Guest Post
By Leah Smith
By Leah Smith
I can’t stop thinking about the Nepali people. There is much about them to love. Three characteristics that seem most common among the Nepalis that we met on our trip are their shyness, their happiness and their strength. Here are some short vignettes to illustrate:
Shyness - Early in the trek, I confided to KC, our trip leader, that one of my goals on the trip was to get a smile out of one of the kitchen helpers, a seriously quiet young man in his 20s. KC quickly spilled the beans to our young friend who, from that point on, gifted me with wonderful smiles. He also called me “Mommy” for the rest of trip, something that made my maternal heart as happy as it could possibly be. He called me Mommy because Nepali people are not comfortable using the given names of older people. I only heard my name spoken two or three times, and usually it was from someone who looked away when they said it. While they love to joke and laugh, Nepalis are also gentle and I think could be easily embarrassed by someone who is too forward.
Happiness - I cannot count for you the number of times I woke in the morning to hear the sound of one of our team members whistling or singing. It might be dark and cold. The singer might have spent the long night under just a blanket in a tent with three other guys. He might be facing a day of carrying 80 pounds up the trail to the next camp, dropping that basket and going back down to where he started for a second load. Any one of these conditions would make me very grumpy, but nothing seems to deter the good nature of these lovely people. They sing quietly much of the time. Have you ever tried singing when you’re cranky? Is there even a word in the Nepali language for “cranky”?
Strength - Kurt has already done a post about the work of porters. I will add that the strength and ability to carry lots of weight over distance is not something that belongs just to a specialized group of workers. In the mountains, everyone carries - young, old, men and women. I watched one day as a teenage girl walked back and forth from her campsite a quarter mile away to the nearest water source. She went by 5 or 6 times with a 5 gallon water container -- that’s 40 pounds, filled! The thing is, each time she went by, she would be chatting with a friend or singing. Always having fun. The work, the weight of the container, the distance she had to walk: they seemed like nothing to her!
In the picture above, you can see the wonderful faces of three old friends, KC, our trip leader; Shaera, a cook on another trek that we encountered on the trail; and Soukbil, our intrepid Sherpa Guide. (Guys, please forgive my unforgivable misspelling of your names!) They’ve known each other since they started in the trekking business years ago. In the photos below are Nuru Sherpa peaking out of a tent, and Kurt and me with some of the guys. Look at these people and understand that in Nepal, where folks make do with so much less than we have, where the average annual income is somewhere in the area of $300 US dollars, I never heard a single complaint. I never saw anyone stress out. They sing and smile and carry on. There is much that we can learn from Nepalis about the best way to live our lives.
Thank you for sharing that lesson with me, my friends. I will never forget you.
