Last Post from My Village Home

at the local nursery

Thursday, August 16 Lamachaur, Phal’s house, LAST POST FROM RELATIVES’ HOUSE

  (due to lack of electricity much of the time and lack of internet all of the time recently, my posts are being added after the fact.)

This is my last night in Lamachaur. I spent ten nights here altogether, after thirty five years away, and at that time after two years of coming here every weekend. So it is like coming full circle. I sit here tonight on the third story rooftop with the dark descending and the evening breeze finally taking away the heat off the oppressive day. Phal Kumari Gurung, who all those years ago was just 14 years old, has proved to be the most generous of hosts ever. Period. 

shopping

Today as Soonyi drove us around in his father’s Hyundai Tucson, she bought gifts for my wife and my daughter. I can only imagine the extent of her generosity, as she cooked for me twice a day this week and a half, put me up, helped arrange the whole trip to my old high school in Sisuwa, and overall has proved to be hospitable beyond any expectations I ever had. In fact, I had been reluctant to stay at her house, figuring it would be an imposition and that I would be more comfortable in a hotel in a touristy area. How wrong I was.

Now it’s time once again to reflect on the journey back, which started from people asking over the years, “Have you even been back?” Finally that constant question sunk in and when the Parents Association Grant presented itself, I took a chance.  Grateful I am that I put in an application sort of on a whim.

paragliding a Phewa Lake

But what does it all mean? First, I have had a chance to visit schools, and that became an important part of the journey’s meaning. Seeing how students are taught in other parts of the global village gives me a world perspective that is hard to maintain in the independent school world of LA. In terms of diversity, I think I can represent diversity in the extreme. Embedding myself in another culture and trying to speak both that culture’s language and it’s customs has enriched my ability to embrace the Other in the world. Thinking about the haves and the have nots, the West vs. Asia, the overdeveloped world of LA and the underdeveloped world of the Himalayas has been easier to bridge and unify after this trip. It is not, for me, us vs. them, the US vs. the rest of the world. I am reconnected to a different culture that feels comfortable to me, like my second home, and that enriches my own experience of being an American and should enrich the experience of being a Buckley teacher.

Living in the privileged world of LA and the San Fernando Valley, I am reminded that I have been close friends with people that are on the UN’s list of those living on less than a dollar a day, and I respect those people and feel generously hosted by them, never feeling superior or pity or that I am luckier. That bridge to another people that ostensibly are the opposite of Southern Californians is perhaps the richest legacy of my trip reconnecting me with my previous experiences. As I taught for a day in a Pokhara boarding school, I could imagine a life there, continuing to teach, coming to care about these students and their futures, as I care about my Buckley students and their futures as well. That’s quite a leap to make, but I made it. I think I can truly say that I am a citizen of the world, an educator not of one particular population, but an educator through and through, eager to connect with students of all races, classes, and cultures. And who knows? I’ve spoken to a Peace Corps recruiter that routinely signs people up so that they begin their careers in the Peace Corps and end them there as well. It is an intriguing thought. But for now, I turn my thoughts back to Buckley and gather my thoughts of what I’m bringing back to the faculty and students of our school. I hope I have made a modest contribution here in Nepal and I hope to make one equally important at home as well.