Nepal-A Place to Call Home Written and Photographed by Kyle Knight
Approaching the Bauddhanath stupa in the morning is risky; thousands
of Tibetan Buddhist devotees circumambulate in a rapid clockwise
stampede. Many have traveled thousands of kilometers to walk tens
of thousands of times around the giant white mound, the largest
shrine of its type in the world. Mixed in with the devout are
beggars, throngs of pigeons, shopkeepers making their way to their
storefronts, and visitors, like me, who awkwardly try to keep
up with the pace of the crowd in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital
city which sits in the tiny country’s biggest valley. .
.
But a ten minute walk down Buddha’s enticing wheel led
me to discover a shrine of another sort, a place that brought
together the most unlikely of people in the name of compassion
in action. The Maitri Griha home for disabled boys quickly became
my second home in Nepal. The house is a home for seven boys. Six
of them come from families who cannot afford to or refuse to care
for them. One, the youngest, is an orphan the owners discovered
abandoned in a toilet at a nearby hospital. The boys’ disabilities
range from deafness, which prevented one from continuing school
past the third grade, to violent social behavior, induced in the
oldest housemate by his living with a pack of street dogs for
the first fifteen years of his life. Hari, the young orphan, appears
to be about six years old. He cannot walk or speak, but has learned
enough Nepali from the caretakers to complete basic tasks. At
Maitri Griha, the focus is on community, on developing a child
as a happy individual, and on developing their potential to live
on their own one day. And the magic of the place does not end
with the stories of what these boys have overcome to make it even
this far. It extends to the two young men, Urche Bhote and Migmar
Lama, who founded the home, and to the guests who visit and fall
in love with the place, and to the ever expanding global web of
friendships this tiny house has created.
To say that Urche Bhote is one of the luckiest people in the
world whitewashes a beautiful and intricate story. Yes, Urche
was born to a poor subsistence farming family in one of the most
remote places on the planet. Yes, his young life as a mediocre
student at the foreign-run kindergarten promised little more than
another generation of high-altitude sheep herding. And yes, the
money donated by a foreign stranger to pay for his education may
have been the product of nothing more than a serendipitous encounter.
But this version of the story does no justice to the story undergirds
Urche’s effervescent personality.
Urche was born in upper Dolpo in the North West of Nepal. His
family owned a sheep and wheat farm and survived on trading their
goods for other needed items. Dolpo, made famous by Peter Mattheison’s
chronicle The Snow Leopard, is a popular destination
for foreign trekkers. Danny Dover is a piano technician at Dartmouth
College. In 1995, he and a group of friends trekked to Dolpo.
Five days into their
hike a young local boy approached their camp and played
hacky sack with them, counting everyone’s score out
loud in perfect English. He helped them pack up their tents
for the next leg of the trek until his mother arrived at
the camping ground and scolded him for bothering these people
instead of doing his chores.
The trekking party stalled, not wanting to leave their
new charismatic friend. Finally, through the translation
of one of their porters, they explained to the boy’s
mother that if she could get him to Kathmandu, they would
pay for his education in the city. His father hesitated,
his mother burst out in tears of joy. Urche Bhote was going
to leave Dolpo; the trajectory of his life had changed in
an instant.
Urche is now in his final year
of high school. Transitioning to life in Kathmandu was not
easy and often remains a daily struggle. But if his struggles
with the modern school system can be attributed to his humble,
rural upbringing, so can his persevering compassion. Toward
the end of high school, he and a friend, Mingmar Khamsum Lama,
decided to investigate the needs of rural Nepali people adjusting
to life in metropolitan Kathmandu. They spent months shadowing
directors of homes for the elderly, thinking that they might
be able to open a similar center to aid the aging population
that drifts toward the urban medical facilities. But a teacher
at their school persuaded them to look at another struggling
group of citizens, disabled children. Within a year, the young
men had founded the Buddha Jyoti Himalayan Youth Club.
The organization is based out of two centers, a language school
offering free English and Nepali courses to people who speak only
their local dialects and the Maitri Griha Center for Disabled
Boys. Urche and Mingmar are the directors of the program. They
teach language classes every morning before their own school begins
and they manage the Maitri Griha house.
I met Urche and Mingmar by calling the number on a poster hung
in a dingy internet café advertising “cheap light
rooms.” I had intended to survey the rental rooms as I had
at several other locations and then make my decision. I ended
up spending the entire afternoon with two seven-year-olds using
me as a human jungle gym. Urche spoke proudly of Maitri Griha,
of Dolpo, and of his family. Mingmar, who grew up in a middle
hills area never visited by foreigners, spoke with similar pride.
I joined them and the boys for dinner and the next day I was Maitri
Griha’s newest boarder.
Since that first visit I have stayed at Maitri Griha three times.
During my stays, I have encountered other tourists and travelers
who ventured to Nepal for a spectrum of reasons. But everyone,
from the young Norwegian man who had just ridden his bike from
Kashgar to Kathmandu, to the German special education teacher
who canceled her around-the-world ticket and chose to spend the
remainder of her sabbatical working at the home, was drawn to
this particular crossroads of people and issues, this particular
lens on contemporary Nepal.
Most accounts of Nepal will mention that it is among the poorest
countries in the world, that it is extremely isolated by the gargantuan
Himalaya, that it is a politically tumultuous state wedged between
two rising giants, like a yam between two boulders. But the experience
at Maitri Griha, for everyone that passes through and takes the
time to hear this story of what it means to live in Nepal today,
is different. It’s energizing, it’s hopeful, and it’s
sincere. It’s enough to make a return trip to Shangri-La
not to visit temples or marvel at mountains, but to see friends,
and to know that there are more to be made so long as you put
yourself in the right place.
Have you visited Maitri Griha as well? Please share your
thoughts in the comments.
Kyle Knight is
a freelance writer and photographer in New York City. His
work focuses on the Himalayas, children, issues of marginalization,
and human rights.
