Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

What does it mean to bring progressschools, electricity, roads, running waterto paradise? Can our consumer culture and desire to "do good" really be good for a community that has survived contentedly for centuries without us?

In October 2008, climbing expedition leader and attorney, Jeff Rasley, led a trek to a village in a remote valley in the Solu region of Nepal named Basa. His group of three adventurers was only the third group of white people ever seen in this village of subsistence farmers. What he found was people thoroughly unaffected by Western consumerculture values. They had no running water, electricity, or anything that moves on wheels. Each family lived in a beautiful, handchiseled stone house with a flower garden. Beyond what they already had, it seemed all they wanted was education for the children. He helped them finish a school building already in progress, and then they asked for help getting electricity to their village.

Bringing Progress to Paradise describes Rasley's transformation from adventurer to committed philanthropist. We are attracted to the simpler way of life in these communities, and we are changed by our experience of it. They are attracted to us, because we bring economic benefits. Bringing Progress to Paradise offers Rasley's critical reflection on the tangled relationship between tourists and locals in "exotic" locales and the effect of Western values on some of the most remote locations on earth.

Jeff Rasley is a dad and husband living in Indiana, where he practiced law for 30 years. He has been trekking and leading treks to Nepal and the Himalayas for fifteen years. He has been working with the Rai people of Basa, Nepal, to bring ＂progress＂ to their village in the most culturally respectful way possible. Author website: www.jeffreyrasley.com