Laljahri preparing for her role play that she and the other women in her village performancd with the men taking the role of village women and the women assuming the roles of the men.

I, Renu and a few other conference members, went with Lalhari to her village principally to help her conduct the role play she had rehearsed at the conference. We all felt it was brilliant and I was anxious to do whatever I could to assist her. I purposefully didn’t take photos of the role play at her request because Laljahri was afraid just my presence would be distracting to the men and other villagers. If I was snapping pictures she felt it would be too embarrassing for the men. I will describe it though.

Laljahri waited until the late afternoon the day of our arrival in her village to announce the role play. She gathered everyone in an open space near the houses. The houses were small huts made of sticks and mud and the roofs were thatch. She had everyone sit in a group and she explained that at the conference she had learned many things and that from her experience at the conference she wanted to put on a role play for the whole village. She asked if everyone would volunteer to participate without any exceptions. Everyone agreed to participate.

A boy in the village caught these fish for his own consumption. Laljahri goes out on the river in a dugout canoe as part of her daily routine and uses nets she makes herself to catch a lot of fish, a principal food of her village.

Laljahri then said that the role play would involve something different and she didn’t want anyone to be upset and she hoped they would all be open minded. She joked a bit and got everyone laughing then she announced that what she wanted to have happen was for one day she wanted everyone to switch gender. She said beginning the next morning she wanted the men to act like the women are supposed to and the women would be the men for a change. The men all roared with laughter and began immediately to act like women in somewhat demeaning ways. Laljahri let them play out their anxiety but reminded them that the next day they would have to take their roles seriously.

The next morning Laljahri woke the village up and told the men to start doing the women’s chores by lighting the fire and boiling milk for breakfast and then go to the fields to work and she and “the other men” (the women) would call them when it was time to come back. She told the men not to forget the children. The men began complaining instantly and looked at me as if they blamed me for what was happening.

A family group from a Kumal village similar and not far from Laljahri's community.

While the men were out of sight Laljahri and the other women got ready for the main part of the role play. The called the men back early for lunch (Kana) and told them to sit in a group on the grassy sward near the center of the village. The men sat down, some of them clowning around a bit. The women came out as a group from behind one of the houses and stood silently with very serious expressions on their faces and, standing in a rigid line, watched the men intently, like really strict teachers. Two of the women stepped out of the line and went towards the men and began uttering terse commands, barking at them, to them to sit closer together. They carried little buffalo twitches and kept commanding the men to move closer in some cases pushing them physically. They pushed the men until the men were sitting on top of each other.

Shade!

Then four women left the line and went behind one of the small huts and emerged pantomiming carrying something long and really, really heavy. The two in front walked heavily, bowed slightly at the waist, staggering almost with their hands held up to their shoulder where something painfully heavy was supported. They mimicked some one carrying a heavy bag. The other two women walked several yards behind the first two and doing everything the same as the first two, the same heavy steps. Then these four women walked in a circle around the group of men. They walked around two or three times.

The men were silent, watching. Some of them made inaudible wisecracks among themselves. The two women who had pushed them closely together were still there looking sternly at the men in case any of them tried to bolt. The women carrying the heavy load stopped. Then four more women came from the line and “picked up” one end of the “something” lying on the ground and pantomimed pulling it with all their might backwards. The four women who had carried the “something” around the men then took the other end and pulled in the opposite directions. As they pulled with all their strength the two women near the center kept barking at the men and pushing them even closer together. It was a chain. Everyone got it at the same time. The women were wrapping a huge chain around all the men. They pulled and pulled pulling the chain tighter and tighter.

I was amazed how well these women acted. The made it all feel real and vibrant the way they moved their bodies, flexed their muscles like men, and grimaced when the load was heavy.

Finally, Laljahri who was still standing and watching went behind the same hut and came back carrying something really heavy so that she staggered under the load. She put it on the ground near the other women and two women helped open something and then they took the ends of the chain and pulling it even tighter they reached down and took what Laljahri had brought out and hooked it through the chain. It was obviously an enormous padlock. Everyone seemed to get that at the same time, too. Then Laljahri turned something, a key. She had put a huge lock on the chain and she had locked it with a key. She then walked quickly across the grass to the edge of the river and made the motion of throwing the key way out into the middle of the river.

All the men understood it. They got the message and understood exactly what Laljhari and the other women were trying to say. Some of the women who had been watching and some of the men, too, were crying. It had been very powerful! It was amazing to watch the reactions. The women who acted out the role play went back and stood in their line with solemn expressions and quietly gazed at the men. They weren't judging the men. The men, for the most part, remained in their tight group wondering if there was more and afraid to move. After 10 or 15 minutes Laljahri gave them permission to get up and the role play ended. It was incredibly brilliant and one of the most effective "group therapy" sessions I had ever seen particularly one that was specifically geared to provoke change in the mens' consciousness. Laljahre’s hope was the it would provoke discussion between the men and women in the village. It worked. The men were in shock afterwards and my sense was they could see and understand how their behavior impacted the women and children. So it did, I feel, shift their consciousness towards what Nepali women genuinely feel.