Ethical Dichotomy

Dichotomy is the word of the day. While staying lakeside, the most expensive and touristy part of town (not our choice), we’re visiting Dalit settlements and making a documentary about the most underprivileged and excluded community. I feel extremely uncomfortable visiting the most impoverished population by day and living the most luxurious lifestyle by night.

We hired a taxi for the afternoon and drove 15 kilometers out of Pokhara to reach the Dalit settlement. To get to the community, we walked 10 minutes from the road, then descended through a steep cavernous gorge to a patchwork of paddies. Small clay huts were interspersed with rice fields full of men, women, children and oxen. Men and boys were plowing, yoking the oxen in parallel lines, while women and girls cut the grassy paddy and shook the loose earth from their fibers.

After interviewing a woman about her life and experiences, she looked me deeply in the eyes and touched me on the back. She said something to me in Nepali, and Prakash said, “I’m having some trouble with language… she said she really liked you and loved you and would like to smoke corn and eat it with you.” Her eyes were dark and shining as we both placed our palms together, bowed our heads, and joined momentarily.

The taxi driver came with us down to the settlement; he watched us with unabashed curiosity as the bags which were just in his trunk contained cameras not clothes and camping supplies, and we spoke with people open heartedly rather than in the cold, distant language of trekkers. Down in the fields, he was attentive and engaged, and even offered to carry Jes’ camera bag on our way back up the steep stairs through the gorge out of the settlement. Of course, Jes declined but was touched that he was as giving as the people we’d just interviewed. I hope the taxi driver had a good tale to share with his family, or at least experienced something as new as I did.

While talking with the community, visiting their homes, and spending time with them in the field, I was invited into a man’s clay hut which he’d built with his own hands. How humbling to see the one room he and his family shared, with one light bulb, and small fireplace to cook their daily meals. The entire ceiling was covered with corn in the husks, drying in spiky stalactites. Their toilet was in a shack outside, shared with their neighbors. Mine was connected to my room glossed in white porcelain with a bath tub and shower head.