What You Can Get for 9 Dollars

 

I was lucky enough to go to Nepal with 43 other amazing teenagers from around the world on the first Round Square “Big Build” project. We spent our first two days in the capital, Kathmandu. We then boarded a 2-hour bus through rural Nepal to our work site in a small village named Lele. We were greeted by the students who would attend the school we were building, and by all the village people that lived near our camp/worksite. After a day of getting settled into our tents and camp site and interacting with the locals we spent our first night in the mountains of Lele, Nepal.

 

Our days were fairly routine. We would wake up at 6:30 a.m., have morning games, then head off to breakfast. We were off to work by 8:30 a.m. We had a quick tea break at 10:30 a.m. and we were off for an hour lunch break by 12:30 p.m. We were back to work by 1:30 p.m. and our work day wrapped up by 3:30 p.m. Our work for the day would often be made up of hand mixing cement, passing bricks, passing trays of cement or digging dirt. If you were lucky, you got to lay bricks. After our long day of working in the hot Nepalese sun we would participate in the cultural experience of the day, always involving the locals. The cultural experiences would be watching traditional dances, playing badminton or just interacting with the children. Some of our cultural experiences would displace the daily schedule, such as going to visit a monk montessori or my personal favourite, watching the sunrise.

 

Watching the sunrise was one of my top highlights. At 3:30 a.m. we witnessed 43 crusty and tired teenagers emerge from their tents, in what I referred to the middle of the night. My group member uttered, “the sun isn’t up so I shouldn’t be.” We then all piled on to 2 buses and began the trek up the mountain. To say the ride was uncomfortable was an understatement. All I will say is, I have never appreciated paved roads so much. As we got to the top many of us forgot to consider the altitude change would also affect the temperature, making the majority of us very cold and unprepared. All this was a small price to pay to witness the sunrise. Watching the glowing orange sun rise over the Himalayan mountains is a sight I will never forget.

 

The second we got off the plane our phones were taken away. At first I felt like a piece of me was missing, as I am normally glued to my phone. This assumed tragedy turned into a blessing in disguise. I live in the Lakefield bubble. We are trapped in our ways. Always being connected, in each other’s drama, being stressed. Your phone allows you to hide. I now had nowhere to hide. You were forced to introduce yourself, make conversations and entertain yourself. I have never played as many card games as I did in Nepal. Nobody missed the ball and chain of a cell phone. It’s as if we were in a whole different world. This trip taught me how to disconnect to be able to connect.

 

Something that resonated with me throughout the trip was what you could get for 9 dollars. We were in rural Nepal, in the middle of a village. All around us for miles was where all the bricks in the country were being manufactured. You would see small tiny huts and fields and fields full of rows and rows of bricks drying out. We would watch the fragile old ladies make the bricks. She would have one brick mould. And one by one she would put a slab of cement into the mould, flip it over on the ground and move to the next one. This is what they would do all day everyday, baking in the sun. We were informed for every 1,000 bricks they get 9 dollars. This makes me think about what 9 dollars is worth to me. I would spend that on a snack and a drink with no second thought, for them 9 dollars helps to feed their family.

 

This trip taught me that I’m not afraid of the world around me, there’s so much outside this Lakefield bubble. It made me be me, not live up to who I should - be but who I am. And finally, it reminded me of how privileged I am and what is going on in the world, those who are less fortunate. And it really makes me realize what 9 dollars is worth.