I'm reading a book called NIMA by an author whose name I can't spell. It takes place on and around Mt. Everest and it's not very good so below are the interesting parts so if you're interested, you don't have to read it:
The author lived at base camp and knows what he writes, he worked for BBC for years and wrote magazine articles.
Nima lives on the Nepal side basically at the base of Everest and I had no idea these particular gentle Buddhist sherpas on the whole are terrible to their women. Who knew?
Most people know all people from Nepal people are oppressed (Tibetans, worse) but in this insular society the women are oppressed by their own.
ETA: (actually correct( it's Nepal, not Tibet. Sorry!
Should have realized. They don't have it easy in Nepal either but nothing like Tibet's problems and the sherpas live in Nepal and take that side's route up the mountain.
They are a tiny slice of Nepal, have never been to a city, their houses along with the occupants are regularly buried by avalanches so they're a closed society. We need Margaret Mead here...
They don't even give the girls names. Nima's family has six girls and they are Eldest (her), Fifth, Fourth, etc. The boy has a name!
And they have bartered, arranged marriages -- her man was getting her AND her sister. This is a novel but this stuff is real. And the male sherpas beat their women, a lot.
The women spend their time cooking, cleaning, having sex with thier men (and if your sister is married to him too, you sleep in the same bed) and birthing numbered girls and named boys. And spend much of their time collecting dried yak dung, which above the treeline substitutes for firewood.
Nima wants to be a sherpa climbing up the mountain. The mountain is precious to them and also guides are the only ones who make a good living. Besides, Nima wants to be more than just a beaten yak-dung collecting baby factory.
But they don't allow women to be sherpas, to haul let alone climb. They don't allow them up the mountain -- they're considered bad omens.
So she's run away from home the day before the wedding and is going to disguise herself as a man so she can live the life she wants, as a sherpa. Hoping to work her way up to the elite group that gets to go all the way up the mountain.
Here's a little sample of how she's treated when she first tries to haul some cargo off-loaded from a small plane ahead of an expedition. The head guy says to her:
"' What kind of woman comes alone to work? Huh? Women alone on the mountain is a bad omen and bad omens bring bad fortune. Go back to where you belong. Get out of here or we'll drop you into the gully. No one will find you, no one will care.'" .
Very fast book, even for me, classified for adults but the writing is more YA or even children's book at times.
I've read multiple books about Everest but no focus on these insular sherpas and their culture. I've only read about Sir Edmund Hillary's beloved sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay and recently the 19 sherpas who died in one day in the same avalanche while preparing the mountain for the expeditions.
This small group of Nepalese Buddhist sherpas in this book resent the climbers without whom their lives would be even harder, much harder.
I don't like reading the prejudiced name they use to describe the climbers. Nima uses it too. It upsets me. But so do all the expeditions that take big money from wealthy climbers who don't have proper experience or training and who die themselves and litter the mountain with their bodies and trash and much worse, endanger others and even cause their deaths.
Very few people are born into this life and it's a rare inside look.
Once she's disguised as a man, in just a few pages, it will be her climbing and I've read and seen plenty about that. I've referred to this book as Yentl of the Himalayas.
ETA: So she hit the "city" (it's tiny), cut off her hair and got a job. That's not why I'm adding it. The city,in real life has a restaurant called YakDonald's and I just assumed it was connected to McDonald's but no, it's not. Nor is the Starbucks, a fake, a climber tells her, clueless she has no idea what Starbucks is.
Do I recommend the book? No, it's not well-written. And hard to take. But they are a unique people and that's why I wrote this. Hope somebody enjoys reading it. If not I won't know because you're not still reading it LOL.
[The Discovery Channel series Everest: Beyond The Limit is re-run a lot, multiple seasons, nothing from the sherpas' side but it does show some of the very hard work they do, it follows the same expedition leader each season and the filming is amazing. Also available on Comcast On Demand.]
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