LUCK

1.05 am. Qatar Airlines. Doha to Kathmandu.
There are mostly Nepali people on my plane, some Asian businessmen and few French and German tourists.
I happen to be seated next to an Italian family, that’s weird.
The mother is writing something in a notebook; the older son, a shy teenager, is listening to music in his headphones while doing a playlist in his iPod. The father is helping the younger son (with South American features) in doing his math homework. Definitely, they don’t look like tourists.
“What brings you to Kathmandu?” I curiously ask them.
“Eh, it’s a long story”, the father smiles at me, “we are going to adopt a Nepali little girl”.
Wow.
Since then, I have felt that it would be hard to find on this plane someone more excited than me to land in Kathmandu. I am aware of the importance of the next two months in marking both my professional and human growth. I am anxious to take as much as I can from this coming experience.
But now, next to me, there are four people whose trip is going to change surely more radically their lives, and the life of a 4 years old Nepali girl as well.
Wow.
“Are you excited?” Stupid question, of course they are. Their feelings are pretty self-evident from the father’s standing smile, the light in the mother’s eyes, and the completely wake standing of both sons during all the trip.
“You know”, the father answers me, “in a few hours we will meet our daughter for the first time”. He explains that they will stay one month in Kathmandu, doing all the bureaucratic procedures that are required. He also talks about the general process of adoption and how long, complicated and often frustrating it is.
While he is talking, for some reason I start imagine my research project in Nepal. I will look at the education system, the integration of Dalit kids, and more generally the current debate on how to reach equality and a higher level of both education and development in the country. During my research I will most likely meet a lot of kids, just few years older than the adopted girl. These kids will have probably different background, caste belonging and economic status. Yet, they all are supposedly given the “opportunity” to live in their own country, because somebody, unlike the Nepali girl, can take care of them and grow them in the same land they were born. Even if banal, this “opportunity” has a great value in itself.
They will grow with their natural relatives, in their own culture, speaking their birthplace language. Most of them will also have to cope, everyday with poverty, instability and other challenges.
Who is lucky? This question is floating in my mind while the father keeps talking to me.
The 4 years old Nepali girl will be now a lucky child. Starting from tomorrow she will have parents. She will live in a fancy apartment in downtown Rome and she will probably attend the same schools I attended. She will have new cloths and new toys. And, most important, she will be extremely loved by her new family.
The father is talking with a light Roman accent. I like that, it sounds so familiar. I wonder if the Nepali girl will speak in the same way in a couple of years. Of course she will. In a few months she will probably forget her Nepali language and replace it little by little with Italian words in Roman accent.
How weird is this.
In order to “be lucky”, to have finally parents, to escape the orphan status, and to escape poverty, she will have to say a definitive goodbye to her birthplace.
The hostess arrives with the lunch. The father starts eating his meal.
I continue to think about the meaning of luckiness. From the plane window I can finally see the mountains, the hills and the landscape of Nepal. I wonder what this country needs in order to make Nepali children feel lucky in their own country, not outside.
Maybe after two months in Nepal, in my flight from Kathmandu, I will come back with some clearer idea on that.