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Time races forward, and our start in Nepal stares us directly in the face. A number of people have asked to join us, and three NGOs have expressed a clear interest in hosting our work. The common thread is documentary video — two think they’d like us to develop video footage to promote their work and help with fund-raising. One is ETC, which is now working in Dolakha district. The second is VEC-Gangkharka, in some remote valleys of Helambu. Are we ready to take on the challenge? Both situations will mean communication challenges, as English is virtually un-spoken in both regions, once away from the main trekking routes. We’ll be hiring an interpreter, if we can find one. Our Nepali is coming along — we study every day. But it’s not up to the task, yet. And we’ll have to wait until we’re there to begin picking up phrases in the local dialects, which are related to Tibetan languages. Our big goal is to keep this fun and light. There will be set-backs and difficulties, for sure.
We’re also working on the Kathmandu end of things. One apartment possibility has come up, which makes us look more closely at the time we’ll be spending in town, re-charging our ‘batteries’ from the months in the field, and taking care of logistics and legalities. Kathmandu is a great city, and we’re looking forward to getting to know it better.
After a few weeks of discussion, I think we’ve finally settled on a good, if unusual, approach to our move. The ‘vision’ of the One Village Project is now ready, and posted on our site. It feels good to reach out to involve a network of friends and colleagues, to build on connections and the privileges we take for granted.
We have modest goals: Starting in September, we’ll stay in one village for a year or two. We’ll try to help, using the skills and resources we have, with whichever projects or developments the residents most ask for help. Maybe it means building a trekking lodge, or organizing visiting doctors for an annual health clinic, or teaching English, making documentary videos, or something else more traditionally part of ‘rural development’ programs, such as women’s micro-lending or agricultural projects.
It will start with a trek to visit promising places and projects, to see which would really benefit from us being there. Now it’s off to the scrap-paper again to sketch out the questions we need to answer to identify likely local NGOs and appropriate towns, not to mention the pile of logistics that needs preparing. And then it’s the contacts lists and memberships on appropriate discussion boards, and scouring the related news articles and NGO reports and Twitter discussions, and….
Time to get started!
This weekend, I paused in the stairway to chat with our 88-year old neighbor. She expressed interest in seeing our kids during the week. When I asked when, the reply was, “Oh, dear, I simply don’t have time. I don’t even have the time to read the newspaper. Life is so very busy, I don’t ever have the time I need to sit long enough to even read the newspaper.” And this from someone who is relatively immobile, and has cleaning and shopping taken care of for her by helpers, and seems to have no ongoing ‘projects’. Now, if SHE can’t eek out the time for reading the newspaper, then what hope have I? Will I, too, be looking forward to retirement, even as my days of retirement draw to a close? That was a wake-up call, very loud and very clear.
This weekend we finally confirmed that we’ve got people to rent our apartment, so we went ahead and bought plane tickets to Kathmandu. Wow! That was the phychological step that really put the ’stake in the ground’. Suddenly planning is swinging into high gear. the plans for the ‘one village project’ are taking shape, and people are beginning to share ideas and contacts. Now THIS is the way it should work. I have a feeling that we really can find a way to make a difference, to use our time in Nepal to give back some of the properity we’ve received, so un-deservingly.
Layers and layers of abstraction and technology. That’s what our work lives are filled with. It adds up to an inevitably overwhelming mountain of concepts and projects to be organized, somehow. The concept of taking a break, really living mostly tech-free and staying with in-the-moment tasks is, to me, both hard to imagine and like a long-lost favorite toy. Shocking. Shockingly right.
I look so forward to some time away from computers. How much of my life has been spent staring into square boxes on desks and clicking away at keyboards? It’s just crazy and I’m stopping it. But simplifying my life is complicated. Ha!
We’ve written out a vision statement now. It sounds inspired and yet a little childish. Being inspired doesn’t always look professional or mature. Do we go without a plan and allow the ideas and projects develop and find us? Or do we search now for collaborator with whom to build our dreams? Or do we search for NGOs doing things to which we can imgine contributing? We spend a couple of hours every evening online just looking at what others are doing. There are so many wonderful-sounding initiatives.
Visas researched and planned. Unemployment requirements researched and job end date planned. House rental ads planned. This isn’t so bad! I’ve even got a new website hosted for the trip. It’ll be gonewandering.net. If every day goes like this well be ready in a month, not six.
Yes, Nepal is really happening. We’ll travel in mid-September, and start a year with an initial 3-months trekking around as a family, looking for a town we want to stay in for the following 9 months of the year. It’s a completely ‘open’ plan. But we’ve set the date, and it’s really going to happen now.Yesterday I finished our logistics preparations list. That took the wind out of the sails for a few minutes as we looked at the overwhelming number of things we have to do in the next couple of months. Almost like the preparations for Lia’s adoption. But it’s a chance of a lifetime, traveling as a family in a place like Nepal. We’re really excited and motivated.
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