T HE UNDERDEVELOPED ME : LOCAL SELF - DEPICTION

When people come to this country, people come from different countries, at least, they have to know about the country, and when they come to the country for volunteering or something like that, they expect for the hot water, staying in the orphanages, electricity like for 24 hours, internet access in the room, it’s impossible when people go to underdeveloped countries, I’m not all talking about only Nepal, if you go Africa is also poor, people are dying without food they cannot provide you with that (Ramesh, Local organization coordinator).

Ramesh is the coordinator of the local organization that receives volunteers in Nepal and is based in Kathmandu. He has been working in the field of volunteer tourism for nine years and met more than four thousand volunteers as he stated.

In his narrative, Ramesh is defining Nepalese by opposition to the western. His narrative is emphasizing what Nepal lack, comparing to “developed” world.

According to him, material poverty, manifested in the absence of hot water, electricity and Internet access, is definitively the main difference between Nepal and western world. He explains how this difference could be a shock for western volunteers, as they do not expect such living conditions. Ramesh does not want to downgrade too much his own country so that it adds a comparison with Africa as even more mediocre, implicitly defining another otherness, with however similarities: both Nepal and Africa are undeveloped. All the local’s testimonies that have been collected show an apparent separation between the self and the western volunteers. The self is depicted as poor, underdeveloped, uneducated and lacking economic capital. Said (1987) argued that the orientalist discourse is reflexive. The differentiation between self and other is natural and universal.

In Nepal, the person who is running the project, the people are not intellectual, not like you said, educated, they don’t know how to coordinate the people and they cannot speak English, the big problem is language barrier, people cannot speak English. (Ramesh, Local organization coordinator)

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

As shown this extract, Ramesh also describes Nepalese orphanage employee as not “educated,“ not “intellectual,“ and they do not speak English. According to Nino-Murcia (2003), English is associated with technology, modernization, and jobs in the knowledge economy.

However local's narrative reveals also a sense of proudness of the local culture and traditions. Locals portrayed themselves as generous, welcoming, peaceful and rich culturally by opposition to western who are materially rich but empty in term of culture.

I give you one example, in Nepal when people are sitting like guests or something, see, they are the God. See, guests are the symbol of the God! In Europe when you knock the door if you behave like this, you are getting some problems, there is like no a hotel or something like that if you want to spend the night, if you knock the door, people don’t care about you but here in Nepal, you knock the door, they welcome you. They don’t know about you, the people they don’t know you, you are new for them, what are you for them, but they don’t care about that, a guest is a God. When you go, when you knock the door, that means that the God came in, well people think like this, it’s still like the remote area, I’m saying about city, in the city people are like more selfish (Ramesh, Local organization coordinator).

It is noteworthy that in his discourse, Ramesh appropriates the western view of the underdeveloped other as poor, wild, lacking knowledge but at the same time kind and generous. These narratives are in line with the noble savage myth and depicted local as poor, underdeveloped but generous and peaceful. In fact, locals perceive themselves from the western lens, and they define themselves as peripheral, the center is the world of the west. In the same vein, Costa (1998, p.306) argues that “not only do Europeans come to see Orientals in a particular way, with certain characteristics; Orientals may come to see themselves in the

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

same terms.” This late point is crucial as it reinforces and solidifies the image of the noble savage.

However, the same narrative could be interpreted as a form of resistance to western culture. In an unequal world, the powerful is the reference, and he states the rules. The world of the west is the reference, the center and the rest is the periphery.

Local’s narrative insinuates a hidden transcript as explains James Scott (1990), locals are not passive followers impressed by the western culture. They understand the power game, the economic power game, but they are aware of what they have, and western don’t.

5.3.2..Resistance: The hidden transcript

In the very foundation of the postcolonial and capitalist volunteer tourism marketplace (Devereux, 2008; Guttentag, 2009; Raymond & Hall, 2008;

Simpson, 2004; Sin, 2009; Mostafanezhad, 2013; 2014), western volunteer tourists have agency over the local population. For western tourists, this is a stage: a hero’s journey where they experience poverty and otherness in a limited time and place. Whereas, for the host, this is their everyday life. In this stage, the local plays the role of the noble savage, but unlike the volunteer tourists, this role is “permanent.“ Volunteers are confronted with alterity. They come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different gender and age to consume local culture. They want to live local people’s life, and a fair proportion intends to teach them to speak English, how to see the world, how to dress, how to eat with a spoon and how to brush their teeth, how to wipe with toilet paper instead of washing with water. Some come to question the way they love and take care of their children, the way they educate them and the way they punish them. Local narratives reveal an evident outrage against these Eurocentric and arrogant attitudes of some western volunteers. Resistance to these approaches is however not expressed explicitly through boycott or volunteer’s rejection. It is instead articulated through a hidden transcript found in gossips and some

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

excluding positions. For instance, host keep distance between them and volunteers. Like a secret garden, the core culture of the local, their relationship with each other, their real problems and feelings are kept protected and inaccessible to the western volunteers. The gates are closed as long as the volunteer did not gain the trust and confidence of the locals.

5.3.2.1 Integration’s barrier

Poverty is a fundamental component of the volunteer tourist experience.

Volunteer engage in a paradoxical relationship with material poverty. On the one hand, they come to help in orphanages and immerse themselves. On the other hand, they expect tailored poverty that allows them to get engaged in everyday life of the orphanage without compromising much of their comfort. Thus, from the local perspective volunteers are considered as a spoiled arrogant or frail tourists rather than committed volunteers. In the opposite case, the ability and willingness of the volunteers to live with locals in their house without complaining about hard life conditions are seen as a sign of sincere commitment to help and getting involved with the local life. Ramesh explains this tension in the following extract.

Ramesh: Some people were there like real volunteer here and some people were here for like spending their vacation

Interviewer: What do you call a real volunteer?

Ramesh: Volunteers who are more devoted for the work, who are more interested to help the children, when they go to orphanage project, to the students when they go to the school project, and help patients when they go to the hospital project. Not all the people do that, around like 20% only

Interviewer: only 20% are “real volunteers“

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

For Ramesh, only 20% of people are “real volunteers.” His narrative illustrates the bitterness he has toward the attitude of a large majority. According to him, most of the people who came to volunteer in Nepal seem not committed to helping local population whatever conditions are; rather they are seeking “five stars“ orphanages where they can perform their role of volunteering without compromising their comfort. As Ramesh mentioned, “They don’t want to go to the remote area, the most deprived areas where they can’t find facilities.” These attitudes are considered as arrogant and Eurocentric. That is why locals keep their gates closed until the volunteer accept to live the authentic locals’ life.

Dealing with material poverty became the central part of the experience and the most challenging one. At the same time, it represents the first bridge to “win” the trust and respect of the hosts.

Besides, most of the host families maintain an equal relationship with the volunteers. In fact, host family does not make any extra effort to satisfy volunteer’s request for comfort, as Ramesh explains in the following excerpt.

Nepalese people get used to welcome foreign people they always try to make them family member, comfortable, they always consider them as a member of a family and they try to make them stay home, like the citizens, equal, equality but they cannot make them more clear about this, they bring two blankets like 4 people here, you take one blanket and I’ll take the other blanket but on the ground there is no bed …the host family are sleeping on the same bed, the volunteer will sleep at the same bed, same size, there no discrimination between them and the host family, they don’t want to be discriminant to them, but the people, the volunteer people they don’t understand that.

Of course, we can consider that Ramesh idealizes his people, as noble savage compared to spoiled westerners. But what we want to keep from this excerpt is the preservation of equal treatment as a form of resistance to the western

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

supremacy. By treating western tourists as equal, host families redefine the dominant/dominated relationship.

It is worth to note, this form of resistance is not generalized. Local organizations and some of the host families, who mostly perceive volunteers as customers to satisfy, have different attitudes. To avoid complaints and maintain a constant flow of international volunteers, all facilities are provided just like a hotel service.

For instance, during my ethnography in Nepal, I noted that the most popular orphanages or host families were indeed those who offer more facilities. For example, I went visiting some other projects in a village in Chitwan and noted that most of the volunteers were lodged in a vast and very fancy house. I was the only one stayed in one of the employee’s home, with limited facilities. This is because the elegant house was full and somehow they were constraints to put me there. The customization of the volunteer tourist experience illustrates very well one of the capitalist sides of the volunteer tourism marketplace. In fact, volunteers are supposed to contribute to help the most vulnerable; it seems incoherent to lodge them in the more luxurious houses.

5.3.2.2 Cultural resistance

The local perceive western volunteers as a threat to their culture. They are portrayed as culturally more free and open. The freedom and openness are used in a pejorative meaning to emphasize exaggerated and unlimited freedom, by opposition to Nepalese culture, where respect and rules are seen as necessary because they define and maintain coherence and harmony. Here, for example, an excerpt from an interview with Prakash, the director of the orphanage..

Prakash: Volunteers come and they try to catch small children, but it depends on the culture, on the Nepali culture, European culture, US culture, this is really difficult, because, they need to give good love to the children, they need proper management.

Interviewer: It’s cultural problem?

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

Prakash: One part cultural means, the European never been able to…but as for my knowledge, there is more freedom.

Prakash's narrative shows how the cultural aspect is important in the relationship with children in the orphanage. Not only he sees westerners as different but as a kind of threat. As he mentions, “they need to give good love.“ In fact, by good love, Prakash means proper values that are coherent with the Nepalese culture.

In Nepalese perception, Western society is portrayed as a rich and developed society but lacking social and family values. In the imaginary of Nepalese, western women and men have no limits, they are sexually free, they drink and smoke without any limitations, and they tend to spoil their kids instead of educating them. That is why locals need to set rules that must be respected to protect children from western influences, as Prakash explains below::

In our orphanage no, there are no problems. Some volunteers when they smoke or something, but it’s not allowed here! So, directly they never do here, but for them it’s their problems, not for us, and when they want to go out, outside, in some place, they can, it’s different here!

In the same way, Alison, a female volunteer in the orphanage reported how she was disappointed by Prakash's attitude because he did not let her stay with her friend family.

Interviewer: And with Prakash have you any problems?

Alison: yeah I’m met a friend who became my best friend here and went to be with her in the weekend and wanted to stay with her but he didn’t let me and eventually I talked to Ramesh and Prakash agree on it but he was back to his decision and my friend and her family told me that I can stay with them and go to the orphanage every day, Prakash was ok with this and like 2 weeks later he went back to his decision and changed

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

mind, my friend and his family was hurt because I couldn’t stay with them.

When I asked Prakash why he did not let her go to her friend house, he said that she is dating the brother of this girl and that it is not appropriate to live with him.

He said this would give a bad example to the children.

Consequently, the integration of western volunteer in the Nepalese culture is controlled. To be accepted, Western volunteers have to respect the local culture and behave appropriately. This form of resistance helps to rebalance the power relationship between host and guest. Rules come from hosts, and western guests have to follow them. This demonstrates that hosts are not passive instead they are active and they decide what is allowed and what is not.

5.3.2.3 Volunteers are not qualified

Locals tend to be skeptic about the contribution of volunteers. Narratives show that they are not satisfied with the quality of volunteers who came in their projects. Accordingly, most of the volunteers are young and not skilled, and therefore they cannot add anything to the project. Below an excerpt from Prakash

Prakash: Sometimes it’s difficult, sometimes they have not English, well English, if they cannot speak English so how to teach? How to help the children? It’s really difficult with it, this is the first part. Second part, they are usually here coming, normally below 20 years old, they are coming in 20, 22 only as student level who completed their school education. They sometimes start university, it’s like these problems in Nepal, so I’m thinking.

For Prakash, volunteers who come to the orphanage are not qualified. According to him, if volunteers do not have a university degree, they could not help children in education. Prakash's perception of volunteers is very pragmatic: he aims to

Chapitre 5.Beyond the smile: The infrapolitics of the host in a Nepalese orphanage

provide his orphans with a high-quality education to guarantee a better social and economic situation. To reach this goal, Prakash invests mostly in kid’s education; for example, in Hopad children go to a private school because the government school is not right, and they participate in cultural and sports activities. For instance, one of the oldest children is a national champion in Judo and has competed in international competitions. In that sense, if volunteers are not enough qualified they cannot help children in their education. Implicitly, Prakash denounces young – naïve – westerners who have an under-documented vision of Nepal, exaggerating its underdevelopment and thinking of themselves that they can bring a contribution of their own. However they can substitute their lack of knowledge by money contribution. In the next section, I explain why locals encourage volunteer tourism in Nepal despite all the drawbacks.