Oct. 29^th, 2012

Last night, we had a little celebration.  We had potato mash for dinner, a local favorite among the Sherpa people.  The potatoes are boiled, peeled, then mashed by hand to a very fine consistency.  Its then place in a pot and cooked again, then served with a broth.   I helped pound down the potatoes and discovered how weak I am.  It was a lot harder than it looks.  Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, or maybe my body is just a spent unit.   In any case, I could only pound it a few times before handing the job over to another.

Dinner was followed by a lot of chung, conversation, and dancing to Nepalese music.  To a guy who listens to jazz and normally only dances to salsa, this was an interesting change. As isolated as many of the villages are from social services, I wondered how children were born out here.   A local doctor?   A Mid-wife? Nope.   Babies are born here the same way they've been born since the beginning of the human species.  All of the men on my team were born at home, without the help of western medicine.  “Sherpa women are strong”, I was told, and that very few children or mother's die out here as a result of natural child birth. Fascinating, I thought.

A product of natural child birth

We took off around 0730 hours the next morning after breakfast.  We were still above 2,500 meters so, it was no surprise that every uphill step I took was a struggle.  We made it to the nearest town by 11:30 AM, stopping for lunch.    Along the way, I came across a man on the trail.  His gaze was vacant, his clothing torn and dirty.   He stared at me as I walked towards him. “Namaste”, he said as I approached to pass. “Namaste”, I replied, smiling but continuing forward, in an attempt to pass.   He stuck out his hand. It was dirty.  Really dirty, showing the signs of a very hard life.   I looked at it, and him as I reached for his hand.   I could not help but think of how many people back home may have declined to shake his hand, or perhaps offer a knuckle instead.  Or maybe reluctantly shake the man's hand but immediately feel the need to breakout the hand sanitizer.   After our exchange, I continued down the trail, then focused on the hand that had just touched another's, and wondered, what is humanity?

In the next village we passed through, before dropping in altitude, I was reunited with a little girl I had met the year before.  It made me very happy to see her.

My young friend and her brother in 2011

My young friend 2012

Soon after passing through this village, we were able to bypass the trail through the farm fields and walk on the unfinished road they are building that will allow buses to travel further into the mountains, reducing the walk time for many of the villagers that are traveling back from Kathmandu.  Once we dropped below 2,500 meters, I felt like myself again, able to walk at a brisk pace and keep up with the others.

Some villagers are trying to discourage littering on the trails

Some people still don't get it

We made it to the buss staging area in the village of Dareh before night fall.  After dinner, we all sacked out for the night in a dormitory style hotel.   Although I was still in rural Nepal, life felt a bit different.