Love Does

30 January 2016

I met a young man named Kristian last Fall when I was walking the Camino through Spain. He was a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday, but from the few minutes, we talked it became clear he wasn’t your average teenager.

For starters, he was walking the Camino alone after graduating a year early from high school. He was spending a gap year traveling through Europe and beyond before settling into university for the long haul.

He was bright, confident, articulate, and bold enough to make his way through uncharted territory without a second thought. I found out later he had already traveled to Japan and Morocco on state grants to study Japanese and Arabic. Like I said, he’s not your average teenager.

After the morning we spent together walking along the Way we didn’t meet back up until we arrived in Santiago de Compostella, about two to three weeks later. He had been renting an apartment for a few days and offered me the extra bed he had in his room. It was over the course of that week that I really got to know him.

There were lots of lentils, Drake, and the occasional angry, French Rap, but it wasn’t long before we said our goodbyes and parted ways from the Spanish coast. My plans were set to fly to Italy at the end of the week and he was heading out to Nepal to do an Everest base camp hike. This was back at the end of October 2015.

Fast forward to today, and Kristian is still running through the streets of Nepal three months later. This wasn’t his plan of course, but opportunities present themselves and some become too great to ignore.

After spending three weeks hiking around Everest and another month helping rebuild a school, Kristian went back to Kathmandu for the holidays when he saw an article in the newspaper featuring the needs of refugees from the earthquake last April, now struggling to survive the winter in the mountains.

Many were suffering from exposure or getting sick from a lack of nutrition. He was initially going to brush it off, thinking, “the world is a messed up place and there’s nothing I can do about it,” but instead, realized he could do something about it. In his own words:

“So I packed all my things and took a bus as far as I could towards the village of Laprak that I had read about in the paper. Then I walked for two days. When I got to the village, it was immediately clear that the people were pretty desperate. It was between 5-10 degrees (F) outside at night and they were living in emergency shelter tents and tin shacks provided by relief organizations with almost no ability to keep warm.

“The only reason the whole camp hasn’t died is that they build a fire inside of their shelters (you get hit by a massive, eye-burning, lung-choking wall of smoke when you step in) and sleep below the smoke line to stay warm at night. It’s quite incredible. Seeing such an extreme need was pretty intense, so I made the trip back to the nearest “major city” (two days walk) and got to work raising money.”

I kept seeing post after post on social media of urgent requests from Kristian to help raise money to purchase supplies for Laprak. When I spoke with him a few weeks ago he had just gotten back from a trip delivering mustard and medicine to some 3,500 people that would last a few weeks.

I found out he only started a fund raising campaign after he personally fronted $5,000 of his own money. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

As of writing this, he’s raised about $3,623 of the initial $5,000 he loaned. For him to do more, he’ll need to surpass the $5k and purchase more supplies (Update: he’s just passed the $4k mark. However there’s a much greater need and he’s hoping to raise $45,000 to help these families make it safely through the winter). News of his efforts has been circulating around social media reaching some of his friends and family. He’s since partnered up with Hadaya Toys to deliver a number of books to be airlifted to Laprak. It’s clear Kristian is getting it done.

Let me remind you this is an eighteen-year-old you’re reading about. I’ve been blown away by his heart to dig in and get his hands dirty. He’s too humble to think he’s doing anything spectacular, but the truth is that he is absolutely changing the lives of hundreds of people in Nepal right now.

He’s the type of guy not to be deterred by obstacles and audacious enough start out strong without knowing where the finish line lies. He was originally going to fly to Thailand, but he had canceled that flight so that he could stay and manage the relief effort. But what he needs now is continued help raising money to help get more supplies into the mountains.

If you’ve been inspired by Kristian’s attempt to help these people facing a life and death situation, please give what you can in order to further fund these relief efforts. Click here to donate to his relief campaign. Please feel free to share his story with friends and family and you can continue to follow Kristian’s efforts through his Instagram account (@kayolord).