I’m The Only Woman Driver In My Town
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
In our entire Midwestern Development region of Nepal with a few million people, I'm the only woman driver that I've ever seen. For whatever reason, I've been thinking about how messed up that is lately. It started to hit me whenever I jumped in the car to run errands or on one of the motorcycles to drive over to the new property. I watched Gagan Uncle pull out of our driveway the other day on one of our motorcycles and remembered how I taught a him and a bunch of the uncles how to drive our first scooter a few years ago. We were all laughing so hard watching them drive in circles around our dusty playground while I ran by their sides on foot yelling directions. I was thinking about it the other day when the kopila women were all on their way to a picnic. They asked me to drive them over in the car and they watched me try to teach Prem Uncle how to drive a stick. He's still learning and when he stalled a couple of times I jumped in the car and drove them myself. How nice it is to be able to get in the car and get where you need to go. I don't know why it's taken me 27 years to realize what a privelege that is. I still notice the looks I get when I'm out running errands. Men and women look at me like I have some sort of superpowers and admittedly I kind of like it.
My Nepali women friends and neighbors all describe me as being really masculine. If you asked them to describe me in 3 words, I bet you anything that one of the first things they would say is that I'm "manly." I think maybe because I've always had the ability to talk to men as an equal, face to face. I've always been able make them question their thinking and see things another way. I used to tell the "Maggie is like a man" anecdote and sort of laugh about it. My friends from NJ and anyone who knows me well would NEVER describe me as being masculine. I'm not even sure I know what defines maculinity and femininity but I'm really starting to realize that some of the rights, priveleges and opportunities I've been given have made me who I am and granted me the power to do what I do. When you have certain skills, it means you bring something to the table and even if it's something as simple as being able to drive, you're more valued. I won the birth lottery and if you're a woman reading this right now you probably did too.
People always ask me, "how did you do it, being such a young woman and all?" and "what was it like starting a project in a patriarchal culture and society?" Mostly I answer that being a woman has been an advantage for me here. But the more I think about it, it was the opportunities I was given as a woman that have given me the rights and the respect I've earned. It was the opportunity to sit in a driver's ed class and get my driver's permit at 16, my license at 17, and drive the car that my sisters and I shared. It was being able to make choices for myself since I was five, and engage in discussions in a family where everyone was heard and what you had to say mattered. It was being able to lift weights in the weight room at my high school with the football team after sports practices. It was coaches and teachers who made me push myself whether it be engaging in a debate during class or coaching me through the last minute of an intense lacrosse game where you left it all on the field. Sometimes when Magdalena and I ask the women the most simple questions like, what's your opinion, what do you think? what's your goal? what do you want? they honest to goodness look at us like they've never been asked a question before where they were entitled to an opinion. It's the scariest thing in the world to me.
When a woman sees me driving here, the reaction is always the same. They ask me in a shocked voice, "you can drive?!?" I tell them that where I come from, many women drive. I explain how in 11th grade we take a four month course called Driver's Ed and then a car comes to school and it has two sets of stearing wheels and two sets of brakes and a guy drives around with you for 6 hours and teaches you the rules of the road. Then your mom takes you to empty parking lots on the weekends and lets you practice. After you get the parking lot down, she takes you on the roads and finally she teaches you how to merge onto the highway. After a year, you go and take an exam and if you pass you get a license with your name and birthdate, and photo on it.
"I'm not special and I don't have a superpower," I tell them. "Where I come from almost every woman my age can drive. You could too."
The women look at me, eyes wide, like I come from another planet. Most of them don't have a single document acknowleging their existence. Magdalana and my dad have given some of them the first photographs that they've ever had of themselves. There's something really strange about that.
Bottom line, the more I get to know the women in my community and in our women's center, the more I realize how lucky I am. Every time I sit in a driver's seat now I realize what an incredible gift it is that I can actually drive. Every time I read a sign board or an article in the paper, I realize what a gift it is that I can read. Every time I see a woman carrying 100 pounds of firewood on her back from a day spent in the jungle, or a huge load of rice on her back, I feel a little pang of something in my stomach. I think it's the realization that I come from such a different reality and even after 8 years in Nepal, I still can't get my head around that. I want my daughters to drive. I want them to ride scooters and motorcycle and bicycles. Is it totally out of this world insane to say that I want Driver's Ed at Kopila High School? I want to keep fighting for a world where every girl is given the opportunities I was given. With each passing day I'm more and more convinced that it's possible.
Mother daughter