I followed twelve year old Anup
through the streets of Kathmandu,
Nepal into a
tangle of broken down, dilapidated apartment buildings. We had met in Durbar Square and he wanted to show me
where he lived, convinced that if I knew the truth I would invite him to trek
with me through the Himalayas. I was new to traveling, fearful and certain that
he was trying to embroil me in some sort of scam. Looking around, I noticed that windows in the
majority of buildings were either cracked or missing, doors had rotted off of
their hinges and paint, that which remained, was severely chipped. Women haunted the alleys either doing laundry
at communal water basins or digging in plots where the dirt was either too
rancid or too depleted of minerals to grow anything they planted. Their clothes were so old and worn they
looked more like rags that may once have been colorful but were now faded. Hands were dirty, faces exhausted and the few
eyes that darted up to catch a glimpse of me were numb. One girl who said hello to Anup looked to be
about twenty-five, but Anup said she was only a year older than him.
When we
reached what could loosely be described as a courtyard, Anup turned right and
bounded up three steps to an open door.
Raising my eyes to appraise the building I was about to enter, I felt
ill. Neglected wouldn’t even begin to
describe the state of the building in which Anup lived. Bricks had been torn from the walls and the
holes they left looked like giant pock marks.
Seven windows were shattered and jagged glass still stood in the
frames. The front door was cracked, and
could no longer be closed without scraping the floor. I was horrified to
discover it was actually inhabited. In
the States, it wouldn’t have passed a single inspection and it would have been
condemned a long time ago.
However, Anup entered with the same
ease, the same sense of familiarity that I used to have entering my parents’
house every day after school. We climbed
up two flights of stairs, each step whining beneath the weight of our
feet. I held my breath as best as I
could, aiming to block out the foul stench that permeated the air; the smell of
decaying flesh and bodily waste. The
stairwell was lit by nothing more than a few holes in the wall. There was no banister, and I doubted any one
had painted the walls in the past two decades if they had ever been painted at
all.
Reaching
the second floor Anup turned left down a dark narrow hallway and stopped about
half way down in front of a door no thicker or sturdier than a sheet of
plywood. As far as I could discern,
there was no numbers or any other mark to differentiate it from any other
room. There was neither a doorknob nor a
lock to ensure privacy and security.
Jabbing it with his foot, Anup easily pushed it open. My horror upon entering the building was
nothing compared to the revulsion I felt stepping into his cell. I won’t even dare to call it a room, since
the word itself radiates an element of warmth of which his cell contained
none. It was no longer than ten feet and
no wider than six. The floor was made of
cement. There was no window to provide
either light or ventilation. He had no
bed, only two blankets spread out over the floor and a sleeping bag so thin I
wondered how it could keep anyone warm.
Curiously,
angrily, my eyes scanned the rest of his room, and the more they absorbed, the
more repulsed I felt. There was not a
single lamp, not even an outlet where one could be plugged in. There was no dresser, no desk and not a
single appliance. Hung on a solitary
nail punched into one of the walls was tee-shirt and plaid flannel shirt. In one corner was a small wooden table that
stood about as high as my knee and spread out across it was a pair of socks, a
toothbrush and a black comb. That was
extent of his possessions, all he could call his own. I looked again to make sure I hadn’t missed
something, but the inventory didn’t change.
He had no television, no video games, no football or baseballs, no bicycle
and not one chocolate bar. What kid back
home could survive in that cell which Anup called home?
Outside the
clouds broke and I could hear the rain lashing against the building. I wanted to turn around and run away despite
the rain, but I was rendered immobile by a lightening bolt of guilt which
ripped though my consciousness and burned through my body with such
recklessness I’d never forget it. Not
once had I ever gone to bed cold. Not
once did I ever know what it was like to go hungry. Not once was I ever deprived of a summer
holiday. Yet how many times as a child
did I have a temper tantrum in a store because my parents refused to by me a
toy I wanted? How many articles of
clothing did my mother buy me that I ended up hiding in the back of my closet
to prevent her from pestering me to wear them?
How many times did my parents ask me to do something but I refuse
because I was too busy? And how many
times did I declare that they hated me simply because I felt cheated in one way
or another? I expected everything I was
given and not once did I ever consider the fact that there were those who went
without simple necessities. Sure there
were the commercials – ‘For the price of one cup of coffee you feed a child for
a week’; the clichés – ‘You know there are people starving in Africa,’
but how could they compete with the unpleasant reality in which I was
submerged.
“Where is
your family?” I finally found my voice, appalled by the realization that this
young boy lived alone, far removed from the loving and sheltering arms of a
family.
“My father
was a drunk,” Anup explained, his face twisted in bitterness. “He went out one day to look for work and
never came home. My mother has three
sons and could not feed all of us. Since
I was the oldest, she told me to leave.”
“How do you
support yourself? Where do you get money
to eat and pay rent?” I asked even
though it seemed absurd that anyone should have to pay rent to live in such a
cold dreadful place.
“I give
tours of Durbar Square
and if I’m lucky tourists will pay me.”
So that’s what he was after from me - money to survive. But could I really blame him? What would I have done had I been twelve and
all alone on the streets in New York? But the greater question was – Could I trust
him? Could I trust him up in the
mountains where he had every advantage over me?
“That’s why I had to learn English and German.”
“Did you
learn in school?” I asked, amazed that this poor child – disadvantaged in so
many ways - could speak multiple languages, whereas I – a privileged white
American - could speak only one.
“No,” he
scoffed. “Here school is only for people
who have money. I learn from talking to
people like you and from reading books that others have thrown away or given me
out of pity.”
“It doesn’t
seem fair,” I spoke aloud but the words were addressed to myself and my friends
back home, friends who complain they are poor because they can’t afford to stay
in a five star hotel or go out to dinner ever night.
“It’s not
so bad,” Anup frowned, his eyes straying to the bleak walls. “Someday I’ll have
a room with a window and I’ll be able to buy enough candles to light up my room
to read when it gets dark.”
His words called me out of my
cocoon of guilt, forcing me to further confront the hypocrisy of my life. “How do you manage?” I asked trying to
envision what my childhood would have been like if I had been him.
“It could be worse. I could have to sleep out there,” he tossed
his head towards the spot on the wall where a window should have been. “It’s cold in the winter and hot in the
summer, but at least I can stay dry and sleep without worrying about who might
try to steal my shirt.” His optimism was
astounding. He was looking at a nearly
empty glass, and yet somehow managed to see it as half full.
“If you could have anything you
wanted, anything at all, what would you ask for?” At that moment I could think of about a half
a dozen things that would make his life better, easier, even happier, but I
regret to say that not one of the things I thought of matched his
response.
“I’d want to go to school.”
“School?” I spoke the word as if I
hadn’t heard him correctly. I could ask
a hundred kids back home that very same question and their responses would
range from horses, to Playstation, to trips to Disney World. Many of them would probably even be happy to
exchange school for one materialistic object or another. And I was certain that not one American kid,
at least none that I knew, ever looked upon school in the same light as the boy
standing before me.
“Yes,” he sat down on the cold
cement floor, pressing his back to the wall and pulling his knees up into his
chest. Instead of looking at me while he
spoke, he looked at his feet. “If I
could go to school I’d never have to ask for anything ever again. If I went to school I could get a real job
and with the money I made I could buy anything else I might want.”
Completely and totally
flabbergasted I stared at Anup, wondering how at his age he came to the same
realization that most Americans didn’t make until after high school, if they
made it at all. There were still things
I wanted, things I wished for every night, yet I stood there in that lonely
cell doubting I’d ever have the means to acquire them. Perhaps, I had just been conditioned to want
too much. Growing up spoiled I took the
little things for granted. When you have
a parent cooking dinner and tucking you in at night I suppose it’s easy to lose
sight of what’s really important.
“We should go shopping,” I
suggested, turning to the door, having experienced enough squalor for the
moment.
“What for?” Anup looked at me with
round questioning eyes.
“Boots,” I smiled. “It doesn’t look like you have any and I’m
not taking you into the mountains without a decent pair on your feet.”
“Boots are expensive,” his face
fell. “I don’t have any money.”
“But I do.” I might end up regretting my decision to
take him trekking but I feared regretting it more if I left him behind. In the short while I had known Anup,
something in me had changed. 
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