What Do You Take for Granted: Traveling with Privilege

One of the aspects of travel that I most appreciate is how it can put our own petty challenges in perspective. After spending time in Nepal and India, I was once again reminded of some aspects of life I take for granted that not everyone in the world can. 

Running Water

You use a dish and want to wash it. What do you do? You turn on the faucet. You use the toilet and flush it. You feel dirty after going to the gym, so you hop in the shower. Running water that for the most part is potable right from the tap is almost a given in most everywhere in the US and Europe. I think that’s what was so shocking about what is happening with the crisis in Flint, Michigan. We have all heard about the scarcity of water in Africa and other developing nations and if you are person that is prone to reading travel guides or advisories, you know they tell you to always buy bottled water while traveling abroad. But it’s one thing to know that water is scarce and it’s another to see a line of people’s buckets in Kathmandu at least 100 people long as they wait to fill up their bucket on a Saturday for their family. It’s another to not be able flush the toilet because there is not water in the pipes. It’s another to think water could make you sick rather than hydrating your body. Earlier this month I read that girls from some African villages spend up to six hours a day collecting water for their family, walking over three and a half miles. Time they could be spending  getting an education. 

Indoor Plumbing 

I don’t know about you, but in childhood my experience, indoor plumbing with flush toilets that can handle you disposing your toilet paper are as common as daffodils in the spring. And yet again, this is a Western assumption.  In Nepal, like in much of south east Asia, a toilet can often be a small hole in the ground, sometimes with two areas to place your feet. If there is toilet paper provided, it is understood that it goes in the waste paper basket, not the toilet or hole in the ground. Use the water bucket next to the “toilet” to flush your business and don’t forget, shake with your right hand – the left is used to clean yourself up. 

Gas

One day while we drove through Kathmandu Bimal pulled over exclaiming excitedly, “look that station is giving out petrol. We have to take advantage.” He went on to explain to me that gas was virtually impossible to come by and that people stood in lines for up to two to three hours for gas for their vehicles. That the black market had had gas at double the price until a small problem with India closed the border and prevented the gas from arriving into Nepal. “I always keep an extra container of gas at home and fill it when I can. You just never know.”

Electricity

“It looks like the electricity isn’t on yet,” Bimal remarked as we came down the hill toward the house from Kathmandu. “Maybe by 9:30 it will come one. We can check the schedule in the house.” I looked at my phone 13%. It hadn’t been fully charged in days since the electricity runs daily, but not always at the same time. Obviously a minor inconvenience, but when the electricity is off, fans don’t run, which in 90-106 degree heat can feel oppressive. Of course, worse than the inconvenience of being hot or running out of juice on your smart phone, kids do homework by candlelight, food cannot be refrigerated and hospitals run on generators. 

Rocks and Bricks

Everywhere you are look there are piles of rocks and bricks, sand and gravel. Rocks serve as a form of “paperweight” to hold down the metal roofs on houses.

 Piles of rocks line the road waiting to be used to build something, repair something or as a holding place after something fell down or was destroyed. Workers manually place brick upon brick as they continue to slowly repair the extensive damage incurred last April and May in the Earthquakes that rocked the country. Temples knocked down, tops of houses destroyed, schools collapsed – leaving skeletons of buildings and piles and piles of rocks and bricks. 

Share the Road

In the US, share the road implies that you are looking out for other motorists, bicycles and the occasional pedestrian.  Not so in Nepal and India.  As if it weren't enough that there are only traffic police and no stop lights whatsoever, and no lane lines dividing that traffic, there are also the dogs, goats, cows and hundreds of pedestrians. Busses, trucks, cars and a gazillion motorcycles zip down half paved roads littered with pot holes in what feels like a real live game of Frogger. Cows wander into the middle of the lane or sleep in the middle of the road and motorists adeptly maneuver around them and one another in a orchestra of vehicles.