12

Evenin y’all. So for those of you that don’t yet know, I’m writing this post from home. And I’m realizing that it’s just a fact of life that time truly flies; yet again, so much has happened since I last wrote. I wanted to give y'all a final post of sorts. And though this has been half-written and in progress for weeks, I’ve finally found the heart to finish it.

            In my final weeks in Nepal, a LOT happened. There were so many lasts, with a few firsts interspersed. My kids had their last term finals. I spent hours on study guides, one last desperate attempt to help them believe in themselves and their abilities and pass those damned government tests. Because without passing, they often can’t continue their educations, no matter how flawed the whole system was. They passed in high numbers though and I was terribly proud of them. My last day at Jana Udaya Lower Secondary was a test day. Through some miscommunication, most of my kids didn’t realize I wouldn’t be back. They ran over after their classes were finished, the little kids in particular crowding around, for one last time playing with my hair as I crouched down to their level, and asking me all these questions, questions my mind could answer but my heart couldn’t bear to hear, about why I had to leave? when was I coming back? Would I be there when they were in the third grade? Please stay miss. Please. I was given little glass boxes with paper flowers in them, hand-made cards and pictures, postcards of Hindi actors and actresses with cute half English-half Nepali poems. I have boxes full of little trinkets from the year that I refuse to part with, despite their seeming lack of value to any outsider.

After all those trying lasts though, during this time I had an incredible first, shared with my Dad and sister, who probably had a thousand firsts on their trip to visit me and bring me home. When I finished the grant period, my Dad and Annie came to Nepal. Though I know all too well how overwhelming things can be at first, they were such troopers, as I dragged them all over Kathmandu and the country. We visited countless friends and host family members, ate more rice and curry than they probably care to again, exchanged gifts. We saw rhinos, rode elephants, scaled mountains to arrive in the snow-covered base camp of Ana Purna. That part of the trip alone would take at lease a short book to describe, and I think it would be best to ask them about it, as they had fresh eyes and open hearts to the whole experience. For me though, it just meant so much to be able to show them this world, this place that had become such a special part of my life. I am so incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to share that with them first hand.

I feel I could write much much more, but to wrap up this piece, I have to take you back to before Dad and Anne came, the week after my last day of school. The day after I finished working, I had the chance to travel with my friend and Pitzer’s study abroad program to a small rural village, Tanting. After a day’s bus ride, a 2 and a half hour jeep ride, and a 3-4 hour steep hike, we arrived in the beautiful town, carved in the side of a mountain, at the traditional house we were to stay in. I was only able to stay a couple days, before I had to return to the capital to meet my family. But from just that short time, I have many fond memories, of playing endlessly with the 3 kids at the house, drinking home made millet and rice wine and laughing with old friends from the Pitzer staff, sleeping on the floor by the window with a stunning view of the Himalayas in the morning, and playing my first ever pick-up basketball game in Nepal, out of all the places to play, there in that rural town, where they had built a concrete court.
          It was amidst these happy moments, however, when I was floored by a phone call from an eighth grade girl, a precocious student of mine. She started anxiously telling me a story about little Bishal Moktan, a fifth grader in my grammar class. He had gone out swimming in the local Nakhu River with his friends. As I listened to her Nepali words, she said one I didn’t know. I instantly knew it must mean “to drown,” but in that moment I hoped harder than maybe I ever had in my life that I was misunderstanding what she was telling me, that this story was being confused in translation. But as she kept talking, there was no escaping the truth. Bishal swam out into the deep part of the river with his friends. But he couldn’t swim back.

Bishal was honestly one of my favorites. He had an incredible smile. He was a jokester, but always remained respectful during class. Once, I picked one of his drawings out of the trash, an talented rendering of a teacher and her class, that had been torn off the wall. I was looking for a piece of trash to wipe the dry erase board with, as I didn’t have a duster, but when I saw that drawing, I tucked it away and saved it. This little boy had such a light in him, despite the difficulties I heard about his life from others. I can’t express to you all the little things that made him who he was. But I know that you can understand regardless how truly tragic and devastating it is that that life was taken from this world at such a young age.

This experience and the natural challenges that accompany any great change probably explain my emotional state as of late. To be perfectly honest, I still miss Nepal so much. And I hope that that doesn’t hurt or offend anyone, for I love you all to death, and I am also so thrilled to be reunited with friends and family. And though you can learn to live without a lot, to adjust to a new context and a lack of privileges previously had, it is also easy to slip back into habits, and enjoy the heck out of a hot shower, my piano, basketball, tap water that doesn’t threaten typhoid and various microscopic parasites, driving, southern accents, bike rides, sunsets on the Mississippi river, etc. But there’s a lingering surreal feeling to everything about being back, which demonstrates how truly and deeply my frames of reference had changed. Most of the time I find myself trying not to think too much about Nepal. I’ve called a couple people who had insisted, but I almost can’t bear to call the rest yet. It hurts too much. So I’ve been catching up here, doing little things, throwing myself into work. Finding moments of true happiness and a little peace that I think is increasing as time passes. But whether or not I face my feelings, they are there, poking through in any moment of weakness. I dreamed of my second graders and other students the other day, and it was so vivid I didn’t want to wake up. Another night, as I watched a random episode of a TV show, I suddenly found myself sobbing as the main character pulled the body of a boy who had been drowning out of a lake. I couldn’t even finish typing that sentence the first time I wrote this post, nor the section telling y’all what happened to Bishal. I’m still the tough little stoic tomboy I used to be. And though I’ve gotten better about letting out feelings from time to time to avoid untimely explosions of emotion, I know I haven’t been handling mine well of late. So I’d like to apologize to family and friends if I’ve been up and down, distracted, or testy, or anything like that. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your love and support.

            Many of y’all have been asking what’s next? And I’ve chosen to not choose, at least not right now. Nepal this time around really changed my perspective. And it really wore me out. I want to decompress a bit, but also begin to envision my future with this broadened perspective as a basis. Whatever I do, whether teaching, more school, something completely new, I will be blessed if it’s as as rewarding as my time in Nepal was, even if that means it is also as crazily beautiful, deeply draining, paralyingly difficult, and all those other English words which I’ve forgotten, that are capable of describing the vast array of emotions I experienced this past year. There’s a beautiful love song in Nepali, which resonates with me as I finish this year. It was a year in which I know I did my all, but I also know that all I could have ever done also never could have been enough. “na birse timilai, na paye timilai…” which means “I have neither forgotten you nor achieved you…”

In loving memory of Bishal Moktan

(the little boy boy behind the boy in the hat is Bishal)