Same, Same but different

I am not sure if the spring in my step is aided by the 2 (yes – 2) coffee’s I had this morning, or if it is quite simply I am just having a really great day. An early morning asana and meditation (a daily routine now, awesome) and a morning coffee (ok, 2) over the papers, and a sun shiney walk to work. And I can’t help but feel pretty damn good. Life doesn’t get much better than this. I am reminded of my yummy Saturday morning routine in Sydney – early morning class with the lovely Persia, Orange Grove markets before a detour to see John to pick up my latte, quick stop for the papers and then home to enjoy my home made big breakfast on the balcony with the SMH. So whilst my morning is slightly different, I can’t help but notice some similarities.  So in Sydney I won’t see cows on the street (they were particularly noisy this morning as well) and maybe the pollution is less, but simple pleasures of coffee, sunshine and the morning paper can make my day. So same, same, but a little bit different.

My typical morning

In a foreign country, especially in one that is as diverse as Nepal, it is easy and somewhat customary to focus on the differences. The dirt, the pollution, the lovely animals on the street and even the loos are not quite what we experience at home – and that is not even starting on the social and economic differences of a third world country. However, I am becoming increasingly aware of the similarities, not just in my daily routine, but in the people, the experiences and the simple things that from the outside my look incredibly different, but when you look close enough you will see, are a little bit the same.

As part of the change process at the children’s home, we are slowly working through a large list of priorities. The focus on a clean environment has begun and changes to the diet and nutrition have been welcome additions – the kids even insisted I stay for dinner the other day as it was going to be so tasty, and they were right.  With vegetables, pickle, dahl and rice piled on my plate, I sat in the dining room and enjoyed. It is great to see the differences a few minor but yet significant changes can make. The kids certainly notice it and feel appreciated and even perhaps some pride. Hence the dinner invitation, they wanted to show me they were eating good food and most importantly enjoying it.  So whilst I sat there, surrounded by the chaos of dinner time for 200 kids, I felt an odd sense of normality that I find happens to me at the strangest of moments. Kids are hungry, they eat and make a mess, they enjoy their food, pick out the bits they don’t like at the same time jumping all over the tables – I have to admit I have not shared a meal with that many kids at any one time before, but the meals that I have shared with children are really not that much different.  Boisterous, messy and a little bit of chaos. So same, same, but a little different.

Kids at play, same, ok, maybe the cow is different

Part of the work I am doing is largely related to supporting the change management process but I have to admit, my change experience is not really related to a third world country. The corporate world of IKEA seems miles away from the NGO sector in Nepal, but oddly enough, I am finding many similarities and that at the end of the day, people are people. No matter where you are, people have hopes and dreams and fears and concerns.  Change can be scary, and the fears of the house mothers are no different from fears of all people going through change. Will I lose my job, what will it mean for me etc etc. As I sat in on the one on one discussion with each of the staff, I was reminded of our basic needs. We all want to feel recognised, be rewarded fairly for what we do and in general, aim to do a good job. These women are no different. So again, whilst the environment could not be more removed from my previous world, the discussions with the people were really very much the same.

We are all the same inside

So whilst it is easy and often in our nature to see the differences in people and places, it is a pleasant and somewhat interesting perspective when you focus on the similarities. People are people, no matter what the colour of your skin, the culture you were born into or the religious beliefs you hold, at the core of it all, we are all pretty much same, same, but maybe a little bit different.  

This is my final week in Nepal, it is hard to believe 2 months has passed. From here I am heading back to India for a week enroute to Europe, an entirely different world, one I am not sure I am ready for, but I am sure it is ready for me x

Calm in the Chaos

I really enjoy spending more than a few days in a place. It is a luxury when traveling to be able to unpack, not feel rushed to see the check list of sights and you have the pleasure of finding places that are like an oasis that you can return to. I have my favourite coffee place (best coffee since Melbourne), I am able to walk to my work each day, confident I won’t get lost and I know the names of the guys at my hotel. All things that create maybe some routine and sense of stability in what is often an insecure and unknown existence when you are living out of your backpack with no return ticket home. I enjoy getting to know somewhere, of walking the back streets, buying some groceries and becoming part of a place even if it is for a limited window of time.

Random religion mixed in with day to day life

Kathmandu is an incredibly diverse city that is a mixture of culture and religion, old and new and weird and wonderful. The streets of Thamel where I am staying are the main touristy areas – the scent of incense filling your nose and the sounds of “om mani padme hum” are constants in the thick of the countless shops selling crafts, trekking gear and souvenirs. But get out of this area and the old streets and laneways take you back to what life was perhaps like before Nepal became the new hippy hang out. A maze of narrow streets filled with local everyday life. What is perhaps the most fascinating, is the collection of religious monuments that dot the laneways and appear in a seemingly suburban road. In the middle of the strip shops, it is not unusual to come across a monument to Ganesh or a Shiva temple, all significant icons in the Hindu religion. Add in a Buddhist Stupa and you have what Kathmandu is really about, a collection or collaboration of meeting points.

Buddhist Stupa - Bodnath

In one day I meandered around one of the largest Buddhist Stupa's in the world in the Tibetan area of town before wandering down to the most significant Hindu temple, where I witnessed the ceremony of burial. Profound, touching and quite emotional, the burial ceremony is conducted on the banks of the river where the grieving family come to pay their final respects and the body is cremated and committed back to the earth via the river. All in the plain view of onlookers and bystanders and like me, curious tourists. I felt slightly voyeuristic as the smoke from the carefully built fire filled the air, mindful that as I inhaled, it was once a human life that was mixed in with the oxygen I was using to give me life – one ends and another continues. Another body arrives and the process continues, carefully it is carried to the fresh pile of wood and in the process, the white sheet slips away to revel a woman. A serene face, her arm draped over the soft white cloth, she is covered but yet exposed for the world to see, and I realise, I perhaps have not seen a dead body before. But somehow, it is just that a body, the spirit is long gone and that is merely what remains. It must be how the loved one that ignites the fire must feel as well, as there is no other way I can fathom how you can set fire to someone dear to you.

Everyday life on the streets of Kathmandu, and yes that is a goat

So for all the craziness that is Kathmandu, the traffic and constant of horns, the power outages that are scheduled up to 16 hours per day and the blend of religions and people, there is a certain peace and tranquility in the place. Whether it is walking the kora at the Buddhist Stupa, witnessing a burial ceremony at the Hindu temple or even spending an afternoon at the sumptuous Garden of Dreams, there are moments of stillness, of silence and space. There is the ability to escape the mayhem and to find a place to just be. So this last few days I have been practicing just that, just being, in a place that is usually chaotic, and I am finding the little pockets of solitude and savouring them.

My roof top terrace, come yoga studio, another haven for me

The Art of Happiness in my world

My friend recently sent me an article from the SMH about the age that women are happy. It covered everything from what makes you happy and what it takes to be happy. It wasn’t referring to what just puts a smile on your dial, but how do you get the deeply satisfied, warm from the inside out kind of happiness that so often alludes us. Most of us spend our lives postponing happiness, I will be happy when I met my one true love, get that promotion, own my own home. And really, we all know from past experience, once we have that one thing that we think will bring us that internal glow and feeling of completeness, we are often already chasing the next thing on our to do list. And so the cycle continues, I will be happy when....

How happy are you?!?!?

I am certainly no expert in happiness, and I have had my fair share of down days, weeks and even months over the years, but I believe I have had a taste of what it means to be truly happy. I was asked last year when I made the decision to quit my job, sell my stuff and embark on an indefinite adventure around the world, “surely, you must be unhappy to leave all that behind”. And my response was, and still is, no, I was very happy, in fact intensely happy, but that is what allowed me to do it. I was comfortable and I wanted to stretch my boundaries, and to learn and experience new and different things. And that is what I am doing. I also have had the opportunity to see happiness every day, to witness some of the simplest yet most profound moments of happiness in perhaps some of the most unexpected surroundings.  The strange thing is, well perhaps it is not strange, but maybe the interesting thing is, the general rule applies, that the people with the seemingly the least, are the ones appear to have the most on the happiness scale.

I have met some really amazing people on my travels, many like minded individuals that count their blessings that they have the opportunity to travel and they see the beauty in world and the people who are part of it (Just recently, Jenn and Lynn from Australia are a perfect example)  But then for every one of those, there is the other sort of traveller, the one that complains that things don’t work like they do at home, that speaks to locals like they are second class citizens  and in general, must be incredibly unhappy as nothing is to their liking.  Leaving you to wonder, why did you even leave home?  All of us are privileged to be able to afford to travel, we are born into a society that food and shelter are a given, and that often our biggest concern can be which new Apple product to buy. Now I start to compare to most people in Nepal. Only earning enough to live week to week, fresh fruit is a rare treat and often, children can’t afford to go to school. Or in the case of the children’s home I am working with, the kids here are typically abandoned by their families, live with 200 other kids and are usually branded with the stamp “orphan = no hope”. But like anything, there is always a different view or story.

And the clean up begins

We had a clean up day at the home on the weekend, all of the 200 kids joined in and they had a ball. They laughed and joked as they scrubbed walls, de-bugged their beds and cleaned loos. And they were happy. They exuded that kind of joy that we all allusively search for. And do you know why? Because they have a home to clean, because there were people there helping them that cared, and they were excited to see the grime come from the tiles of the shower. These kids worked their little hearts out all day, they had pride in what they did and there was not one word of complaint. It is typical of all of the people I have met in Nepal, the stories of hardship and heartache are turned into stories of opportunity and possibility. And these people are happy. The smiles on their faces and the sparkle in their eye tells you so.  The Nepalese have an ability to focus on what they have rather than what they don’t. They can all tell you what they are grateful for and how lucky they are. And perhaps the key is they are not worried about what they don’t have, what they will do tomorrow, or even what happened yesterday. They are here in the moment, they are immersed in today. They are not postponing their happiness. It seems so simple. And maybe it really is.

Hard at work

So in my world, you can look at it that I am surrounded by hardship and sorrow, or you can see it as opportunity and possibility. And I am also seeing it as one of happiness.  These children are teaching me a great lesson in gratitude, in embracing hope and being here in the moment.  It wouldn’t hurt my fellow travelers that complain about the dirt, the strange toilets or the lack of power to come and spend a day in the life of a Nepali child that lives in this home, but somehow, I don’t think they would last the distance.  If you would like to know more about the organisation I am working with, you can check out their website www.mitrataa.org.  

Careful what you wish for

I walked through the quiet morning streets of Thamel on my way to work and soaked up the rare peace and quiet. The area of Kathmandu is usually heaving with tourists, touts, cars, rickshaws and bustling retail stores, but at 7am on a Tuesday, it is unusually quiet. Not a tourist or a tout in sight, the local retailers diligently sweeping the store fronts, all smile and greet you Namaste. The pleasant change was it was left at that, there was no “you take look?”. Thamel seemed remotely normal. Well as normal as the capital city of a 3^rd world country can be, it really depends on your definition of normal I guess. And I think mine has changed somewhat. I continued on my journey, past the queues of locals outside the foreign embassy, past the Royal Palace (which is now a museum), past the fish carcass, the dead rat the size of a small child, past the cows, the fruit markets and everyone doing the same thing I was doing – going about their day and on their way to work. I smiled to myself as I stepped over and around the live and dead animals and realised my “normal” had changed somewhat. Instead of cringe, I laugh and move on, I have simply learnt to look where I am stepping.

At the early stages of my trip, the beautiful Bella and I had lots of deep and meaningful conversations about what we want out of life – typical when traveling to reflect and particularly when you have some time to do so. We made lists, talked about it, something’s we shared, and something’s we didn’t, but it was our wish list I guess, what we were going to manifest. A few short months later, Stella’s dreams are becoming a reality (you can check out her website www.shinyyoga.blogspot.com) and I have to say mine are too. This asking the universe for stuff actually works, but perhaps a little faster than I expected! Meeting a friend for life- check (multiple actually), attending a wedding in a different culture (can check that off today) and volunteering using my professional knowledge (will fill you in in a minute) were all things on my list, in fact, I have had to start a new one, it has all happened sooner than I had expected! So the power of focusing on what you want and putting it out there is true, of course some work to get it, but generally, these are all things that have just happened. Randomly. Like the wedding and the volunteer work, both are connected, but neither were part of my plan nor what I thought I would find myself doing. I guess when you are in the flow, these things happen.

So my next volunteer adventure has begun, and when I was sitting in the ballroom of a former royal building, surrounded by about 40 Nepalese and one of the only 2 westerners in an official hand over meeting of the oldest and largest children's home in Nepal, I kinda wondered, how the hell did I end up here. It was like I was in a parallel universe somewhere, yet somehow, it felt completely normal. Strange, as I know nothing about orphanages, social welfare and limited experience with Nepalese culture, but the organisation I signed up to work with had a new project land in their lap last week and it was big. Actually big is perhaps an understatement, massive.  The largest (250 kids,) oldest and in desperate need of help would better describe this home. Like many things, timing is everything, and when I arranged to meet with Bec, the one of the founders of Mitrataa (an Aussie organisation doing work in Nepal) all she said was “thank God you are here”. Nice to feel welcomed, but I wasn’t sure why my presence could really make a huge difference.  That was perhaps before I heard the story of how Mitrataa came to acquire the home, how in the span of 24hours Bec’s life had been turned upside down and in about another 48 hours, the lives of 250 children was going to change forever. Up until Sunday, I was not really sure what I was going to be doing for Mitrataa, I thought maybe some workshops with women or girls, but after my meeting with Bec, it was clear I could perhaps help out with the new project, the hand over of the children's home. A large change process, numerous HR issues (there are about 34 staff) and a desperate need to put the focus back on the children with basics like nutrition, hygiene and education. Bec is an amazing woman and has been doing work in Nepal for nearly 10 years, so she knows a thing or two about the Nepalese culture and the needs of these children. However, it is the first children’s home they have taken on, and needless to say they have take on the problem child of the 600 kids home in Nepal, I guess you have to start somewhere. Did I mention Bec and her husband are due to open a cafe in Australia this week as well? So you could say there are a few things going on. So after a flight change for Bec, and our initial discussions, we found ourselves in the hand over meeting on Monday morning.

So my days are filled with everything from hanging out with the kids at the home and observing how processes work, staff meetings, one’on’ones with the team, and tomorrow I meet with a lawyer – perhaps not that far removed from my HR days. I did ask for it! The Universe delivered. And on speaking with Bec, she did too. This has been a dream of theirs to really set the standard in Nepal and implement a sustainability model that other homes can adopt so in the future, the children don't go hungry, they will go to school and be encouraged and supported to do their homework and that they can live in an environment that is nurturing.  A big dream, but as I walked around the home with Bec, listening to her describe her vision and dream, I fully believe that if anyone can do it, she can.

Attending a wedding was on my wish list

Today, when Bec asked if I wanted to go to one of the kids families weddings, it was like the Universe was reminding me, you ask, I deliver. This week, it has been interesting, challenging and even heartbreaking to see how these kids live, but this is what I asked for. An opportunity to use my skills and really make a difference. So  I am hoping my brain works, I can support Bec and her small team through the initial stages of this process and provide a framework that they can implement to secure the success of the change. And Universe? Thanks, whilst it is sometimes overwhelming when you deliver, I asked for it and could not be happier, it is truly amazing and I am constantly reminded of how wonderful it is to really find what it is you want and go for it. Some work required, but then also a lot of faith in things happening, I could not have planned this any better. So make wishes, and dreams, but be careful, the universe will deliver and you want to be ready :)