I learned a lot from Nepali people that I never expected to, things worth more to me now than they ever would have prior to such an amazing trip, but now, alas, a new adventure and a new job hunt awaits me.
Certainly before I left the UK for Nepal, I had no idea how much I loved writing.
That was partly because I had no real idea how powerful the written word truly was. Writing, in its best most fluid form, is enchanting. It's emotive. It's dramatic. It's thought-provoking. It's powerful. It's The Holy Bible. It's the Qur'an. The Magna Carta. It's the Dalai Lama, and the list goes on.
Let's get back to basics - I'm absolutely, positively sure that as you read this blog post, you're not thinking or aware of the people who are currently not reading this post, or of the people who simply cannot read. According to UNESCO, 796 million adults worldwide cannot read or write. Two thirds of them are women. 63% of this 796 million live in Southern Asia, which brings me back full circle to Nepal.
In some rural parts of Nepal where I visited, there was a 36% literacy rate. Literacy is measured in different ways depending on who runs the survey and what they are trying to achieve. Testing may only involve knowing how to read and write one's own name.
And so it came about that I began to write down stories about people; about their adventures which were much more interesting than any I'd had so far; whose lives somehow I came across out there in various mountainously remote and majestically stunning regions; where I only caught glimpses of their daily lives.
I met an illiterate mother of three who started a micro-finance group in her village and paid for her husband to learn to drive lorries in India so that they could afford to buy books and food for their children.
I met an illiterate mother and father who looked after their severely disabled son every day and never grew tired of it.
I met an illiterate farmer who found out that the pesticides he was using were slowly killing him, but he had to carry on using them in order to earn enough to feed his family.
Looking For Godot never set out to be a way for me to flex my story-telling skills, it began as a way to keep my friends, family, and anyone else interested updated on what I was doing in Nepal. Instead, it led to me being able to share the stories of these wonderful people in a national daily newspaper. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised by the feedback I received for some of the stories from people who had lived in Nepal all their lives and had never realised such people as those in my stories existed outside the metropolis of the Kathmandu valley. In those moments, it dawned on me just how powerful the written word is.
And now I'm back on home ground again, looking for some other rare rubies of advice, awaiting my next adventure.
Shame though, because I still haven't found Godot.
