Tamang Woman, Nepal Wisdom


In 1988, I headed out on an adventure—trekking with seven other women in Nepal for two weeks. One midday, in a remote area just a few miles from the Tibetan border, we stopped outside a small village on the porch of a Buddhist temple.

As we ate our lunches and talked among ourselves, a crowd of villagers began gathering. They stayed as long as we were there, staring at our strange light skin and hair, our foreign gear and clothes. We didn't have words to share, just the language of our eyes.

I didn't even stand up to take this picture—just reached over and picked up my camera and shot from where I sat on the ground.





"Watching"
Nepal

"Waiting"
Laos
"From the Shadows"
Kenya

"Western Eyes"
Kenya
"No Turning Back"
USA

"Peering through the Centuries"
Kenya
"Masai Wisdom"
Kenya

"Studying the Scriptures"
Laos
"Respect"
Nepal

"The Chief"
Kenya
"On the Road"
Kenya

"Koran"
Croatia
"Beads and Charms"
Thailand

At the Masai village on Kenya's border with Tanzania, a group was gathered under
the only shade tree in sight. I wandered over, getting in on the last few minutes
of a religious service. Leading the final prayer was the matriarch of the village, a bespectacled woman of thin frame, but clearly a great power within the tribe.

She prayed on and on, imploring, declaring, coaxing, decrying. As she spoke, the villagers covered their eyes with their hands, seemingly the customary position for prayer.

In Texas, I was raised a Southern Baptist fundamentalist in a tradition in fact
dominated by women (although that reality could not be admitted, for supposed
theological reasons). When I was a teenager, I spent about 20 hours a week in church. Now, here I was on the other side of the world, witnessing a prayer meeting and
feeling much more at home than I am at most elegant social events.

That's the power of religious tradition.

    
"Prayer Meeting"
Kenya

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