Mud splashed beneath our feet as Ryan and I walked down the road from our hostel. Foul smells mixed with delicious ones overwhelmed my nose while man after man offered to sell us drugs ranging from marijuana to opium.
The mud was from the rain the night before. Judging from the clarity of the air, I guessed that the sludge we were tromping through was all the pollution particles from yesterday’s air. Wearing my boots, abused from months of tough terrain and awful climate conditions, I could feel the cold water soaking through slowly.
As we walked and talked about the difficulties of the month, a small man approached me. The young Indian, dressed in red plaid and carrying a small backpack looked small and frail enough for me to throw him over my shoulder as he meekly approached me. Used to being bluntly accosted by the myriad of street vendors, his slow and quiet approach caught me off guard.
“Sir, your shoes need repairing, please let me fix them.”
My immediate response, thinking him like all the others was “no thank you, I don’t need my shoes fixed”. Honestly, I couldn’t afford to anyway so I just dismissed him.
“Where are you from?”
“America”
“Oh, America very good, why you in Nepal? You trekking?”
“Yeah, we are here for 1 month visiting friends and touring”
(Our code for countries that aren’t friendly toward missionaries)
The conversation continued for a few minutes before he again asked if he could repair my shoes. After again refusing service, we went our separate ways, but he left an impression and I didn’t know why.
The next day our squad spent a couple hours doing spirit-led ministry. We just walk into the city and ask the spirit to lead us, and listen to what He says. I felt led to walk in a certain direction and Ryan pictured Rakesh, the Indian we had met the day prior.
After just a minute of walking, we saw him again. Thankfully today I had worn sandals so I didn’t have to refuse him again, but we began talking to Him.
“I can show you the city! You don’t have to pay me, just give me food for family.”
“How long will that take? We only have a couple hours.”
“Only a couple hours, I can show you the monkey temple”
“We don’t have time to go that far, but we want to help you, what can we do to help?”
“No, no, no, I show you city. If you like, you buy me food.”
“But can’t we just buy you the food?”
“No, no, why would you do that?”
Feeling it safe to breach the topic, Ryan and I replied:
“Jesus loves us, so we love you, and want to get you food.”
Rakesh looked at me. He looked at Ryan.
“Really?”
“Of course man! You can show us around the area right here and we can get you some food, what do you need?”
“Just rice and oil…are you sure?”
We affirmed our desire to help him and we began following Him. The scenery quickly changed. There were no other tourists, no street vendors, and we were the only white persons as far as I could see. We left behind the tourist district of Nepal and entered into the real part of Kathmandu. With just a bit of trepidation we followed, dodging the street dogs and monkeys dropping mangos from the power lines.
Arriving at this single car garage-sized concrete room, we saw a man selling 22 kilo bags of rice. We only had a little bit of money between the two of us, so we bought the little bit of rice that we could afford. After Rakesh put the bag into his backpack, he asked:
“Can you come to my home?”
Immediately, a thousand thoughts flooded my head.
“Where is it? Is it safe? How can we go to his house and eat his food when he has so little? What could happen? Do we have time, and if we do, do I want to commit to this much?”
Ryan and I checked our schedule and told him we wanted to but were not sure. Assuring him that we would find Him tomorrow, we went our separate ways; us to our hostel, and he resuming roaming the streets looking for shoes to repair.
The next day, Ryan and I both felt led to find Rakesh again. Not knowing if we could actually go to his house, we prepared to at least buy him coffee. We soon found him and asked him where the best coffee place was. He lead us to this “Nepali Starbucks” called Himalayan Java. We walked in and the man handed us a menu.
Rakesh stared at it.
“Rakesh, what do you want?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never been here”
“what do you mean you’ve never been here? You knew it was the best coffee place?”
“Tourists ask to be taken to good coffee places but I never get to go in with them”
My heart felt like someone had stabbed it. This man had been working in one of the richest parts of the city for the last decade but had never even been offered a cup of coffee??
We selected a caramel macchiato for him and enjoyed our drinks while we talked about life, religion, family, work, etc. When we asked him about his religion, he explained:
“Everyone here is Hindu or Buddhist. My family is Hindu, so I am Hindu.”
Refusing to let that settle, I asked him “but what do you believe?”
“Oh, we worship all the gods. In my house we have a temple to Hindu god, Buddhist god, Muslim god, and Christian God.”
“But what do you PERSONALLY believe?”
After a moment of quiet….
“For me….I don’t believe in them. Shiva doesn’t come to my house and give me food and Allah doesn’t help my family. I believe in my own hands, my own feet, and my brain. That’s what brings me food and my sisters education.”
That hurt so badly. This man who was so unassuming and so quiet, in his own way had just expressed his pain. He worshipped all of them out of fear but didn’t have a relationship with any of his gods. The resentment was obvious.
“So when can you come to my home?” Rakesh asked us.
Quickly checking our schedule, we realized that probably the only time we would have was right then. Telling him that, he immediately made a call then told us
“I told my sister to prepare good food! Come to my house and eat!”
We hopped into a taxi and made our way to his house. I say house because that’s the picture I had in my mind. As we crossed a field full of trash and open sewage, I began to get a picture of his life. We came into this community that looked like a miniature sketchy road-side motel. The pathways between the concrete walls were barely 6 feet and men, women, and children were cooking over open fires. Rakesh stepped into a dark doorway and after removing our shoes, we followed him.
Something hit me. Not literally, but the pungent smell of incense mixed with the thick wood smoke and what I later learned was the hot pepper from our meal knocked my breath out of me. Holding my breath to keep from coughing, I crouched down to get beneath the smoke as my eyes adjusted to the single light in the concrete twelve by twelve room-what his family of five called home.
Rakesh introduced us to his sisters and prepared us some traditional Indian food. I have never eaten anything as hot as that. My eyes teared up, my nose ran, and I wiped my forehead as I ate the most delicious and most fiery food I’d ever eaten.
Swapping glances, Ryan and I saw the fire in each other’s eyes but nodded in agreement that this was the best food we’d ever eaten.
Starting some conversation, partially to be polite, but mostly to give our mouths time to recuperate, our conversation quickly drifted to religion. Knowing we were Christians, Rakesh began talking about family members that were Christian, the bible that he had, the audio cd containing the story of Jesus that he heard, and the temple in the corner with the plethora of deities.
“I have a question” Rakesh began. “I know the mantra for the Hindus, the Buddhists, and the Muslims, but what do you Christians say to please your God?”
“Oh we don’t need anything to please God, He already loves us!”
“but how do you please him?”
“We don’t have to. He loves us and nothing that we do can make Him love us more or love us less”
As he thought about that, he asked us if we were married.
Being used to this question because Americans, I’ve concluded, get married way older than the rest of the world, we answered that we were not. However, we seized the opportunity.
“I don’t have a girlfriend but I do have a relationship. God loves me and I love God. Just like I would love my girlfriend and talk to her and know that she loves me, I love, talk with, and know that God loves me! He lives in my heart and the love that he shows me makes me love others.”
We then began talking about work, what we did and what he did. As we already knew, he repaired and polished shoes. He explained that he had a shop but lost it in the earthquake. Not having any means of supporting his family, he had put his few tools into a bag and roamed the streets asking people for work.
I asked him how well that worked for him. He said that it didn’t work very well because his work was dependent upon good weather and because he didn’t have a workstation, he couldn’t do repairs. Other shoe repairmen had boxes that provided them a workstation alongside the streets but they were too expensive for him to buy, so for the time being he was dependent upon what work he could find.
“How do you get a shoe repair box? What do they look like and how much do they cost?” Ryan and I asked.
“People make them and they cost about 15,000 to 25,000 Nepali rupees”
Quick mental calculation approximated $150-$250! Inadvertently the word “ouch!” Escaped my lips.
Rakesh nodded his head.
We finished our meal and talked with him and his sisters until the power went out, indicating it was time to leave.
Making our way through the rain in the dark across the same field was incredibly difficult but we made it to the road and found a taxi. As the door slammed, a simple glance confirmed both of our thoughts.
“We have to get him a shoe box”
Ryan nodded.
“We don’t have that kind of money”
Ryan nodded again.
“We only have one more day left!”
Arriving late that night, we shared our experience and conviction with the team and resolved to find a box for Rakesh the next morning.
Morning arrived and after a lot of prayer and finding a buddy, I set out and scoured a small fraction of the city to find a box. Not finding any, I made my way back and found Rakesh. He was still wandering the streets asking people if they needed their shoes repaired when I approached him and asked Him where we could find a box.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in an incredible adventure of going place to place throughout Kathmandu when we finally found a man who sold the boxes. I had no idea how to pay for the box but trusted that it would all work out.
Rakesh began bargaining with the man. “15,000 rupees!” The man exclaimed.
While a breath of fresh air that the man was starting at 15K instead of 25k, it might as well have been 50k cause I still only had 2,625 rupees in my pocket.
13 thousand! No more.
I pulled out my phone and calculated it to USD. It was approximately “still too much”
Rakesh told the man that the box wasn’t for me, but for himself and asked the man to help him out. The man reluctantly agreed to my 12 thousand rupee offer and a deal was struck.
Going to an ATM, I pulled out the appropriate sum and paid the man.
Rakesh thanked me and gave me a hug.
“Thank you!”
“Don’t thank me Rakesh, Jesus was the one who told me to do this.”
“Still though, thank you! Please let me shine your shoes!”
To be continued
