TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIBED BY Indigo Mudbhary (x 6)
Alright. Could you tell me about your first few days in the United States when you arrived?
Oh, boy. First few days, let's see. Including the plane travel or…?
Yeah, everything.
Oh, everything. Okay. I left Nepal on—was it July 30th or 31st?—of 1990 and the reason I remember is because—I was going to school. I was going to start school at University of Nebraska. Back then it used to be called Kearney State College, and they had sent me a letter saying that school's going to start in August. And I translated that it was going to be August 1st. So, I left on July 30th, knowing little that it wouldn't start until third week of August. But those are little details that got missed in the communication. Obviously, this was the first time getting on a huge jet plane—getting a pulse and all sorts of nervousness, butterflies, that sort of thing. Leaving itself was kind of a little crazy. Some of the fun tidbits, I guess, from the plane ride—or I should say just a part of being in a foreign environment. What was it? Once the plane took off, when they offer you drinks—and back then, we used to read a lot of these spy novels, and they would have all these fancy drinks that they would talk about, and we had never seen [laughs] those things.
I remember the flight attendant asking for my drink. I say “Martini,” because that was the first thing that came to my mind [laughs]. And she said “Martini.” And I couldn't—I never had it. I'm like, “Oh my God, how do you drink this thing?” It was [laughs] so awful. But anyway, that was one. And then I think in the same flight, or some later flight, I said, “Well, I can't order any more martinis. I should probably stick with something more basic.” And so I'm like, “Well, can I have a coke?” And she goes, “Regular or Diet Coke?” And in the Nepali parlance, the word “diet” is more associated with—I guess the closest equivalent would be something like a protein powder, something that makes you strong and muscular. I’m like, “Yeah, I'm going to have that Diet Coke, man. That sounds like something that’s gonna pump me up.” And it took me probably a few months or whatever to realize that that Diet Coke wasn't what I thought it was. But anyway, those are some of the kind of craziest of food etcetera things.
There was long layovers. Sleeping in the airport was an experience itself, because I didn't have money, so I was trying to find a corner in the airport. That really felt—I don't say homeless was the—[laughs] or the unhoused sort of people kind of thing. But it almost felt like, “Oh, my God, what am I doing, sleeping on top of seats and whatnot.” No, sorry, just open spaces and whatever. And then I go to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Thailand, Thailand to Japan. The flight from Tokyo to Seattle, I got upgraded to business class, which is kind of fancy. The lady beside me goes like, “Where are you going?” I'm like, “I'm going to Nebraska." I'm like, “Wow. Do you even know what’s there? I have no idea, man.” And she's like, “Oh yeah. It’s corn huskers, football, and, man, you're going to gain a lot of weight because there will be a lot of cheese and milk in your diet.” She went on and on and I had no idea what she was talking about, but it took me about a year to realize what she was talking about once I got my freshman fifteen on.
Landing in Seattle was great because you can see those—the big skyscrapers and everything else that fit my image of the U.S. Because what we have seen of the U.S. were all in TV shows. Back then, things like—I don't know—Miami Vice and those kind of—that was the image of U.S. But then once we—that kind of fit that image, once you see the skyscrapers. But then when you flew from Seattle to Minneapolis, you’re like, “Okay, it's still a city, it’s sort of small, but fine.” Then from Minneapolis it landed in Omaha, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is very, very small.” It landed in the middle of night, and I'm like, “Oh, wow, the place I gotta go is still three hours away drive-wise.”
I had to spend the night at the airport. And I don't think they’ll let you sleep at the airport. So I had to kind of play hide and seek, not let the cops get a hold of me [laughs]. It was just like, one crazy thing after another. I didn't know how to order food. Everything looked crazy. Also it's the first time I started noticing that people around me didn't look like me. It wasn't quite—I wouldn't say that was for a racial consciousness. It was more like a where-are-my-people kind of thing, and just feeling a little weird. Anytime you see somebody that was sort of brown skin, you’re like “Is that somebody from Nepal I could talk to?” or something like that. It was really these weird mind tricks. It was more like coming to terms with those kinds of sort of feelings, which I had never had before growing up in Nepal, because it's so homogenous, right?
Looking at prices being super expensive, looking at or transferring everything to Nepali rupees, and getting sharp. The taxicab ride from the plane to the Greyhound station was, I remember 20 some dollars, and I'm like, “Oh my God, there's a full month salary that I used to make in Nepal, gone on a taxi ride.” I felt really depressed. Then when the bus took off, it's literally—when you get out of Omaha—just corn fields, as far as you can see, and flat. And I'm like, “Oh my God, this does not look like U.S. whatsoever that I imagined. Where the hell did they drop me? Might have made the biggest mistake of my life. I thought it was going to be Miami Vice, man. Look at this. This is nuts.”
By the time I got to Kearney, which is a really small town—20,000 people. That's where the college was. When they dropped me out the Greyhound, it was literally—I don't know if I’m imagining it now—but I'm pretty sure I saw tumbleweed, [laughs]. There wasn’t single soul there. And I'm trying to get ahold of somebody. Didn’t know how to use the payphone, and trying to call somebody from the—because I have—basically I'm there with suitcases at a Greyhound station. I don't know where the college is and whatever. Somehow, I think maybe somebody spotted me fiddling around with the payphone and just kind of looking [laughs] lost completely so they grabbed me and gave me a ride to the college. That's how I kind of got to meet the people from the college, and finally felt like, “Oh my God there's somebody who kind of acknowledges my presence here [laughs].” Because until then, it was three days of this complete traveling and sleeping in airports and all that stuff that was just not—. There were a couple of other students from Nepal there, although much older in age. They had come for their masters. They got assigned as my bona fide caretakers, like, “Tell this poor soul where to go”, and that sort of thing. They helped me around that. And then that's when I realized that I had showed up two weeks earlier than I was supposed to because they had said it was August 20th or something, and I was there right then on August 1st. And I'm like, “What am I going to do for two weeks?” They’re like, “Well, we don't have housing for you.” [laughs] There was all this sort of logistics, trying to figure it out. I just remember, once they found me a place to stay, I probably slept for 20 hours or something like that. Because I was so exhausted and then I wake up. Oh, I remember. I wake up some crazy hour in the morning. In the dorm there was a TV on and there was MTV on, and I was like, “Oh my God, they get MTV here in the dorm.” So, I just sat in front there and watched music videos for three hours straight or something because it's all these—my favorite bands. I’m saying, “Oh my God, this is so great. Finally, something.” And then they did a broadcast. I think they had a breaking news or some similar thing. That was the same day the first invasion of Kuwait happened where Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. This is back in the news, it was literally on the day, and the way the news was being covered, it was like, “Oh my God. What happened?” All of a sudden, I've left Nepal, and there's all this crazy stuff happening. Is the world going to end? What is going on? It was playing these weird mind tricks. Just seeing all that stuff happening at the same time. And then the people started, having all these—well, I think it was when immediately a few days after whatever that once they said the U.S. Army was going to get involved, the flag started showing up in people's houses and stuff like that. It was just a very, very bizarre experience. And I think the biggest thing, one of the hardest things, was to just to come to grips that I’m actually I don't know how many 1000 miles, literally, other side of the world without knowing a single soul and not having anybody to talk to about what was going on in my head, because it was getting a little intense. And the only person I could think who was in U.S. that I knew was this one person in Oregon who I didn't know personally. But this person had a scholarship fund, and they had given me a $1,000 scholarship that I won through some application competition, what not. But that was the only U.S.-based address. I needed to have somebody who I had talked to before [laughs]. I wrote this guy I think a three- or five-page letter about everything that I was—I'm like, “Oh my God, I made a big mistake. I'm coming here. I feel so lonely. I miss people and this place is nothing like I seen before.” It was like I forced this person to be my therapist. He's like, “Dude, I gave you like $1,000 scholarship. What the hell? What's going on? What? Are you okay?” He wrote me back later. He must have been pretty befuddled to get this. Here, I give this guy scholarship, and he's going all nuts up after coming to Nebraska. But the thing is, if I look at those first few days, it was a super intense sensory experience of feeling everything from all sorts of extreme emotions, but all in your head, because it wasn't shared with anybody, and the level of sort of fear, anxiety, also excitement at the same time was quite a bit to deal with at the time. But over time, of course, you make your connections and find people and so forth. You start making sense out of it. But it’s almost—I kind of feel for those kids who leave their country and go to wars and stuff like that—although this is not anywhere intense like that. But that uncertainty of leaving, going so far away and not really knowing what to expect: that is what I remember most vividly. Well, at this point in my life.
Definitely. Do you remember what you did during your first week?
Well, first of all, I had to find a place. The dorm situation, because I had arrived early—that wasn't clear. I couldn't understand what's going on. I was like, “What do you mean there's no place for me to stay?” Just the fact that I was getting bounced around from one dorm room to another, that was kind of crazy. That logistics took a little bit. And then they said they were going to charge me money, and I didn't have any [laughs] for the first two weeks of dorm. My scholarship did cover dorm, but only after the school started. And so I remember being pretty nervous, and I was like, “Where am I going to pay this money from?” I went ahead and started just looking for work. And I knew the only place I could work was in the college. There was—the cafeteria let you work there. I was trying to find hours to work there. But because the school hadn't started, there wasn't as much. They would have some of these odd catering jobs and stuff like that which you could get into. I just remember just being super nervous about making sure I was making some money to pay for those first two weeks of dorm. But some of the other things that are—at this point seem really bizarre. I asked somebody, “Hey, it is super-hot here.” And they said, “Well, wait till it's November. It's gonna snow like crazy. And it's like two or three feet of snow,” and this and that. I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s crazy.” Then somebody had said “We'll take you to this place called the mall. That's where everybody hangs out.” I'm like, “Alright, let's go to the mall.”
I'm walking in a mall, and I just go to a shoe store. And the guy goes, “Hey, you need to get some—.” I don't know, somewhere in the conversation this thing about snow came out, and he said, “You need to buy some snow boots ASAP." Whatever little money I had made that week [laughs]. The guy sells me these snow boots in the middle of the summer. And I was a crazy fool [laughs] coming back with these snow boots. It's stuff like that, just looking at things like a mall, just being overwhelmed with that, like “My God, how many different brands of same thing you need to have?” But the one thing that I've always loved: movies. The fact that you could watch movies in a theater with good sound, that was a good experience, the first drive-in. Somebody took pity on me and was like, “Let's go to a drive-in.” Looking at that. But then the thing is, we would watch the news, right? Because you're trying to find out what's going on in Nepal, right? You couldn’t find it anywhere. You're trying to stay in the news and see if there's any—and it'll be all about the U.S. and this and that which I couldn't figure out what was going on. And then there'll be bits and pieces. That was a really bizarre experience because the news in Nepal is very—they cover international topics just as much as they would cover domestic stuff. But here, there was almost zero awareness of what happened outside of U.S. I'm like, “Wow, that's a really strange sort of way of looking at the world.” And then in the U.S. you talk to people, and very few people have traveled outside of Nebraska, let alone outside the U.S. At first, I was really excited telling people about “Hey, Nepal, Mount Everest,” this and that, blah blah blah. And everybody's like, "What are you talking? We don't even know where India is, let alone Nepal.” For what it was, it was getting tiring. I don’t know how to explain where Nepal is when people don't even know where India is at or whatever, right. Our first week was actually pretty crazy because school hadn't started. It was mostly locals, so very sparse and hot. The overwhelming feeling of dread was that “Have I come to the wrong place,” right? Because this is not matching what I thought it was going to be. And then once the school started, then you start seeing more students of your age, and seeing people who actually seem a little bit more knowledgeable about some of these things. You kind of find your people, if you will. Then felt a little bit better. For me, it was like, just fighting this—because I had actually fought with my family, in a way, saying—because they weren't supportive of me coming to the U.S., I'd kind of said—because they wanted me to go study in India and whatnot. That's what most people do. And I'm like, “Well, I want to go to the U.S., man. I want to be like Miami Vice. I want to be like—[laughs] I wanna be watching movies, rock and roll shows, this and that.” Then I—of course the experience is not matching up. I'm like, “Oh my God, I actually went ahead and went through this whole fight and everything else just to get my way in and come to the U.S. Now I’m here I'm—maybe they were right, this is not matching up.” It was really fighting—that feeling was what mostly went on until the school started, and then start figuring out things. But yeah, that's what the first few weeks were like.
Really? During that time, were there any cultural differences or cultural similarities that you noticed?
Probably more differences than anything else, that were overwhelming. I probably didn't even pay attention to any similarities I would say. Growing up in Nepal, religion or anything like that is never even—except for the maybe more cultural or social aspect of it, it didn't really register. And to see so many people very involved in church and just that being a thing and maybe it was because the school hadn't started and whoever was there, they were very much into that and that was just not my thing. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is not adding up to my rock and roll image of the U.S.” And to make matters more weird for me the couple of Nepali people who were there, they were attending church and that really weirded me out. And one of the guys even said, “The Hinduism is total BS man. They just don't know what's going on until I found God here.” And this and that. I'm like, “Excuse me, this is not making sense.” But at the same time, they were my only support system so I wasn’t going to say anything to sort of rattle the case, if you will. I'm like, “Oh my God. Where have I come? Like, this is a bunch of religious zealots hanging out. Like, I can't see myself partying with these guys [laughs] and having a good time.” And then people ask you questions. About your faith and religion and stuff like that, which I'm like, “I don't know.” And then when I said, “I don't know” everybody goes, “Well, what kind of Bible do you read?” I’m like “Well, not any type, actually.” And so that was the amount of time people were paying attention to religion and how much that was part of the conversation. That was really different and hard to get my arms around with. And I had zero interest in going to church or whatever at that time. I was like, “Hey where's the party, man? Where's the fun stuff? Where are the concerts?” And just seeing that I felt—that was, that was really weirding me out. And the place was super, super small. Compared to Kathmandu, which is a thriving city and populous and people around. Not seeing it. It’s a small place with people not even walking outside. You just didn't see a single soul outside. And that was just very, very—an isolating experience. This place—where are people, right? That was difficult to get my head around and still was for a long time because it just was so, so different from what I’d grown up with and how the kind of friends I had and stuff like that was totally different. In so many ways it felt like, “Hey if I was back in Nepal I’d probably be having a better time, and, who knows, maybe even a better education, because this place is there's nothing going on here.” That sort of dread. Added to that, the dread of money. It’s like, “Oh my God, not only all that, I still gotta go find out how to make money to pay for certain things.” If I remember back, the first few weeks and whatever that—in terms of what was similarity? There was very little things that were similar in those first few weeks until I said that when the college started, then you started meeting friends. They’re like—I would tell them about some of these things—or I could feel comfortable enough to tell them about these things, like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you just kind of—that’s not what the rest of this is like. And there are people who understand. There's people who actually like the same kind of music, or aren't—that has this—not everybody's a religious zealot, and you can— people are—there’s a psych department, somebody had some Buddhist whatever going on.” Not that that mattered to me at that time, but just to see that, “Oh, there is variation. There are other types of things.” After that, it kind of eased up that pressure. But otherwise, the first few weeks were just—I was, I was having a super rough time, like, “Oh my God. What have I done?”
Thank you for sharing. Those are all the questions that I had to ask you. But is there anything else you'd want to share about your first days, first week here?
Well, yeah, I think you probably—This will [laughs] give you more stuff to edit. Nothing comes in particular. I think as the semester progressed and I got a better understanding and started—it's interesting that how you connect and who you connect with is more about shared experiences or shared beliefs or values—whatever you want to call it. And that was probably the bigger education for me, because before that— Nepal, everybody, kind of—it’s very homogenous in that sense, right? When you go to a new place now, you're seeing people of—I mean, there were international students. They were local people in Nebraska and whatever, right? Going to Nepal, there's a tendency—there's Nepali people, and there's everybody else, right? You didn't have an awareness of—But as you start talking to people and you understand, somebody, maybe from Nebraska or somewhere else or maybe from Bahamas. All these people, right? It's more about your interests, your outlook on the world, your—and even stuff like the kind of music, movies etcetera that you like, you can find similarities with people you would not expect—totally from a different part of the world. I would never imagine I had so much fun things come from somebody who was from Chile, for example or from Panama, whatever. And that, to me, was—and then you started talking and their family experiences, child experiences, or whatever. There were so many things that were similar. And that, to me, was very, very educational to understand that these experiences or feelings are not unique to a culture or a people or whatever. And that, if you allow yourself that openness to just listen to what people are experiencing or just be open to it, you'll be amazed how much sort of similarities you can find at the most dissimilar places or faraway places, right? That was very interesting. It was very intriguing at the time, and it still is to this day, but I think that was the first time when I had that sort of experience. And if I had to point a finger at something what was the one big part of the education outside the classroom, that was meaningful, then I would have to say that, because that's something I wouldn't have learned probably anywhere else, as directly or with that sort of intensity. I think that's the other part that stands out on the campus, early experiences. And then obviously, once you kind of get your hands around something like that, that gives you so much more—I don't want to call it tools, but a way to sort of relate to people and build friendships, build relationships and that's whether in school or anywhere else in life, right? That's the other part I thought that first semester that stands out. I don't know if that's helpful or not.
Definitely helpful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm going to stop recording.
