This Christmas Season, Nepal Reminds US of Just How Good We Have It

By Steve Richards

​It’s been a tough 2020 pretty much everywhere. We in the USA lament the suffering and deaths, the shaken economy, our politics, civil strife; it’s ongoing and overwhelming sometimes. How could it get any worse? you’ve probably thought this year. Maybe even today the thought has run through your mind.

Now imagine all of this but with a monthly income of $86, the average monthly income of a Nepali. Forget that they just got through the monsoons with no A/C and head into winter with no central heat, just a hefty winter blanket and body heat from loved ones. Add to this: landslides, floods, and the actual smell of death in the villages on really bad days for some.

Now Imagine all this hardship while being a tiny Christian minority. Many wonder that there are Christians in Nepal at all. Nepal is sandwiched between two ascending rivals: India and China. It is a new democracy and no superpower. Except perhaps in spirit.

Nepal has largely been shut down in the same way as most everywhere else. Stay inside mainly. Masks, social distancing, waiting for a vaccine. Tough folks Nepalis. Something we all share? Resiliency. Though we happen to be rich in comparison.

It is these same folks that we celebrate in A Kathmandu Christmas.

What is harder for us to empathize with are the social stigmas based in Nepal’s Hindu caste system roots, even with one of the most progressive constitutions in all of Asia. Our friend Brother Barnabas in Katmandu, a Christian leader of the highest order, relates that they are in a situation that five types of disasters seem to be aiming at them all at once: natural, economic, social, political, and even the religious.

He writes in his most recent newsletter:

They tabooed you, barred you
not to approach them, do not make an eye
contact, do not speak, to not touch anything
around… stay away from us! Where existed the
love, care and compassion? Wearing a mask! 

I think it could be said that we in the USA share in these realities to a large degree. Though it’s hard to say we have a religious disaster. If you read on in the latest newsletter the hope and faith of the believers comes through. They’ve been through worse. As a culture that has existed into pre-history, this isn’t their first pandemic. Nepal is poor but irrepressible.

We were in Kathmandu in January of this year and watched the pandemic in the newspapers unfold just over the Himalayas into early February while shooting footage for our film Piles of Bricks Revisited. We left for home just before the travel restrictions came down. Many Americans and westerners are still there as international  flights were largely terminated in the spring. We are hoping to be able to get back in the Spring of 2021 but realistically we are looking at the fall I suppose.

Signing up for a screening of A Kathmandu Christmas is a great way to support the folks that we work with there. I know It can be hard to have too much feeling for folks outside our country at this time. We are exhausted. But that’s just it. You will likely wind up feeling so good about your state in the world the film is uplifting to most.

​Please come by our All Day Christmas Party this Saturday the 19th. We’ll be screening the film all day at no charge. For more about the party click here.

"This art-work is an artistic portrayal of those Health-Servants who lost their lives during the Pandemic. Have a magnifier and see the picture, so many faces of the doctors and nurses."

---

Read about the COVID-19 efforts of the Christian Church in Nepal from Brother Barnabas with his latest ”Adventure with Him in Nepal” which we offer unedited:
​

---