The Journey
On a gap-year stint in Nepal, the author of acclaimed 2016 novel The Dry went from volunteer teacher to enlightened student.
Writer Jane Harper recalls an eye-opening gap year in Nepal
“You’re Young enough for this trip of yours to make a difference,” said the man from his seat across the aisle. “It could change the rest of your lives, if you let it.” My friend and I nodded politely, the way you do when you’re 19 and reluctant to engage in conversation with a stranger on a long-haul flight. We’d told him we were on a gap year, the traditional pilgrimage of the middle-class British school leaver. We were taking 12 months out before settling down to study at university. If asked why, we were practised in reeling off vague ambitions about broadening our horizons and expanding our minds. We were going to see some of the world. We were going to break out of our comfort zone. We were going to Nepal.
It was 1999: pre-social media, pre-smartphones, pre-Google Maps. It was even pre-reliable email access. Nowadays, the idea of being off the grid so far from home feels a little like jumping without a parachute. Back then, we knew no different. Armed with our Lonely Planet guide and cameras loaded with film, we were happily on our own.
We had lined up volunteer teaching jobs at a school in the capital, Katmandu. There, we met Biva Shrestha, a woman who channelled her iron will into making the world a better place. Officially, she was the head teacher. Unofficially, she was a thousand other things: informal foster-mother to poor students, thorn in the side of the unscrupulous landlords who tried to extort higher rent for the building, tireless fundraiser, community pillar. To two wide-eyed 19-year-olds, she was an example of the grinding hard work that some people must absorb into their daily lives just to get by.
Biva had a warm heart and a broad smile. She commanded respect without demanding it. Though she would have been barely 30, we treated her like someone of our parents’ generation – she seemed so mature and collected. The weight of responsibility in her life compared with the lightness in ours stretched out the few years that separated us in age. We had a naïvety that I imagine must have been hugely annoying. If it was – and I’m sure it was – she didn’t hold it against us.
An educator at heart, Biva invited us to discover Nepalese culture, food and language by her side, as friends. She took us beyond the tourist traps to see how the locals lived. We visited her family in the country – a shuddering, jolting bus ride along unpaved roads to a village surrounded by nothing but glorious scenery.
After spending five months teaching English at Biva’s primary school, we cried when we left. I can’t remember if Biva cried; in every memory I have of her, she is smiling.
It was only when we returned home and started our long-awaited studies that it became fully apparent that the man on the plane had been right. What I had learnt in Nepal from Biva about confidence, kindness, resilience and determination could change my outlook on life, if I let it. I did.