So…we dropped off our stuff at the hotel and headed back out….Michael to collect garbage with our boys, and myself to take the new boys we’d just met out for some food. What followed was a more challenging night for me. The new boys seem to be fans of a popular scheme for getting money from tourists. They tell you they have a hungry or sick baby sibling at home and they want you to buy them milk for the baby. The reason for this is formula is one of the most expensive items in the grocery stores. After you buy them the milk they either sell it to someone else or return it and take the money. Oftentimes they use the money to buy drugs. Just like we saw in Kenya, huffing glue is very popular here among young boys. Three of them kept telling me they wanted me to buy milk for their baby siblings who are sick, but when I’d ask to go to the babies they didn’t want any part of that. I found an inexpensive sandwich shop where I could buy the boys sub sandwiches they could eat right away. After they ate they headed home.
I sat down with a woman I’ve met a few times before. She has a 4 year old daughter who is just precious! Her husband left her when her daughter was 1 month old. She struggles to make ends meet.
I’m being faced more and more with questions of what really is the best way to help? In a city where so many people make such a meager living, what is the best way for me to help? I just want to love people, pray for them, encourage them, speak life & hope to them, but since I’m a tourist I look like dollar signs to many and that seems to sometimes hinder what I want to see happen.
As I sit with my friend a couple of our boys show up. One is the original Rockus (I talked about him in an earlier blog.) He normally wears a smile that lights up the street, but tonight he’s looking pretty sad. He fell earlier and almost knocked a tooth out. He also tells me he hasn’t eaten all day and he’s hungry. I am in disbelief that he really hasn’t eaten all day. This is worse than I had originally thought. I ask again….you really haven’t eaten anything at all…what about breakfast?…nothing….lunch?….nothing. So I take him and his friend for sandwiches at the sandwich place I discovered. As they eat I start to see that familiar smile coming around again.
Enter a Nepali man who sits down beside me on the bench after ordering his sandwich. He asks me where I’m from and so starts our conversation. He shares that he is a social worker who helps to take orphaned street kids off the streets and put them in a home and school a few minutes away. He starts tearing up as he tells me how hard it is that they all go back to their life on the streets within a few weeks of him “rescuing” them. He is holding his heart as he tells me that it has made him sick to see them go back to their old way of life. They like handouts from tourists and they like drugs more than they want to live in the home and go to school. Oof, that hurts me too. I think to myself, I am one of those tourists. I smell alcohol on his breath and wonder what’s real. After he leaves, the boys make fun of him for crying.
The boys have to go back to work so I start walking back to my hotel alone. A young man walks up next to me….clearly stoned….I don’t see any glue container, but I can smell it on his breath. I didn’t think that was possible? He’s asking me for biscuits, but I’ve heard this ploy too….again, similar to the milk, they ask for biscuits to eat, but will sell them unless you open them in the store after buying them so they can’t resell them. It’s at this point that his friend walks up and they point to his arm. His forearm is wrapped in two strips ripped from a t-shirt….blood has soaked through and there is dried blood around the “bandages.” They explain in very broken English that he was sleeping and a bigger boy got angry and cut him up with a razor. It looks terrible to me. He’s asking me for medicine. I am overwhelmed by this situation. I’m praying that I know what to do. It’s in that moment that a friend who works at the hotel shows up behind me. I ask him for his advice about medical care at 9:00 pm. He tells me that the hotel has a first aid kit so we walk back to the hotel where he and I clean and bandage the boys arm. It’s covered with little razor blade slices. He told me earlier that I couldn’t pray for him, but as we work on the wounds I am definitely praying. When his arm is all cleaned up he thanks me and his eyes look different than they did before. Then he walks away.
And that was my night. Overwhelming….but as I come to my room I remember that Jesus is the answer to every question and the solution to every problem. (I don’t mean I am getting an immediate answer or solution, or that it looks the way I want it to….but He alone is all I need.) That even when my heart is overwhelmed by what is around me, He is still Lord. He is Lord of Kathmandu….He is Lord of Thamel. He came to give me peace…not as the world gives….His peace is different….unaffected by circumstances….so I will not let my heart be troubled or afraid.
