The Nepal connection of CMC member Pemba Sherpa

by Jennifer Munn

Despite the current global strife, there are, indeed, efforts still being made to encourage positive cross-cultural relationships; and those efforts are being made close to home for Colorado residents.

Twelve years ago, twenty-year-old Pemba Sherpa saved his wages and moved to Denver from his remote village in Nepal. Pemba grew up in the Everest region of Nepal in a picturesque hillside village of stone houses called Sewangma. As a child, Pemba lived without the modern-day conveniences of electricity, plumbing, running water, or roads. At age fifteen, he began working in the Himalayan tourism industry, starting first as a porter, then later as a professional mountain guide. In a country where the need to acquire sustenance for life far supersedes education, his days were spent not in the classroom but gathering wood for fire  so his family could cook a hot meal. He earned a couple of dollars a day as a porter for climbers and trekkers clambering to see the historical Himalayas. “It wasn’t great but it beat any other job around, if there were any. It wasn’t until I became a guide (or “Sherpa,” as westerners have come to call guides), that I was able to save a couple thousand dollars and make my way to my visit clients-turned-friends in Colorado,” Pemba says. Pemba found his home away from home after viewing the mountains of Colorado and discovering some of the best rock and ice climbing he’s ever experienced.

Since his move to Colorado, Pemba has learned to read and write, returned to Nepal twenty-two times for trekking, climbing, and volunteer service trips, (including eleven CMC trips); started an adventure travel company named Sherpa Ascent International (SAI); and opened his own Nepalese restaurant, Sherpa’s Adventurers Restaurant in Boulder. Pemba has had the pleasure of guiding over four hundred visitors in his beloved “Himalayan Kingdom.” In addition, he has climbed most of the major Himalayan peaks and has reached the peaks of 20,000+ foot mountains over twenty-five times.

Through both of his companies, Pemba is hoping to teach other sherpas the value of a good education. Today, he works very closely with nonprofit agencies that promote a better understanding of and respect for the environment and culture of the Himalayan region. Pemba also donates ten percent of the profits from his restaurant and travel business towards the building of a school in his home village of Sewangma in the Khumbu district of Nepal.

His efforts at providing an education to the children of Nepal are much needed. Many of the parents in Sewangma who have the means to send their children to school in Nepal send them to Kathmandu, a bustling city of two million people, a seven-day walk from the village. The drawbacks are many. The children are removed from their families, the Sherpa culture, and their religion. (While the Sherpas practice Tibetan Buddhism, Kathmandu is largely Hindu.) And those who stay in the remote Sherpa village have valid reasons to ditch classes. Last year Pemba was instrumental in building a 300-foot suspension bridge across the Dudh Kosi River. The bridge reduced the village children’s walk to school from four hours to thirty-five minutes. Pemba now strives to go one step further by building a school near the village. Pemba proclaims, “I feel strongly that education is desperately needed, and I feel cultural and economic development is the key to making education available.” That development comes with a high price. Tourism has surpassed agriculture as the country’s economic lynch pin. Sherpas are some of the country’s highest-paid workers, with those guiding clients to the top of Mount Everest pocketing as much as $3,000 a trip. Those are darn good wages when the average Nepalese citizen earns $210 a year. Last year eighty people successfully summitted the 29,028-foot Everest—nine short of the record set in 2000. Each year hundreds more attempt the summit but are turned back due to a plethora of perils. Of the 167 who have died on Mount Everest, forty-seven have been Sherpas. Many others have died taking clients to the region’s other world-renowned peaks. In a country where men make the income and the woman raise the family, each death leaves more children fatherless and with slimmer hopes of ever stepping into the classroom.

Pemba has been involved in the war between tourism dollars, which can enhance the financial lives of Sherpas, and the negative social impacts they have on their lives and on the environment. His goal is to continue to push
for more environmentally-friendly tourism and for more educational and health care opportunities for the Sherpas. He wants people to learn about the Sherpa culture through tourism, and if they can’t travel there, his goal is for them to learn it through his new—and already popular—restaurant. Pemba proudly pro-claims, “I believe my efforts will help to save the Sherpa culture and will offer an opportunity for education and health care, unlike when I was growing up. Since leaving Nepal, I know how important those things are now and for the future of the Sherpas.”

With a new life in the state, Pemba hopes to set a course for others in his homeland. If you would like to assist the school project, visit www.sherpaascent.com, call 303-525-6508, or visit Sherpa’s Adventurers Restaurant. P

Jennifer Munn is advertising sales representative for the Colorado Mountain Club.