From Nepal to Joplin
Karki adjusts to Southern, cultural differences in U.S.
Nathan Carter
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: International
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Sushant Karki, freshman computer information science major, was born in the village of Kapil Vastu, the birthplace of Buddha. From there he moved to the capital Kathmandu where he lived the majority of his life.
Some of the major differences Karki has noticed is in how people - total strangers greet each other.
"Here I find people are more friendly," he said. "When I find people on the road most of them wave or say 'hi' or something, but there you have to be really close to some person or know some person if you are to greet them.
"If you go on the road greeting everybody you meet, they say you're crazy."
Karki also noticed that American technology is far ahead of the technology used in his homeland.
"Here people use a lot of gadgets and technology," Karki said. "As Nepal is a developing country, these are not that popular. Computers are, but not these gadgets we have here like the calculators we have in my calculus class right now. They are the TI-89 or something and we didn't have that in Nepal.
"I've been using computers since I was 10 and I go to Best Buy and look at the specifications and they have a lot of power where as what is new in Nepal is actually quite old here. In Nepal, iPod is not there yet but there is iTouch."
While Karki was born in a village, he isn't very familiar with the traditional ways of his people.
"People in the capital are much more open to whatever comes their way but people in the villages and the rural areas, they have their own traditional ways of thinking, so what one does might not be acceptable to them; like their sense of fashion or clothing.
"Only on the main festivals do I go to my birthplace because that's where my grandparents live - lived," he said. "My grandmother passed away just last month."
The festivals he returns to his grandparents home for is Dashain, a yearly celebration of the victory of good over evil as told by the Hindu book Ramayana.
"Lord Ram, the prince of Ayodhya, had married Sita, daughter of King of Janakpur, Janak," Karkis said. "Ram, Sita were sent to exile by Ram's father, Dasarath on demand of one of his 4 queens. Laxman (one of Ram's four brothers) insisted to go with Ram to exile. And during the exile at a forest, a demon called Ravan kidnapped Sita in order to make her his queen.
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