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« Fairyland | Main | songlines »
Friday
May062011

electric

Namaste,

The unemployed Nepalese teacher, hustling 10 million visitors asked, "Do you know what NEPAL means?"

Big business? Economic survival? Mountains? High altitude sickness? Adventure travel? Peak experiences?
Whining, demanding Chinese?
Sitars and raga symphonic structures?
Extensive deep raging rivers?
Riding an elephant looking for extinct tigers?
An old woman collecting and loading cow shit patties into a wicker basket for home fire fuel?
Chakra, crystal healing?
A Chinese woman walking with her Nepalese lover, both measuring the ground with the eyes feeling the inevitable end of a quick painless short term physically satisfying fix?
Stoned out ragged travel casualties? 

Big fat culturally insensitive white Europeans wearing fancy expensive climbing gear as their Sherpa guide in flip flop sandals carrying the world on his back runs up the mountain, leaving them in the dust?

Young Israeli cowboys fresh from mandatory military service staring at a sacred cow shitting in the street? 15 million Nepalese women on their hands and knees mopping floors with a dirty rag because mops are too expensive?

Rolling fuel shortages because a) the government wants to increase demand b) India reduces supply?
Limited daily electricity? Nepalese must pay for electricity they do not receive. 

"Not exactly," said the teacher refreshing his lost hunger for money.
"NEPAL means Never Ending Peace And Love."

"Watch out for the land mine!" yelled a Cambodian orphan in exile.

Metta.

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