Living the Life

stories from the ex-street kids here :)

the next time you go to the petrol station and that $4+/gallon sign makes you cringe... just remember it could be worse. you could live in a country where even professionals often make less than $100 a month, the price could be around $7/gallon, the line could be wrapped around the curb and down the street a kilometer, and after enduring that line, you could be standing at the pump only to find that it's dry and the next batch of petrol won't be in for a week or so.... the story is the same at every pump in the city... this is our kathmandu reality. the picture is the petrol "line". the line of cars and the herd of bikes are all hopeful waiters...can you even see the end? this pic was taken just in february and trust me the situation has only gotten worse.

today i was looking through my archives... it's kind of like flipping the pages through an old journal... and i realised when i lived in thailand i used to post a pic a day (okay, more like tri-weekly) from around the city... half those pics were stolen goods thanks to google images, but still... it helped give my readers who had never been to thailand a better idea of the place i lived... so i've decided to try to do the same thing with nepal and show you some interesting (and yes, probably for the most part, stolen) pics from my two lovely "twin cities", pokhara and kathmandu.

My twin sent me this quote from the book Paula, by Isabel Allende... I think i just might have to read it...

"In the long, silent hours, I am trampled by memories, all happening in one instant, as if my entire life were a single unfathomable image…. The child and girl I was, the woman I am, the old woman I shall be, are all water in the same rushing torrent. My past has little meaning; I can see no order to it, no clarity, purpose or path, only a blind journey guided by instinct and detours caused by events beyond my control. There was no deliberation on my part, only good intentions and the faint sense of a greater design determining my steps..."

Bandh[b-awn-dha]: the word literally means "closed" in nepali. when thrown into the context of politics or civil movements it means 'close your damn shop and don't even think about driving or else we are throwing rocks through your windows and maybe causing a lot of other havoc'.

It’s been a while since I’ve written something straight from my heart… but to give food for thought to my dear and faithful friends in Spain who say I don’t post regularly enough, I’ve decided to write a very nonlinear post (to steal a term from another friend in NYC).

My life. These days it’s been hectic. More on the inside than the outside. Or maybe on the outside as well, I’m not quite sure. I feel a bit bi-polar and I don’t use that term loosely or in jest. A few of the people who know me the best always tell me there is a chance that I really am. Mental issues run on both sides of my family, but I’ve always thought I’d rather be a bit on the side of crazy and really feel what it is to live than to exist in whatever it means to be so-called ‘normal’.

I have big dreams. They aren’t your typical dreams, but for me they are big nonetheless. I want to write. I want to help people. I want to breathe life in. I want to love and I want to feel pain. Those are my dreams.

Some mornings I wake up and I look back on my life when I was just a child and I realize I was a very complicated child and in that light, who I have become seems inevitable. Even at a young age I felt unsatisfied with life. I wanted more.

When I was about seven I guess, I saw an episode of Family Ties that showed Elise and whatever her husband’s name was living under some mosquito net tent in some far flung corner of the earth. At that moment I thought, “someday, I will do that.” I made lists of travel plans although my family hardly used to travel. I explored, I envisioned, I dreamt. When I was around eight, I remember making a list of all the things I wanted to do. Climb Mount Everest was on that list. I didn’t even know where Mount Everest was, and I have never even been the type of kid who liked climbing. I just liked the idea of accomplishing something huge. Pushing myself to the limits.

I don’t think I will climb Mount Everest, but maybe it was some sort of symbolic representation of the metaphorical mountains I strive to climb. But it’s funny, sort of. I’ve lived in the land of the great glorious Sagarmartha for so long and I’ve only caught a glimpse of her from very far away when I was coming in from Tibet.

The symbolism lies in this: I’ve come so far just to sell out at the end. Sometimes I feel like that in my life. I want to push myself, want to risk everything because my glorious God promises to do big things through those who are willing… but then a few steps short of the end, I fall short. Or maybe it was in the beginning that I fell short, and it was just God pulling me through until here.

It’s hard to be a self-starter. Sometimes I daydream of running away to Phuket, buying a motorbike and just teaching random English lessons. Living carefree and simple. No expectations. I wish I could do that, but I know even if I did, something would be haunting me forever.

There are mornings when I feel so content. I feel like, gosh, I am doing everything I ever wanted to do. I am living my dream and aside from climbing ol’ Everest, God’s using me to do everything I set out to do as an eight year old list-maker. But usually before 11 a.m. even comes around, the feeling of content becomes nothing more than vapor that’s given way to the heat.

Last night I returned to my kids after a three-week sabbatical in Thailand and Kathmandu. They are having their school holidays at the moment, and in the past, the expression, ‘idleness is the devil’s workshop’ has always been true in my house. It’s usually the time they fall back into glue, wind up in jail, or have any other major crisis akin to their former street kid life.

This holiday was different. The guys were relatively, well, perfect. Okay, they smoked a few cigarettes, but in Nepal I think every person over 12 smokes every now and again, so for me, that doesn’t count. The behavior of my boys was our version of perfection. Yet, I didn’t find myself rejoicing the way I would imagine I should have been. Instead of enjoying my precious time with the fellows I have loved to watch grow up, I sat like a recluse in my room for a few hours, counting my failures, my shortcomings, and wondering how I was ever going to make it through this life.

Bibek is a persistent little fella. He knocked at my door for 10 minutes when I first became a shut in. I ignored him. Twenty minutes later, the knocking returned. It went on like this for four or five times until I finally gave in and opened the door.

“What do you need?” I asked the boy.

He picked up some completely arbitrary stick in the corner, pretending like that was the thing he’d been so desperate to have for the last two hours.

I was sitting on my bed, staring in the darkness at my laptop screen and the boy with the stick came and sat down next to me.

“You know Emma didi, Raju dai and Gopal dai bringing movie, same like Jesus is coming next time.”

After spilling my water on the floor (Beebs isn’t the most careful of souls), he continued, “and same like, nighttime coming and not going sleeping, first I am doing same like what means… prathana.”

“Prayer.”

“Yeah, same like pray.”

I’ve never told my kids what to believe or who to pray to… because I don’t want it to be the rich God of the west that they follow. I don't make them go to church, I don't tell them to pray, I don't preach a word of the gospel and I don't show an ounce more of affection towards them when they talk about Christ. It’s their decision and my love for them is not contingent on how much they love God or how much they pretend to worship Christ – and my kids know that. Bibek’s always been an adamant Hindu on the grounds that Christian people only get one life on earth – and he wants two….

Yet, while I was wallowing in the despair that it is my plague, the inner sickness of my soul, my ten year old was contemplating the Kingdom, the second coming of Christ, and his life of prayer.

There’s something to give a girl ridden by angst of this world a bit of perspective.