I Learned…

The suburbs of Katmandu are not beautiful to look at. They are filled will falling down homes and people packed together with nothing in between them but thick brown dust. In the bus headed towards Pokhara I felt overwhelmed. No matter how long I looked I could never seem to process everything around me. I saw a baby lying near a gutter wrapped in a trash bag blanket. I saw an old woman carrying a basket of mangos so large that her small frame was nearly completely hidden from view. Flies hung lazily in the brown air. Men shouted and horns blared. Traffic was stuck in a dusty gridlock and a little boy ran up to our bus. His eyes were old and he held out empty hands towards the window. An old man lay on the street, bare feet, one eye closed. Cows ate crumbs from bags of Doritos. The mayhem was mesmerizing. As I watched from the safety of the air conditioning, a feeling of utter helplessness rose in my chest. I picked up my camera, focused it on a boy about my age sitting in the doorway of a shack beneath a ripped tarp roof. I lowered my camera and took a picture of the water bottle between my knees. I felt painfully useless. I remembered Sharon wondering aloud, “Why do we get to go home?” I kept thinking that to myself as the bus bumped along the dirt road. Why do I get to go home?

It was a Saturday night and we were on the bus again, lurching along toward Pokhara. Soccer games were in full swing. Girls wearing lipstick waited on street corners for boys in knock-off Nikes. A man on a motorcycle opened his arms to embrace his daughter who dropped a pile of laundry and ran to greet him. Children were everywhere. They rolled in the dirt while mothers and grandmothers and uncles watched from porches. A circle of old men sat in quiet concentration as they studied a game of dice. Red dust tinted black hair gold. I saw all of the familiar and universal aspects of humanity that I had missed as I left Katmandu a few weeks earlier. I had been so captivated by the unfamiliar that I had missed the countless similarities between my own culture and the one I was visiting. The sun sank low behind the mountains, resting on the peaks of green foothills. The bus massaged my sore muscles and I thought, why do I have to go home?

I can’t say that in that moment I had an epiphany. I don’t think that understanding is that simple. I think that maybe wisdom is about not having answers, not knowing how to fix things. Perhaps instead it is as simple as seeing the clarity in chaos, the strength that emerges through hardship, and the love that lies everywhere. I think that on this trip I began to realize that home is all around us.

Emma – Class of 2019

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