One of the reasons that I find travel so important is that it’s an incredibly humbling experience. It’s so easy to get caught up in one’s own life – to forget how lucky we are and how easy we have it. We spend so much time complaining and worrying about unimportant things. Travel is an eye-opening experience, one that puts us in our place and reminds us that our own personal lives are not the center of the universe.
As I mentioned briefly in my last blog entry, I have befriended several people here in Kathmandu – primarily shop-owners or workers in the tourist industry. As I have gotten to know them a little bit, I have begun to realize how difficult many of their lives are and how they truly have to struggle against all odds to succeed.
Prem, who works at a clothing shop, juggles college and work 7 days a week. His only “holiday” is Saturday, when he gets to finish work at 6pm instead of 9pm. What he goes home to is a 10X8-sized room that he shares with his friend. There’s no bathroom or kitchen – just a bed and a gas stove. Oh, and a radio.
Keshav, the owner of the phone/internet place by my hotel, begins his day at about 6am. In the morning, he studies at college, and by 9am he’s at work. Besides the shop I know him from, he also has a trekking/rafting guide shop and an NGO for children in the south of Nepal that he started. He stays at the office until 8:30pm, juggling his different professions all the while. He arrives home at 9pm, cooks his own dinner, sleeps, and does the same thing the next day.
Ram, who does the night shift at my hotel, probably has it the worst of anyone I’ve spoken to, though I’m sure there are many worse off than even him. He arrives at the hotel for work at about 5pm and stays here until roughly 9am. One would think that after that he goes home and sleeps, but he doesn’t. He eats and then goes off to college until mid-afternoon. He manages to squeeze in an hour’s nap before being at work again by 5pm. When does he sleep? “An hour here, an hour there” he casually responds.
What all these people share is a tremendous effort to succeed and get ahead here in Nepal. They all work 60-75 hour work weeks and manage, on top of that, to attend college. But their efforts to succeed, despite being much stronger that my own or those of anyone else I know in the West, are rewarded only with mediocre success. They might receive their Bachelor’s degrees, and maybe some of them will continue on to graduate school – but where will that really get them in a country that doesn’t have any jobs to offer them even if they DO have a degree?
Perspective
