Dateline: Mungpoo, Darjeeling District, West Bengal, India; March 14, 2011—You can mark it on your calendar; today I did it again. For those who follow my travelogues, you might surmise to what I refer. It might begin, “Once upon a walk…”

Last Sabbath, after dinner, the students wanted me to tell part of my testimony so we set out to a special place they frequented. It was a good walk from the school, out of the village area in which we study, down roads being carved into the mountainside and paved with large creek rocks from the river far below, past the newly planted vineyards and orchards which take the place of the denuded jungle growth, and partly down a ridge to a lovely spot under some large cedar trees the British planted 100 years ago. It was a great spot and a lovely day. They carried a guitar and sang some songs. They can really sing wonderfully. Then I spoke for about an hour before we headed back to the school.

One of the young men lived down the mountain and was employed during the week in building a new set of steps up the mountainside. And everything, from top to bottom, is transported on the backs and necks of humans; male and female humans. Women with baskets or sacks suspended from straps across their foreheads, will carry 100 pounds and more back and forth. Amazing people. One of the students here, Honock, grew up doing this type of work. He lived a ways from the nearest road and had to carry food on his back; like 50 kilo (110 pound) sacks or rice. And when he worked building roads or retaining walls, he would carry 100 kilos of concrete, 50 kilos on each shoulder. He is quite a guy.

Well, these stairs being built really looked attractive and so I thought I would explore them a bit closer. So Monday I set out on my little adventure. It is amazing how they construct these paths and stairs. Using mostly rounded stones, they do a rather creditable job of making a solid platform for each step. Once the rocks are in place, they cover the whole stair with concrete, making it look as if it were solid concrete. Trouble is there is a bit of dishonesty here in India. If 100 sacks of concrete are allocated for a job, 70 might be delivered. The rest? A little kickback for the people in power. And so the fewer sacks of concrete, the less binding material in the final product which causes the concrete to become brittle if not downright rotten, The leading edge of most of the finished stairs are already broken away.

All this I was observing as I descended the mountain thinking for a long time I would come to the road that snaked down to the main highway. The stairs and the connecting path wound through people’s yards, gardens, orchards. Here, as in much of the world, growing food is not a hobby; it is bare existence. It seems as if not too many Americans wandered this far from the main thoroughfares. I was scrutinized with a combination of incredulity, curiosity and caution. Finally the stairs petered out in the middle of nowhere and the paths whispered over the steep ridges in every direction. And as far as I could see, there were no major roads below and I was far nearer the river in the valley below than when I began by corriganistic journey. (See Wrong-way Corrigan.) It was then that light broke over me and I realized that in walking to the lovely Sabbath spot we had passed over to another ridge and now on Monday I was going down the far side of it, straying further and further from the familiar. So, once again I startled the folks tending the gardens, bearing the burdens, cooking the meals. What goes down much come up and it is amazing how much longer those steps became in just a short time. I was a tired puppy when finally home came into sight.

The next day was “take a walk to the tea factory” day. We had held school on Sunday to allow the school’s director, Sandra Horner, to arrive from Nepal, as she wanted to go with us. The tea factory can easily be seen from the school but banish from your mind any idea that it would be a short walk. You can see the moon too. The tea factory was on the side of the facing mountain. As the crow flies the factory was probably no more than two or three miles away. But none of us were crows, although before the day was over I mused a time or two about why some people might cling to the futile belief in reincarnation. So we skirted the mountains, walking perpendicular to our destination for about three hours.

I love walking in mountains and here you can never get lost. Not just because of the trails, but because the trails are lined with empty purple packets that held the national pastime; dipping. In the USA we have Skool and other types of leukoplakia-producing snuffs. Here they mix the powdered tobacco with betelnut, catechu, lime and various spices and flavorings. The packages ominously depict the black silhouette of a scorpion with the words “Tobacco Causes Cancer.” Seems not to stop too many people as the wrappers are everywhere. Little wonder oral and stomach cancer are so high in India.

Around 9:30 AM we all set out, carrying packs and glad for an opportunity to be out in nature. It was the best day of the week as far as weather. Sunny and warm. At one point on the walk we came to gorge through which ran a very lively and clear stream. I was told that stream was the source of all the water we and the area of Mungpoo use. From high up in the mountain, the water cascades down to the river below but somewhere up there a pipe enters the cold, soft water and into the community flows life. And the water is very soft, and very cold. Those two factors make showering a bit of a challenge although I am used to it by now. You learn quickly not to use too much soap as soft water does not cut soap very well. And when trying to rinse soap off your cyanic body with very cold mountain water, rapidity is a necessity not just a courtesy to those who might be waiting for their hypothermia treatment. At last the training I received on Naval vessels in the taking of Navy showers was paying off.

This gorge was the crossing point to the other mountain, the home of the tea plants. On our side of the mountain the main cash crop is the cinchona tree from whose bark quinine is extracted. Whereas it is not as much in use anymore for treating malaria, they continue to propagate trees, plant them and harvest their bark. The other side of the mountain is tea. Sort of reminds me of Deuteronomy when the children of Israel lined up on facing mountains, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, the mount of blessing and the mount of curses. Medicine and poison. Interesting contrast.

We stopped along the way and had lunch, served from a pot we had been carrying the whole way. It was great to empty that pot for it became heavier by the mile. We ate beside a dirt road carved through the midst of tea shrubs. This mountain was an undulating sea of green, each shrub a perfectly rounded wavelet swelling up the side of the mountain and sinking in its furrows. We had passed through tiny hamlets on the way to the fields themselves. The homes grasp tenuously to the side of the steeps, the front door on the level of the path and the back door, if they have one, suspended 20 feet above the “yard.” These are hardy folk.

We went through two tea factories, one of which had been established in the 1800’s. Not being in the peak of the tea season, not much was going on. But it was getting late and we had a long way to go to arrive home. It must have been after 4 PM when we turned homeward, not the way we came, but straight down and straight up.

I like to consider myself as being in shape. Following the road down made the trip probably almost 10 times longer. The mountain is so steep that the roads consist of switchbacks, hairpins and pirouettes. I can't ever remember thinking I might not be able to complete the mission. I have humped the mountains of the Philippines carrying all my gear, a 2-niner-2 and a machine gun my men couldn't carry, and lead the whole way. I have run sub-three hour marathon and worked long days planting trees, but this was and ordeal. But the "troops", the students and staff, cheered me on and we all finished in fine shape. Nice day off.

Some have asked me, “Don’t you get tired of traveling?” You must understand the thoughts that filtered through my mind on the afternoon of October 1, 1984. I was driving through the gates of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point for the last time. My fourteen-year military “career” was over. I was now a member of CivDiv (Civilian Division), a member of the great unwashed masses with no order, no esprit, no direction. My traveling days were over. It was the end of traveling that imposed itself upon my senses most powerfully. No more travel, no more new sights, no more new challenges, no more respite from the boredom of the status quo. I would no longer be free to Go.

Little did I realize God had a bigger plan in mind for me. The plan required cutting short my retirement plans by six years, meaning no big paycheck after 20 years of service. It meant losing just about everything I owned, that which I had sunk all of my savings into. I meant being separated for long periods of time from the one dearest to me. It meant enduring the monotony of the status quo uncomplainingly and faithfully for a few more years at wages that would have made the poverty level look attractive. But through it all God was with me, leading, pleading, supplying all my needs. Then He said “Go.” That’s what I do now.

But again the question comes, “Do I ever become weary.” Oh yes. Few realize the rigors of this work. The almost constant isolation, cut off from the gentle flow of humanity by language, custom, duty. The constant requirement to give, to teach, to counsel, to prepare, to study. I will spend hours preparing for each hour taught and I will teach 3-6 hours a day. Then missing the familiars; the family, the few friends I have back a world away. No phone, no internet, no cheering words. But then I think of those who have dedicated themselves to years in this environment and am ashamed of my selfishness.

But I do miss seeing all the spring flowers in bloom that I have planted around my little home in Alabama. To feel the warmth of a fire on the hearth, the pleasure of a hot shower, a bowl of granola with blueberries and almond milk. But then the advantages of this work overwhelm all other considerations, and the benefits have been monumental this trip. Meeting new friends and changing lives. And the young men at Mungpoo were the tops.

More to come.

God bless,

Don

Mungpoo somemore

Dateline: Mungpoo, Darjeeling District, West Bengal, India; March 13, 2011—A week has come and gone. Internet is not a thing readily available on this mountain so you won’t be hearing from me on a regular basis while I am here. Twice I have been able to check emails via a staff member’s computer with cell phone connection, but I suspect this and other travelogues from the current leg of my journey will be sent from New Delhi the night before I fly to my next appointment; Bulgaria.

I arrived in Mungpoo 24½ hours after departing Kathmandu. Someone was surprised we made the trip in such good time. Assuredly, it was not a good time in quality even if it were good time in quantity. For the last 2½ hours on the first bus (we took four different vehicles on the trip), we limped along with a broken fan belt. Water kept boiling over so we would stop, someone would find some fetid pool, scoop up a bottleful, and replenish the radiator. But we were “home” now. Having not eaten a meal since lunch the day before, the school had some rice and vegetables set aside for us. This meal was my introduction to Everest-sized proportions. The students ate a lot of food in the Philippines when I was there last fall, but here it is as if the physical needs of a reincarnated Norgay Tensing lives on in all of the youth of Nepal, and all of the students here in the school, as well as the surrounding region, are Nepalese. For some reason England gave West Bengal, formerly a part of Nepal, to India after WWII. And can these young men eat! Being taller than the average Nepali, the students must have mistaken me for a bottomless pit like themselves. For the first few days I struggled to empty a plate so loaded with food it could have served as a serving platter for an African family. Why go to all the effort? Conditioning. First, we were always being reminded of the poor starving people in China while we were young as a means of getting us to eat everything on our plates. And we are not far from China, Mongolia, Bangladesh and Tibet here, so, I forced down herculean proportions of rice, vegetables and legumes. Second, when I was in Marine bootcamp, we would be marched to the chowhall and entered its confines with the drill instructor’s charge ringing I our ears: “Get in, get it and get out!” “Sir, yes sir.” That all changed a few days ago when I started shoveling abot half my (the plates are served already loaded) onto a clean plate and eating just what was needed.

Eating presents an interesting challenge here. Of course we have rice about every meal, and we eat two meals a day. It is good, whole rice with one problem; stones and sand. One of the daily tasks devolving upon the students is to sit at a table with a mound of rice and go through it one grain at a time, separating all the foreign matter, and there is a lot of foreign matter in this rice. But still, after all that meticulous labor, it never fails that while we’re eating our meals, an ominous crunch, crack or groan will signal the familiar news that someone has found one more piece of terra firma. This has been my experience a number of times and I just hope my teeth can survive this leg of the journey.

Typically, the seasoning of the food in India, as well as Nepal, registers somewhere between blistering and cauterizing. This school has chosen wisely not to promote the flaming seasonings which all the students grew up with. The students are now used to the more bland, but very tasty, meals. India, South Korea and Mexico lead the world in esophageal and stomach cancer according to some reports. The report authors, as well as this writer, believe it is as a result of aromatic oils which cause the burning. All hot spices contain such substances as capsaicin, myristicin and eugenol. These aromatic oils irritate the alimentary canal from beginning (mouth) to end (anus). A study conducted by Yale University and a college in Mexico found that tobacco increased the risk of lung cancer by 1000% while hot peppers increased the risk of esophageal cancer by 1700%. So, I’ll probably keep my stomach here, but the teeth are in more jeopardy.

There are nine students in the school in Mungpoo. One of them, Jisoya, came to my room the other night wondering if I would be willing to share some of my Keynote (PowerPoint/PDF) files. Of course I was so he produced a flash drive and I plugged it in. He told me there were some pictures on it I might be interested in. In the village in which he lives, the Hindu’s rose up against the Christians, all of the Christians. They swept through the village, which was quite large, burning the homes, cars, motorcycles and possessions of the Christians. They also burnt their churches. The coup de grace of this Indian form of the Night of Chrystal was the killing of the Christian pastors. This is not an uncommon event today in India. Religions intolerance is rearing its deadly head with new boldness. It seems as if many of the major religions of the world have built their power and congregations, not so much by appeal of logic and purity of doctrine, but by force of arms and appeals to the flesh. Thus you have pilgrimages, indulgences, “honor killings,” candles, saffron and works. Jisoya has lost everything.

What are Jisoya’s plans? Go back to his area and open a school like the one he is now attending and also open a lifestyle center where he can minister to the physical needs of the villagers, Hindu’s included. This is the caliber of the men I am working with.

God’s blessing,

Don

Dateline: Mungpoo, Darjeeling District, West Bengal, India; March 4, 2011—India! This is not exactly the country I would want to call my own. But it does hold its fascinations and it is here the Lord has sent me to do some work. And getting here was half the fun.

Yesterday, Thursday, March 3, I appeared back at the visa office of the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu for the almost final phase of the visa process. I turned in my paperwork, paid the 5,150 Nepalese rupees ($74) on top of the 300 rupees ($4) already paid, and was told to come back at 5PM.

After making my way back to my residence in Kathmandu, I busied myself in packing and preparing for the ordeal, for traveling in India is more an ordeal than an experience or an adventure, although there is always plenty of adventure. The trip might be reasonably compared to the bus ride I took a year and a half ago from Lusaka, Zambia, to Mafinga, Tanzania. Harrowing, to say the least. A man had been in Nepal at Scheer Memorial Hospital in Bunepa for treatment of a kidney infection and he was to accompany me to my destination in India for he was a student there. His is an interesting story.

His name is Tika and he was not a Christian before the following event. His son, a student at the school to which I have come to teach for three weeks, was a faithful Christian. He was a sincere and dedicated soul but his father showed little interest in his strange religion or his invisible God. As part of the course, the students went out on a camping trip down near a large river. Although told not to go into the water, the siren song of the cool flowing waters beckoned them to enjoy its needed refreshment. This boy and another student entered the water. It wasn’t deep, which was good, for the boy could not swim. As they splashed around, reveling in the respite from the noonday heat, the young man stepped into a deep hole. He went straight down. His companion plunged in after him, trying in the tenebrous depths to catch glimpse or grasp of him. Again and again he dove, wildly searching until at last, a touch of flesh. Hauling him to the surface and to the shore, he tried vainly to revive the unconscious and unbreathing boy. It was all in vain; the boy was dead.

After dealing with his great loss, the father, Tika, showed up at this school one day high in the mountains, and asked to take his son’s place. This was the man guiding me back to Mungpoo. But he could speak about as much English as I could Nepalese.

I was at the embassy by 4:15. The last bus for the border was due to depart at 6 PM so time was of the essence. By 4:50 a crowd of trekkers from around the world was waiting for visas at the mute and unyielding gate. It is a special breed that would undertake to trek through Nepal and India. As I scrutinized the motley crew, I saw very few who appeared to have any other purpose than to just fling themselves from hostel to hostel for a few months. Some had dreadlocks that would have made Bob Marley look like a Marine recruit. Others were dressed in native garb, swami beards, robes, sandals and a fine layer of dirt. They are serious about fitting in.

Five o’clock came, no passports, no visas, no officials. Then 5:05, then 5:10. Someone mentioned something about Indian time and well I knew about Indian time. My two other visits to the land of the Indus taught me that if a meeting was slated to begin at 7 PM, expect people to begin showing up by 8:30 PM. But I didn’t have an hour and a half to hang out at the embassy and I had to travel on Thursday or wait till Sunday as I won’t travel on the Sabbath unless absolutely necessary and unavoidable. Five-fifteen came and still no officials. At last the gates swung open and we swarmed in like so many bedbugs at a cheap motel.

By 5:20 I was in a taxi with Bajhu Ram speeding to the bus “station.” And no matter how squalid it may have been, erase from your fertile minds any experience you might have had in a Greyhound Bus station. That was luxury and perfect order compared with what I met in Kathmandu. The “bus station” consisted of the hopelessly confused confluence of two main roads teeming with busses, trucks, cars and people, people, people. Bhaju Ram and I were trying to find Tika and another boy who had my luggage. Busses, weighted down with freight on top, bulging with people inside, and belching blue exhaust outside, were stacked up two and three deep as vendors hawked their snacks and accessories to the already weary travelers. Busses were heading for all parts of India and beyond.

I was told to “stay” like an obedient dog while Bhaju Ram went in search of the other two. I was the only Westerner in sight that evening and thus became an opportunist magnet. I was offered unknown morsels to eat, assistance in carrying my backpack, invitations to board busses going wherever I wanted to go, and just curiosity seekers wondering what I was doing there looking like a minaret from the Tai Mahal; white and unmoving. Twice Bhaju brushed by, upset someone wasn’t following orders. It was after 6:30 when he found our party on the other road. All the “good” busses were gone. That means “better” and “best” were well on their way with happy and comfortably ensconced passengers enjoying their ride. I suspected we had now bad, worse and worst to look forward to, if we were to travel that night at all.

An apparently roving agent attached himself to our group and told us of a bus that would take us to the Indian border for 1300 rupees. That was for both of us and comes to about $18. We paid the fare and by 7 PM were sporadically making our way out of Kathmandu into the deepening night. I say “sporadically” for nothing here flows along. And to depart Kathmandu one has to climb out of the former lakebed. It was slow going. At one point the bus stopped for a man standing by the side of the road with a heavily laden cart. He began passing large sacks into the bus. These were the size of gunnysacks and were filled with small individual packets of roasted peanuts. About 40 sacks were stuffed in the aisles of our bus. It wasn’t long before passengers were digging into the sacks and passing around packets of peanuts. I was shocked at the abandon with which the whole bus seemed willing to steal some merchant’s wares.

Fourteen and a half hours later we were finally at the border. Now, I have been to many borders all over the world and this one is in a class all by itself. It deserves a Pulitzer Prize for Pandemonium. I exchanged dollars for Nepalese rupees at one place and then had to go to another to exchange Nepalese rupees for Indian rupees. Apparently you couldn’t buy Indian rupees with dollars in Nepal or Tika just didn’t understand my predicament. He proved that to be very true with the next event.

I told him, through arm and hand signals augmented with basic words and anxious expressions, that I needed to have my Nepal visa stamped before leaving the country and then have my Indian visa stamped as soon as we crossed the border. We found the Nepal visa station amidst the jumbled shops and quickly dispatched that visa. Tika then led me to a jeep which we were apparently going to take across the border.

The border crossing was a causeway and a bridge over a mostly dry river. It might have been about a kilometer cross and I was fully willing to walk but as not too many people were walking, I figured riding was acceptable. I again expressed to Tika my need to have my visa stamped. I took out my passport and made stamping motions on it and he nodded acknowledgement, I thought. Once the jeep was so full of people we had to inhale by turns, we started across no-mans land. Never have I seen such a mess. Every vehicle in India it seemed was trying to pass over the Nepal. Pedicabs, which are bicycle-powered rickshaws, vied for road space with large lorries, cars, bicycles laden with huge sacks of grain and pedestrians, as we entered India. We passed them all. We came to a police checkpoint and they didn’t cast one inquiring look into the jeep. We just drove on, and on, and on. Finally, when it seemed it was a bit far into a country to have a border visa office, I again showed Tike my passport and made a stamping motion. He merely nodded as if to say, “Yea, I’d like to beat my passport up too.” I was now an illegal in India.

Moretocome.

God bless,

Don

Last day in Kathmandu?

Dateline: Kathmandu, Nepal; March 3, 2011—Man proposes; God disposes. That is always comforting to me somehow. All of our fuss and feathers, worrying and complaining, really amount to nothing when compared to the big, Master’s plan. Today I will either receive a visa to India and board a bus for the border, or I will plan for another weekend in Nepal. Whatever, I will be content.

Have you ever shaken hands with a person who has had Hansen’s disease, or what is more commonly called leprosy? Last Sabbath in the church in which I preached there were a few such people. Their hands are stiff and knobby, fingers having long since consumed away. Oh, but what sincere Christians they are. It was a great Sabbath. The church was full from front to back, probably more than 100 people present and many of them teens and twenty-somethings. All sit on mats on the floor and are eager for the word to be preached. For those who have been in Nepal or India, you know the music is a bit more raucous than a conservative is used to, but it is great to hear them singing. Tambourines, dholak (Indian drum) and a pump organ played with one hand while the other pumps, all contribute to the cultural baptism of soundsations.

From the church we made a visit to a children’s hospital. This place would not pass inspection for a pigeon cote, which is what much of it looked like. Pigeons perched on every ledge and overhang, their chalky sludge streaking down the walls and windows, accumulating on the ledges a breath away from the inmates inside. Laundry that was probably considered to be clean was draped everywhere; handrails, windows, chairs. Some had loosed their laundered holds and now lay moldering in the rain and sun. Courtyards between wings were nothing more than garbage dumps.

This all reminded me of the last time I went to India. Dr. Agatha Thrash was scheduled to go but Dr. Calvin lay dying so I was tapped to take her place. As it was he died a week before the departure date “But like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path, God’s purposes know no haste and no delay.” I had my ticket, my visa and therefore filled the billet. That following week Dr. Thrash had a medical emergency necessitating immediate surgery. I have often thought what would have happened had she been in India and been sent to one of these type hospitals. I was thankful to be in India that time.

The thought of the condition of the hospitals makes me ever more cautious here in Nepal. Traffic is so far from being the orderly flow of vehicles in a given direction as to be a joke. Intersections are more like the confluence of many turbid rivers, boiling and swirling in no particular order. Motorcycles take precedence it seems and they weave themselves through impossibly narrow spaces. One thing Nepal does not have that India is plagued with is the ubiquitous sacred cow. They wouldn’t survive here. I rode on the back of a motorcycle to the Indian Embassy today (pick up passport with visa at 5 PM and hopefully catch my bus to India) and it was a sobering experience. No lanes, no order, no law, no turn signals; just the constant staccato of horns, the swirl of exhaust and the zigzagging of countless metal fish in spawn. I hope Mungpoo is a quiet place.

The police and military are everywhere here. The military carry what looks like M-16’s in M-14 bodies. Very untactical as the barrels are quite long. As I was coming back from the embassy a bus passed with a bunch of people on top waving red flags that looked much like Maoist flags. Maybe it is Mao’s birthday and those poor gullible people think that communism offers them something better that what they have. Frankly, if man is in charge of government and himself, we can hope for no better from any system.

On the few days when the smog had taken a hiatus, the Himalayas could be seen reaching across the northern span of the city, white and regal in the late winter sky. They are beautiful. Hopefully if I can make it to Darjeeling I will be able to see the Himalayas without the shroud of smog. We will see.

Time to turn to in finishing packing and preparing for the trip. Hopefully I will be able to write again from India.

God bless,

Don

Kathmandu March 2

Dateline: Kathmandu, Nepal: March 2, 2011—Tomorrow will be the day I go to the Indian Embassy and try to complete the visa process, receive it and begin the all-night bus ride to the Indian border. Normally visas are all taken care of before I leave the States, except for those I can receive in airports. But this has not been the normal trip. In January I sent visa application for China and Russia, along with the fees, the Washington, D.C. The General Conference of SDA’s are very gracious to assist me in this process. China was no problem, or course, especially when I wouldn’t need it. Russia, on the other hand, kicked it back twice to the Visa and Passport office on minor technicalities. I was going to Perm and Molokova, Russia, but was planning to take the Trans-Siberian Express through Mongolia. In the visa process, they ask that a letter be written including, among too many other things, where all I would be going. So, knowing the former USSR mindset a bit having spent a lot of time in former USSR countries, I listed all the stops my train would be making. I planned to exit the train at these places since it was a five-day ride. Well, none of those cities were on the letter of invitation. So, a week before I was to leave, I pulled the plug on Russia. I had to have my passport back. Of course all of this eventuated my coming to Nepal and India instead.

My first day in Nepal I went right away to the Indian Embassy to begin the visa process. Tomorrow is my next and hopefully last appointment. Being the country of the Himalayas, one would expect it to be very cold but it is not, except in the houses. I took a taxi to the embassy but really took a chance and walked home. It got hot as I trudged down the unbelievably filthy streets, clogged with vehicles and smogged with the exhausts of ten thousand vehicles, all sounding their horns and racing pell-mell to nowhere or anywhere.

Back to the temperature, most people it seems live in large brick and concrete monoliths with no insulation or heating. During the night they adsorb the chill and breathe it off all the day long. I am sure it will be nice in the summer but it is still winter and so it makes for cold living at times. Of course cold is relative. They grow bananas here so we are not talking about what all of you are going through.

Yesterday we went over to Banepa where I gave a health lecture for a women’s literacy meeting. We had first gone up to the hills above Banepa where Bhaju has some land. From there we could see the broad reach of the Himalayas. Wow! I have seen a lot of mountain ranges, but this took the cake. My friend says one say, early in the morning, someone was passing the home he is building, and a mother tiger and her cubs were sunning themselves in a clearing. This is a land of tigers, and Maoists. The Maoists, communist insurrectionists who want to take over the country, rise up and fight every once in a while so the Nepalese army has tactical positions in many places. Walking up to see the big Buddha we passed through concertina, past machinegun emplacements, and under the gaze of the ubiquitous soldiers. I took some great pictures.

We took the bus back down to Banepa for my lecture and on the bus I lost my camera. That was a real blow. I had to buy another as a camera is a part of my work but I was terribly discouraged for a while. But this too shall pass and I move forward. Perhaps making the pain a bit more acute, besides having lost all the pictures I had taken since before Christmas, and perhaps even back to Hawaii, was the fact that I am a very careful shopper. I will research, read reviews, pray, compare prices; frankly, I am not an impulse shopper. But this time, feeling I really needed to get it done, I went to a camera shop in downtown Kathmandu and, after a huge struggle, bought a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W530. They charged me $188. Now, insult to injury, upon checking on the internet, the same camera sells for $130 in the States. Probably made in China which is probably less than 100 miles from here. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” Sometimes it is dreadfully hard to see the blessing and perhaps sometimes I am just suffering a consequence.

I am not really looking forward to the all-night bus to the border. Don’t picture a nice comfortable Greyhound bus here. It will probably be on the par with the bus ride I took from Lusaka, Zambia, to Mafinga, Tanzania. Oh well, all part of the job. I will be traveling with a man who knows the ropes although he speaks no English. But he will be one I can trust to watch over my things, not that my guardian angel hasn’t done a capital job over the years of keeping my bones together.

I have found in my travels that the countries practicing polytheism are among the most degraded. This would include any worship centering around multiple objects of worship and idols or images. Nepal is a Hindu state and thus Shiva and large pantheon of other “gods and goddesses” such as Vishnu (incarnate as Rama and Krishna), Kali, Durga, Parvati, and Ganesh, predominate. Temples and shrines are everywhere. Basically, they have millions of “gods” and the other day, just past the big Buddha, are there are some Buddhists here too, there was a Hindu shrine for one of the many “goddesses” and leaning against her enclosure there were a row of “unknown gods.” It reminded me so much of Paul in Acts 17 when, on Mars hill in Athens, he said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious [very religious]. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Brilliant.

Hindu society, and therefore Nepal, practices and promotes a caste system. It is a huge injustice but you will not hear the west railing against it. Oh, our (USA) government will rail against our capitalist system, seeking to fleece those who have worked to clothe those who have seen no real motivation to try. Thank you FDR. But you have to see the caste system in action to begin the fathom the depths of injustice being perpetrated upon innocent people who have done nothing more than be born into the wrong caste. And once there, there is no climbing out of the pit, and the lowest caste works in the pits, literally. To see dusky children picking through the trash, men working in the sewers, families living in hovels beside rivers flowing with muck and mire and the refuse of a thousand sewers, giving off a stench that would make a fly lose its lunch…this is the lot of the Untouchables. And all the “social justice” foisted upon the West will not change this system one iota. Nor would we dare to, for it is their “culture.” The empty idealism we hear trumpeted by the left rings hollow over here. Anything the West sends this way will never trickle down to where the real need it. It makes you weep.

Okay, off the soapbox. I will try to send one more blog from Nepal before moving on to India.

God’s blessings,

Don

KATHMANDU AND NOT CHINA

Dateline: Kathmandu, Nepal: March 1, 2011—“The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley,” according to Burns and I tend to believe it, if only looking at my own convoluted wanderings. My motto is Have God, Will Travel, and travel I do. It takes a lot of coordination and planning to fling myself off into the ether. Tickets have to be purchased, visas acquired, point of contacts identified and notified; it is a busy and demanding job just preparing to leave, much less the leaving itself. When I finally do cast off, I have a sheaf of papers with me containing e-tickets, e-reservations and e-confirmations. The job is never completely finished until I am back home again, but the major parts are usually mapped out well before I leave. Then Frost takes over, or is it Murphy?

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Frost wrote in Mending Wall. Murphy would have a twist on it and write “Something there is that doesn’t like the Great Wall.” Three times I have booked flights to China, already to teach in a school that was established there last year, and three times the schedule has been changed. Last fall, number two change happened when the school was postponed until February. That is when I changed my itinerary and flew to Beijing to Hong Kong to Manila. At the time plans were made to teach in the third module beginning in February. That thought in mind, a ticket was purchased for me to fly back to Beijing in February for that very purpose as well as a visa acquired. What happened? One of the major teachers from America had to bow out owing to heart problems. The major coordinator and translator from Malaysia had to cancel because her mother had a stroke. “Something there is that doesn’t like the Great Wall.” Change three.

But I have learned there are always needs in the world for the few services I offer and so the call went out, a bit of a twist on the Macedonian call Paul received in Acts 16:9. “And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” A few emails were scattered abroad and soon the Macedonian calls were coming in. Two in particular seemed viable. One to return to the Philippines, one to go to Nepal and India.

Frost also wrote a poem titled The Road Not Taken. I have always said that India was not one of my favorite places, for reasons I will elucidate on in the next few posts, from India, allowing I am able to post from India. Truly it is a road I am not anxious to travel very often, some visceral hesitation standing as an impediment. But I know the needs are great in India and I have former Uchee Pines friends who have been working in this part of the world for 10 years and I thought it might be a blessing to them to have a bit of help. Terry and Sandra Horner, a mother and daughter, and Linda, another daughter who happens to be here in Nepal running a LIGHT school for a month, have dedicated themselves to the work here and dedication deserves confirmation, if nothing more than a helping hand and a familiar face.

So, I flew to Beijing on schedule (February 20-23…spent the night in Seattle and crossed the international dateline), spent the night in the Beijing Airport hourly lounge, and flew the next day on to Kathmandu, arriving a bit after 10 pm. In Nepal you can purchase a visa right there in the airport for $40 so in a matter of minutes I was deposited out amongst the mass of humanity collected outside the airport. Shades of India. All these people, wanting to carry your bags, give you a ride, beg some money, suggest a hotel. How thankful I was that my friend Esther Morris back at Uchee Pines had worked it all out for me to be met by Bhaju Ram Shrestha and two others. Soon I was safely ensconced in Bahju’s home in Kathmandu. Here I would wait until I was able to acquire an Indian visa.

More to come.

God bless,

Don Miller

Finishing out 2010

This blog is coming way late as you will see. I am finishing it from Kathmandu, Nepal. You will understand the reason why soon.

Dateline: Neuva Era, Norte, Luzon, Philippine Islands; October 23, 2010—Now, this is a different place. I am sitting here in a crowded city in northern Luzon, battling something I have never before faced on my computer. Some people fight viruses, some do battle with spyware, pop-ups and the like. Oh, not me here in the Philippines; my computer has ants; how many, I have no idea. Took my battery out a bit ago and killed three right away. As I type, one will pop up out of the pit of L, make a mad dash across the labyrinth to the W while another will make a dash from the semicolon, trying to make it over the edge onto my trousers and back to wherever its 10-20 is. What will happen if one of the critters steps in the wrong place deep in the bowels of my computer? Short out a motherboard? That will be what I call being in deep kimchee. On my old Apple I could pop the keyboard out; this one offers no such deal. Do ants pee…or spit? Thoughts like this go through my mind when so far from home and with my backup disk up on the mountain.

A bit of my journey getting here. I had a great flight from Oita to Hanada. I was relaxed, no one shared the seat next to me so I could spread out just a bit. Once we landed, I wanted to hustle because the bus to Narita would be leaving soon and I needed to catch the earliest one possible. Gathering my carryon possessions, I entered the flow to the exit and on to baggage claim. It was there I discovered my classes were missing. Back on the seat next to mine. Using simple words and grand gestures, I was able to communicate my loss and soon an attendant came rushing up with them. And still I was able to catch my early bus to Narita. It was a good flight to Beijing and there I spent the night.

In the Beijing Airport, each of the three terminals have hourly lounges which are really motel-like rooms. I obtained the last on in Terminal 2 for about $60 and had a good night’s rest and a shower in the morning, probably the last official one I will have till I spend my next night in Beijing on November 14.

My flight to Hong Kong was to leave out of Terminal 3 which was quite some distance away so I left as early as possible to make sure all was in order. Arriving at the shuttle bus, I had just piled everything aboard when I remembered I had left my sheaf of e-tickets back in the room. Unpile, drag in, along the corridors and down and retrieve the tickets and then retrace my steps to the bus to the 3^rd Terminal. Two strikes.

The flight to Hong Kong was uneventful and the flight on to Manila, whereas over, under and through almost solid clouds, brought us down safe and sound in a post-typhoon city. I am sure there were areas with lots of damage, but I saw no more than some downed banana trees and large puddles in the streets.

Outside the Manila airport was vaguely reminiscent of the outside of the airports in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai, all cities of India. Crowded, cluttered, noisy, busy; a cacophony of humanity and machinery, just no sacred cows. My new friend, Alain Batista, the educational director of the medical missionary school to which I was heading, met me and began the search for a honest cab. Most want to squeeze every peso possible out of a person and so will refuse to go on the meter, offering rather to give you a set price which will always be much higher than the meter. Finding an honest man, we took the long ride to the bus depot.

Bus depots in most parts of the world are much different than those in America and other developed countries. Granted, most bus stations in America are situated in unsavory parts of town and lined with pinball machines and bleary-eyed denizens apparently seeking shelter rather than transport. In Manila the station to which we repaired was an open air affair with a covered area hosting rows of plastic chairs and Filipino people. There was a bathroom one could use for the nominal charge of 5 pesos but be sure to bring your own cleaning material and toilet paper. The busses are very nice, nothing at all like their crammed and careening cousins in southern Africa.

We were to take a sleeper bus which was a totally new experience to me. There were rows of bunk beds down both sides and a row down the middle. They were very narrow and not quite long enough for my frame, but it was still better than sitting up all night in an equally narrow seat. The trip lasted almost nine hours and we were deposited in a town a few miles from the school. The school operates two jeepneys for the dual purpose of generating funds and to transport their baked goods to towns and cities lying much further away. Soon we were trudging up the side of a mountain to my home for a month.

For those of you unknown to the Philippines, a jeepney is basically modeled out of an old Army jeep but stretched long enough to carry many people. They are often gaudily decked with religious icons, famous idols and frivolous incidentals. You sit on long benches stretching down each side and as each passenger boards, money is passed up the line to the driver. It s really quite an experience, one I first encountered in 1974 when I served here as a member of the Marine Amphibious Unit.

The school here on the side of a mountain is a truly unique experience. Challenges are met on a daily basis by the staff and students with casual good humor, challenges that would send most people in more developed lands packing for home before they had even unpacked. It doesn’t take long to separate the committed from the curious. A few of the challenges faced here.

1. Housing. This would be the first big separator for most people. Bamboo huts with thatch roofs and walls. No windows, no screens, no doors. The floors are either bamboo strips affixed to spindly trees harvested from the scrub or rough-hewn planks laid unevenly over whatever joists could be crafted from native materials. All of this constructed on stilts to lessen the unwanted and added discomfort of flowing ground water when it rains, the easy access of serpents that slither everywhere, and to provide constant ventilation from all sides. At night rats burrow through the thatch and scamper across the internal infrastructure, making more noise than is conducive to a good night’s sleep. And it is just one large room. Beds are mats on the floor or hammocks. Closets are bamboo poles suspended from various cross members or the cross members themselves. Dressers? Well, if you have a suitcase, that is it. If you have a cardboard box, that will do. Chairs? The floor will do.

2. Power. At 4:30 each morning a generator just up the trail comes on for just one hour. In the dwelling in which I live, a single 45 centimeter fluorescent bulb flickers to life and floods our dark domain. It is a wake-up call for most people on campus. I am normally awake earlier for one reason or another. The anticipation of the generator has conditioned me to wake a bit early. Sometimes the rats are particularly restless in the pre-dawn hours, as they were yesterday, and I lie there wishing for the dawn’s early light. This morning I woke up before 4 am to some strange sound. Strange sounds in the darkness can rouse me out of the deepest sleep. Turns out one of my fellow inmates decided to do his laundry early so he was outside sudsing and scrubbing his clothing to the constant splash of the eternally running water. Yes, laundry is done by hand in a plastic tub. After the hour of power, we are done with anything artificial until the evening meeting when two wires are hooked to a car battery and two mercury vapor lights push back the darkness and allow us to have our evening meeting in the main building.

3. Water. As mentioned, it flows eternal, or at least as long as the long black pipe continues to carry the water down from a lake high in the mountain above us. It is clear and cool which is nice on the hot days, which most are. The initial pipe is quite large, about 2 inches in diameter. Once it arrives at campus level, it is split into various smaller pipes to serve the needs of the numerous huts that house students, staff and visitors. One day the water stopped flowing down the smaller pipes. The young men went to work trying to fix the problem. Turns out it was nothing more than a six foot green snake that had taken the long and dark ride from the lake to the fork in the road. Another day in the Philippines.

4. Bathrooms. This depends on your home. Where I am staying it is state of the art, compared to some of the other places. It is on the same level as the sleeping floor and concrete. I shutter to think of what will happen when the ubiquitous termites have so undermined the integrity of the poles holding up that heavy slab that it can no longer support the weight of it and the last person answering the urge of nature. Not nice. One of the women’s residences has its bathroom on the ground floor, literally. This means they have to take the three or four steps down from their hut, walk around the corner and enter this very dark and very small relieving station. The other day one of the girls ran up to the classroom just before my class and said there was a snake in their bathroom. Fortunately it had made its escape before the posse arrived. The toilets themselves are porcelain apparatuses sans seats. What happened to the seats I have no idea. And flushing consists of dumping a bucket of ever-flowing water into the maw of the white throne.

5. Meals. Quite simple. One day there will be beans and rice; next day, rice and beans. Sometimes there are some weedy-looking greens or blossoms of squash added to the menu. The greens look as if they have been wildcrafted from the undergrowth or rescued from the garden. But they are always good, very good. One of my favorites has to be the sweet potato vines. I have eaten them in Africa and am surprised we don’t eat them on a regular basis in the States. They are great. People here eat many different greens and I have yet to be disappointed. The moringa (or whatever) is another green, actually a leaf from a tree, that is not only good tasting but very healthy. I was introduced to it in Africa and it is called the miracle tree. Purportedly it contains all the vitamins and minerals needed by man and can reverse many diseases.

6. The garden is the center of attraction most of the time. Most of the students spend their work period, and all students take part in work period, carving out gardens in the former jungle growth. The head gardener has a goal that in three years they will be totally self-sufficient. They have many banana trees planted, as well as papaya and the papaya hand heavy on many of them. On rare occasions we are treated to a slice at mealtime. The students work with heavy hoes, not the dainty things we are used to in the states. With them, and some similar shovels, they turn the thick soil, pulverize it, and leave neat raised rows behind them, ready to grow sweet potatoes, beans, tomatoes, or whatever the gardener decides. They also have pineapple growing. Yes, it will be a delicious place in a couple of years.

7. Equipment. I have mentioned the generator which roars to life one hour a day. There is also a motorcycle with a side car they use sometimes to haul supplies up the mountain on one of the roughest roads I have traveled down. Someone offered the school a tractor but the gardener refused, asking for a cow and a carabao instead. A carabao is a water buffalo. No gas, no oil, no tires; just let them keep the grass trimmed for energy and pull the plow and carts for free. One drawback is they make a big mess when it rains with their heavy hooves churning up the ground.

8. Students. The students are an eclectic group ranging in age from teens to grandparents. And yes, they all live in the huts in the bush. One is a young man taking six months out of medical school to attend the course. One has a masters degree in public health. Some speak excellent English, some seem as hopeless with my tongue as I would be with the 107 of theirs. That’s right, in the neighborhood of 107 languages spread across the 7,000 islands comprising the Philippine archipelago.

At this point I had to cease writing this blog because a mortally wounded ant I had been smashing at all across the home row dove down into the pit of L and there apparently died but not before wiping out the 8, I, K and comma. It became so frustrating trying to type and understand what I had written without those keys I just gave up. I was not able to fix the thing until my return to the USA near the end of November.

The stay in the Philippines was very rewarding. Each weekend I was in a different city when the student team I was with and I gave lectures and generally helped the people as we found chance. Soon my time was over and I headed back to Manila with Alain. It was again an all night bus ride and we arrived at the airport in time for me to catch an early flight to Hong Kong and then on to Beijing. I was then to spend the night in Beijing before flying out the next afternoon to Tokyo and then on to Honolulu and from their to Hilo.

It had been arranged for a person to meet me in Beijing with some of the things I had left there, not the least of which was my big, brand new winter coat. Understand, I was flying from the tropics to Beijing in late November where it was very cold already. I was wearing a light short-sleeved polo shirt which was the uniform at the mountain school but KNEW I would be met with the warm embrace of my new coat in he Beijing airport. Expecting to see Mr. Lee, our driver at the school, I scanned the faces of the curious and the anticipating as I departed the secure area. I also read the signs, at least the ones I could read. “Military Historical Tour,” “Mr. Bloderdash,” “Ms. Farfromhome,” “Adam.” That last one caught my fancy, just Adam. I smiled at the young man holding it and shook my head; I’m not Adam. It never occurred to me that the main man behind our school in Beijing, a Paul, for some reason had taken to calling me Adam. And so when he dispatched this young man to the airport to meet me, he prepared this nice sign announcing ADAM. For two hours I waited, nearly frozen, for Mr. Lee, or one of my former students, to come to my rescue. Finally I rummaged around in my suitcase and pulled out my suit jacket. How good it felt. But it was getting late and so I decided to go to the terminal I would be leaving from the next day. Beijing has three main terminals located some distance apart. I took a bus to the one serving Delta, acquired a free internet password (Beijing is great for this service) and checked into the hourly lounge, buying just one hour for I felt compelled to check my emails first. Sure enough, Mark from Hong Kong was searching for me, telling me there was a man waiting for me back at the other terminal. He also sent me a cell phone number and the women at the desk were kind enough to dial it up and soon the man with the ADAM sign was on his way to meet me.

When he arrived, he had the suitcase I had left there, my winter coat and a pile of other things. Arrangements had also been made for me to stay at a different hotel. Well, I could go on and on but the short of it is, I gave him about everything but the coat, had a good night of sleep, flew on to Tokyo the next day, got bumped up to Business Class to Hawaii and had a great time on the Big Island of Hawaii with friends Ryan and Marina and former student Desiree. Only downside of that whole visit was, thanks to TSA and their not allowing us to lock our suitcases, by Bose QCII headphones were stolen out of my suitcase. They were in the suitcase in Japan, gone in Hilo. Thank you TSA, who only give an allusion of safety.

Farewell and God bless,

Don