Nepal

The Many Faces of Nepal's Children













I knew as soon as got off the plane that I would love Nepal. It was chaos combined with a sense of peacefulness that reminded me of India. But unlike India, which is relatively homogenous from a religious and ethnic perspective, Nepal is a crossroads of people—lonely planet says it best “Nepal is a remarkable mosaic of peoples who have not so much assimilated as learned to coexist. It is the meeting place of the Indo-Aryan people of India and the Mongoloid people of the Himalaya.” In Kathmandu, where people have mixed somewhat, the result is visually unexpected combinations in its people—such as light skinned people with Asian eyes wearing saris. While in the countryside, one finds pockets of culturally distinct populations that have preserved their forms of dress and way of life throughout the centuries. For someone who loves photographing faces, like I do, the contrasts are fascinating.

There are virtually no roads in the Himalayan region of Nepal so people live in hamlets much like they did centuries ago. It is perfectly reasonable to have to walk 5 days to reach the nearest town with bus service to the nearest hospital. Although most hamlets have electricity, there are no refrigerators, people still cook on a wood fire, meat is dried and smoked and hung up in the kitchen to dry, people fetch water from the local rivers, houses are made of stones stuck together with mud, roofs are thatched without nails—often times this means several slabs of wood laid vertically with stones laid on top to hold them in place, and if there is phone service—there are probably only one or two phones in town. Most people are farmers—they grow their own crops and have goats, chickens, cows, water buffalo, donkeys and yaks and although they live in extreme poverty from a monetary perspective, it is not the same poverty as is seen in other countries where the children are malnourished. Families and their dogs are happy and healthy. The children are chubby and have bright red cheeks and there is a respect for family and community that I have not seen elsewhere.

It is not uncommon to walk into a shop and find a male shopkeeper ringing up goods with one hand and carrying a baby in the other; or to find the older male son helping the mother cook and serve and pick up plates; he may even be the main cook in the family if the mother has young children that she has to breast feed. I was also surprised to see how much neighbors help each other. Often the older children of one neighbor will be tending to the younger children of another. If someone falls ill, families borrow money from each other. I have mostly interacted with the Sherpa, Tibetan and Gurung people (the Gurungs come from Mongolia) and I still have much more to learn about the Nepalis but so far I am fascinated by the people—they exude what I can only describe as love and kindness.