When left is right and right is left; when might is right and right is wrong; and when the wrong get their way and are held is high esteem, what is left?!
I'll tell you what is left...Nepal.
You are left with the country of Nepal...where pride is the new shame!
As much as we are products of our culture, education, society, and people, and as much as a closed and inward-looking society and people might fail us, as individuals we are also influencers and shapers of our culture and society!
When it comes to verbal, emotional, and physical violence against children is concerned, for example, we Nepalis have a choice. We don't have to follow the dictates of our culture and society. We can instead teach about empathy and compassion and even display them towards our children to end the vicious cycle of childhood violence, a hallmark of child-rearing and educational practices.
Combination of lack of good quality and level of education and a social system based on a highly discriminatory caste system means that, in Nepal, there are many instance of people displaying their ignorance and/or bigotry and prejudices without even them being aware that that's what they are doing.
This blog post is about one such example: Nepalis mocking the American twang in a Nepal-born American as well as fellow Nepalis for their non-mainstream Nepali accents.
Nepalis generally make a lot of assumptions about and are judgmental of fellow Nepalis based on their appearance and/or their name and/or surname, a consequence of our social system, the monstrous caste system.
In this blog post I relay a typical incident of a fellow Nepali making assumptions about who I am and what I do based entirely on my facial features -- my ethnicity.
A reproduction of an Instagram post about a family in Nepal pressuring their young professional adult medical doctor daughter based in Australia to accept an arranged marriage proposal from a complete stranger. In spite of her "No" the day the post was published, it had been three weeks of constant pressure from the family to accept the proposal, completely ignoring her wishes and thus putting her through a lot of mental and emotional agony!
Life at home among the familiar and predictable—people, culture, social and physical surroundings, routines etc. — surprises and challenges generally are few and far in between, unless you go in search of them or are on the lookout for. When traveling however, unexpected and unfamiliar struggles and challenges are routine, and that's one reason to travel!