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July 2000
Dear Friends,
Yes, it has been a long time. I am now in Kathmandu. I am in
a three-month intensive Nepali language program before starting
work in United Mission to Nepal. Nepal is a very small country,
just 22 million people, nestled in the Himalayan mountains between
the two largest countries in the world, India and China. It has
only been a democracy since 1990. Before that it was ruled by
its king, whom the people still believe to be a god. The country
is the only officially Hindu country in the world.
When you are in Nepal, you experience what it might have been
like in the days of the Old Testament. Here in Kathmandu there
are temples and idol worship everywhere. Right near where I am
staying is a temple next to the sidewalk and in the middle of
the sidewalk is a very low-standing, small idol, the shape of
a shoe box, at least I think that’s what it is, in that it
is often decorated with dyes and flowers, which is the usual worship
attire. I often wonder what would happen if a dog decided to claim
it as part of its territory in the usual fashion! I have been
studying Acts recently and as I read 22:17-31, I nearly wept as
I thought how God must feel as so many people worship stones and
other worthless items—like money—too.
As part of our language and orientation experience, we spend
time living with a Nepali family. I spent two weeks living with
a middle-class Hindu family here in Kathmandu Valley. The Bisnets
are of the Chetri caste, which is just below the highest (Brahmin)
caste. It was a fascinating experience to live intimately (and
I mean intimately!) with a family of another faith. Much of family
life is dictated by the rules of maintaining oneself free of pollution.
In fact, one morning I absentmindedly polluted an entire basin
full of clean dishes merely by placing my used tea cup on one
of the clean plates in the basin and thereby requiring the entire
basin full of dishes to be rewashed. (Actually the mother was
out at the time and the teenage daughter who had discovered my
infraction decided that only the underlying plate had been polluted
and had to be rewashed—I was greatly relieved because we
were dearly short of water.)
The sense of the Old Testament came wafting through to me one
day when I was sitting in the living room and a young women visitor
started talking to me and sat down just outside the room but did
not come in. She could not come in because she was menstruating
and would pollute the room if she came in. Later on, I asked her
to write a Nepali word for me in my notebook—she shrank back
as I tried to hand it to her. (I must admit, I actually precipitated
the event to see what would happen.) She then opened her hands
and allowed me to drop the notebook and pen into her hands. She
then wrote in the notebook and dropped it on the floor and I picked
it up. Apparently she would only pollute me through the notebook
if we both were touching it at the same time. The pollution does
not persist in the notebook after she finishes touching it (I
guess). In these Nepali Hindu homes, menstruating women do not
go into the kitchen, or cook at all and they eat separately. Girls
do go to school and work, though, and apparently there are not
separate places, etc. for them—they just don’t say anything,
so I’m not quite sure how that is all rationalized—but
I’m glad it is! Several women that I spoke to say that they
do enjoy the few days off a month—it gives them rest. During
that time another relative, often a male relative, will do the
cooking. And of course childbirth is also very polluting....
When I got back to the Pucho Nivas Guesthouse, I met Nancy and
Prabhu Rayan, a delightful Indian missionary couple. They are
missionaries with the Indian Missionary Alliance, an indigenous
missionary fellowship. They are based in Chennai (Madras), and
work among the visually disabled. They have just come back from
Burma and now they are here in Nepal for a few days encouraging
some Nepali missionaries who are working with the blind here in
Nepal. It was exciting to listen to them describe how desolate
and frightened and unsure they were as the Western missionaries
like myself have had to leave India in recent years. As they were
forced to stand on their own feet, they found to their great surprise
that they could, and now the Indian indigenous mission movement
is really taking off. It is indeed exciting. It is similar to
what happened in China when missionaries were forced to leave.
It was such a blessing to be part of their joy and excitement—I
felt a real sense of release from the bonds that tie down my Hindu
friends.
In September I begin working at United Mission to Nepal as advisor
in planning and evaluation in the Health Services Department—more
about that in my next letter.
Matters of Praise: Visa, safe arrival
of household goods from India, good health.
Matters of Prayer: That Nepali will
come more easily (!); for the five-year general agreement between
United Mission to Nepal and His Majesty’s (Nepal) Government
which has not yet been signed.
Beverley Booth
The 2000 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.149
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