What Jonathan Zimmerman Learned Living in Nepal for 2 Years

In Nepal, the reason that you ate a rat was the rat was considered the strongest animal. And you weaned kids on it because you want the kid to grow to be strong. Really? Yeah, and so they would often wean kids and get just a tiny little piece. Yeah, yeah. The cow urine, that was the only time I actually took antibiotics prophylactically, which is something you're not supposed to do. But I just decided that, you know, it was my second year I didn't want to get ill. Cow urine has some weird pseudo medicinal purposes over there. I've read that too, yeah. They're using it for people that are suffering from COVID. And there was, yeah, there was just like this guy from, I'm trying to remember the country, I don't remember, but he was criticizing like how ridiculous this practice is of giving cow urine to these sick people and how ignorant it was. Well, you know, it's funny you say ignorant because for me, really, what was so important about that experience with just learning how weird I was and that is, you know, how weird I was to them, you know, and how many different ways there are to be human. And so, you know, I participated in marrying off one of our sisters, right, because I'm an older brother, a girl 16, you know, time to get her married. 16. Oh, yeah. How old was the dude? Yeah. Well, you know, people would come by and ask for a hand. This is what the process was and often bring gifts. And I'm there with the other brothers and a guy would come and leave and somebody would say to me, well, what did you think of him? And the first time they asked, I said, which means what does little sister think? And people just cracked up. And I heard about that for two years. I would walk to other parts of the district and people would say, oh, I heard about you. You're the guy who asked what Boini thinks. And the point was that wasn't relevant to them. That wasn't what the experience was, right? That wasn't a relevant variable. And, you know, I would explain to them that in my country, you actually chose your own spouse and they would say, well, how do you do that? And I'd say, well, you find somebody that you love. And then they would say, well, then what if you don't love them? And then I'd say, well, there's this thing called divorce, you know? And what I realized was that the way I thought about how all this should work was just so radically different from theirs and not necessarily better or worse, right? Their system had its own logic and it was static. It was stable, right? If you don't marry for love, right, you're not going to get divorced because you're out of love, right? That wasn't the purpose of it. The purpose was it was social. It was familiar. It had to do with joining communities, you know? And again, I didn't grow up there, so that's not what I do or what I would want to do. But what I learned was how many different ways there are to do, you know? How many different ways there are to be human and always to resist the automatic assumption that your way is the better way, you know? Because we all do that, too. And by the way, I did some of that in Nepal. I mean, you know, one of my other really enduring memories is my best student was of the so-called Kami cast, which is metal worker, which is an untouchable. It's way down there, right? It's not as low as a shoemaker. And you know, they have a cast system, right? And at the bottom, there are people that are called untouchables because you're literally not supposed to touch them or anything that... What? Yes. I mean, that's how, you know, shoemakers especially because they deal with... With shoes? They deal with cows. They deal with leather, right? And you know, so... Why is that? And well, because the cow is a sacred animal, right? But you need shoes. Yes, you do, right? And so, you know, the Hindu system evolved to have a cast that did precisely that, right? Wow. I mean, you know... So did you communicate with those people at all? Oh, sure. What was it like? Yeah. They must have felt terrible. Well, I mean, here's the story. The metalworking family, I actually went down to their house and I had a meal there. And I come back and I tell my Amma, that means mother of my family. We were chattries, which is way up there. It's not Brahman, which is the highest. And that's the priestly cast, but the chattries are second. You know, they were historically the military cast. He's like, Babu, that means baby, which is what he called me. Babu, you ate rice at a metalworker's house? But you know how filthy those people are. You know, what were you thinking? And I'm like, listen, Amma, I just don't believe in cast. You know, I think everyone's the same. And P.S., you know what's going to happen? I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm just incredibly ill. And I just go outside and I'm puking my guts out. Amma can hear me. He comes from the other room and she's like, listen, Babu, you can't say I didn't warn you. You know? I mean, you know. And again, you know, it was really useful for me. It's not like I suddenly believe in the caste system because I don't. Right? But I think it's really useful just to have all your assumptions challenged. You know? And that's really what it did for me. And here I was, I'm this American, I'm making this great statement about how all people are equal. Well, you know what? I mean, 20 years earlier in my own country, they had a caste system. Right? That went back to the 1600s. And that was the other formative experience of being an Apollo. That was actually the first place that I started to think about American history. What did you, when they were talking about the arranged marriage. Yeah. And when you were saying that in your country people get to choose. Yeah. Like, what did you think about, what is their, like, how do they explain it to you in a way where it made sense? Did they attempt to? Yeah. Or did they just say this is how it's always been? Well, you know, I would say that the things that are most common sensical to us often we don't have to explain, right? Because they're part of our ether. But I think the logic was this, you know, that you have to create families, right? And so. You have to. Yeah. Yeah. Because you've got to, you know, you have to perpetuate the species, right? And so, you know, the simplest and the most static way to do that is to have the girls marry guys who can, who have enough wherewithal to take care of them, right? They can bring you something, right? Because it's a reciprocal arrangement, right? And this is why in rural Nepal at the time people wanted to have boys, not girls. They used to say, Choro Bascha Chori Jancha, which means the son stays and the girl goes. Because of course the system was also patrolocal, which means that, you know, you go and live in the house of the guy that you've married, right? So in the house I live with, the older brothers, they all had wives who lived there. Wow. Right? But when the girls got married, they had to go somewhere else. So that was. How bizarre. Yeah. Well, that again, and it's ironic because believe it or not, 20 years later, I went back to my village with my older daughter who was a junior in high school at the time. And the three-day walk had become about a day's walk because they had cut a tractor road kind of up half into the mountains. And the first guy that I ran into, he just said, hey, where you been? Like I haven't seen you around. They're like, oh, you brought your daughter. Great. Let's drink rice wine. You know, basically, you know, somebody had died and somebody got married and, you know, somebody had a kid. But the one thing that was really different, and this speaks to globalization, is a lot of the younger men had gone to places like the United Arab Emirates to work. And that was ironic too because, you know, the old story was the sun stays and the girl goes, right? A lot of the suns had gone, but they had gone outside of the country. And that's the way so many of these economies work in that part of the world. Did you see if the girls' marriage worked out? Well, again, you know, it all works out, right? I mean, you know, it works out because it was designed for social reasons, not for personal ones. You know, it's not about what she thinks or about what he thinks. You know, it's about kind of, you know, bringing together families, creating communities, bringing up kids. It wasn't about sentiment. Although you know, as I got closer to people in the community, I found out that after a marriage was arranged, often you did develop feelings for the person. Often? Yeah. It's just that those feelings weren't the foundation of it, right? They weren't what spawned it. They were an offshoot of it. They weren't a cause of it. Did it make you feel uncomfortable that they were doing that? Not in the least, you know? And in fact, I mean, that was when I started to read history because, of course, in most parts of the world, including where we are right now, historically marriage was arranged. But I would imagine that, like, if you have this conversation with a feminist, for instance, they would have a real issue with that. Absolutely. And also a real issue with your acceptance of it, right? Well, again, I'm not saying that I accept it for me. Right. I understand that. You know? Yes. And because that wasn't my expectation, you know? Right. But I think it's worth asking ourselves the degree to which we know we're right. Right. And, you know, I think that at the end of the day, we don't. All of us have opinions. All of us have biases. All of us have learned certain things. But learned at hand, who was, you know, a famous jurist and federal court judge, one of the things he said that's always stuck with me is that the spirit of liberty, which is really what we're talking about, is the spirit that is not so sure of itself. And I'm always in love with that. Right? So I'm a human being. I have biases, opinions, very strong ones. But I think that the worst human attribute is self certainty. I think it's the most dangerous one, you know? And for me, the Peace Corps was just a great way to challenge that and just say, okay, look, I'm not going to have an arranged marriage. And by the way, I don't. And I'm not going to marry off my daughters. But in another part of the world, they do that. And that's decreasingly the case, by the way, right? Because these places of modernized. Do they get the internet? What the fuck? I can just meet a guy I really like. Exactly. Right? And so these, you know, I mean, when we went back to Nepal, in my village, it was in a remote place. So it was relatively static, but there had been many other changes. I mean, just think of all these guys going to the UAE to work on construction sites. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.