Dress Accordingly

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Saturday, October 29, 2011 | 5 photos

Three minutes into an interview for a summer internship placement with a high-profile bank and investment firm it occurred to me; I was in the wrong place. Nothing close to “real world experience” could be gleaned from spending a summer beside lamps that simulate daylight and sharing recycled air with thirteen floors of employees piled on top of each other. In search of the polar opposite, I went home and booked flights to Kathmandu, Nepal.
I accepted a volunteer English teaching position in a small village, cut off by monsoon-season landslides. The Bright Future school consists of a modest two-story concrete edifice, a roof of aluminum siding anchored by heavy rocks and around 100 students. Like most villages in Nepal, residents rely upon harvesting small rice paddies. Having encountered such poverty common in developing nations before I was moved by something that stood out among these students. Every morning they lined up in rows by class, sang the Nepali national anthem and stood at attention as the principal inspected and strictly enforced their school uniform. In two months I saw not a single wrinkled tie or a set of braids without a pair of white bows. Clothes do not make the man, but with such few personal belongings wearing that uniform gave the students a sense of pride, something that people living in poverty are usually forced to abandon. I have hoped to capture this in the following photographs.
In a dilapidated school house in a small landlocked country I learned more than I could have in a high rise in Manhattan. The “real world experience” promised by that internship isn't a world I ever want to work in. I want and need to keep exploring different people, places and cultures, to capture and examine what it is that we can admire and borrow from others to make ourselves better. This opportunity to travel to South Africa and to be mentored would allow me to take my first steps to achieving that.