I said a quick “thank you” to the driver as I lugged my rucksack off the bus and began my short walk to the house. Something felt strange, it was a beautiful sunny day yet there was no-one to be seen, I was in a City yet there was no-one about, only a few cars drove past, but even they did so quietly. It was a strange feeling. I'd spent three weeks plodding my way round Nepal, and the only time I'd seen anywhere this quiet was Kathmandu at 5am on the walk to the bus stop, but this was Liverpool, in the middle of the day.
Now don't get me wrong, it only took me a day or two to get used to the change, this isn't a story of how I've spent years feeling out of place and lost, I've lived in the UK 25 years, three weeks won't change that, but it did make me realise a few things. I don't know my neighbours, as I write this, I'm living in Essex, there's a couple in the flat next door, I think they're Chinese, I don't know for certain, I only met one of them, once, and she didn't speak much English, and I've met the people in the flat above, but only because there was a leak and we had to speak to them to sort it. In Liverpool, we met the old lady on one side of our house a couple of times, and a young couple further down the street, but that was it, generally speaking, I've never known the people I live closest to.
There's constant soaps on TV depicting these streets or locales where everyone knows everyone, something my parents claim existed “back in their day”, but it's something I've never seen in the UK at all, but for my brief time in Nepal, it was something that had become normal to me, the family in Sikles who looked after me when I was ill, the Rickshaw peddler who had done nothing but hassle me in the daytime yet just wanted a chat about life the moment he was off duty, the dancer who gave me her soup and stayed up until the early hours chatting about life, then took me to the school she worked at a couple of weeks later, the monk who just wanted to show us his artwork, and didn't mind that we had no intentions of buying any of it, he just wanted to tell us what it meant.
I'm not saying Nepal is an idyllic world of ultra generous people, 90% of the people you meet on the streets of Thamel are out to make some easy money from the gullible white-boy, but it did seem so much easier to meet those people than anywhere else I've ever been, including the UK, and the general way of life and attitude was so much more relaxed.
OK, so, three years later, I'm now a qualified Geography teacher, and, for the first time, have no real social ties, so, as I promised myself when I left Nepal that one day I would go back for a LOT longer than three weeks, I am now doing just that. For now the plan is to head out for a year, starting mid-august-ish 2010, and see how it goes from there, if I want to stay, and can stay, I will, if I've had a great time but want to move on I will, if I really miss the UK I can come back.
I'm not going out on some sort of missionary save-the-world campaign, I'm going because I really want to be there, obviously I have the full intentions of making the most positive contribution I can while I'm there, but that's also my attitude when I'm here in the UK too. I'm going, armed with a camera, a pen and notepad and a bag of clothes to start myself some sort of life out there.
So, if, either you know me, or this babble interests you, this blog is where I'll be letting folk know how I'm getting on, so, keep reading, leave your comments and lets see how this goes shall we.
Alyn
12/04/2010 (UK)
२०६६/१२/३० (नेपाल)
