The "Pointy End of the Spear" - where theory intersects life

I met a polio crawler yesterday.

It is October 21, and I am in Kathmandu, Nepal: not exactly a vacation --- my travel is too rough and basic to be called a vacation --- so perhaps you could call it business since I am a writer and this is a great place to observe life. It certainly *is* what Clint calls "enrichment," because yesterday I met a crawler.

Carole, my traveling companion, and I sat on the balcony of a second-floor restaurant, watching street life from our "observatory" as we ate, entertaining each other with a running commentary on the interaction between people: tourists, beggars, fruit vendors, street hustlers, sari-clad ladies carrying a child and tapping passersby on the arm with an empty baby's milk bottle.

Of course, we could not ignore this man, the crawler, as he appealed to various people. Carole and I had made a pact that we wouldn't give to most beggars, especially after watching a boy instruct younger boys in the art of efficient begging. We couldn't hear him, but we certainly understood his gestures: how to run up to adults, how to prayerfully fold the hands in the "namaste" greeting, how to look appealing. (We then saw them inhale from paper bags, recognizing the habit of children who sniff glue to get high.)

As we would have to walk past him, I asked Carole: "What about this guy?" He was different. Carole is an RN, and we had decided this was not an act: his withered and contracted legs were surely the result of polio, folded in front of him the way a butterfly would retract its wings to rest for a moment. He used his hands for support and advanced himself by pushing forward an incredibly calloused foot. His richly browned face was at the knee level of everyone else.

Carole and I talked about a world that stops caring when there are too many people in it. People become commodities to advance their governments, and instead this man was a burden.

I wondered how the man could use a toilet, thinking of the "eastern style" squat toilets where I carefully rolled up the cuffs of my jeans so they wouldn't touch the smelly, slippery floor. Could this man unfold his legs or manuver his body to decently relieve himself?

When Carole and I finally went into the street, he saw us and beckoned. He was younger than I thought and frightfully dusty from living at dirt and pavement level, as Kathmandu is certainly not a tidy city. His clothes seems to be more of rags wrapped around his nut-brown body, but his eyes were a startling contrast: large whites in contrast to nearly black irises. I could not help thinking that he looked up at me like the fearful and tentative eyes of a guilty dog waiting for punishment.

I feel very strongly about our Rotary projects to relieve suffering in the world, like this. When the unfair and unequal distribution of wealth and services continue cycles of poverty, we must share our blesings that we are finacially able to give, multiplying our individual donations into a mightier effect.