Lights, Camera… …Reality.

This blog entry is done at the risk of sounding cheesy. Truthfully, sometimes real life is stranger than fiction and sappier than drama.

Before coming to Nepal, I had spent many hours in Houston mentoring engineering students. One thing I talk about is experiencing all life has to offer while you are young, then moving into a stable job when you have a family to take care of. A stable job at age 22 is not necessary. Especially if you are going to sit at a desk performing a mundane task, then get your fill of drama, action, and excitement by going to the movies each weekend. A real life of adventure and service is so much more rewarding. You don’t have to sit and watch the movie, you can live the movie. Later on you can enjoy the stable life, where raising children is the right reason to remove some of the risk from your life.

Here in Nepal, as one might guess, I stand out from the crowd. When I am visiting a grade school, children will often come up to me and ask my name, where I am from, and what my caste is. For the final question, I tell them that I am American, so I do not have a caste. In a discussion with a fellow M.Sc. student, the two of us traded ideologies of religion and culture. He asked if I believed in reincarnation. I explained that I am Christian and that I do not believe in reincarnation. I believe that each person has only one life and afterwards they either go up, or they go down. Gesturing with my hand, he understood what up and down meant. He explained to me that while he believes in reincarnation, it’s not as simple as coming into your next life based on your previous life. Everyone gets 83,000,000 reincarnations and they will permanently go up after any life where they have lived properly. If they have not gone up after all of their chances of lives, then they will go down. We continued by talking about the caste system in relation to reincarnation.

I explained that in my culture as an American and religion as a Christian, every person has one chance at life and all people are created equal. I explained that children in bad places are not considered to be placed there as a punishment. Furthermore, children are considered to be innocent and not responsible for their own livelihood. Adults are always responsible for children’s standard of living. From what I understood, Buddhists consider it a great deed to build a resting place under a tree. For Americans, one of the greatest deeds you can perform is to help a child who is in a bad place. I continued by explaining that the Jewish and Muslim faiths, as well as many developed nations, also have similar values when it comes to orphaned children. I also emphasized the fact that those who are fortunate only have one chance at life too, so it is imperative that they get things right to ensure going up, instead of down. My friend explained that more developed Nepali culture was starting to move in this direction. The caste system was outlawed by the government, but there were still many people who believed in it and supported it.

To illustrate my point, I gave him an example that most people know. I talked about the crime boss in Slumdog Millionaire who takes the children’s eyes out. I explained that he would never survive in the USA. He would either be jailed or killed there. I explained that there would be no impunity for anyone in the USA who did that, no matter how rich or powerful they were. Because children are considered innocent and often helpless, it is each adult’s duty to prevent such a grave crime against children from taking place. I added that if the legal system in the USA failed to punish him, there would be criminals that would end his life. I explained that some of those who are either common criminals or organized-crime gangsters would be angered by a man who harmed children. They would take the law into their own hands and ironically enough, they would see it as a good deed to remove him from this earth. This mentality regarding children is so engrained into our culture that some of those who are viewed as bad people still will not harm children, they will even protect them. I continued by telling him that the homeless panhandling children in Kathmandu would not exist either in the USA. They would be picked up and placed in orphanages and foster homes. Where there are children like this, it means that they have repeatedly run away from the homes they have been given through charity. I even explained that there are NGOs in the USA that will look for these children and give them things like soap and clothes, since they will not accept the gift of living in a home.

That’s enough of an introduction, why don’t I get to the real story?

Since it was Saturday today, the equivalent of Sunday in the USA, I decided to finally go see a movie that I had wanted to see for some time. It was a Nepali movie, but I could recognize from the poster that it would be mostly physical humor and I didn’t need to understand the words in order to laugh. I called up a friend on the other side of town and we agreed to meet at a theater that was not too far from where I lived. I set out walking towards the theater. I left my neighborhood where there are countless headquarters for international organizations, passed through the tourist section on my side of town (I showed my student ID to avoid paying the tourist fee), and walked to the edge of the Ring Road that surrounds the city of Kathmandu. Just on the other side of the dusty and trash laden road was the movie theater. This theater showed only Indian and Nepali movies. As I walked up to the theater I realized that I was the only foreigner in sight, probably also for a mile in each direction. The last foreigners I had seen were near the tourist area. There was a tall and wide staircase leading up to the theatre entrance. The top three steps were the only ones shaded and many people were standing and waiting in the shade. I walked up to the top of the staircase and stood on the second stair. I sent a text message to my friend to tell her that I had arrived. She replied that she was on her way and would be there soon.

After waiting for about 15 minutes, I realized that a small homeless boy had setup camp directly behind me and was counting his begging earnings. At first I thought it was strange that he was only a few inches behind me. I soon realized that between the front wall of the building, a column, and the legs of a foreigner, he was surrounded on three sides. This was the safest place for him to count his money. He was wearing a skirt from a prep school girl’s uniform, something that had probably been lost or thrown out by its original owner. His shirt had several holes and it appeared to be 3rd or 4th hand clothing. His dark brown skin was made lighter by the dust and dirt that he was covered in. His dirty clothes also made it obvious that he was accustomed to sleeping on the ground. The boy counted his paper money and then began making little stacks of coins to count them. When he was done he put everything into his skirt pocket. He wore the skirt sideways so that the pocket was directly in front of him. As he got up to move, several coins spilled out and down the staircase. Another man and I pointed out each coin to him so that he could pick all of them up. As he moved to pick them up, more coins spilled out of the pocket. The man and I pointed out those coins as well, still more coins fell to the ground. It was obvious that there was a hole in his pocket. Now holding all of the coins in his hand, the boy flipped up his skirt to inspect the pocket. I looked away since the boy didn’t have any underwear. He then sat down a few stairs in front of me, coins in his lap, wondering what to do.

A few stairs below the boy was an empty potato chip bag. The boy grabbed it and looked inside at the few small broken chips leftover. He dumped the chips into his lap and then began putting all of the money into the bag. When the bag contained all of his money, he ate the few broken chips in his lap and then stood up. He removed 10 Rupees from the bag and then placed the bag into his pocket. He now had an effective pocket liner and change purse to hold his earnings. I watched him as he walked over to the edge of the stairs. There was a smaller and younger boy sleeping on there. As the older boy shook him to wake him up I looked at the older boy’s body language and facial expressions. Whether they were blood brothers or they had become brothers in the streets, it was clear that the older boy was the guardian of the younger boy. Their age difference couldn’t have been more than 2 years. The older boy continued to shake the younger boy without much success in waking him. He began pawing around the younger boy’s shorts looking for a pocket. When he rolled the younger boy over, I could see a few open sores on the younger boy’s face. Finally finding a pocket, the older boy stuffed the 10 Rupee note inside, gifting it to his sleeping younger brother. The older boy then sat on the stair above, placing his legs over the younger boy, protecting him from rolling off of the stair in his sleep.

The two stayed in this position for a few minutes. A lady came up to the older boy and he immediately stood upright while the younger boy slept. She reached into her purse and gave the boy a 2 Rupee coin. It was an appropriate amount for a single person to give the boy. Afterwards, he returned to his protective pose over the younger sleeping boy. I continued to look out at the street, watching the two boys out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and thought about the things I had shared about American and Christian culture a little over a week back. I thought more about where I was. There were many panhandling children and families that targeted the tourist areas of the city. There are also notable scams in these areas involving children asking for milk and children reciting the capitols of expected tourist nations. (I once had a little girl tell me that she thought the capitol of America was London.) These two boys were nowhere near any of these areas. Everyone I had seen since arriving was Nepali. Looking at the tea shops and restaurants, I knew that tourists and foreign nationals didn’t stop here to eat or shop either. I thought about how much I should give to the older, awake boy. 33 Rupees would easily double his bankroll. Still, for an American, I would be ashamed to only give him the equivalent of 50 cents.

I decided that 330 Rupees was more appropriate for today, the 4th of July. In reality, I was still sacrificing virtually nothing and I knew I wouldn’t walk away with some pompously swollen sense of pride. With the boy still protecting his younger brother in the corner of my vision, I took out my money and began sorting out 330 Rupees. The boy saw what was happening and he walked over to me and stood next to me. I rolled the money together, placing the smallest bill, the 10 Rupee note, on the outside. I turned and handed it to the boy. He took the money from my hand while looking at the 10 Rupee note, something which he saw regularly enough. He walked back to his younger brother and shook him awake. This time the smaller boy awakened and he watched as the older boy unfolded the money, exposing the three 100 Rupee notes inside. The two boys got up and walked over to me.

The younger boy sat down at my feet, facing away from me, still waking up with his head propped up in his hand. The older boy stood three stairs down from me. He was looking up directly at me with a big smile. I was still looking out over him at the street. After 30 seconds of the boy smiling at me I looked down at him and smiled back. I returned to watching the street. After 30 more seconds the boy was still smiling at me. I looked down at him and waved and said, “Hello.” I went back to watching the street. After another 30 seconds of the older boy smiling at me, the younger boy had awakened fully and he stood up. The older boy walked the younger boy down the stairs. As they walked off together, the older boy put his arm around the younger boy, waved the finger of his other hand high in the air, and exclaimed something enthusiastically. The two of them walked into the nearest tea shop, either to get something to eat or to give the money to their pseudo-caretaker. I resumed waiting for my friend to arrive.

Today there were no fireworks, no American flags, no red, white, and blue clothes, and no one I knew said, “Happy Fourth of July!” Still, this is the best Independence Day I have ever celebrated. I love the USA, everything it has taught me, and everything it has facilitated me becoming. Today I give thanks for the vision of the founding fathers, everyone who believed in that vision that followed, and everyone who has fought and died to protect this ideology.


Happy 4th of July little slumdog. I hope that someday soon your country will generate the excess income needed to take care of you. More importantly, I hope that someday soon everyone in your culture will truly and genuinely believe that all people are created equal, so that they will have the strongest desire to take care of you.


P.S. My best wishes go out to Freema Davis, a Rotarian from Oakland who is currently fundraising to create a pilot model orphanage in Nepal.