KATHMANDU

Thousands of miles from his hometown, in a land totally different from where he grew up in and pursued his education, and studying about strangers unique to him, anthropologist Steven Folmar has explored the deepest layers of Nepali people, more specifically of the Dalit people of Nepal. Since his first arrival in Nepal some four decades ago, the 71-yearold has successfully penetrated into the socio-cultural lives of Nepalis, thus examining the complex and layered realities, a not-so-easy feat for a foreigner - just not any other foreigner but one who is acquainted with Nepal and Nepalis no less than natives, or even better than them.

Fascinated by the 'different' professor

Born in a small town of Warren, Ohio, USA, Folmar was the fourth of five children.

This Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Wake Forest University, USA shared that his father worked in a steel mill while his mother didn't work.

'We were what you might classify as working class, or even working poor,' he said.

Folmar was particularly good in maths, chemistry and physics in the high school level. But when he joined an engineering school, he realised, 'I was not prepared for scientific technical background in the same way a lot of other students were.'

While he questioned himself on whether or not engineering was the correct path for him, anthropology fascinated him, which he had taken as an elective.

'I really liked the professor because he was so different from the science professors - he looked different, he had a beard, wore a cap, smoked cigarettes constantly in front of the class, and he would laugh at things he would say. He was engaging in a way that other professors weren't,' recalled Folmar.

'Plus he had a great topic, which was anthropology,' smiled Folmar who then became interested in the other anthropology teachers too as 'they were very interesting people looking at different parts of the world from different perspectives'.

Folmar, who graduated in 1974, added, 'I liked anthropology as it was learning about how different people lived in such different ways and had different belief systems, much different from my own.

The idea of trying to understand the differences in a non-judgemental way was very eye-opening.'

This fascination of learning about people and their diverse ways of living would bring him to Nepal some five years later.

Before that, Folmar struggled with finding jobs as upon graduating, 'I realised anthropology wasn't the type of major that led directly to a job', He therefore worked in the steel mill for a year following his father's word, andmade some money which he used to go back to graduate school, got his master's degree in 1977, and was conferred the PhD in 1985.

'Compelled' to come to Nepal

As a PhD student, Folmar chose Nepal as the field to do his work, and that materialised in February of 1979.

What made him choose Nepal? 'I hadn't really had this aha moment that 'yes, Nepal is the place...' It was a gradual awareness that Nepal was where I wanted to do the work. It was a little bit more instrumental for me than it was emotional.'

Nepal fit his criteria regarding the place for his field work, that being: 'I would have to cross an ocean to get there, because I wanted it to be physically distant from the United States. I didn't want to be in an English-speaking country, so I wanted there to be a language difference. I wanted the culture to be significantly different than American culture.'

Nepal lived up to every one of his criteria, as per Folmar who learnt about the Nepali culture and other aspects before landing here.

'Thus, Nepal became more and more romantic to me as time went on.'

He set off on this journey of his despite it being 'very intimidating.

I had not travelled. It was so far out of my experience that I had some fear. But I felt compelled to come to Nepal'.

Things were bleak on the way to his land of choice as he had to stop in Delhi, India after his flight to Kathmandu got cancelled.

'I had to stay overnight, and I made the big mistake of deciding that I should get my visa while I was in Delhi. I didn't know that it would be so easy at the airport, but so hard in Delhi. It took me five days to get my visa. Then I finally flew to Kathmandu.'

While in Delhi, he didn't like it as 'it was overwhelming' and he even considered returning home without coming to Nepal.

Yet he decided to come here for at least a couple of weeks to see what it's like.

Fortunately, he liked Nepal from the very first moment. 'When I got to Kathmandu I remember driving from the airport, and I saw Nepalis sitting at temples or walking around the streets, and they were laughing and joking. That was so uplifting to me that I immediately liked Nepalis. I liked Nepal from the very first moment.'

And this has kept him drawn to the country over the years - his recent trip is his twenty-fifth. 'What keeps me coming back to Nepal is the previous trip. There's always something more to do. Also it is the people. Even though I might sound critical of people who are not Dalit, I like the people of Nepal,' shared Folmar who has made Dalit people the focus of his study.

'Also, it's the way Nepal deals with social life that is so fascinating to me,' said he who loves Nepali food too, especially daal-bhaat.

First impressions

During his first visit, Folmar stayed in Nepal for 17 months that included eight months in the village of Ghachok, and seven months in Tersapati.

'I collected a lot of demographic and economic information then,' he recalled adding that everything was different from where he came from.

'I was trying to speak a language that I didn't know, a language that I'm still trying to learn. I was living in a place and in conditions that were absolutely foreign to me, with the kind of facilities that were common in rural areas at that time.

There was no toilet, there was no electricity, no plumbing. That was brand new to me,' Folmar elaborated on the conditions that he experienced some four decades ago.

The hardest thing for him however was the feeling of social isolation then. 'Even though people were welcoming of everything, we were very much foreign to each other. I was in their space with the opportunity to learn a lot about their lives but without the opportunity for them to see what my life was like. The feeling of being alone was deep. I didn't recognise if that was really what was going on. I just felt isolated,' Folmar said walking down memory lane.

On the other hand, he couldn't get over the excitement of being in Nepal. 'In the morning I walked to a tea shop in the village and I would think to myself, 'I'm on the other side of the world. Everybody I know is going to bed now and here I am getting up'.'

At times it was so hard for him that 'I was ready to leave'. He even thought, 'When I get out of here, I'm never going to come back,' but with a smile he said, 'You can see that didn't turn out to be true.

This is, I think, my twenty-fifth trip to Nepal.'

Back then a lot of anthropologists must have gone through similar experiences, he said as he explained the experience: 'It is a real process one goes through. It isn't simply an academic and intellectual process, it's very much a personal and emotional process.'

Probably that was also because communication was not easy back then. 'When I was in Nepal the first time, I never made a phone call. I saw two movies, and I hadn't driven a car in months. It's like I hadn't done anything that I was used to doing.'

He used to communicate with his mother through letters. 'I would write a letter to my mother, and then six weeks later I would get an answer. It would take three weeks to travel to America, and three weeks to travel back.'

Things are different now - while in Nepal he talks every morning and evening with his wife who he met after returning to the US.

And he came back 11 years later with his wife and two children, thus he did not feel 'isolated' then.

At the same time he was visiting people who knew him in Nepal.

Since then Folmar has been coming to Nepal frequently. This was also because of the then chair of the anthropology department at the Wake Forest University (where Folmar started working full time in 2000), who encouraged him to bring students to Nepal to get engaged in small research projects here.

Into the lives of Nepali Dalits

One of the prominent fields of research in Nepal that Folmar has delved into is Nepali Dalits. 'The interest in Dalits didn't come all in one moment,' he said, sharing an instance from his first trip to Nepal: 'I remember some Dalit people in their neighbourhood in Pokhara telling me that things should be better for them. 'After all, if you cut us, we bleed. If you cut them, they bleed'. It is this equality statement I still hear.'

At that moment Folmar realised that life is different for some Nepali people.

In another incident he offered amkhora (traditional water vessel to drink water) to a Dalit man. Folmar recalled, 'My Brahmin landlord was furious. He chastised my assistant but the Dalit man didn't react. I guess he was used to being treated that way.'

Then in yet another incident a Dalit man was walking towards Folmar on a narrow path in Ghachok; he climbed the wall so that he wouldn't touch Folmar.

Despite such and more incidents and advice from famous anthropologist Don Messerschmidt for him to study Dalit people, Folmar was not fully convinced that the lives of Dalit people of Nepal were qualitatively different from the lives of people of other castes.

It was during his 2000 visit to Nepal that things changed. His guide took him to Sirubari of Syangja that had a village tourism project. There they were greeted as per the Gurung culture - Panchebaajaa or Naumatibaajaa was an essential aspect here.

'At that time I thought that's not Gurung culture - well it is Gurung culture, but it is Dalit culture. Dalits are the ones who make and play the baajaa. It is driven by Dalit people,' he thought.

Folmar then asked himself a question: 'What was the contribution of damai (as they were called then) musicians in this cultural programme?'

This realisation and questioning set him off on a journey to the study of Dalit people.

'The formal part of it started in 2002 when I did a study that focussed on Dalit... It really showed me a lot about how Dalits are separated from normal, how they are treated, what expectations there are, how those expectations are made, what sort of benefits do they get from it. That was a very eyeopening experience for me. From then on everything I've done is focussed on Dalit people,' he shared.

Folmar has delved into several issues related to Dalits like economic materialism combined with caste-based social organisation, identity politics, comparing mental health status of Dalit community with others to name a few.

Folmar continues to study about the Dalits here and this time 'it's a broader view of health'. Folmar and his team are working in a Chhetri village and a Dalit village that are next to each other in Besisahar and economically similar.

While it is purely research, Folmar revealed they 'want to find some way of addressing health problems in these two communities that the people feel are things that need to be addressed in the way that they want them addressed'.

'At the end of this I will be looking for funds and I'll be publishing the mechanism by which people can donate. Because we can't do this without some money and we're trying to get money from every type of funding we can get,' revealed Folmar who has been involved in small ways in some material development projects for Dalit people here.

So, how has the Dalit community of Nepal evolved over the years? Sharing his observation, Folmar said, 'I see Dalit people going into other people's houses. But of course that's not everybody ... It is an extraordinarily complex situation.

Some things are clearly changing... But again, it's complicated.

Everything won't change all at once. That's not going to be that way. It hasn't been that way in the 22 years I've been looking at the situation. It changes a little bit by little bit.'

Being an anthropologist

What does it feel like being an anthropologist in the modern world? 'It is a really great place to be in. As we progress from one moment to the next, there are always new ideas that pop up and new questions we can ask, and new social situations that are fascinating to us. So anthropology is never boring. Doing anthropology can be boring, but the new ideas, the new opportunities are always there,' explained Folmar excitedly.

Yet there are challenges and for him it was the feeling of social isolation, 'which is, I think, not as great now'.

Another challenge: 'The ease of doing anthropology might be its biggest challenge. When things look easy, they're not necessarily as easy as they look. So you can be tempted to maybe focus more on the surface rather than digging deep,' said Folmar who calls himself a 'little bit of a loner' as an anthropologist.

After coming to Kathmandu he wanted to go to the field. 'I want to be in the field and I want to be working with the people that I work with. As a foreigner, I walk into this village where I have been working for years. They all know me. As soon as they see me after months, their faces light up. It's such a welcoming experience. How could you not want to be in the field when you have that?'

But what is it like being a foreign anthropologist? 'Over time, it becomes much more familiar,' he said adding it's a part of his life now.

'I think that being a foreigner, anthropologist, in some ways you feel a little bit like you're on display.

There's a lot of looking at you. That wears off also. So when I walk up and down the main bazaar in Besisahar, most people don't look at me a second time because they've seen me so many times. It is just the familiarity, that is what changes. But being a foreigner in any place means rather than you studying the other, you become the other. And that helps you see the otherness of other people in a different way.'

For the aspiring anthropologists, he has a few words to share: 'Do what you love. Don't make what you think the outcome will be.'

A version of this article appears in the print on October 8, 2023, of The Himalayan Times