When Brot Coburn spent four years in Syangja as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s, he came to know an elderly Gurung widow
Nepali chhora
When Brot Coburn spent four years in Syangja as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s, he came to know an elderly Gurung widow. He was so impressed by her simplicity, wisdom, compassion and generosity that in 1982 he published a pictorial book on her called Nepali Aama: Life Lessons of a Himalayan Woman which is now in its fourth edition. The book captured the essence of the Nepali soul, that uncommon combination of common sense, humour and hard work.
Ten years later, when Aama was 84, Brot took her to America, recorded her reaction to the unimaginable but everyday luxuries of the American way of life in a sequel, Aama in America: A Pilgrimage of the Heart. Along with Brot’s girlfriend, Didi, Aama was taken on an adventure-filled journey across America: the Twin Towers, Disneyland, Las Vegas. But what amazed Aama were the everyday things around the house to make life easy: washing machines, microwaves, lawn mowers.
She talks to American wheat farmers in the great plains and gives them a few useful tips about seeds and fertilisers, she takes a holy dip in the Pacific Ocean and prays at the Old Faithful. “The reason America is so rich is because it is a holy place,” Aama concludes, but she senses that many of its people lack soul. Brot has taken Aama’s odyssey on the lecture circuit all over the United States to spread her wisdom, and even on a celebrity cruise ship. He now plans to translate Aama into a children’s book in Nepali.
In 1997, Brot’s third book, Everest: Mountain Without Mercy reached #17 on the New York Times bestseller list and sold 350,000 copies—making it and the IMAX film Everest that it is based on a big boost for Nepal’s tourism. His other books include Triumph on Everest, a photo-biography of Sir Edmund Hillary and his 2001 collaboration with Jamling Tenzing Norgay, Touching My Father’s Soul: A Sherpa’s Journey to the Top of Everest. In that book, Jamling talks about how he saw a vision of his father when he reached the top of Sagarmatha in 1996. Wherever Brot goes, he keeps coming back to Nepal, the land of his Aama. He says, “This is where I belong, Nepal is where I feel most at home.” (http://broughtoncoburn.com)
