THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

said a person was in 'Malaya' when they meant he was currently serving
in the Gurkhas. Service with the Gurkhas during the period of our
fieldwork brought the likelihood of visiting places such as the U.K.,
Hong Kong, Belize, the Falkland Islands, Brunei and other exotic
destinations. Of the possibilities, Hong Kong was preferred over
Britain. The accommodation in Hong Kong was said to be superior to that
on offer at Church Crookham, the Gurkha's main barracks in Britain, and
there were facilities for families to stay in Hong Kong as well. The
opportunities to get to know other parts of the world were appreciated
by the soldiers and their families.
"It's like a dream to me now", said one woman, remembering her
experiences as a Gurkha soldier's wife in Malaya and Singapore in the
early 1960s. Our village mother remembered a ten-storey building in
Kuala Lumpur with lifts going up and down inside it, and fans on the
ceilings, Our village father had been impressed at a British wedding in
Burma by the corridor of swords made for the happy couple by the
soldiers standing outside. He had also been fascinated by the common
occurrence of pigeons around British churches and squares, which we fed,
Did we use them for puJ6, like the Yakha? Our village sister Kamala's
memories included as a child splashing in the sea at Penang.
Since returning from Nepal we have seen the assessment and analysis
of our own society by a Yakha stationed at the Gurkha camp at Church
Crookham. A sightseeing trip round the Oxford co!leges terminated at
(modern) Wolfson College: "Now this is a nice bui!dingU was the
reaction. A particularly thought-provoking example of cross-cultural
interpretation was to attend the one-hundred and first Royal Tournament
in London's Earls Court Exhibition Centre, by the kind invitation of a