‘Hi!’

I’ve come to a decision. I’m not going to say ‘hi’ to the Bhutanese kids any more. That may sound harsh, but I think it’s best for everyone.

It happens in many countries – certainly it did in Japan. Little kids want to show off their English by saying ‘haroo’ (Japan) or ‘hi’ (Bhutan) whenever they see a Caucasian. It’s cute at first, but after the 1000th time in the first month, it begins to wear. And why can’t they say ‘guten tag’, ‘bonjour’, ‘здравствулте’, or something else that Caucasians might say? It’s compounded in Bhutan because the kids get excited when they get a response and follow you down the street repeating ‘hi’.

I’ve been debating how to deal with this for a year and a half, saying ‘hi’ at least once each time I’m approached. I think that the friendliness of Bhutanese is one of the countries greatest features, so I don’t want to discourage that in kids. Nor do I want to give foreigners a bad reputation. On the other hand, they’ll get plenty of practice speaking English in school and in their country, I’d like to speak a bit of their language. I Japan, it was easy. I could speak fluent Japanese anyway and just told them so. Here, the situation is complicated by the diversity of languages. At home, most people speak a local dialect like Sharshop or Nepali or something more obscure. Almost everybody also speaks Hindi from watching TV and English from school. In political offices, they need to speak Dzongkha, but it’s really a political language and only some natives from the Thimphu region are comfortable with it.

So what do I choose to respond in? I’ve decided to go with Dzongkha. The government has made it the official language of Bhutan, and most people can at least speak the basics. The kids can understand ‘kuzu zangpo’ as a suitable response to ‘hi’, so I’m sticking with that. Now I just need to get into the habit.