LITMIR.BIZ

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my stuff down in the volunteers’ room, trailed by several children. We were five volunteers in total. Jenny was an American girl, a college student, who had arrived a month earlier. Chris, a German volunteer, would arrive a week later. Farid was a young French guy, thin build and my height, twenty-one years old, with long black dreadlocks. I first assumed Farid was shy, since he was not speaking much to the others, but soon realized that he was only shy about his English.

      I was the last to arrive for daal bhat. I entered the dining area, a stone-floored room with two windows and no furniture save a few low bamboo stools reserved for the volunteers. The children sat on the floor with their backs against the wall, Indian style. They were arranged from youngest to oldest, right to left against three walls of the room. As they waited patiently for their food to be served, I got my first good look at them.

      I counted eighteen children in total, sixteen boys and two girls. Each child seemed to be wearing every stitch of clothing he or she owned, including woolen hats. I had not worn a hat to dinner and was already regretting it. The house had no indoor heating and I could practically see my breath. Most of their jackets and sweaters had French logos on them, as the clothes were mostly donations from France. I studied their faces. The girls were easy to identify, as there were only two of them, but the boys would be more difficult to distinguish. A few really stood out—the six-year-old boy with the missing front teeth, the boy with the Tibetan facial features, the bright smile of another older boy, the diminutive size of the two youngest boys in the house. But otherwise, the only identifying features to my untrained eye would be their clothes.

      Before daal bhat was served, Sandra asked the children to stand and introduce themselves, beginning with the youngest boy, Raju. He was far more shy now than when he had been clinging to my face. The other boys whispered loud encouragements to him to get up, and his tiny neighbor, Nuraj, dug an elbow into his ribs. Finally he popped up, clapped his hands together as if in prayer, the traditional greeting in Nepal, said “Namaste-my-name-isRaju” and collapsed back into a seated position flashing a proud grin to the others. The rest of the kids followed suit, until it had come full circle back to me.

      I stood up and imitated what they had done and sat back down. They erupted in chatter.

      “I do not think they understood your name,” Sandra whispered to me.

      “Oh, sorry—it’s Conor,” I said, speaking slowly. I could hear a volley of versions of my name lobbed back and forth across the room as the children corrected one another.

      “Kundar?”

      “Hoina! Krondor ho! Yes, Brother? Your name Krondor, yes?”

      “No, no, it’s Conor,” I clarified, louder this time.

      “Krondor!” they shouted in unison.

      “Conor!” I repeated, shouting it.

      “Krondor!”

      One of the older boys spoke up helpfully: “Yes, Brother, you are saying Krondor!”

      Trust me—I wasn’t saying “Krondor.” The children were staring earnestly at my lips and trying to repeat it exactly.

      “No, boys—everybody—it’s Conor!” This time I shouted it with a growl, hoping to change the intonation to a least get them off Krondor, which made me sound like a Vulcan.

      There was a surprised pause. Then the children went nuts. “Conor!!” they growled, imitating the comical bicep flex I had performed (instinctively, I’m sorry to say) when I shouted my name.

      “Exactly!” I said, pleased with myself.

      Sandra looked around and nodded in approval. “I think you will get along with these children very well,” she predicted. “Okay, children, you may begin,” she said, and the children attacked their food as if they hadn’t eaten in days. They spent the rest of dinner with mouths full of rice and lentils, looking at each other and growling “Conor!!!” flashing their muscles like tiny professional wrestlers.

      There was no way to keep up the blistering pace set by the kids when they ate. They had literally licked their plates clean when I was maybe half finished. I would have to concentrate in the future. No talking, no thinking, just eating. There was far too much food on my plate, albeit mostly rice. The worst part about it was that I couldn’t give the rest of mine away, since once you touched your food with your hands it was considered juto, or unclean, to others. The very idea of throwing away food here was unthinkable, especially with eighteen children watching you, waiting for you to finish. I force-fed myself every last grain as fast as I could, guiltily replaying scenes from my life of dumping half-full plates of food into the trash.

      When I had finished, Sandra made a few announcements in English. The children understood English quite well after spending time with volunteers, and the little ones who didn’t understand as well had it translated by the older children sitting near them.

      The big announcement of that particular evening was the introduction of three new garbage cans that had been placed out front, one marked “Plastic and Glass,” one “Paper,” and one “Other.” Sandra explained their fairly straightforward functions. She was rewarded with eighteen blank stares. Trash in Nepal, like all Third World countries, is a constant problem. Littering is the norm, and environmental protection falls very low on the government’s priority list, well below the challenges of keeping the citizens alive with food and basic health care. Farid took a stab at explaining the concept of protecting Mother Earth, but the children still struggled to understand why anybody would categorize garbage.

      “Maybe we should demonstrate it?” I suggested.

      Sandra smiled. “That is a great idea. Go ahead, Conor.”

      This was a big moment. I had never interacted with children before in this way; I had no nieces, no nephews, no close friends with children, no baby cousins. I steeled myself for this interaction. Fact: I knew I could talk to people. Fact: Children were little people. Little, scary people. I took solace in the fact that if this demonstration went horribly wrong, I could probably outrun them.

      “Okay, kids!” I declared, psyching myself up. I rubbed my hands together to let them know that fun was on the way. “Time for a demonstration!”

      I picked up a piece of paper leaning against my stool and crumpled it up. I walked over to Hriteek, one of the five-year-old boys, and handed it to him.

      “Okay, Hriteek, now I want you to take this and throw it in the proper garbage can!” I spoke loudly, theatrically.

      Hriteek took the paper in his little hand and held it for a few seconds, looking at the three green bins lined up with their labels visible. Then he started to cry. I hadn’t expected that. But I knew that kids sometimes cried—I had seen it on TV. This was no time to quit.

      “C’mon, buddy,” I urged him. “It’s not tough—throw the trash in the right bin,” I said, nodding toward the “Paper” bin.

      No luck. Finally I took it from him, giving him an understanding pat on the shoulder, and walked over to throw it in the proper bin.

      “Brother!” called out Anish, one of the older kids sitting opposite us. “Brother—wait, no throw, he make for you! Picture!”

      I uncrumpled the paper to discover a crude but colorful picture of a large pointy mountain and a man—me, judging by the white crayon he used for skin tone—holding hands with a cow. On the bottom it was signed in large red letters: hriteek. Uh-oh.

      “Hriteek! Yes! Great picture! Not trash, Hriteek! Not trash!” I said quickly. He cried louder.

      Sandra leaned over to me. “It’s no problem, Conor,” she said, and took Hriteek’s hand. “Hriteek, you do not need to cry. Conor Brother is still learning. He doesn’t understand much yet. You will have to teach him.” This brought a laugh from the children, and Hriteek, despite himself, started giggling.

      “Sorry, Hriteek!” I said over Sandra’s shoulder. “My bad, Hriteek! Your picture was very

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