My medium is the same as the past eight months, but my continent is not. I have made it back safe and sound to my city by the Bay, and a joyful reunion it was. But! Before I commence my reentry into civilian life, I've got a yarn to share...
As the end of March came to a close, so too did my work at Save the Children Jordan. The farewell to Za'atari Camp wasn't an easy one: after a month of working and playing at the Saudi School, the children weren't keen on letting me go, and I wasn't keen on leaving them. Likewise with the staff - we had really hit it off, and saying goodbye was all the sadder given that my next stint in Jordan isn't exactly on the calendar. On a more abstract level, my sheer ability to pick up and leave stood in such stark contrast to the casts of refugees who lacked basic freedom of mobility and the freedom to seek their homeland in peace, that I was painfully aware of the inequalities and injustices that pervade and invade our lives. Unlike every Syrian I had met, I had full command of my rights. As I pulled out of Za'atari for the last time, my eyes overflowed with tears. It is my wish among wishes that when I return to the Middle East, there is no such thing called Za'atari, and there is a thing called a peaceful and prosperous Syria. It's been over three years of civil war, and a country and its civilians lay ravaged. Please keep your thoughts and prayers with the little girls and little boys who will inherit a scorched land, and please pray that they can find the strength and courage to rebuild a brighter future.
After leaving my post at Save the Children, I readied my things to head to Nepal. Another round of difficult goodbyes with my host family ensued, but before I knew it, I was on the first of the three flights that would carry me from Amman to Kathmandu. I passed through Doha and New Dehli with Steven Dubner of the Freakonomics podcast propelling me through (a side note: this was my first brush with podcasts, and I would recommend Freakonomics wholeheartedly!). I arrived in Kathmandu at around midnight and proceeded to the "airport" exit, where I was met by a literal wall of men holding hotel signs and screaming foreign names and goading me into taking up this fabulous deal and that reliable taxi. I managed to somehow find my hotel representative, get into a relic of an automobile, and arrive at the Vajra in one piece. The hotel - a recommendation of my dad's - didn't disappoint, I discovered, once morning light emerged and showed me colorful gardens and red brick buildings and peaceful terraces with sweeping views. I made my first walk into Kathmandu central - awash in tourists and ubiquitous tchotchke trinkets - and wound my way down little allies. The contrasts with Amman bowled me over - the color! The crazy! The action!
I spent the six days after my arrival exploring Kathmandu and some nearby sights - Bahktapur and Bouhda - and managed to run into my seventh grade teacher from Convent and a few Middlebury alums doing Fulbright research. Kathmandu was a small world - one of fast friends and inconceivable coincidence. I met an Irish woman who had foregone her dull desk job in Canada and sold everything to make a South East Asia tour. A German lady who had worked in a rural village hospital in central Nepal for 8 months and fell so in love she was back to visit her charges and her peers. A Canadian man who has spent the last decade teaching English in South Korea and is now plotting his next move to Saudi Arabia (where the cash flow is greater). A Latvian woman who had relocated to Australia and attributed all her friendships to Couchsurfing. Though I had feared loneliness, I found myself floating between lovely new people and learning their stories, and there is nothing that wards of loneliness like a good story (may I venture a guess that the percentage of people who have good ones is inordinately high in Nepal?).
My other pursuit in these six days was trek preparation, which was absurdly easy given that every store's existential purpose in Kathmandu was to outfit tourists like me with fake and affordable trekking gear. I packed it all up, and April 1, caught a 7am flight in a 10 seater plane to Lukla. The views from the sky were hard to beat - the whole Himalaya Mountain Range extending as far as the eye could see. The sophistication of the runway, however, was anything but hard to beat. It was, for one, about an inch long, and on a cliff. But! Given that I'm writing these words, the verdict is out that our captain was more than capable and that we were safely delivered. It was here that I met my Sherpa - Chiring. He proved a reliable and lovely guide.
From Lukla began the eight day journey up to Everest Base Camp. Green forests and blue rivers kept us company the first few days of the trip, as we passed through Monjo and Namche and Tenghboche, and as we threaded back and forth across the river gorge we gained elevation quickly (may the record note that I did not, in fact, walk in any style that could be characterized as rapidly. I blame it on the elevation gain, not on my seven months of mass caloric consumption in Jordan). As we continued up through Dingboche and Lobuche and finally Gorakshep, the trees thinned and disappeared, and the landscape turned to stone and snow. Reaching Everest Base Camp was a bit underwhelming - one cannot actually see Everest - but certainly neat to glimpse the Khombu Ice Falls (which is where the avalanche tragedy would fold out a week after my departure) and the field of hundreds of yellow summit tents. The greater accomplishment came the next morning, when we summited Kala Pattar - at a whopping 5,500 meters (in other words, our highest elevation). Right as we reached the top, the sun peaked out behind Everest and made the panting and fatigue of the previous two hours plenty worth it. In every direction - mountains. Big ones, beautiful ones, breathtaking ones.
From there - the trek was by and large, all down hill. For the next three days, we made our descent, and it was such a treat to see yet again the landscape change as we dropped elevation. It was magic to reach Lukla on Day 11 and tuck into bed knowing that a plane and not my own two feet would be taking me to my next destination.
That may be all well and good, you muse, but what actually was the experience like on a day to day basis? Well, my trek was a teahouse trek, which meant that the daily goal was to reach the next teahouse, where we would take our meals and sleep for the night. In comparison to traditional backpacking, in which you are responsible for carrying your house and your food on your own back, teahouse trekking is five star luxury treatment. Three hot meals a day! A warm cot at night in a private room! Showers (maybe)! Internet (sometimes)! We woke at around 7, ate breakfast at 7:30, and hit the trail at around 8. We walked for about 4-5 hours every day (with the notable exception of one 12 hour day and one 8 hour day on the descent), and reached our destination around 1 o'clock. From 1 until dinner time, I mostly wrote in my journal, read a book, and got acquainted with the other trekkers. I met folks old and young, Israeli and South African, old hats and total novices. The beauty of the hike, really, was that I had plenty of solitary time during the day to take in the sights and walk at my own pace, but I was able to socialize during the evenings, over dinner and around the fire, with whoever happened to be passing through as well. Given that I happened to start as the same day as most of the Everest expedition teams (expedition teams are the ones heading to the summit, not just to Base Camp), I met some of the trekkers and Sherpas on the teams that were affected by the tragic avalanche of 2 weeks prior. Summiting Everest is an endeavor of great allure but of great risk - human and natural - and unfortunately many lives were taken in realizing its execution.
When I heard of the news, I was already onto my next site: Pokhara, a lovely little lakeside town. I took an 8 hour bus from Kathmandu, after which I wanted only to shower and sleep, and spent the next few days browsing book stores and frequenting coffee shops (mostly one: Perky Beans, where I promise the milkshakes were larger than any milkshake you've ever seen). My friend Becca, who is studying in Nepal, came out to meet me, and we spent a few days together along with some of her study abroad buddies. It was a relaxing little getaway, and I came out with some book recommendations: White Teeth by Zadie Smith, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.
Before I knew it, I was back in Kathmandu and this time staying with my friend Becca's host family - which was a treat. Picked up a few Nepali words (most - no, all - related to food) and got to see the dynamics of a Nepali household. Then came March 23rd and I was retracing my footsteps of a month earlier back to Amman. Fortunately, all smooth sailing! One of my biggest takeaways from my month stint in Nepal was the value of knowing a foreign language. By the end of my time in Amman, I took for granted that I could understand and be understood. That I, by knowing some Arabic, could begin to scratch beneath the surface; I could probe, ask questions, and answer others' questions. I could endeavor to understand what were the differences that meaningfully mattered between my society and my host society, and which ones were mere variations on the same theme. I could, in other words, blissfully escape the tourist label. But in Nepal, I was more aware than I've ever been in my life, that to know a place, you must speak a place.
Which is an apt way to wrap up. Eight months ago, I ventured to Jordan, speaking formal Arabic without a clue of what Jordan was. I didn't know Jordanians, and I didn't know if I ever would in a meaningful way. Fast forward. Now I speak Jordanian dialect, and leave every taxi driver scratching their heads (is she Arab? Isn't she Arab?). I cannot count the number of times people have insisted, contrary to what I know to be true, that Jordanian blood runs either in my mother or my father's veins. Why? Because I can speak some Arabic, adopt Jordanian cadences and mannerisms, and invert assumptions about how Americans deal with the Middle East. This commentary is not meant to be a pat on the back, it is meant to illustrate the magic of language acquisition and cultural observation - a magic I never would have understood if not for my time abroad and my instruction at Middlebury. It, really and truly, is a key, and it is a key blind to race, creed, sex, or age. I don't know how I got so lucky, but this key brought me the love of a host family and of work peers, and I will never forget the good fortune of being adopted into another culture and loved as one of the clan.
It was a good run - but alas, all adventures have their end and I'm back to my original clan. I will be here in SF for the month of May, out in DC for the summer, working at organization called Vital Voices, and back to Middlebury come fall. I hope you've enjoyed this blog as I've enjoyed sharing it, and I hope we get to discuss it face to face sometime, instead of screen to screen. Be well!
