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
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