Dave's 5th Post

Wednesday, January 19th

Yesterday we met an amazing teacher, Jeffrey Kotller, a psychology professor at the State University of CA in Fullerton. He spoke at core class and showed pictures and videos of his work with lower caste girls in Nepal. It was very moving and I’m sure brought tears to the eyes of many, including me. Nepal is a landlocked inaccessible country between India and China. Ninety percent have no health care and most deaths are caused by HIV, malnutrition, and maternal mortality. That’s the good news.

Because girls are valued less than the family goat, many are sold or abducted into sex slavery and transported to Mumbai after the 3rd grade when the government no longer pays for their education which costs $50/year. Twelve thousand Nepali girls suffer this fate annually. Because the girls constantly disappear from villages, the life expectancy of women in Nepal is unknown. For men it’s 57. When the young girls, as young as 8, arrive at brothels in Mumbai, they are raped 15 times the first day. The men prefer the new girls because they believe sex with a virgin can cure their aids.

Professor Kotller is teaching a course on altruism and social justice on the ship but I could not get into it as it’s full. Too bad, it’s the only course I had planned to attend. For the past ten years he has been heading an organization called Empowering Nepali Girls, www.empoweringnepaligirls.org, to rescue girls. It operates out of his dining room in California and has no overhead and pays no salaries. He got involved in Nepal when he accompanied a physician who traveled there to discover why it had the world’s highest mortality rate. Jeff saved his first girl, Ngu, on this first visit. She is now attending college in America studying TV production. Jeff, who must be in his 50s, has amazingly written 82 books, is a Fulbright scholar, and is obviously a very caring and impressive guy. To date, ENG has rescued 145 girls. One of his recent books is Changing Peoples’ Lives While Transforming Your Own. You may be able to read a description of it or buy it on Barnes and Noble or Amazon’s websites.

Jeff describes social justice as being about addressing the suffering of others. In his talk he referred to the “reciprocal effects of giving” and how service to others can transform oneself. In other words, how it is better to give than receive. He closed his presentation by recommending a four step process to the students:

1. Increase your awareness
2. Write: articles, letter, etc.
3. Share your concern and information
4. Act: do something, even if it’s something small.

There is a small plaque on the cabin door a few doors from mine. It’s the only door plaque I’ve seen. It features the following quotation by German theologian Martin Buber: “All journeys have destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” I would rephrase Buber’s and my earlier axiom to read, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey and the friends we make and serve, and are served by, along the way.”

Every afternoon at 4:00 we senior passengers gather together in the faculty/senior passenger lounge for an hour meeting led by our marvelous lifelong learner coordinator, Barbara McGarvey. The first day she asked each of the 65 of us to comment on what we expected from our journey. When it came to my turn, I said I am open to being surprised. The Kotller lecture was a wonderful surprise. I wonder what additional surprises await.