A Classful Of Gods And Goddesses by Ruth Higbie

A Classful Of Gods And Goddesses
Ruth Higbie
Boxwood  Press, California
U$ 12,50. 1988
Review   by Jay a raj Acharya
Ruth Higbie´s book is a well written persona] account of a "newly bereaved American suburban wife and mother" who, at age 58, goes as a Peace Corps volunteer to Nepal, She lands up teaching science to eighth to tenth graders in the Newar town of Banepa, ten miles east of Kathmandu  Valley.
This books readership should not be limited to Nepalis and Nepal aficionados, for it is a delightfully lucid description of a "mature" Western woman confronting an "alien" Third World environment, making friends, learning-ahe inner workings of a different society, and, most importantly, rising above her predispositions to really understand and empathise. It is on a different level from the plethora of anthropological treatise on Nepal that keep emerging from various Western universities.
Ruth´s description of Kathmandu, city of myths and mystery, as a prologue sets the tone of the book. She had immediately to embark on the difficult path of cross-cultural understanding. It did not help that she had been taught Nepali by her Peace Corps trainers, only to land in Banepa, where Nepali is not spoken other than in classrooms and some formal occasions.
It was during her very first days in orthodox, culture-bound Banepa, while still adjusting  to life in a Newar house,
 
that the very observant author noticed with some amusement that students in her class all had names which were names of their own gods and goddesses: "Ram", "Krishna", "Lmmi", "Saraswati" — hence the title of the book.
As Carleton Coon, U.S. Ambassador to Nepal till 1983, notes in his foreword, Higbie makes her friends in Banepa come real. As a result, he writes. "Inevitably, and naturally, we come to understand that these people really aren´t that simple, they think differently from us in profound ways, and "made in America" solutions to their problems can look just as unreasonable and even silly to their problems as their reactions to our "solutions" look to us…this kind of perception is worth a hundred or so global theories for anyone who wants to understand what is actually going on in the Third World."
Higbie tells everything as she sees it. For example, she does not shy from dealing with the unsatisfactory sanitation conditions of Banepa, which, indeed are awful. She describes the frustrations of Headmaster Ram Bhakta when he is unable to come through with a project and use U$ 5000 that friends in California had raised for his Azad High School. Blocked by numerous administrative and other hassles, in the end he gives up and the money, after three years on hold, is sent to a Latin American country instead.
Ruth Higbie writes about experience as a Peace Corps volunteer, warts and all, and in doing so does justice to the town of Banepa, to Nepal and to the reader.