I spent around 1½ months volunteering in a very rural Nepalese village in 2017, and some things in this post reminded me starkly of that. (Others were quite different, always in the “better” direction). For context, Nepal is one of the poorest Asian countries (150th out of 192 in the list of all countries by GPD per capita).
Things that were similar:
Cruelty towards animals. While I did not observe cruelty to the same extent as in the post, villagers were remarkably unconcerned about animal well-being, and would e.g. throw stones at the basically stray dogs in the village for fun when drunk. I was sleeping in the same bed as an educated man from Kathmandu, and one evening at cat was lying on his side of the bed, causing him to hit the cat so hard I feared it had suffered fatal injuries (I saw the cat later and it seemed fine). Fights between animals were a curiosity. I think this is not too surprising: People were used to slaughtering animals such as chickens with their own hands. I also saw children playing with young animals, so it wasn’t as clear cut as in the post above.
Hard work by pregnant women. I was told that one woman who was working with us digging out the foundation of the house we were building had a few months prior worked up to the day before going into labor, and then picked up the shovel/pickaxe the day after giving birth. She had apparently also carried 60kg bags with stones on her back while pregnant.
Cooking with smoke inside the house. In one house, the woman was cooking while the smoke was escaping only through the windows and the door, resulting in me (who was sleeping on the veranda) having headaches when I woke up. I can’t imagine how bad the air was inside. On one occasion a kid started burning plastic waste, without much regard for the fumes, and wasn’t stopped by the parent nearby.
Alcohol consumption. I don’t think it was as extreme as in the text above, but in the village I stayed in, there were no weekends, but instead holidays every ~4 days, during which the main source of entertainment was getting drunk. This resulted in cruelty towards animals, but not towards each other (afaik).
General poverty. I guess the villagers were maybe twice as rich as the peasants described in the post. I found it quite stark how the family I was staying with were sleeping mainly without blankets, warmed only by sleeping next to each other, even at temperatures near zero degrees. There was access to electricity, which was (exclusively?) used to power the light in the hut we were sleeping in.
Work ethic. This one is an ambiguous case: The people in the village were (of course) much more proficient at hard physical work than I was, to a sometimes embarrassing degree. But there was no regular schedule, and work was interrupted by long irregular breaks.
Things that were different:
Cruelty towards each other. Everyone was quite nice to each other, as far as I could tell. (This might’ve been confounded by the fact that people were especially nice to me, since I was a rich foreigner). I didn’t hear of cases of infanticide, rape, murder or even accidental death (apart from the earthquake a few years earlier).
Respect for property rights. There was no or very little stealing going on, at least from what I could observe. (One exception being some young kids stealing chocolate I’d brought for them and wanted to give out incrementally, but I’d expect a bunch of western 7-year olds to do the same thing).
Children drinking alcohol. I didn’t see this happening.
I spent around 1½ months volunteering in a very rural Nepalese village in 2017, and some things in this post reminded me starkly of that. (Others were quite different, always in the “better” direction). For context, Nepal is one of the poorest Asian countries (150th out of 192 in the list of all countries by GPD per capita).
Things that were similar:
Cruelty towards animals. While I did not observe cruelty to the same extent as in the post, villagers were remarkably unconcerned about animal well-being, and would e.g. throw stones at the basically stray dogs in the village for fun when drunk. I was sleeping in the same bed as an educated man from Kathmandu, and one evening at cat was lying on his side of the bed, causing him to hit the cat so hard I feared it had suffered fatal injuries (I saw the cat later and it seemed fine). Fights between animals were a curiosity. I think this is not too surprising: People were used to slaughtering animals such as chickens with their own hands. I also saw children playing with young animals, so it wasn’t as clear cut as in the post above.
Hard work by pregnant women. I was told that one woman who was working with us digging out the foundation of the house we were building had a few months prior worked up to the day before going into labor, and then picked up the shovel/pickaxe the day after giving birth. She had apparently also carried 60kg bags with stones on her back while pregnant.
Cooking with smoke inside the house. In one house, the woman was cooking while the smoke was escaping only through the windows and the door, resulting in me (who was sleeping on the veranda) having headaches when I woke up. I can’t imagine how bad the air was inside. On one occasion a kid started burning plastic waste, without much regard for the fumes, and wasn’t stopped by the parent nearby.
Alcohol consumption. I don’t think it was as extreme as in the text above, but in the village I stayed in, there were no weekends, but instead holidays every ~4 days, during which the main source of entertainment was getting drunk. This resulted in cruelty towards animals, but not towards each other (afaik).
General poverty. I guess the villagers were maybe twice as rich as the peasants described in the post. I found it quite stark how the family I was staying with were sleeping mainly without blankets, warmed only by sleeping next to each other, even at temperatures near zero degrees. There was access to electricity, which was (exclusively?) used to power the light in the hut we were sleeping in.
Work ethic. This one is an ambiguous case: The people in the village were (of course) much more proficient at hard physical work than I was, to a sometimes embarrassing degree. But there was no regular schedule, and work was interrupted by long irregular breaks.
Things that were different:
Cruelty towards each other. Everyone was quite nice to each other, as far as I could tell. (This might’ve been confounded by the fact that people were especially nice to me, since I was a rich foreigner). I didn’t hear of cases of infanticide, rape, murder or even accidental death (apart from the earthquake a few years earlier).
Respect for property rights. There was no or very little stealing going on, at least from what I could observe. (One exception being some young kids stealing chocolate I’d brought for them and wanted to give out incrementally, but I’d expect a bunch of western 7-year olds to do the same thing).
Children drinking alcohol. I didn’t see this happening.