We passed this child on the street sleeping.
We have started our journey out of Kathmandu. We had a full day trying to get our visa to travel into India. Now, I am not sure we are going to go. While we were waiting for the gates to open, we were sitting drinking water. Water is truly the most precious natural resource that we have. Kathmandu has a major water shortage. I saw this little dog when I was paying for water. I asked the young man behind the counter if it was his dog. He said no, he was just a street dog. I don’t know why he caught my attention after seeing men crawling down the street begging, and children huffing solvents through bags surrounded by dogs, as if in one crazy pack. But this dog had the sweetest face, and as I talked to him he wagged his tail. That is when I noticed he was dying. On the way out of the Indian embassy I had some cheerio’s in my bag and tried to give him, some but he was beyond taking them. I looked back to see him labor as we drove away and thought - this is what abject poverty is like, you suffer before people's eyes with barely a notice. Mostly it seems like an inconvenience as people pass those that are asking for money. Then one day they are just not there anymore. Who is really left to mourn?
A community by the river where people are living ...
We drove to our first stop in Butwal, where one of the offices that PRC has to reach the community is located. Here we changed vehicles. We were told the SUV we were driving would not make the trip to where we were going, and I was about to find out why. We rented a 4 wheel drive Jeep with a driver. Driving for about an hour though a windy bumpy dirt road we came to a village when our clutch cable suddenly broke. Now for the miracle - it broke right in fount of a mechanic that had a new cable! It took him 15 minutes to fix it and we were on our way. Oh, and the cost: 100 rupees which is about $1.25. Anytime before and we would have been walking for miles to get to that village, any time after and we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere taking perhaps days to get back. God is with us on this trip. I thank you all so much for your prayers, know that God hears every one of them. It took us 7 hours to go 60 miles! With much of the time there appearing to be no road at all. The road was so bumpy that one of us would occasionally hit our head on the ceiling as we held on tight to stay in our seats nearly the whole time. The road is barely wide enough for one vechicle, and then another comes from the other way and the game of inches begins as you slowly work together to pass. One of you is always inches away from going over a steep mountain edge that seems to have no bottom.
Young man working on our car ...
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