In August 2017, I visited Nepal to learn about ginger farmers, who farm in the remote mountainous regions of the country. These smallholder farmers grow mostly subsistence crops with ginger as the only cash crop to generate income for their families. The ginger business is a risky one: The crop is susceptible to rot quickly, the markets are distant so farmers rely on traders who may or may not come to purchase their harvest, and prices depend entirely on demand in India and the whims of the Nepal-India border.
To reach these farmers, we took a plane from Kathmandu to a tiny airport in Nepalgunj, a two-hour drive through the Bardia National Park to a small trail opening, a four-hour hike through flat jungle where elephants and tigers roamed, and another four-hour hike up a mountain to the little village of Taranga. It was monsoon season, so we were soaked to the bone and our trails had transformed into rivers and waterfalls. While I labored along in my hiking boots, our porters, who were villagers from Taranga, small wiry men and women in flip flops, scaled the mountain with ease.
Their lives are difficult in some ways I can measure and in many ways I cannot comprehend. I don’t romanticize that. But to step out of what I know and be reminded that there is life — exquisite, as it is life — in spaces so different from mine (but somehow so familiar to my heart) was an un-nameable blessing.
diary from Nepal
august 2017
I walk through clouds. the clouds greet me, or they don’t. they rush in, they attack, they envelop, they obscure, they part. they are thick, they are light, they refract, they embrace. they bring rain, they cool, they remind me that this world is an ever-changing place and we, our great big egos, inhabit but cannot rule. because even the clouds, those massive things, don’t rule. and even the mountains, those massive things, won’t rule.
the frightening: the elephant that roared hidden in the trees to my right, and the porters were nervous too; the fresh tiger paw prints with prey dragging; the rocks slippery with algae at each mountain edge where one wrong step could finish us; the sliding mud from monsoon rains that squelched under my boots, made them slip, oozed inside; the fall into that something-like-quicksand when my ego got the better of me.
the exhilarating: all of the above. my face turned upwards to the first droplets before the heavy monsoon, grateful after climbing in sun and jungle heat; the vistas of clouds and mountain meets sky meets heaven meets earth that expanded me after each ascent; the white flowers irresistibly flourishing on every mossy rock so tiny but impossible to miss; the trees that whispered to me that I was familiar.
the human: my out-of-shape self climbing the mountain like a sloth; the pit latrine and the cobwebs on my fingers when I lost balance; the bathing spot with spiders watching; the mud where all those bare feet found home but mine so uncomfortable; the language where every other word I understood but no sentence made sense; those hot coals spread carelessly and easily to dry the wet ground; the dancing, the spinning in circles faster and faster they were nepali whirling dervishes before the dervishes knew themselves; the roti expanding in the heat of the fire, dipped in honey so sweet from the bee on my shoulder; the corn, picked from this plant and shucked and boiled, flames fanned and coal burning all as a kindness to strangers; my friends, where laughter can’t be contained even with that spider on your pillow; our colleagues: as restless as me or you, trying to figure out their place in this world, which is what made them so beautiful.
Photo by Binod Bajgain
but how did I get here? in this jurassic park, with my bamboo walking stick, at every raising of my eyes a loud and silent greeting of LIFE and fertility and me so tiny nature so great. how did I get here, where the rains beat down and find their way through my coat and into my skin into my bones, where the pebbles in my shoes from the rivers we cross have made these shoes their home, where we should be silent through that ‘danger zone’ lest the tiger spot us or the lone elephant come raging through — except who would be silent when you might glimpse such creatures? — where the monkeys scamper across branches then turn to look at you, the intruders, with the wisest eyes, where I sit atop clouds that tell me ‘you are at the edge of the world my dear’ one moment then pass and chuckle ‘just kidding, here is another mountain’ the next. how did I get here where the babies are fat, nourished by mothers so slender and strong that they can carry one hundred pounds of ginger up and down mountains rising quickly three-thousand meters with chappals on their feet. how did I get here where the world they know is nothing like mine but they are just like me.
Reshma Hussam is a development economist who uses microeconomic tools to think about ways to alleviate poverty. She is most herself in open expanses of mountain, water, and sky. You can learn more about her work here.