The Balancing Act.

I’ve been thinking about how the folks who live here must perceive our team. How they must perceive our presence here in their villages, amongst their families and in their homes.

It’s somewhat more clear when I see the way that they look at us when we take the first steps onto a new mountain ridge. Their eyes peer us up and down. Their faces look nervous. Their body language is rigid. They mutter amongst themselves and curiously watch our every move. They have no idea what to make of us.

We are people from another world.

This is the rarest of places. A region completely out of reach of the mass media. There are no ads here, because there are no stores here. There are no magazines. No newspapers. No television. No want and no need.

A place where children can actually dress like children. Where female role models are not hyper-sexualized stick insects and where everyone actually knows your name.

I was joking around with my team-mates that we should start dressing in space suits, just so we could realize how the villagers would treat us the exact same way that they do now.

The simplest games become these interesting cultural experiments.

While on a trek down by a mountain river, we decided to create makeshift Inukshuks out of the stones. Two of the Nepali children on our hike were absolutely perplexed by this.

Since the waving of a hand is not a recognized greeting here, it allows one to be more flexible with their symbolic manifestation of ‘hello’. I’ve taken the cultural-mashup approach, mixing the traditional ‘Namaste’ hand gesture with a hearty Texan “Howdy!” to people I meet along the way. I’ve received several curious glances, many warm smiles and one actual “Howdy!” back.

The villagers aren’t the only ones who are confused.

While walking along the trail this afternoon, our guide knelt down and picked up a jagged leaf that he told me was “The Medicine Plant”. Who knows what kind of ridiculous opiate the damn thing was. All I know is that the day flew by, I broke out in hives and I swear that at one point I saw some people in a rice patty dancing to the YMCA song.

The next time I come back here, I’m bringing my laser pointer and some astronaut ice cream.