Poverty in Kathmandu

Poverty surrounds Kathmandu like a shroud. People live with it as best they can. You can see it in many places, the electrical system, the streets, the homeless children, the city parks, and the voices of the people.
There are rolling electrical blackouts everyday. That means that each neighborhood has no electricity at certain times everyday. From what I've heard, the city just cant keep up with te population growth as more and more people roll in from the villages. In my area there is usually no power from 7 pm to midnight and sporadically at other times. That means the streets are completely dark. They have street lamps and an electric grid, just no juice to run it. After the power turns off, some stores and restaurants crank up the generators and that clank clank becomes a part of the aural landscape, not really pleasant, but distinctive. In my hotel, there is a generator, and when the diesel fuel runs out, there are candles, and we go back in time to a less convenient, but in some ways , more charming way of lighting. For me this means the day ends early, around 6 pm because there isn't much open around my area after that and t's impossible to get around. Walking home a little after 6, I come across the night market in a small square fed by 5 streets. It is bustling with people shopping after work for food and goods. Around the outer ring is the crazy traffic. On the inner ring are small vendors, their produce and products lying on plastic sheets on the ground, each one lit by a candle. In the center are 4 large street lamps that could light everything up, but they are dark, there's no power to light them. It has an eerie feeling, yet a lot of business is being done. It seems so inconvenient and dangerous as a pedestrian, yet that is how people must live in a poor country.
The streets are over-crowded, are poorly paved, and most have no sidewalks. That means that everyone is competing for the same space. Trying to walk the 500 meters down the road from Dirvani Square back to my hotel is my personal hell. If there is a hell and if i am judged unworthy, i know I will be sent here. It is jam packed with motorcycles, horns blaring at ear-splitting volumes, huge bicycle rickshaws that take up a tremendous amount of space, cars and taxis also blaring horns, and people trying to squirm through it all. Everybody is literally jammed against everyone else and you have to move around and try to make progress. You have to pay attention. People and vehicles will hit you, knock up against you, push you out of the way, cut in front, blare at you, and that's just to take the next step. It might take 20 minutes to move 100 meters in this madness. Because the roads are poorly paved, many of the roads have sections of dirt, which become dusty. Dust fills the air and makes a perpetual haze. Many people wear face masks, and the city looks like a community of robbers, everyone walking around ready to pulls out a gun in the hazy solution. "Give me your ruppes!" Luckily for me, with my face mask on and my shoddy travelling clothes, people say I look Nepalise, so i don't get hassled as much. Whats the solution? Sidewalks, one way streets, subway system, wider streets, all things that take money and planning and probably won't happen, so people live in this hell and just accept it.
There are many homeless children living on the streets. You see them everywhere, often carrying large plastic sacks that seem to be full of garbage, but may be their bedding and some few belongings that they have. Often they can be seen with a small paper bag which they they are holding to their mouths and pumping. It's glue they are sniffing, a cheap high for them. These kids live in tribes and are tough. They grow up fast and it is interesting to watch them because they have adult gestures and body movements. They are like gypsies and are unafraid. They live outside of society and social norms. I like them, but keep my distance. They will come right up to you and glare at you then dismiss you with a wave of the hand. The young ones are still tender and seem like kids, the older ones are scary. They sleep in packs like dogs on cold nights. They form very close friendships and help and protect one another. Sometimes they push up to the front when I'm playing street music and just stare at me as I play, unsure whether to let the music in or not. I hope some nice music will come out at that moment to give them a good feeling for awhile, to show them a different way to get high. Sometimes I break through and they will stand there, transfixed, maybe show some enthusiasm in their eyes, maybe even give me a smile. Then they break away without a sign and go back to the harsh world they live in. Yesterday a boy tried to help me and after I said thanks, he said he was hungry. I took him to a restaurant to eat. On the way there, 4 of his friends wanted to come along, but it was really not a good idea. The restaurant owner doesn't want those boys in his place. The sometimes fight and are dirty and they disturb the other customers. So it was a bit of a scene. I had to tell the other boys to go away. They stood outside the window pantomiming their great hunger. I made him was his hands. Then the food came. He ate like an animal, eating with his hands like Indians and Nepalis do. But normal people eat with their fingers. This boy ate with his entire hand, like he was grabbing a baseball. I kept telling him to slow down and he nodded but didn't, like he was afraid I might take it away at any second. He drank 3 cups of water. He ate every bit of food on his plate. When he was down, he stood up, said "thank you" and walked off into the night.
I take the bus from the center of the city at a place called Ratna Park. Yesterday I ventured in. Let me say it is the alternate hell in case the streets during rush hour, which will be my first hell, has no vacancies. It's just a big dusty field now, maybe 100 by 200 meters, in which homeless people and very poor families are camped out, each group cooking and sitting on the ground in the dust, around their pot. The dust sways around eerily like phantoms. Some groups are made of families clothed in tribal rags. Others are made up of groups of men sitting together doing nothing. There are a few vendors here and there selling slices of fruit or some cooked goods like noodles or stir fried something. Their is the inevitable hawker, selling some magic potion that will cure whatever ails you. He is sitting on the ground ranting away while an excited spellbound crowd huddles around him. Off to the other side, some street kids are putting on a show. One of them is walking on stilts while playing a drum. There is a large crowd watching. The boy performs with the confidence of a seasoned performer and commands respect. Later when he unwraps the rags holding his feet to the stilts, I see he is just a tough little boy. Other even smaller boys walk around collecting money from the crowd. At the end they have a pile of 5 rupee bills and coins.
There is desperation in the voices of the people selling things. They tell you their stories and you don't know whether to believe it or not, it sounds so fantastic. "I make 33 dollars a month. My family lives 50 miles away but I don't have time to see them. I work 15 hours a day everyday". You want to help them, help them all, but can't. You can help a few or you can just ignore it completely because to admit the enormity of the problem would bring to the foreground, the glaring unfairness of it all. Why do I have money and they don't? Am I a better person, more deserving, more talented, did I work harder, am I smarter? Hardly. It just comes down to the simple fact that life isn't fair. And yet, within those parameters, you see that some of the people here are very happy, gracious, graceful, and productive, making choices that allow them to live their lives fully and happily within their society. As tourists we walk among these people, getting glimpses of how they live and what they do. It's amazing because it's different and it's the same. Different clothes, different food, different ways of doing the same things that we do, but with the same feelings that we have, the same reactions to situations that I would have. I delight to see myself, to recognize a piece of me in them. A blind beggars reacts to a coin dropping in his bowl. He smiles then frantically searches with his hand for the coin that hit the bowl and popped out. He could hear that it popped out from the way it sounded. He drums with one hand for a few seconds while he searches for the coin with the other hand. The drum sounds still talking, still making sense and calling to me. He finds the coin after a few seconds feels it's size, knows it's a 5 rupee coin, seems satisfied and drops it in the metal bowl and continues playing with 2 hands. Yes I can understand him. That's what I would do too. That but for luck, but for karma, but for a roll of the dice is me and I feel happy and sad when I recognize myself in him and in the other people of this wonderful terrible city.