Strangers
>> Tuesday, May 31, 2011 –
Ponderings,
Travel
Life continues in Nepal at such a fast pace that I am not even sure what to blog about.
I feel like such a stranger in this country--To their language, their food, their chaotic movement around the city, their religions. We spent an entire day yesterday visiting some of the most sacred temples of the Hindu and Buddhist religions. Monkeys surround all the temples and cows roam freely. Sadhus, dressed in beautiful fabrics with their skin exquisitely painted with bright colors, sat outside the small temples where they live. A cremation was taking place beside one of the holy rivers.
I’ve been hit with the realization of how little I know about these people, how little I understand their lives, and how much of a stranger I must seem to them.
And day after tomorrow we leave Kathmandu to go South to Damak. There we’ll meet and interact with yet another population. A population with which I have even less in common. Refugees. Expelled from their home. Currently without citizenship anywhere. Preparing to be relocated once again, this time to the western world. Maybe even to Durham…or Charlottesville. And I’m starting to get a glimpse of what they are about to go through. Feeling like complete strangers. To our language, our food, the way we move to and from places, even our religions.
I feel like such a stranger in this country--To their language, their food, their chaotic movement around the city, their religions. We spent an entire day yesterday visiting some of the most sacred temples of the Hindu and Buddhist religions. Monkeys surround all the temples and cows roam freely. Sadhus, dressed in beautiful fabrics with their skin exquisitely painted with bright colors, sat outside the small temples where they live. A cremation was taking place beside one of the holy rivers.
I’ve been hit with the realization of how little I know about these people, how little I understand their lives, and how much of a stranger I must seem to them.
And day after tomorrow we leave Kathmandu to go South to Damak. There we’ll meet and interact with yet another population. A population with which I have even less in common. Refugees. Expelled from their home. Currently without citizenship anywhere. Preparing to be relocated once again, this time to the western world. Maybe even to Durham…or Charlottesville. And I’m starting to get a glimpse of what they are about to go through. Feeling like complete strangers. To our language, our food, the way we move to and from places, even our religions.
To be completely overwhelmed at how another people live life by norms so utterly different from their own.
We are all strangers somewhere. In fact, we are all strangers most everywhere.
But I think being a stranger--
Feeling really strange somewhere,
Is life-bringing in a weird, humbling, authentic kind of way.