Saturday, February 25, 2012

Exhaustion

Over the last few days I have come to accept something within myself, and that is that I am exhausted. Exhausted from attempting to gain respect and recognition from all those around me, and most of all from within myself.

I'm not sure how many white men ever realize their place of privilege in global society. And if you are a person deemed to be of low class or racial inferiority, your struggle to be heard, let alone recognized and respected are compounded with immeasurable challenges. As a woman, segregated because of class and race for the first 18 years of life, I feel an inherent understanding to the persistent struggles of the lowest caste group in Nepal (Dalit) and especially girls and women. Yet, even as a foreigner, I do not deny my privilege to be here and to be living and working amongst the people of a country considered one of the poorest on the planet. Yet, even amongst those I work alongside (other foreigners) my opinion, actions and voice are still challenged and made to feel inferior. Those old feelings of oppression which were felt as a child haunt my daily routine, and to be honest, have haunted me for the two decades in which I left my home village of marginalized existence.

It is only now that I have come to the realization, that the daily internal and external shouting above the imposed silence, has drained my energy and will to challenge the closed minds surrounding me. It has been my reflective soul-searching of the last several months that suddenly opened a door for me to acknowledge the reality of this daily battle and how my head, heart and soul are fractured because of it. It is time to not only be proud of myself outwardly in all I have become and done, but most importantly, inwardly in all fairness and honesty to myself. I bow now to let those around me to continue to live in self-imposed spaces of privilege and ignorance-of-self, while I will roam freely and with conviction in knowing my own good, my own identity, embracing my own spiritual peace.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Innocence...

What do children really need? Toys? New designer shoes? Electronic gadgets? Attention? Empathy? Love? I guess depending on your own social, political and economic status in the world, you might answer with all of the above. But it's not until you walk out of the developed world box that you see Children really need Equality!! Equal access to clean sanitation, safe housing, quality education, and basically the individual recognition of potential!!!!

Children's innocence in what they have to what they don't have amazes me. As I think of the 5 year olds from my middle-class world in Canada, to the 5 year olds I greatly admire and respect in impoverished rural Nepal, I see how much "richer" these local children are.

Their certainly rich in their joy of the simple. The way all Nepali children laugh, explore, investigate with limited fear of strangers, any creature great or small, is utterly blissful!! Baby goats and puppies are all part of the local "gang" to sing with, dance with, dress up in towels and hats, as everyone rolls around in the grass between rice patties, cattle stalls, pig styes and concrete or adobe walls of their "modern" humble homes. Their possessions are very few. One or two causal outfits, to one or two school uniforms will be all they wear for some years. Expected school shoes are enclosed, but most children (and adults for that matter) live in hard plastic sandals, or nothing at all. Toys are few. Electronics non-existent.

And yet, these children are some of the poorest in all the other ways that qualifies developed nations as "developed". Many schools have limited running water, let alone separate bathrooms for boys or girls. All sanitation is outside of course, and there is no environmentally safe/appropriate waste system anywhere in rural Nepal. Schools are in various states of construction or crumbling, qualifying many classes to be conducted outdoors all year through. There are no Health & Safety rules or regulations here in Nepal.

Children however, are incredibly resilient in this nation of 30 million people (roughly the same as Canada). The statistics for child-hood disease and death rates are still alarming, but of those children I engage every day... I routinely sit in awe of their urchin-like smiles, their unadulterated giggles and their captivating sense of innocence.