July 19, 1977:  Having enjoyed ten days of Bangkok Jesuit hospitality, I’m off to Kathmandu with Royal Nepal Airlines.  I enjoy a drink and a meal as we cross the Bay of Bengal, but a question keeps nagging me:  “How can an airliner land in the Himalaya during the monsoon?”

I’ve spent the last five monsoons in eastern Bhutan, with steep hillsides soaked with rain and obscured in mist, no place for a commercial jet to be!  As we start our descent through thick clouds, my question becomes a serious worry, until we drop below the cloud at the south end of the expansive Kathmandu Valley, with the airport runway in view.  The landing is uneventful, and clearance through customs and immigration an introduction to Nepali smiles. 

The taxi gets me to St. Xavier’s in twenty minutes.  There more smiling faces greet me.  The doorman insists on carrying my luggage up a couple of flights of stairs, and the hostel students crowd around me.  They’re so small!  The students in Bhutan were short, but stocky villagers, used to rough village life, youngsters who taught me a thing or two about trekking and camping.

I soon move to the Godavari Alumni Association residence, and start Nepali language classes.  There will be no teaching until February, but that teaching will have to be in Nepali, thanks to the government’s New Education System Plan.  This will be a challenge!  I pick up basic language skills over the next four months, and by February I’m in the classroom. 

My mentor, Fr. Charlie Law, teaches physics, so I take on an industrial education course, teaching basic electrical theory and practice in grades nine and ten.  The classes are small, and the students patient.  They are a couple of years older than the little fellows I first met.  I spend mornings and evenings helping Charlie run the hostel. 

As the years go on, I hardly notice the city change from a scattering of old neighbourhoods separated by rice fields, to a mass of concrete replacing those green patches and many of the old brick homes.  Our twenty-seven kilometer ring road, once ideal for quiet jogging, changes to a busy thoroughfare with traffic jams at most intersections.  Pleasant bicycling through the city becomes a battle of wits between trucks, motorcycles and a few daring cyclists. 

Electric supply comes and goes, as Nepal Electric Authority distributes inadequate power to consumers turn by turn.  Easy going communication, involving a trip across town to meet a friend and chat,  changes to quick text messages and constant cell phone communication.

But the people have not changed!  People walking on the streets smile at one another, as well as at themselves.  Minor traffic accidents are quickly settled.  There is always time to stop and chat.  No one waits to be invited to visit.  The hosts drop whatever work is at hand and enjoy a break with visitors. Our city could be cleaner, but cleanliness certainly has improved over the years and the garbage does get collected.  The traffic is chaotic, but the police, men and women, efficiently untangle gridlocks.  Deadlines are seldom met, but work does get done. 

Our April and May earthquakes brought out Kathmandu’s best and worst.  Old building did fall, as did many illegally and poorly built modern tenements.  People with nowhere to live set up makeshift tents in parks and playgrounds, sure that their belongings would be safe.  Strong youngsters wore themselves out cleaning up debris. 

Kathmandu’s infrastructure will develop.  What will not change is the smile on each person’s face.  No one here stays sad for long.  Life together, though simple, is always worth living. 

I continue to enjoy life with the smiling Kathandu people. 

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Source for all photographs: Bill Robins, SJ