Flashback Nepal
In 2008, I remember us moving to Kathmandu. Axl was barely a year old and heavily into the Wiggles, and we had just completed a tour in Jordan, during a time when tensions in the Middle East were nearing a breaking point.
After the Peace Corps in Morocco, New York City, Washington DC, plus Jordan that included a temporary trip to war torn Baghdad, I was not intimidated in the least by Nepal. But if I didn't arrive frightened in 2008, I can openly admit that I left with my tail between my legs by the time 2010 rolled along.
Was it the Maoist government? Certainly not, even though they made many religious cult groups look sane. The traffic? Again no, even though I still maintain to this day that more people have won their driver's license in the lottery in Nepal than in any other country. The one thing that would render me as speechless as helpless was a trauma that hadn't even occurred when I arrived: an earthquake, or just the possibility of it.
Of all the places I have ever visited, nothing has shocked me in a cultural sense like Nepal. I remember driving through its garbage strewn roads, the Bagmati River (easily the nastiest looking river ever), and little toddlers out in the streets left to fend for themselves. There were bhands, strikes, dozens of them, that would bring the city to a standstill, and the cruelties that happened to the people who defied them. There were burning vehicles by the side of the road, the result of drivers who didn't pull on the brakes in time and as a direct result plowed into one of the neighborhood's unlucky children. I remember cows in the middle of the Ring Road, the cows that actually looked like they believed that they were as holy as the Hindus said they were.
On the other hand, I remember the countless hours I passed walking in the countryside, pausing to gaze at the colorful prayer flags with the summits of the powerful Himalayas looming in the background. I remember literally trudging through people's backyards to get to where I needed to go, and the same people smiling at me and welcoming me to a pot of Nepali tea (still the best I have ever had). I recall dozens of hikes through the Kathmandu Valley, past countless stupas and temples and rice paddies along the way. I recall the feast of the Holi and the fun I had with the children when we would douse each other with colored water. I remember Nepal as the place where I fell in love with cricket. I remember the monsoons, and the rains that seemed to last forever.
And yet, the earthquake that never happened trumped it all. Sick, I know, but try to explain that to a person who had just discovered fatherhood and would welcome another child before our time in Nepal was up.
I could climb up any mountain and look over the city, toss a couple of nuts to a troop of tenacious monkeys, or watch the orange cloaked monks solemnly do their thing, and yet there was always the thought of an earthquake in Kathmandu. The nightmare that I had always expected finally arrived, and I wasn't around to be a part of it.
One thing I have learned about third world countries is that many of them are just plane unlucky. Nepal is one of those places. And unlucky is a charitable word. Imagine you are a cripple who has just worked hard to walk again. No divine intervention was needed, no religion or über doctor on your long road to recovery. And there you are, walking, walking, and walking until somebody pulls the carpet from underneath you. You take a spill and are confined to the crutches again. That, in a nutshell, must be what it feels like to be the country of Nepal.
There are the photos on the internet, those of buildings that merely resemble the contents of an ashtray, the temples of Durbar Square reduced to rubble, masked rescue workers digging out survivors, the same rescue workers running for cover following the first aftershocks. People standing by the side of the road weeping, uncertain of what to do next. There is the uncertainty of what happened in the countryside.
Come time, the prayer flags will flutter in the breeze again, the people of Kathmandu will do what they do best...dust off their shoulders and get on with the business of living. Buildings will rise again from the ashes. People will travel here again from around the world and leave it not one bit wiser or more enlightened, but will at least have the pictures they can post on social network sites to show for it.
In the end, it's all the same to Nepal. Their lot is unlikely to change, at least until there are people in power who not only proclaim that they love their country but roll up their sleeves and actually get down and dirty. Until then, the mindset is one of survival and the pursuit of prosperity, at least until the next earthquake.
Good luck, Nepal. You certainly deserve better.
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