Blessing the Children

Tonight was my third visit to Blessing Child Welfare Home. It is a small orphanage here in KTM run by a single Nepali couple, Bal Bahadur Bishwokarma and his wife Sharmila. Bal and Sharmila just recently started following Christ. Now they all attend church and the kids are learning the Bible stories. Tonight we joined them for dinner. On their own, the kids all pressed their hands together and prayed before the meal. Precious. The children are all very well behaved and seem to get along very well together. They are also very bright kids despite coming from such unfortunate circumstances. Interestingly, the kids are all older than they look. I just found out that Amisha (pictured) is 10. I had thought she was 5; maybe 6. In fact, she's still 5 in my eyes! She deserves that extra five years of childhood...
Read a little more about them here: http://www.blessingchildwelfarehome.blogspot.com/

Pokhara and Dirty Hippies

Everyone raves about how great Pokhara is.  Because of this, perhaps, I was disappointed when I first arrived.  Too many dirty hippies and pushy vendors.  As I walked along the lake front the other day I was entreated, beckoned, approached, or otherwise accosted by no fewer than eight people.  Two of them looking to sell me marijuana.  [Apparently I look like a stoner; must be time for a shower…]  Just making eye contact with a merchant is a mistake: “Come, come!  No buy, just talk!”  “Wait friend, I want to ask you something.”  Or beggars: “Father, mother, sister, hospital. 50 rupees.”  What to do?

Pokhara is in a beautiful location next to lake Fewa, but the smog, pollution, and trash really detract from the scenic allure.  So, like I said, I was disappointed at first.  But by the end I started to see its charm.  It is far more quiet and peaceful than KTM.  It has wonderful restaurants and bakeries which, though in the tourist area, are still reasonably priced.  The colorful rowboats on the lakeshore are picturesque.  And finally, the views of the Annapurna range are stunning on a clear day. 

Bearing the Burden

Here are three grab shots off the back of a motorcycle.  The images are rather poor, but it accurately reflects the hard labor of many of the village women.  In a land where pickups are scarce, women seem to be the main mode of transport.  Everything is packed this way; laundry, firewood, stones, feed for cattle.  Except for babies which are slung around the shoulder, everything else is carried by means of a broad strap across the forehead.  I can't image the strain some of these loads must put on the neck!  What about backpacks? you ask.  Well, I witnessed one woman step off a bus, wrap her backpack and other belongings in the loop of a sari and place it over her forehead.  Then she started the hike to her village.

Little Surprises

Alley, from the Honolulu DTS team, got off the bus to discover a mysterious substance on her shirt.  After a careful inspection of the sit she was sitting on, it was determined to be aged puke residue.  Due to the condition of the roads, the condition of the buses, and sometimes the condition of the drivers, motion sickness is rather common.  Here a friend is scraping it off while she looks away.  I told her she'd appreciate this photo later.  

Village Life

This is one of my favorite shots from our time at the village. We were invited to a widow's home for breakfast of meat and potatoes, rice bread, and chiyya. It was the tastiest meat and taters breakfast I've had! I helped myself to seconds (which turned out to be a mistake as we were invited to two more homes/meals directly afterward). But back to the photo. This is the widow's daughter Bina doing the dishes against the adobe backdrop of the kitchen. The light was excellent and I snapped a few shots until she looked up with a hint of surprise on her face. Expressions like these are difficult to catch because they are not self-conscious. How rare it is that we are not completely self absorbed!

Transportation

Driver was "speeding fast" and swerved to miss some kiddies.  Oops.

Eli's rented motorcycle.  The best mode of transportation.

We tried getting on this bus... We squeezed 3 people on but could literally not fit anyone else on.  Ended up riding a dumptruck down the mountain.

Awesome ride.

Micro.  The most common transportation.  Unfortunately they have a very low ground clearance.  

Change

So... Back to Kathmandu.  Traffic, noise, shopping, power outages.  Big city life.  Unfortunately, load shedding means power is out more often than it is on.  I currently have 20 mins left, so I'll stop writing and start uploading!

So here's a great shot showing where I spent the past month. This is several hours NW of Kathmandu. We have been staying down in the bottom of the Trishuli Valley which splits the photo at about the midpoint.

Nepal is full of temples and idols. Everywhere you go you find some sort of shrine. This is the stupa at Swayambhunath. Swayambhunath, the Monkey Temple, is located on a hill overlooking Kathmandu. In Nepal, high hills and large trees seem to be favorite sites for shrines. It reminds me of the Israelites who “set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree.” 1 Kings 14.23. Here is a thought from E. Stanley Jones on the Buddhist stupas:

Standing in the middle of a Buddhist ruin, I asked the learned Indian curator why the stupa was always oval-shaped. “Because Buddhism believes that life is a bubble; therefore the stupa is shaped like one,” he replied. Life as a bubble—sunnayavada (in Sanskrit)—nothingness at its heart! At that moment, I felt darkness close in upon me. But as I looked at the shrine again, light seemed to dawn. “Why, it isn’t shaped like a bubble, it’s shaped like an egg!” I remarked. Is life a bubble or an egg? Does it contain nothing inside, or is it filled with infinite possibilities for growth and development and perfection? …. I follow a Man who saw just as deeply and more deeply than Buddha into the sorrow, the sheer misery of existence… and yet came out at the other end of it all affirming His faith in life. To Him, life was not a bubble, but an egg.

A trio of stickers found inside a public bus. First we have the Buddha's Eyes (or Eyes of Bodhnath), which are found on many of the Buddhist stupas throughout Nepal. It is commonly excepted to represent such things as wisdom, the omniscience of Buddha, and unity. In the middle is Guerrillero Heroico, the iconic photo of Che Guevara. Called the "most famous photograph in the world," Guerrillero Heroico has circumnavigated the globe as a symbol the revolutionaries. And lastly we have Bob Marley bordered by cannabis. :). Oh, Nepal! You truly glean the best the world has to offer!

I am now hunting the most elusive and dangerous subject that a photographer can shoot: people. I used to really dislike taking people shots. I am actually rather reserved when it comes to photography, and it is very uncomfortable to be 'in someone's face' with a camera. Doubly so if they're strangers! But I discovered that the shots I was most uncomfortable taking are often the ones that come out the best. So, slowly I am breaking out of my shell and turning the camera on my fellow human beings. Call it a cannibalism of expression. Individuality is a reflection of our Creator. To capture an expression of that individuality is the most gratifying experience to be had with a camera!

The Pipaltar Nursery

This shot was taken in a nursery in Pipaltar (Nepal). Most of our group was teaching English at a nearby school. Three of the girls opted to help out at the nursery. Neither group knew the location of the other (or likely their own), so I set out with our translator, Sing Raj, to find the nursery. As is apt to happen, mis-communication led us a good half mile past the nursery, out of the town, and down the valley to a nearby river. Eventually we worked our way back to the unmarked nursery and met up with the girls. Two young Nepali women were in charge of a room of 6 children. This little boy (girl? It's so hard to tell with Nepali kids because the boys are often dressed as girls to trick the demons) had just woken up to find us scary foreigners in his nursery room and was upset. Children, though, love to see photos of themselves. So I took my camera, and after showing him several shots, his curiosity overcame his fear; resulting in this shot...

Revival of the Blog

I created this blog years ago as an experiment. The experiment was successful and I came away with a better understanding of myself: namely, that I lack the consistency to maintain a blog. Over the past year, however, I have run into a reoccurring problem. It is twofold: 1) when I do manage to sit down and write I write far to much, and 2) when I try to share photos of my experiences I share far too many. I think that I would rather post (and others might rather see) small 'snapshots' of my experiences encapsulated in a single photo and paragraph.

Behold the revival of the Blog...