The Hotel Courtyard has one primary entrance in and out. It goes through, you guessed it, the courtyard. This is the central location where patrons often sit to have a drink and make conversation. The owners hang out there and socialize while conducting the day-to-day business of the hotel. Always present is their little yappy dog, Tibby. I'm not sure what breed of dog Tibby is--it would be sort of like trying to identify the race of Cousin Itt. Underneath the ugly hair and yapping is a pretty friendly dog that will sit in your lap and let you pet him. But Tibby fancies himself the courtyard's guard dog as well and misses no opportunity to defend it from anyone threatening. As the courtyard is the primary entrance in and out for everyone, it has a regular flow of not just patrons, but drivers, porters, deliverymen, cleaning staff, etc., all of whom are native Nepalese. Tibby only barks at them. If I walk in, or an Australian, Brit, Canadian, Greek, German, or Italian, Tibby greets him/her by trotting up and sniffing. If a Nepali or Indian enters, Tibby greets him/her with ferocious barking and occasional nipping at the knees and calves. This racial profiling occurs with remarkable consistency.
It is at times amusing, and at times annoying, to watch Tibby go from placid to vicious with the entrance of a dangerous new visitor. The dog's racism is a joke among everyone here, but it's also pretty curious. The owner explains it like this: Nepalese people don't typically own pets. Dogs fend for themselves, and the notion of a domesticated pet dog is unusual. Consequently, dogs are often subject to abuse by Nepali people. The owner thinks Tibby can somehow sense the different attitude towards dogs. I don't entirely buy this because some of the hotel employees who are around Tibby every day and like him are still subject to the racist treatment. The cook, for example, just smiles while Tibby attacks his heels, and I think he feels affectionate towards the dog despite being victimized by him. Or does the cook just smile because it's the owner's dog, secretly harboring resentment toward the mutt that daily terrorizes his ankles?
On a related note: a westerner might come to Nepal and think that the Nepalese people are pretty homogenous. This is far from the case, which one might expect in a mountainous country with weak central government and poor transportation and communication. Despite its small size, apparently Nepal is quite diverse in its ethnicities and languages. Most people in Kathmandu speak Nepali (and some English) but I understand that the longer treks will take travelers to parts of Nepal where people don't even speak Nepali. The ethnic differences between these peoples would be difficult for westerners to distinguish, but I think that for local people, those differences are quite real. To illustrate, consider the interchange between my hiking companion Bruce and our Nepali guide, Isur:
Isur: I am the only member of my family to come to Kathmandu. I'm from the mountains near Ganesh Himal, so I know the mountains very well.
Bruce: So what, you're like a Sherpa?
Isur: No, Chhetri.
Bruce: Huh?
Isur: Chhetri.
Bruce: So that's not Sherpa?
Isur: No.
Bruce: What's the difference?
Isur: Um...
Chris: They're different ethnic groups, Bruce. I think it would be like assuming Puerto Rican and Cuban are the same because they both speak Spanish.
Isur: Yes, that's right.
Bruce: Ok, cool.
Incidentally, Chhetri and Sherpa don't speak the same language, so it's even a bigger difference than Cuban and Puerto Rican. Still, you get the idea. In an earlier entry I talked about the Newari meal we had, and I commented that I wasn't sure what Newari was. Well the Newari are the ethnic group descended from the medieval people that traditionally inhabited the Kathmandu valley, before the country was unified. "Nepal" is thought to be a poor transliteration of the older word "Newar." Today, "Nepali" refers to any person from Nepal, cutting across ethnic lines, while "Newari" is reserved for those descendants of the medieval Kathmandu valley, and is only the 6th largest ethnic group in the country (thank you, wikipedia).
I'm not attuned enough to the language and culture to detect different attitudes about different ethnic groups here. But in a few conversations with people I've detected condescending attitudes about urban Nepal vs. rural Nepal. One shop owner who sold me a knock-off North Face shirt commented that in the country they're suffering from cholera because they're not educated. He said they don't know better about drinking clean water. I said something like, "Well, aren't they pretty poor? Maybe they just don't have the money to do what they need." And he said, "Yes, they are poor because they aren't educated. In Kathmandu at least we are educated so we know about these things." He continued, showing an awareness of how a westerner (me) might view Kathmandu: "You might look at the streets of Kathmandu, and they are very dirty and dusty, but this is the most modern place in Nepal. We know we need to make our city better, but out in the country they just don't know. This is why there is cholera."
I also purchased the board game that is a traditional Nepalese pastime. Similar to checkers and chess, Tiger-Goat is the official game of Nepal, and we've seen groups of people huddled on street corners to observe an intense game. Shortly after I bought mine, I asked one local person how to play it, and he responded, "I don't know the rules of that game. It's for the peasants and farmers." He was sort of joking, but not really.
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