Blog

Before Kathmandu, we dived off the perfectly good main highway and headed for the bush.  We traversed good roads and bad, but wound up on terrible roads.  The rocks projecting out of the surface often bounced the fun right out of riding.

While the jolts tormented our joints, sunsets fired narrow draws with the soft warm light of molten metal.  Narrow terraces dived steeply down thousand foot hills.  We had airplane views of the landscape earned by the sweat of our constant climbing and descending.

The Nepali people also sent us on roller coasters.  Children followed us up hills, panting their pleas for money, chocolate, food into our annoyed ears.  We could not escape, the hills were too steep, the children too determined to milk us into compliance.  Before, we had encountered beggars only in cities, but here normal children with houses and fields and parents harassed us to no end.  Our respect for the people diminished.  Before, we held their tough mountain culture in high esteem.  After several kilometers of mobile begging, we began to reassess the impact of tourism.

The children had been taught to beg.  Tourists (that terrible T word!) had pitied their slightly dirty clothes or tough lives.  No doubt, they have tough lives.  However, handouts haven’t helped anyone; they only breed dependence and encourage roguery.

Goofing around, not begging.  Hooray!

The children made me sick.  We tried to discourage them with words, by begging back to them, by pointing their behavior out to their parents.  Our efforts to rid ourselves of the beggars sometimes only rewarded us with rocks lobbed harmlessly by small hands.  Harmless maybe, but it is, as they say, the thought that counts.

Later we found we’d been biking on the road to Everest.  Not all kids begged.  Some unquestioningly threw their shoulders into the trailer and helped us push it up the hills.  Some merely ran alongside, happy for the unique experience-as were we. To them we will be grateful, but as for the others, they make me ashamed for my fellow travelers who have so carelessly bred dependence into a people and erected a hopelessly tall wall between me and kids who-save for their eager greed-I might have had a chance to befriend.

Perhaps I am a callous, hard-hearted miser.  The number of requests and demands and complaints I often receive in touristy areas have encased my compassion beneath a thick crust of suspicion.  Yet, I still struggle to treat people with respect, even as they cling to me and block my path.

We met two gentlemen, Andrew and Jesse, in Kathmandu who worked for a Christian service organization called Word Made Flesh.  They have committed to three years of service in Kathmandu, providing physical and spiritual help to drug users, victims of prostitution, homeless children and the infirm elderly.  Only in the country for a few months, they already have a truck load of emotionally heavy tales.  It is no half measure of faith that compelled them to come.

Over lunch they related their own struggles to see Christ in everyone who approached them, from drug dealers to beggars to sales people.  This sentiment resounded with me.  Not everyone is a Christian, but there is a fundamental act of metaphysics in the manner in which we approach each other.   “Seeing Christ” in a person guarantees a failure to objectify.  Christian or not, objectifying people serves only to degrade them, to isolate yourself, and to fail to create a connection, and denies people their spiritual autonomy.

Through a connection of Andrew’s, we met a pastor in Kathmandu named Mani.  We shared dinner with him, and he in turn invited us to a prayer meeting with a few college students to whom he ministers.  I found not the calm bible interpretations I expected, but instead challenging questions from the pastor and his students.  For an hour we talked about the reasons for the trip, difficulties we experienced, and happy moments, both spiritually and otherwise.

What humbled me was the belief held by meeting participants that they could learn something from us.  I suppose I pompously inscribe opinions into this blog, but to have someone actually ask me meaningful questions about my experience was illuminating.  Such experiences would be impossible without first shedding prejudices and opening one’s self to what someone has to give one, not what one wants or expects.

After an therapeutic hour of meaningful discussion, I found myself recharged and ready to confront whatever sort of person Nepal might through at me next.   We all felt especially great after the pizza Mani procured for us.  I guess the positive truth I gained from this experience was a little hospitality goes a long way.  The children of demands left a bad taste in my mouth, but my palate was cleansed soon enough with tomato sauce and cheese.  I can only hope other travelers on the road to Everest have the gumption to act responsibly and the luck to find those authentically friendly Nepalese who make an experience truly meaningful.

Pastor Mani (middle holding daughter) with FBR and local students at a prayer meeting in Kathmandu.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 6:08 am and is filed under Jim's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.