuring that their complaints are heard by hundreds, if not thousands. And it's disgusting how trivial almost all of the complaints are:
"I'm hungry, but my refrigerator doesn't have anything that looks good right now."
"My internet's too slow and I can't download the latest episode of Game of Thrones fast enough."
"I can't hear the TV because I'm eating potato chips and the crunching is too loud."
"I'm bored."
"They don't have Coca Cola at the fast food restaurant that I'm at, only Pepsi."
"They forgot whip cream on my Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte."
"My parents bought me a used car to replace the Lexus that I just totaled."
"I'm still hungry."
As the great Louis C.K. points out, it's amazing how quickly we can become accustomed to luxury when we bitch and moan about our airplane's complimentary Wi-Fi network suddenly not working only minutes after learning about the service in the first place. But are our problems really so bad?
To help put these so-called "problems" in perspective, let's examine one of the kids at EduVision. This boy, who's 16, lives in a stucco-ish shack on the edge of town, without electricity or running water. He also lost his entire immediate family in a car crash on one of Nepal's many treacherous mountain roads. Despite this, he's one of the most friendly and intelligent kids at EduVision, where he works hard to improve his English, learn to type in Nepali on the computer, get excellent grades, and forget that he lost his family in a grizzly car accident.
Similarly, many of the other kids have a history of abusive and/or alcoholic parents, parents that have abandoned them, or parents that have died. For those that do have reasonable or even existent relationships with their parents, they get to enjoy reminiscing about the times when they used to work as child laborers in order to pay for school, which they could only attend if all of their labor was completed. One girl even has the luck of trying to battle the hormonal fluctuations of puberty while psychologically coping with witnessing, firsthand, one of her close friends die at a young age. To top it off, all of this is taking place in a third-world country with an unjust political system and almost little to no opportunity for most of the population to rise above their predestined occupation of shopkeeper or housewife.
But do they whine? No. They keep their chin up and work hard at getting an education and maintaining a positive attitude to increase their chances of living a better life. They take joy in even the most simple of activities, like going on a walk or playing chess, or even making new handshakes. They respect their elders, and they actually listen when others talk to them, rather than just waiting for their chance to talk. Everything is fun, because they find the fun in it. And when things are boring, or hard, or uncomfortable, or traumatic, these kids don't whine about it, they make it better. Because in Nepal, nobody has time for your tears.
Oh, what's that, little American boy? Your parents are divorced and you didn't get what you wanted for Christmas? That must be rough.
4. Attention Spans
In a similar vein to attitude, attention spans are also something in which Nepali kids have a leg up on American kids. The reason for this is simple: Americans are addicted to technology. Nepali kids are not... Yet.
In America, our attention spans are attuned to being constantly prodded, entertained, and captivated, and when they're left alone for just a few minutes, they cause us to get upset, depressed, or bored. Hence why we need handheld computer/gaming/phone devices in our pockets at all times. We need to consistently scroll through a news feed of Facebook statuses made by people we don't necessarily need to know about, or watch news stations of 24-hour coverage on something that's going on. Or check out Netflix. Or iTunes. Or 9gag/Reddit/4chan. Or to see if we have a new text message. Or back to Facebook.
My favorite emerging form of socializing in America is the "Mobile-Phone Group Hangout," where a group of friends sit together in the same room, and everyone silently scrolls around, doing separate things on their iPhones without talking to one another. Maybe a comment or two will be said occasionally, but for the most part, everyone's attention is constantly captivated by their pocket-size entertainment devices. It really is group bonding at its best.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, attention spans. They're terrible in America. But in Nepal, they haven't been blessed with the plague of technology quite yet. They still go outside and socialize on street corners. Or play soccer or cricket in alleyways. Or read books. Or come up with dance routines. Or learn a new language or subject. I know it sounds like I'm discussing the topic of hobbies again, but attention spans and hobbies sort of go hand-in-hand here. Longer attention spans lead to more creative and fulfilling achievements, whereas shorter attention spans usually lead to time wasted on short-term, disposable distractions like Facebook, YouTube, and Honey Boo Boo.
The reason I said that Nepali kids are not yet addicted to technology is because their country is still on the cusp of offering affordable technological gadgets to the majority of its population. Mobile phones are considered a big luxury, and even those are only the cheap, pre-flip-phone mobiles that are limited to dialing and texting on a small black and white screen. Everything else, like expensive smart phones, televisions, or toaster ovens are excluded to the 60 or 70 individuals belonging to Nepal's ultra-wealthy upper class. But just as America has shown, it's only a matter of time until Nepal, too, is tainted with the attention-span-draining gift of technological obsession.
5. Willingness to Work Together
The last and most striking difference that I noticed in comparing Nepali kids to American kids was the willingness of Nepali kids to work together. In just about any activity, it almost always became a group effort where everyone discussed ideas, strategies, and solutions to problems. In America, that almost never happens.
In a game of Chess or Connect Four, for example, it would take no more than a few minutes after the game had started before one or two additional kids would come in on the other side and begin helping your opponent by pointing out strategies or risky moves. Aside from being frustrating when you're the single brain working against two or three other minds collectively, this was also a good example of how these kids valued teamwork over single-handed success.
Even their classroom points system was group-based, where the class was divided up monthly into teams of several students, and each student would get points in accordance with their quiz scores, volunteer work, and overall performance throughout the month. These points combined to create a group score, which would then be in competition with the other groups' scores until the winner was announced and rewarded at the end of each month. Here, the kids not only were encouraged to work together, but also relied on doing so in order to do well in the class.
In America, you see a lot of "just let me do it on my own" type attitudes. From putting together puzzles to figuring out math problems to playing chess, American kids want to either do it all on their own or have someone else do it for them entirely. If someone else helps them, they feel robbed of their own ability to handle things solo. In college, we're encouraged to compete against hundreds of others for scholarships, grades, exam scores, top percentiles, and even graduate schools. Likewise, group projects in American schools almost never work out idealistically because nobody knows how to work together properly, so one person usually ends up doing the entire project while the rest slack off. And when you do complete something, most want to take complete credit for it, rather than joint ownership.
Even the standard American dream is the classic Rags-to-Riches story of financially starting from nothing and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, completely on your own, until you're a proclaimed self-made, successful individual.
This comparison even continues on into family life, where American high school graduates are encouraged to head off into the world on their own in an attempt to make a name for themselves and develop a career. In Nepal, however, it's very common for young adults to live at home and take care of their family until they get married, and even then, they usually end up living close by so that they can continue to care for their parents, grandparents, and any unmarried siblings back at home. In addition, any earned money that goes beyond the basic costs of living usually ends up being sent back to the family, whereas in America, it's usually the other way around.
Perhaps this Nepali mindset is a subconscious reflection of its Communist government's influence, or perhaps it's just a social habit that's developed out of necessity from living in a third world. Regardless, it was one of the most strikingly fundamental differences between Nepali kids and American kids that I noticed.
So while it may seem like I'm saying that American kids suck and Nepali kids rock at everything, I'm really just criticizing some current trends in the behavior and attitudes of western youths that could use a little improvement. Nepal may not have the economic resources and educational opportunities that America does, but it certainly highlights our nation's idiosyncrasies when we see how much more intelligent, positive, and hardworking Nepali children are than their first-world counterparts.
America may think it's ahead now in the "global competition for world domination" or whatever nationalist garbage we like to believe in, but in 20 years when China and India are ruling the world and Americans are trying to blame their economic downfall on the current president or government, rather than themselves, I'll be busy legislating to open America's borders to my friends in Nepal. Because they really do rock.
- Riley Harrison
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