"I love this place more than anything!" Emily says fairly often during taxi rides. As a rule, Emily loves whatever she enjoys at the moment more than anything. Everything gets its turn at being the best thing EVER.
But her love and excitement for Nepal is undying.
So, this past week and a half, I've been trying to understand just what makes her love this place so much. This is my third trip here and it has never captured my heart like it does Emily's.
Instead – in case anyone hasn't read this blog before, has never talked with me or has a remarkably short memory – I have a deep love for Bali, France and most recently Patmos, Greece along with some special fondness for Hong Kong and Singapore.
Clearly, I love the softer side of life. In a world with such a spectrum of hard and soft, dark and bright, joyous and painful – why not use our all too precious and short lives seeking the better aspects of life?
I realize where there are some big flaws in that. And I know that we are made, defined, strengthen and molded through our experiences in the tough and gritty. We also have opportunity to do amazing and more generous things by facing the hard places and things.
But if someone had a plane ticket to Bali in one hand and Zaire in another, you better believe that unless I'm given some very compelling reason otherwise, I'll take Bali.
So, when we're driving down broken roads past teeming crowds, dirt, pollution, squalor, and general chaos and Emily looks out the window and loves it with all her heart, I find myself struggling to understand.
When I ask what it is she loves, Emily inevitably answers, "All of it….!" So, I press further and I get, "The colors, the smells, the people….just everything…."
I get the colors of what people wear and how they decorate…although they choose loud colors and combinations that don't do it for me. But I can understand it. I also like the smells when we're talking about the food and I can intellectually grasp liking the smell of the burning trash….even though I personally don't care for it. I don't like most of the smells on the street and certainly not in the restrooms.
The people, though….that's the one place where not only do I understand, but the more we go along on this journey, the more I understand her love for people here.
Last night we went to the house where Emily lived for almost two years and had dinner with her Nepali family. Last week, we had dinner with her friend Rabina, her husband and in-laws. This was Rabina's family – complete with three sisters, one of her brothers and one of her brothers-in-law. Rabina, her husband, brother-in-law, brother and her brother's best friend all spoke incredibly fluent English. The brother, Amit, is studying at a college in Oklahoma and trying to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin – his English is perfect.
If these people were the core of your experience anywhere – you would have to love that place. This is a warm, caring, friendly family that laughs, eats and spends time together. They adore the children of the family. They are kind to one another and guests. Then there's the other magic ingredient – they're all brilliant.
This upper-middle class to wealthy Nepali family is filled with sharp, experienced, thinking people who understand their society, politics and the world around them. They have the grounding to love their country for what it is, to dream of what it could be and the detachment it takes to forgive the abuses Nepalis inflict on Nepalis.
Rabina's parents live in a beautiful village two to three hours from Kathmandu. They bought this house in Kathmandu and over the years sent all of their children to live in it so that they could attend private schools in the capitol and get better educations than they public schools in Barbise offer. Each of the siblings misses Barbise. Amit intends to return there when he finishes school in America. Jobs and economy make it hard for everyone to live in Barbise, but they all pine away for it.
Rabina's parents can be proud. Rabina is an attorney who works on human rights causes, Amit is studying in America, another son is a successful businessman and their daughters have each married men with good livings. They gave their children everything they could.
How can you not love people like this?
They even stand over you while you eat to see which of the five dishes they've made you like best and to immediately refill your bowl with more. Okay, a little odd and uncomfortable to Americans – but they express their hospitality with a rarely seen verve. Until last night, I never understood when Emily told me she gained weight in Nepal….
To me – and I think to Emily last night, at least – Amit was the most interesting. He has lived in America for more than three years now. He has attended two schools, had an immigration issue because of a very bad international coordinator who ripped off foreign students at his first school and has lived in both Florida and Oklahoma. Amit understands America and what it is to dive into a new culture without a support system.
Amazingly, and wisely – Amit says he has learned tremendously about Nepal by living in America. Anyone who has lived abroad can relate. You can see your home more clearly from outside – or at least get another very important perspective on it.
We were fascinated to hear someone in his mid-20's – the ages we were when we each lived abroad – discuss our country and his own from his new-found perspective. He seems what's wrong with Nepal all the more acutely and yet, he loves it more. Amit wants to bring his American education home, put it to good use for Nepal and to be in the place he loves and feels he belongs.
Beautiful is the only world I can find for his conclusions.
Many Nepalis would have wanted to stay in America for the opportunity and the materially better quality of life. Others might have run home, overwhelmed by our big, challenging and much more complicated country. Amit has braved the rapids, mastered the challenges, learned some lessons and then decided to follow his heart and to take the road less traveled.
Amit is doing exactly what foreign study and exchange programs are designed to do – to transfer new skills and resources to challenged countries. But better yet, he's not doing it because he's supposed to – but because it's his heart's path. That will make all the difference.
As I meet the people who were integral in Emily's life and experiences in Nepal, I understand more why she had such a wonderful experience and why she thinks so highly of Nepalis.
I have always found people here to be kind and helpful. But as a traveler passing through – you never get to really get to know people in any depth. You can get some good insights, exchanges and views at best. So, to have an opportunity to step into Emily's well-developed world of connections with all their warmth and intensity is a wonderful treat.
I may never come to love the crowded, broken sidewalks or the gutters filled with unidentifiable smelly liquids – or even the smell of burning trash, but I have a better understanding of why Emily's heart swells with joy when she speaks of Nepal.
