(this post is long, and isn't really a blog.......... it's a way to put an article on line..........)
Please consider this - life is centrally about relationship. We need to have our own clear, still center, which then primarily takes form via relationship with our companions, the earth and the spaces in which we dwell. That is, we are little else apart from our union with others, and our relationships are connected more deeply as each partner feeds, gives to, the other.
Giving can be considered as a path to making whole and enlivening our journey.
Another angle to explore giving: I offer that to be rich is not to want. We in the "west" have everything and keep wanting: are we over and over trying to fill our spiritual emptiness with stuff? Is the richest person he who has nothing, and wants nothing?
Much of the world and Nepal specifically - it ranks first to fourth poorest country, depending on indicators - is a "need" based society. Survival and sustenance, day to day and hand to hand, is a widespread concern. In Nepal - perhaps due to greeting all you encounter with "namaste," said with hands at heart in prayer form and a deep gaze into one another's eyes - there is pervasive quiet joy, if you will, or at least a gentle humble peace.
Before discarding their lovely demeanor due to fatalist Hinduism - and i understand life is mixed everywhere; i'm not romanticizing their condition - just hold the possibility and ask, "what can I learn from them?"
I'm learning to sit still on my small patch of earth, pay attention to the life swirling around me, do what is in front of me and offer a hand to my companions, hopefully with some of that quiet joy. Again, this is what I've extrapolated from being in Nepal - I'm not saying this is how most Nepali's live.
The heart of what i'm offering - giving as a way of living. To "give back" is to say we've only taken and are now making amends. Considering our stressful and competitive society, it's hard to avoid putting our work above all else and then one day wake up and realize we've left the other part of the dynamic out of the equation - we've worked hard and grabbed and and claimed and taken and forgotten we can also achieve our life's intentions through giving (perhaps even truer to who we are at heart). I'm seeing (finally) that in each action, I can look for how I can give to a companion - be in relationship - rather than grab and pull into my self, which only feeds my isolation.
What does a life of giving look like? I certainly don't know - I am learning this late in life - but here are other ways i'm pursuing. First, a small clarification - most friends consider me generous, but i know there are many ways I can invert my ways of interacting.
I consider time to be our greatest commodity, far beyond stufff and money. As such, i'm learning to give my self through showing up and offering any small hand I can (which usually means getting up from this computer). I'm not suggesting our valuable work or service isn't essential; everything is about balance. Left to my own unconscious motivations, my work becomes precious and I attach my self-worth both to the hard work and outcomes. As I awaken day by day, I learn to focus on how my work is primarily a way of giving or serving.
Another aspect of giving time: A vibrant Irish story teller once told me that there is no more important work for him than turn and engage with the person sitting next to him on the bus. It's so easy for me to be self-absorbed, day-dreaming out the window or in my book when there is a person with real stories sitting next to me. I'm as conditioned as anyone in our society to operate as a discrete entity floating through public spaces, with our headphones and smart phones and phones - by giving myself to any random person, I may open a door into a lifetime friendship, or at least feed (and/or receive) a morsel of human warmth and acknowledgment. Being seen and regarded is a basic human desire.
The most interesting nuance of giving i'm learning - ironically, asking for help is actually giving back. By making myself vulnerable and asking a friend to see who or where i am and to help me find my way, i'm giving them a part of myself, that expands themselves - I'm making their life bigger and richer. I'm giving them a real relationship, not afraid to enter uncomfortable places, and want them to join me there.
OK, that's enough background, onto the subject at hand - ways of helping Nepalis develop a program to create buildings which gives new life to waste and build community in the making. All I've written above begins to explore the deeper purpose of giving; all you're about to read illustrates how giving is life-giving. What follows is spoken through "we," as I'm one of many volunteers who help at the foundation i work with in Nepal, the Kevin Rohan Memorial Eco Foundation (KRMEF).
We are fortunate to have found an extraordinary budding Nepali NGO whose founder and director, Krishna Gurung, is working towards helping an existing village - Kharare, just south of Kathmandu - develop and live into a wide spectrum of sustainable practices. He is working with his fellow villagers, introducing ideas which find wide-spread approval by the village. Krishna's vision is both to create a model village for the Kathmandu Valley as well as take the show on the road through workshops and consultations.
KRMEF always has western volunteers there, between two and 16, who live and eat with him and his family while particpating in the work. The programs include bio-dynamic gardening, bio-fuels, health clinic, jewelry and crafts, day care, building and operating an "Ankuran" (orphanage), augmenting the local schools with Waldorf-inspired lessons, land/water systems, and natural building. All of these programs are developing organically and slowly, taking firm root, with no major funding. Krishna does attract numerous small individual donors, many of whom have spent time there and are a part of the community. What follows are ways we expand our lives as we give:
We give our time. We make the trip all the way there. halfway around the world. Just showing up there from so far away tells the Nepalis that we care about who they are their lives. Knowing we matter to others is another basic human desire.
We give back our status or power - as being a westerner, with all of our baggage, sets us apart from many Nepalis we work with, we ask for help and take on any task while working together. We don't claim to be experts, we only have ideas they haven't considered, to fold into their traditions to find effective ways of living (amidst increasingly westernized systems and methods in their society, such as building with concrete blocks, or eating processed foods in plastic bags and containers).
We give our wealth - not by handing out money, but by acknowledging their true wealth. Our wealth only isolates us as we think we don't need to regard anyone as we can get what we want at the expense of other's livlihood (I'm referring to corrupt aspects of capitalism). We spend little money when we're there, as we engage in their simpler village life.
We give back our preconceptions - we don't come there assuming we know what to do, we submit ourselves to their ways of living. We don't speak of them being backwards; rather, we appreciate their simpler ways in contrast to the rat race we run around in at home. We form relationship with them and the land and their traditions and work together to create the most effective way to build.
And so on. These ways of giving are, perhaps, the more long-lasting gift we offer while we create buildings together with Nepalis. The building process is all about forming and enriching community - it takes a village to build a village. Natural building is low in skill and in need of many helping hands, and it's fun! Workers smile and laugh and throw mud at each other and get their hands and feet muddy and their faces shine when they take a waste glass bottle and set in into mortar of clay and sand - who would think to build in such a way?!
I met Krishna when he was in the US on a fund-raising tour, in the fall of 2010. He had a vague idea of building with waste bottles from the embassies in Kathmandu, and I agreed that night to come there and help him and his village find a way to do that effectively. When we arrived in Nepal - Beth, my wife, joined this initial trip there - we found a team of Nepalis who gave their knowledge and energy. There is an experienced builder in Kharare - as all building methods follow the same basic principles, uniquely adapted to the materials at hand, he quickly saw ways to make this method work. There is also an older bamboo craftsman, who built the structural frame and roof. And there are many laborers who developed clever systems to produce many pounds of earthen plaster from clay, sand and chopped-up straw. First, the sand needs to be carried to a site, which comes from a nearby river. The clay comes from the immediate site. These are first mixed together dry, then water is added and and the mix is stomped on - danced in! - while slowly folding in the straw. This earthen plaster becomes mortar to hold the bottles in place. The bottle walls are only walls - the bamboo provides the structure, which is important as bamboo will give and sway when earthquakes occur.
Now, after going to Nepal four times in the past year and developing a project during each trip, we have a good system down. I spend two weeks at each location, where i work with the villagers and western volunteers as the first trip. We've built a model home for someone in need and an addition onto the community center in Kharare, and gone to other parts of the Kathmandu Valley to build an orphanage and then a women's educational center. In each case, it takes another two or three months to complete the projects, depending on size and energy of each crew.
Part of our long-term intention is to build homes for those in need with profits from other projects. We have developed a skilled building crew - the person in need whose home they build will also work on their home, joining the crew. The new home owner will then work on the next few homes at reduced pay, to partially pay back for their home (profits would also contribute). Slowly, as a few such homes are built, another building crew will be established; over time, a network of new homes and jobs will be created. Creating jobs is an enormous issue in Nepal, as is providing shelter.
There is endless need in Nepal, or said in a more useful way, there is tremendous possiblibity. We've established firm traction with this building method, which has generated tremendous excitement throughout the Kathmandu Valley. We could live there and help build 24/7. Each time we build we give skills and purpose to Nepalis, and ourselves. As we give to and feed one another, we form close relationships. This is all we can ask for.
