I SAID GOOD-BYE TO PASUPATHI. HE WOULD BE TREKKING FOR THREE hours along a side trail to another school. I thanked him for introducing me to the education system in Nepal. “I will not say good bye,” he said with a smile. “Instead, I will say pheri bhetaunlaa. This means ‘until we see each other again.’ If you come back with books, please remember that we have seventeen schools here in my province. This school is one of our better ones; the others are in worse shape. Please come back. Pheri bhetaunlaa.” With that he lit a cigarette, pressed his palms together and bowed, and walked off. I strode in the opposite direction, higher into the hills.
During the four-hour afternoon hike, my brain spun with the possibilities. Could I get my local library to donate books? Hold a book drive at work? Hit one of those “Buck a Book” surplus stores and buy several hundred? How soon could I get back to Nepal?
That night I stopped at a small lodge run by a charming Nepali woman in her late 50s. I was exhausted by eight hours of hiking with a heavy pack, but mentally energized by the challenge given by the teachers. The menu offered some intriguing dinner options:
Trivous Roast Briten
Fielt of Blat Steaks
Winner Esnetur
Hungering Gulsh
Had someone translated the menu from Nepali to English to German to Hungarian? I used my limited treasure trove of Nepali to ask the owner if she could make egg fried rice. Mito cha, she said, telling me that I had chosen a delicious dish. I wondered if she would have said that had I ordered the Hungering Gulsh.
I sipped tea and began talking to a Canadian woman at the next table. She asked why I had such a big grin on my face, so I eagerly told her about the school and my plan.
She asked me how I planned to get books to the village. I admitted that I had no idea, but that it did not seem beyond me to figure it out. She then pointed out several potential problems—the cost of shipping books from overseas, the potential difficulties with Customs, import taxes, and other things that could go wrong. I never enjoy listening to people talk about why things cannot happen, so I changed the subject.
After dinner, I went back to my $2-per-night room. The drafty walls made me thankful for my faithful sleeping bag. The lodge had no electricity, so I rummaged through the backpack for a headlamp and a book. My current read was the Dalai Lama’s The Art of Happiness. It seemed tailor-made for me after the visit to Bahundanda. The Dalai Lama had written extensively about our duty to others and made a persuasive case that one of our primary duties on this earth is to look out for people who have less. “The basic fact is that all sentient beings, particularly human beings, want happiness and do not want pain and suffering.” He suggested that if we were lucky enough to be living a good life, we should recognize this gift and thank God for it by looking out for others who need our help in breaking out of the cycle of poverty.
I was inspired to briefly meditate on these words, and to record my thoughts. In my journal, I wrote, “It does not matter if we have material wealth. What really matters is—what do we do with it? I have attained financial success at a young age, but that was mostly luck. I just happened to join the right company at the right time. The fact that I have money does not make me a better person. What really matters is what I do with it.”
The other trekkers were sleeping. The sound of pen on paper broke the silence. My headlamp was the only illumination. I returned to the book.
The Dalai Lama wrote that when we gave something away, we actually got something back in return: happiness. If we were to use our money simply to buy ourselves things, there would be no end. Acquisition would not produce true happiness, as we’d never have the biggest boat, the nicest car, and would be stuck in a perpetual materialist cycle. But if we gave something away to those who are less fortunate, we’d get nothing in return except for a warm feeling in our heart and the knowledge in our brains that we had made the world a better place.
The Bahundanda visit had put me in a frame of mind to be receptive toward this teaching. I visualized 450 students without a proper library. Would I stick with my goal? Or would I forget this school as soon as I returned to the frantic pace of my career? I had always vowed in the past to “do more for charity.” I had usually failed; work had won out. I vowed that this time, it would not.
I turned to a different section of my journal. Accompanied only by the sound of barking dogs and snoring trekkers, I began drafting a list of everyone in my life who might be willing to help me collect books for Bahundanda.
MY EXCITEMENT FOR SETTING UP A LIBRARY CAN BE TRACED DIRECTLY to my childhood. My earliest and most vivid memories involve reading. On Sundays, my mother would spin a story from the comics section of the newspaper for my enjoyment. My eyes followed the colorful drawings and I committed the stories to memory. At bedtime I would insist upon countless rereadings of classics like Go, Dog. Go!; Green Eggs and Ham; There’s a Wocket in my Pocket! During long family car trips, my nose would be stuck in a book while my brother and sister were otherwise engaged punching each other.
I read so voraciously that my parents’ limited budget could not keep up. Being a pragmatic engineer, my father designed a cost-effective solution. My parents bought me a bike as the “big present” for my tenth Christmas. I thought the bright green, banana-seated vehicle was the coolest set of wheels in town. Our small public library in Athens, Pennsylvania, was only three miles from our house, and so once we experienced spring thaw, I proudly began my weekly trips.
There was only one small problem. The library allowed only eight books to be checked out at a time. I have never been shy about making suggestions for how things could be done better, so I asked the kindly and matriarchal librarian if the limit could be raised. My zeal for reading won her over. We agreed that it would be our little secret that for selected customers the new limit was twelve.
On occasion I’d earn the ire of my teachers when they discovered the storybook hidden beneath the class textbook. I’d sneak furtive glances at childhood classics such as Touchdown for Tommy while also listening in on the class discussion. This seems to have ignited a lifelong penchant for multitasking and an obsession with productivity.
Thankfully, my grades did not suffer as a result. When I brought home a report card full of good marks, my parents would offer me a reward of my choosing. All those library books required extra hours to read them, so my choice was always a week of extended bedtime. I can remember nights when my older siblings and parents were asleep. The house was silent as an empty country church, the quiet broken only by the sound of turning pages.
This love of reading, learning, and exploring new worlds so predominates my memory of youth that I simply could not imagine a childhood without books.
DURING THE NEXT SIXTEEN DAYS OF TREKKING, MY MIND KEPT THINKING about the proposed school library project. One day I talked to a Nepalese guide named Dawa Sherpa and mentioned the project. Dawa was a short man with a muscular frame influenced by years of portering on Everest expeditions. He was fond of baseball caps, thumbs-up signs, and English-language colloquialisms. “See you later, alligator” was his favorite. He laughed constantly, and this influenced those around him to share in his joy. Dawa reminded me of Dostoyevsky’s quote—“if you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man…just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he is a good man.”
I asked for Dawa’s feedback on whether a book drive would be a good idea. “Yes, I think so. You see, in Nepal we think that education is the key to the future of our country. One reason nations like yours are rich is because all children grow up going to school. Here we do not have that advantage.”
But what about English books? Were they needed in a rural school?
“Nepali people want to learn English. It is the language that will let us communicate with others. Not many people speak the Nepalese language. But so many people speak English. I am one example of this. If I did not speak English, you and I could not communicate. Trekkers would not hire me to be their guide. Most people in Nepal make a very small amount of money, maybe fifty rupees [75 cents] per day. But as a guide, I make eight or ten dollars a day. Tourism is the biggest industry after farming. So if you can help children learn English, then maybe you help them to have more opportunities and a better life.”
A mix of excitement and fear started to run inside me. The adrenaline pumped when I thought about how many books could be gathered and put into children’s hands. At the same time, I doubted myself. My friends could flake, and work demands certainly wouldn’t make it easy to follow through on my promise of returning. I could picture day one back at the office, immediately being pulled in a million directions at once. I needed to find a way to stay true to my vision.
That night, at 12,000 feet elevation, the cold set in the moment the sun ducked behind the mountains. The only artificial light was from a loud and hissing kerosene lantern. I zipped into my bag and was alone with my journal and my thoughts.
I thought back to life in Sydney, where I enjoyed a comfortable income, a Saab convertible; a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment on the harbor all to myself; and so much “stuff” that I was renting a storage locker. Maybe, I thought, my life is screwed up if I can’t fit everything I own into a 2,000-square-foot apartment.
I debated whether doing just one school library was enough. Pasupathi’s closing reminder that his province had 17 schools had stuck with me. Why not think bigger and start 10? Or 20?
I reached into my backpack to grab one of the seven books I’d brought along to read during the trek. Almost as if to answer my questions, a line from Søren Kierkegaard appeared on the first page to which I flipped:
“There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.”
I felt as though a challenge were being made, albeit from a dead Danish philosopher. I turned the headlamp off as visions of Kierkegaard danced in my head. Lying in the dark and staring out the small window at a half-moon, I thought about this project as a litmus test: Would I be willing to use my good fortune to help others? It would be a shame not to respond to these needs in a big way.
AFTER THREE GLORIOUS WEEKS OF TREKKING, I RETURNED TO KATHMANDU. I had loved the freedom of being in remote mountainous areas, and of being cut off from phones, e-mail, newspapers, and the accoutrements of modern Western society. There was, however, an urgent e-mail that needed to be written. I immediately went in search of the nearest cybercafe.
Pulling up Hotmail, I counted over 100 people stored in my online address book. Clicking on the “Mail All” button, I prepared to make the best sales pitch of my life.
From: John Wood
Subject: Books for Nepal—Please Help
Dear Friends,
Congratulations. You have been selected to participate in one of John Wood’s random ideas. Unlike most of my rambling stories from the road, this one will not take long to tell and will do a lot of good for a large number of children whose lives are less fortunate than ours.
While trekking through the Nepal Himalaya, I was invited to visit a local school. Over dinner at a small trekking lodge, I had met Pasupathi, a man who administers 17 local schools in the remote province of Lamjung. In the West the term “school administrator” might bring visions of a deskbound bureaucrat, but Pasupathi walks ten miles of donkey trails every day to visit the rural, dirt-floor schools set up to educate children in small mountain towns. His goal is to help children to gain an education, and his job is made difficult by lack of resources.
Nepal is one of the world’s most beautiful countries. It is also one of the poorest. It’s hard to support a population when the majority of the terrain is mountainous and barely inhabitable. It’s hard to grow crops at 12,000 feet and impossible to do so at 17,000 feet. A measure of the poverty—GNP per head is $400. A starker reminder—pay a local family $2 and you have a bed for the night.
The lack of resources in the schools is sad. I showed the teachers a battered postcard of Sydney and they asked if they could keep it to augment their world map, which was the only decoration on the wall of the classroom. The “library” we visited, despite being in the largest school in the district, had no more than twenty books, and those were backpacker castoffs that are not at the appropriate reading level for the 450 children in grades 1–8. Think how much books meant to you as a kid, or to your own children. Then imagine taking that away. It would have a profound impact on your life path.
Therein lays the crux of this mail. I need your help! I asked Pasupathi and the headmaster what they needed most and was told desks to keep up with the population growth, and books. I contributed cash to buy some desks and have vowed to return with enough books to set up a good library that will keep their students busy gaining a lifelong love of reading.
If you’d like to help, there are three things you can do:
—Send any books you have which would be suitable for a young student learning English, up to age 12. There are collection points in Australia and the U.S. (thanks, Mom and Dad!) listed at the bottom of this e-mail.
—Forward this mail to friends or family who may have books their own children have outgrown. Everyone knows someone who has an old copy of Goodnight Moon or Hop on Pop lying around. If sent to Nepal, it will be read dozens of times by eager students.
—Stick $5 or $100 in an envelope and send it along. I’ll buy kid’s books in bulk (ten for a dollar) from online retailers and bookstores. I will personally match all cash donations, dollar for dollar.
I will pay all costs of postage and handling to get the books to Nepal. Please remember the energy, creativity, and hunger for knowledge of youth, and do something to help these children. Get your friends involved! We all want to make a difference in life. Here is an opportunity to do so in a way that may seem small to you, but will have a big impact on kids who have been denied an education by the poverty and isolation of their homeland.
The worst option is to do nothing.
Thanks in advance.
Warm regards from Kathmandu,
John
ON MY FINAL MORNING IN NEPAL, I FELT GLUM ABOUT HAVING TO LEAVE. The country had captured my heart. I consoled myself with the thought that I would return. I would be coming back with books. I would rent that yak. As I paid the bill, I chatted as usual with the lodge owner and his two friends who seemed to be always hanging out. I commented that I had enjoyed our conversations over the previous three days. “I will be back. See you next year.”
Tilak, in his mid-20s, with jet-black hair and a perpetual smile, asked me how I would get to the airport.
“No problem, I will jump in a taxi.”
“Oh, no! I will take you on my motorbike. Your backpack, no problem, it’s a big bike with lots of room.”
We weaved through the chaotic streets of Kathmandu. Tilak dodged diesel-belching buses, cows, and cars that were not moving fast enough.
Fifteen minutes later, the airport. I jumped off the bike and hoisted the heavy pack onto my back. Tilak shook my hand. “Good bye, Mr. John, please come visit us again next year.”
“Wait, wait, let me give you some money for the ride!” I fished frantically through my pockets.
He shook his head and waved his hand, palm down. “You do not have to pay me anything. You are my friend.” Before I could utter a word of protest, he smiled, waved good-bye, and sped off into traffic.
This was my final positive impression of Nepal after three weeks that had been full of them—the quiet dignity of a people who are poor, but who value friendship over money. I knew that there was no way I could ever repay all the kindness that had been shown to me.