I have spent the better half of my life attempting to blend my passion for adventure with a desire to impact the world in a positive and lasting way. Two decades as an international mountain guide and emergency medicine physician assistant have provided countless opportunities to be in very compelling alpine and medical environments. From guiding a blind man to the top of the world to volunteering in Nepal after the earthquake as well as embedding with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces as they fought to eradicate ISIS from Mosul… I have found ways to discover the dynamic of exploration and humanitarianism. As with most solid adventures, a few of them were even fun.
And for all of my son’s 14 years, he has watched his dad head out on these obscure missions. Early on, Jace never questioned why I would pack my duffels and be gone for weeks at a time, but as he matured and developed a deeper understanding of the world around him, his line of questioning would be more inquisitive of the why and who I was engaging with. Some of the missions were easy to explain, some a little more nebulous. But what he was always took note of was my fundamental desire to help “make the world a smaller place” by showing compassion to other members of our global community.
It was only a matter of time before we reached a crescendo with the “Dad, can I come with you on this one?”
My relationship with the Himalayan Stove Project (HSP) goes all the way back to its inception. My good friend George Basch accompanied our Everest team to basecamp back in 2001 and just like all of us, Nepal and its people became planted in his consciousness in a profound way. On each of his subsequent journeys back to Nepal, he continued to encounter a reoccurring problem at every teahouse he ventured in. The open-air cooking fires produced an extraordinary amount of smoke that filled the rooms with heavy particulates that were inhaled by all of the residents both young and old. George intuitively knew that this issue was contributing to a whole host of environmental and physical detriments. It became his charge to interpret the problem, engineer options and execute a solution. What sprang from that is the Himalayan Stove Project. Clean burning stoves, economically fabricated and installed into Nepali homes would lower the incidence of lung disease, cataracts and fuel resource consumption. I watched George turn a dream into a reality, impacting thousands of homes all over the country that I loved so much. I was proud.
So a few months ago when Jace asked to join me on a humanitarian themed adventure, I knew a family trip to Nepal to do the work of HSP would capture the essence of the effort. We worked with HSP to identify a remote village that would greatly benefit from the stoves, booked our flights and headed east. My wife Merry Beth and I agreed that we would encourage Jace to take the lead on fund raising (he helped to raise over $12,000) as well as be out front with the stove distribution and installation once we arrived into the small village of Odanoku. I radiated with pride as he went from one small mud hut to another, bridging the language barrier with gesticulations and comical versions of charades, problem solving and doing the good work. The villagers didn’t know exactly where we were from, but they knew it was a long way away. They seemed to genuinely appreciate this family of foreigners traveling from afar to not just give them a stove unit, but more impactfully, show them compassion and love.
Undoubtedly, my son grew from this experience and will be a better man for it. I can only hope that this was the catalyst for the next generation to discover the wonders of blending adventure, exploration and compassion.
Jeff Evans
1/1/2020
