Loss in the Community

Saturday – Nepal’s one day weekend, and our day to explore. This particular Saturday I decided to take the Champa Devi hiking route, located just behind the foundation which takes you directly up to the peaks of the mountain range that continuously cast’s its shadow on the village. Another volunteer here, Silea, asked if she could join and of course I welcomed the presence. It’s always better to have someone along.

The walk up is a warn in trail of hard packed earth and rocks, traveled for centuries by the locals to reach their century old homes and occasionally to celebrate the new year on top of the mountain. We pass through several villages, consistently being turned around by the, “ello! What is yer name?” of the small children who are just now learning English is school. We walk through a field, where an energetic man recognizes my face and flails his arms in the air to say hello. This man, full of life, was one of the bamboo experts who we had recently worked with to construct a bus shelter that we’re currently building. After we exchange hellos, we continue our trek up the mountain. There reaches a point when the earthen trail turns to a shamble of broken rocks laid out to form stairs. At the peak, there’s a new construction of paved stones that pave a smooth path, making for an easy stroll amongst a beautiful setting. Silea and I found a nice flat grassy area and sat down to rest.

After an hour or so of chatting, we decided it was time to go down. There were heavy, ominous clouds moving in and a bone chilling wind that gracefully pushed the tops of trees and caused the leafs to ruffle. Descending the stairway to heaven that brought us to the top we stopped occasionally to rest our legs and have a drink of water. 3 hours later, we found ourselves back in the villages with kids screaming “ello!” once again. Passing by the same field which we found our energetic bamboo man earlier, we noticed a gathering at the house just below the field. Walking through the villagers, many tried to communicate with us asking if we were part of the foundation just a 20 minute walk down the hill. It seemed they wanted us to stay for a bit, have a cup of tea maybe. How wrong we were.

I found the comfort in recognizing our bamboo man, with a pile of smoked cigarettes in front of him. He was sitting on his porch, cross legged staring into space. As I greeted him, something didn’t seem right. He wasn’t enthusiastic; he wasn’t flailing his limbs in joy to see us like he always had. He looked up, found my eyes and said, “my father… dead.” I gazed slightly to the right, to find the body of a frail man wrapped in a sheet, laying on his back only a few feet from his son. Words cannot express the sorrow that I wanted to, because words mean nothing when you can’t speak another’s language. I gestured with my heart, I let my body speak for my mind’s mourning.

This is my first direct experience with death. I’ve never seen life change so fast. One minute, a charismatic young man; another minute, a torn and cheerless individual struggling to cope with reality. After the event, continuing our walk down the hill I couldn’t help but try and understand what had happened. I, also, was struggling to cope with reality. It forced me to realize how fragile life can be, how anything can change so vastly at any given moment. It made me think of my family, my friends, how any one of them could find themselves in this situation. Most importantly, it made me realize how special life really is. How graced we are to exist and how wonderful it is that we have this time to live our lives in meaningful ways. Death, I’ve found, is not merely a time of sorrow but rather, a celebration of life.

My heart tonight rests solely with this man and his family, his friends and his community; for I am part of this community now and a loss is felt in every member’s heart. My thoughts seek to find his spirit and to wish him an enduring sense of happiness wherever he may come to rest.

Cheers to this man, whom I’ve never met but will forever remember. 

As Day Fades to Night

As I sat on the rooftop of our home away from home, my mind wandered into the fading light as day slowly turned to night. I began to think about the differences that I’ve experienced here in Khahare, a small village on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. My first impressions here were filled with overwhelming capacity as I inhaled the burning plastic of the streets, paid witness to the crumbling homes of the old Newari villages and struggled to see the mountains beyond the thick, dense clouds of smog. “This doesn’t seem like the place I’d want to spend a significant amount of time in,” I thought to myself. My heart was pounding, my head was aching from the fumes and my mind was spewing thoughts of regret. In a short 3 weeks, these feelings have been suppressed by even more powerful ones; emotions of selflessness, of kindness and the importance of having an open heart and an open mind. The best way to describe this transformation is to simply state that Nepal is a dirty country, occupied by the most beautiful people.

We’ve actively engaged ourselves within the community, spending time with the children and the elders – experiencing life from a new perspective. Most Nepali’s live on less than two dollars a day. They occupy dismal structures, with no heat in the winter. Most don’t own vehicles, and some take a commute walking for hours up some of the most treacherous terrain, challenging enough to put me laying flat on my back gasping for air. Sanitary bathrooms are one in a million, rivers are filled to the brim with garbage and human feces and the smell of this place alone is enough to send people packing. You’re probably thinking, “how can anyone live this way,” or, “how can you be happy living like this?” I’ve had the same questions, but the one thing that convinces me that these inquiries are of no importance are the smiles that are contagious here. Their complacency radiates from their surroundings, and a sense of community is ever present around each bend in the deteriorating road. Community is the mud that holds the walls of their homes together. Community is what they have and community is what they thrive off of.

During our time here we’ve been getting our hands dirty cleaning garbage and building a bus shelter for the community; we’ve been getting our minds dirty brainstorming projects based on NEEDS, and not WANTS. But most importantly we’ve spent time getting to know members of the village. We’ve keyed in on what it is that they feel is necessary for a healthy community and a positive lifestyle. During a random survey of needs, it was shocking to see how many of them all wanted the same things: a shelter from the rain, a bridge that doesn’t flood, a bathroom and most importantly a clean village. Even more shocking was the fact that not one voice emerged to do something about it after all these years. That’s where we come in. We’re merely a catalyst for the reaction; every project we start is shortly taken over by community members wanting to make a difference. We teach what we know – pass on the techniques – and let others empower themselves to make the difference.

As I laid on the roof and stared into the sky I began to think.. Day doesn’t turn to night in the blink of an eye. It’s a gradual change. As the sun sets and the moon rises it makes visible one star, followed by the next, and the next, and the next, until eventually the entire night sky is glimmering with thousands. I see our role here as the moon – to give birth to one shining star after another until eventually there are thousands of stars working as a team to illuminate the darkness.

Cheers to being a catalyst for change.

For The Kind Hearted Only

I've been thinking about how best to describe my time here in Nepal however my travelmate, Lowell, did such a phenominal job that i thought it appropriate to simply repost his insights. Thanks lowell, and cheers everyone!  Greetings all you friends and loved ones. Ian and I have been here for just a handful of days, but already our hearts have been touched in innumerable ways. Nepal is a land of striking natural beauty. Steep hills rise from the valley, clad with a beautiful cloth of living greenery. The forest here gives life to a massive range of plant types, from cactus trees that must have walked here from some far off desert, to wild bananas that climbed up from the hot and fertile lowlands. Bamboo groves cluster together like old friends next to the bodhi trees which sheltered Buddha as he rose to enlightenment. Cedars and pines crown the tops of the ridges and the deep canyons are filled with ferns and mosses soaking their life from the cool moisture of the streams. People have been living and farming here for more than 10,000 years, and as one descends from the tops of the hills the forest slowly gives way to the angular geometry of terraces, houses and temples. Entire mountain sides and valleys have been shaped into grand steps of agriculture. Holding water during the dry season so that the rice, wheat, barley, and vegetables can flourish all year round. Right now is the season for growing mustard and the land is humming and overflowing with the rich yellow of their flowering. Goats, pigs, sheep, cows, chickens, and water buffalo roam around every corner, and in front of almost every house. safe under the watchful eye of some old man reclining on his porch. Great Buddhist monasteries rise out of the trees, their golden roofs proclaiming the glory of their teachings for all to see. whilst Hindu temples, thousands of years old are filled with a reverent fervor and vibrancy that we never see in America. Houses made of brick and local stone, washed red, white and tan, cluster along the roads and k creep up the mountains along precipitous paths.       Yet against this most beautiful of backgrounds, Nepal is a place of striking and sometimes appalling contradictions. people here are so happy and content it seems, and yet they live in object poverty. Traditionally containers were all made from natural materials. Bowls made from banana leaves sewn together with threads of bamboo for example. And so the habit has always been to simple throw ones waste on the ground and let it rot, or pile it up and burn it. Well now that has all changed, every single container is made of plastic. And yet the peoples habits have not changed one bit. They still just throw everything on the ground not really bothering to pick it up, and if the do decide to tidy it up, they generally just put it in a giant oil drum and burn it. No morning here is free from the smell of burning plastic. Trash piles up in every nook and cranny. The rivers are gray and bubble with black goo, their sediment layers composed of alternating levels of silt and garbage. It makes a heavy heart to see these wonderful people treating the land, which is so literally the source of all their life and livelihood, with such indifference and disrespect. They poison their fields, they poison their rivers, and they poison themselves. They think we joke when we tell them that plastic will give them cancer.      But enough about the sad parts, because Nepal is also a place which inspires me with great hope for the future. The organization we are staying with, KRMEF (Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation), has for the past month hosted a group of young adults from a school in Sweden called the Youth Initiative Program (YIP). The first couple weeks they were here they did the hard work of demolishing an old building on the site where we shall be building the new orphanage. During their last week here however they engaged the community in a wonderful series of exercise called the oasis game. The game is intended to be a structure within which a community is encouraged to examine their situation, identify problems, needs and dreams, and then come together as a team to make these dreams reality. To make a long story short, by thursday, the day Ian and I arrived. the villagers were cleaning up trash around the community center, planting gardens, and making trash bins and benches. Right where the bus stops in the village is an open area that was literally full of trash. I dont think it had every been cleaned except for the seasonal floods that might wash some of it down into the river. Plastic bags, bottles, shoes, clothes, cups, plates, silverware, old toothpaste containers, you name it, it was laying there. But on Saturday morning a different kind of flood came along. A flood of people. There must have been more than forty people who came together to clean things up and make the place look nice. Of course as i mentioned Nepali garbage pickup involves burning, and the plume of garbage smoke was miles high. Soon the villagers turned their attention to the drainage ditch running paralel to the field. All the trash in there, and there was quite a lot, was to wet to burn. The solution; get a couple water trucks and wash it all down into the stream. It was pretty horendous watching the stream of sludge and garbage go pouring off the end of the ditch into the gully, but it was also very inspiring to see all these people coming together and getting excited about cleaning up their community. Everyone was cheering and smiling and working together to solve a problem that had quite literally never been addressed before. Suddenly from nowhere all these pieces of cardboard appeared with slogans on them like "dont use plastic!" and "clean up our community!". The kids fashioned these into signs with sticks of bamboo and next thing you know two adults were leading an army little ones up and down the street chanting and marching. Singing out their cause for everyone to see. After this i didnt think the day could get much better, but boy was i wrong.     That night the YIPies organized a celebration in honor of all the work people had done throughout the week. There was a really amazing Nepali band, with all sorts of interesting instruments and sounds, not to  mention a really loud sound system. They began to play, and people began to trickle in to watch, but at first everyone just stood there stone faced, arms crossed, watching the spectacle. After the second song, two young girls got up and danced quite beautifully in front of everyone. After a couple songs with just them dancing, a bunch of us westerners decided to get up there too and thats when things started to get really fun. Once we got up, then all the kids got up there too. you can imagine a literal horde of children with us towering above them trying our best to dance in the Nepali way but just probably looking to the locals like we were doing some crazy gringo dance. But regardless. by this point pretty much everyone was smiling. after a short break and some speeches from the community leaders and the westerners, The YIPies got the whole entire village to join in a giant dance. We all got in a huge circle holding hands and did a hilarious and awesome shuffling turning dance. not a single face wasn't split open with laughter. It was a beautiful thing to see and be a part of. After the community dance finished lots more people joined us up at the front dancing. The kids were fighting over who would get to dance with us and complements flew with reckless abandon. No matter how tired i got i was simply not allowed to stop, break away from one group of eager children and another would instantly agglomerate around you. Oh what a glorious torture. It was absolutely one of the best days of my entire life. So much love, so much happiness. It doesnt matter whether you speak someones language, Love, laughter and dancing speak to everyone's heart, and remind us that despite the fact that these people live half a world away from us, and lead totally different lives, they are our brethren just as surely as our own flesh and blood. Namaste, Lowell and Ian