Inquiries

Everywhere we’ve gone in India and Nepal the question is “From which country?”. Most of the time it’s out of pure curiosity and nothing more. It’s like our question of “What do you do?” – but here in the East, it’s more important where you come from. When it’s a sweet giggling child who just wants to practice their English, or a young teenager who has honest wide-eyed fascination about where we come from, it can be endearing. In fact, one of the cutest things is the young teenage girls who practice their “Hello”, and then when I say it back, they giggle like they’ve been caught.

But unfortunately, many have also been tainted and jaded to see Americans as a source to take from. In one neighborhood, the children said “Hello-one-Rupee” as if it was all one word – a standard greeting. Another unabashed boy (and I’m not talking about the street begging children, mind you, but well dressed school children) TOLD me to give him ten rupees. An intellectual/emotional battle rages each time a young hand begs, especially in light of Scripture that tells us to give freely as we have freely received. Emotionally you want to believe that giving will help, but intellectually you know it will not. This was proven to us when we went to the Nepali village that as of yet remains un-jaded by tourism. We could see in living person the fresh innocence that these children still had and how zealously it needs to be guarded.

Perhaps the most interesting inquiry of all, though, was a Tibetan monk who stopped us and asked “From which country?”. When Jason said “USA”, he said “Oh, a rich country.” We instinctively bristled for what he would then ask for, but instead he said “I am from Tibet, so I have no country. You are twice blessed. You both have a country and it is a rich country.” He spoke with a toothy smile and then just walked away leaving us humbly chagrined.