Arranging the delicate prayer bead bracelets into small groups on the worn, wooden table, Johanna Duponte-Williams handled each one with care, like dainty diamonds that had no price to measure their worth.
To Williams, they truly are priceless little trinkets, each one fashioned by the tiny fingers of children whose futures are as bright as the colors of the beads – all because of an act of kindness from years ago that set into motion a chain of events that would transform lives and realign the fates of those who gave a little street boy from Nepal a chance, and a home in Mattapoisett.
Williams, a vendor at the Mattapoisett Friends Alternative Gift Fair on November 8, candidly told her story of a boy named Rajesh Shahi, who came from Nepal to Mattapoisett in order to heal after surgery to correct a severe spinal deformity.
Williams remembered back in 1993 when the board members of Hands in Outreach – an organization that sponsors impoverished children from abroad – asked her to host a child from Nepal who needed corrective surgery in Boston for severe curvature of the spine. His disability was so severe that, without the surgery, Rajesh would have been an outcast in Nepalese society, a street beggar.
“I was actually quite reluctant,” said Williams. “I was busy.” Williams was working as an occupational therapist with very little spare time, adding that the possibility of Rajesh even making it to Massachusetts for the surgery was doubtful. She said she had little hope for the situation – until she sat, looking at a photo of Rajesh, his body bent and folded, with an infectious smile that brought Williams to a pivotal moment.
“It was my time,” said Williams, “but it was his life.” She decided to expend the extra effort to make this happen, abandoning her apprehension and restoring her hope that she could help make a difference in this child’s life.
During a visit by the Dalai Lama, Williams went to Brandeis University to attend the event. She approached a Buddhist monk to tell him about Rajesh and her concerns over how the trip to Massachusetts might negatively affect Rajesh, who after tasting life in the developed world would only have to return to Nepal to the struggles he faced before.
Should I really do this, she asked the monk. How will this change him?
“It is much more likely to change you than it will him,” the monk told her.
Rajesh came to Massachusetts and received his surgery at New England Baptist Hospital. Soon after, he arrived at Williams’ house in Mattapoisett to attend sixth grade at Old Hammondtown while he recovered.
“The kids at school were really touched by him,” said Williams. “By his heart, his gratitude.”
They had never met anyone like Rajesh and had never witnessed the degree of Rajesh’s thankfulness and gratefulness.
“In Mattapoisett, our community is pretty homogenous,” said Williams. “They aren’t familiar with this kind of poverty. There is, for the most part, little exposure for these kids. We don’t have a lot of people from different groups.”
At school, Rajesh used a wheelchair while in recovery and he needed to avoid being bumped or moved while his spine healed from the surgery. Williams said that wherever Rajesh went at school, his classmates would form a human protective ring around him. Through the hallways, in the cafeteria – everywhere Rajesh went, a human shield of his classmates surrounded him.
“They wouldn’t let anyone bump into him,” said Williams, adding that even now, Rajesh is still in contact with some of his former classmates from Old Hammondtown.
Williams recalled, around that time in the 1990s, she and her husband had been looking to adopt a child. However, she worried and often asked herself, could I love another person’s child? During Rajesh’s stay in Williams’ home, she said one Sunday, while she was fixing Rajesh’s tie in preparation for church, that she looked at him and found her answer – yes.
“I realized as I was looking at him that I loved him,” said Williams. “I realized that, yes, I can love somebody else’s child.”
After Rajesh’s five-month stay with Williams, he returned to Nepal, his body transformed much like his life had been, as had been the lives of those who helped him. Williams said he knew he wanted to return to Nepal to someday return the kindness that his “family” in Mattapoisett had shown him, and he devoted his life to assisting children in Nepal.
In 2008, Rajesh founded Sanga-Sangai, which means “together,” an organization that helps poor children and their families in Nepal.
The organization recently constructed a dormitory room for an overcrowded orphanage in Kathmandu, created a library in a remote village, and built a vocational educational school for women. It is currently fundraising to construct toilets in poor villages, provide educational activities for street children, and continue to feed the hungry.
In an email response to The Wanderer, Rajesh recounted his experience in Mattapoisett and wrote about the impact the love and caring he received here has had on his life.
“I have no exact words to say how I thank Mom Johanna,” wrote Rajesh. “She had played such a ‘parietal’role, which I even cannot get from my own mother … so I call her MOM.”
Rajesh, now in his early 30s, said his experience prompted him to give back to the children of Nepal and serve them as he was once served the opportunity to have a future. For 13 years, Rajesh worked as a social worker, helping and educating impoverished kids and witnessing firsthand the positive impact his work had on them.
“After experiencing such a great thing, I one day decided to open my own organization to serve the children in a more effective way. As a result, Sanga-Sangai was born.”
During the Alternative Craft Fair, Williams was selling the bracelets, cards, and beads that children served by Sanga-Sangai had created to raise funds for the organization’s efforts.
Rajesh, who visited Mattapoisett in 2009, keeps in contact with Williams and with the Mattapoisett Friends, who have taken on Sanga-Sangai as one of its missions. Williams graciously assists in Sanga-Sangai’s efforts because she believes in the man behind it, the little boy she believed in years ago, who has taken the kindness shown to him and transformed it into something greater.
“This one child who had this kindness shown to him has multiplied that,” said Williams. “And he continues to do so.” She described Rajesh as “a little Mother Teresa,” at the risk of sounding dramatic, as she put it. “He’s just so good to other people.”
For more information about Sanga-Sangai or to make a donation, email Johanna Duponte-Williams at johannad@comcast.net.
By Jean Perry
