keep your eyes and mind open

My experience so far has been both challenging and phenomenal. Nepal is amazing but I have never such truly real desperation as I have here. I am not naïve enough to think that it doesn’t exist in the states but I have also been asked for money by homeless men with blackberries and new kicks in the states. I still have gym sneakers from high school and am rocking a not so smart slide phone. True story.

baby crawling around on dirt covered sidewalk
with no pants
parents watching from afar

In all seriousness, there are a lot more facilities and outlets to get help in the U.S. Here, in broad daylight on a crowded street, I saw a girl with skin dark, worn and toughened, wearing tattered clothes, barefoot, not begging others for money but digging through piles of garbage for scrapes of food to eat. There are thousands just like her, families sleeping on the side of the street, others working day and night for virtually no money to try and feed their starving families.

And still others resort to theft. My aunt and uncle tell me to always keep my bedroom locked and for good reason. There has been things stolen from this room at least twice before, thieves go in and out without the homeowners knowing, even when they’re right upstairs. Valuables are a given, but my uncle told me people will steal anything and everything. More than once people have drained all the water from tanks by stealing faucet knobs to sell for a few rupees. At my cousin’s weddings, a thief posed as a wedding guest and stole people’s shoes.

Theft and crime is more prevalent around the holidays (coming up!). Dashain is traditionally a time for new things. People are compelled to buy new clothing and gifts, as well as host a feast. The price of gold has skyrocketed. Traditionally, married women must not leave the house unadorned. Back in the day, women could walk around with thousands of dollars of gold jewelry on her, now it’s dangerous to have anything of value on you at all. Gold necklaces and earrings are yanked off of women (even off babies!) walking on the sidewalk by thieves on motorcycles. I heard that a thief yanked a necklace off of a girl and then came back, smacked her, threw the necklace back in her face and screamed at her for wearing fake jewelry… I don’t think I would have believed that story a few months ago, but now I don’t doubt it one bit. I’m not too sure who I feel worse for, the person who has things to be stolen or the person who has to steal to put food in his kid’s mouth. Again, my view would have been drastically different if someone asked me a few months ago, but now… I’m not so sure.

check out the background and foreground

In a world where you truly can’t move up no matter how hard you work, theft and crime will always be prevalent. Hopefully things will be different one day, but then again, you see the same problems in developed countries with rigid class structures and large socioeconomic gaps. There are people that are just lazy, but then there are people that are truly hard working but struggling to get anywhere. Younger generations are jumping through hoops to go abroad for a shot at a good education/job, but more importantly to get out of this rut they find themselves stuck in.

For anyone traveling abroad, the best piece of advice is to ALWAYS be aware of your surroundings, keep your eyes and mind open.