Essay of My Wonderful Life, Wisdom of Nepal

One night of the autumn, I kept reading the legal book. After a while, I was bored for the book and I switched on the TV. As it was only news program, I changed the channels and found a lecture of the TV University. Putting a picture of valleys, a professor explained his study. The picture showed "W" style mountainous area. There are two mountains on both sides. The hight of there two mountains are nearly 1,800 meters above the sea-level. The hight of the mountain in between these two are only 500 meters or so. At the sea-level of more than 1,200 meters, he draw a line. The color of the higher area of this line is green and the one of lower area is red. I was interested in this picture and I had listened for a while what he explained. I was really impressed by his study.

Three different races are staying in this area. Two races are living on the higher part of the mountain. In the morning they start from their houses of high mountain and reach to the rice fields of the valley. And after the agricultural work, they return back to the high place by walk. It will take more than one and half hours for them to walk without luggage. If they would have some luggage, it will take three of four hours. Every day they have done this way. To the contrary, one race is staying in the low mountain of the middle. They are doing in just the normal way. Then I would like to ask you why they are doing such a troublesome way of life.

The answer is that it is because of Malaria. This is the epidemic area of Malaria. The ancisters of these two races faced one problem. When someone would sleep in the small house of cows in the valley, he often got Malaria. So evading from malaria, their ancisters started to stay such a high mountainous area.

According to the professor, this is theoretically wonderful. The Malaria mosquito will fly only the night time. So during only the daytime, it is safe for them to work in rice field. Then their risk of Malaria is quite small, if they would go back to their house at night. The limit of the Boa trees is 1,200 meters high of the sea-level. More than this hight, Malaria mosquito would not come. Their house were built in such high places. Without scientific knowledge, they could produce this counter-measure. How wonderful it is!

As the professor of the TV University had this lecture, it should be the real story. He examined the bloods of these three races. He checked whether they had the resistance to Malaria bacteria. The race living the low mountain had 75% resistance. However the race staying in the high mountain had only 20% or so. The traditional wisdom and the moder science technology happened to coincide to each other.

In 1950s' the people of the World Health Organization came to this area for the purpose of stopping Malaria project. They spread DDT here and there. This succeeded in killing most of Malaria mosquito. The number of patient of Malaria had drastically decreased. So some of the race staying high mountains are gradually shifting to thhie valley area. However the head of the race would refuse to go down. I think I would like to agree with me.

(November 5, 2005)