Activism Vs. Skepticism: A Showdown
The Awareness into Action series of blog posts originated in 2011 as a way to document ordinary folks attempting to get out there and do good. We began by following a pair of MF staffers through the setbacks and triumphs of their endeavor to take the inspiration of Mountainfilm and turn it into something tangible in Ghana. Now the series continues as we follow a former MF staffer, in Kathmandu, Nepal.
A recovering skeptic’s take on activism, idealism, and development in the real world. And how to live your ideal life without clean air or breakfast burritos.
Kathmandu, Nepal, is by my estimates, about as far on the opposite side of the world as you can get from Telluride, Colorado. The steaming cow patties, verdant rice paddies, honking motorbikes, and tinkling temple bells that mark my morning commute are evidence enough of that. It’s a seething city of about 4 million where it’s about as likely that if your motorbike breaks, a duck will be sacrificed for it as it is that an actual mechanic will be brought in. Visibility on an average morning is about 500 m on the ring road, through a thick blend of exhaust, dust, fog, aerosolized animal dung, and smoke from both incense and trash fires. On the other hand, this place is about as full of mountain-loving do-gooders as Telluride on a Mountainfilm weekend. There are literally thousands of NGOs here, working on every imaginable angle and variation of what they think is good.
I consider myself both a mountain-lover and a do-gooder, but I realized my first mistake when my plane was circling in to land at Tribhuvan International Airport — all over the valley below me were rice paddies and in the spaces in between the houses, red, tropical dirt. I’d been told that Kathmandu was at 4000 feet, but hadn’t yet processed the fact. The real mountains, snowy and huge, were hours away in the distance.
Within a couple weeks of this disconcerting discovery, I realized I’d have to dig a little deeper to survive and be happy in a city where the rivers are not only muddy and slow-moving, but also serve the triple function of garbage dumps, burial sites, and toilets. All of which renders them too toxic to comfortably wiggle your toes in. So what then, if not the mountains and the local environment, has kept me here for the past couple months?
For the last few years, I have been living in Telluride working in a variety of jobs and volunteer positions, some of them remunerative, some satisfying, and few both. Before that I spent two years in China working at a small non-profit called the Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge doing community-based development work. It was a fantastic, frustrating experience that, upon my return to the US, drove me to move straight to a mountain town and seek work outside the NGO world.
From the start of my time in Telluride, the highlight of my year has always been one particular weekend in May — Mountainfilm festival weekend. The rest of the year in Telluride is full of good things — but it can feel like a bit of a bubble. So Mountainfilm is a 96-hour-long whirlwind of films and forums and art and conversations where I stay awake for 22 hours a day and routinely get my mind blown. In addition to being a chance to think hard about some of the big problems the world faces it’s an inspirational kool-aid-fest and I come out every year wanting to be a Tibetan antelope-saving/anti-mining/human rights activist/journalist/doctor.
Recently, though, I started to wonder how useful all that indomitable spirit is to me if it’s not translated into something concrete. What about the other 360 days a year? And what about the world outside the box canyon? What can I do personally sustain that inspiration throughout the rest of my life and turn it into something that doesn’t just sound good, but Is good?
In trying to answer that question, and after months of following a path lined by equal parts serendipity and mistake, I ended up here in the lowlands of Kathmandu, Nepal.
I am here with the dZi Foundation, an international non-profit which works to improve the lives of people in some of the poorest, most remote villages of eastern Nepal. I will spend the next 9 months trying to figure out what it means for a small non-profit based in Ridgway, Colorado to do good halfway across the world. In theory, I am not a volunteer—the dZi Foundation has provided me with a fellowship that covers my travel and basic living expenses, as well as weekly Nepali language classes. Functionally, I am making no money, and have given up three seasons of running around in the sun-bitten mountains of my favorite place on earth to trudge through the smog and plentiful cow dung of the world’s youngest democracy. I feel incredibly fortunate.
Next week; Cows, conflict, and what does the dZi Foundation actually do?
