Righty-tighty, lefty loosey. That’s the way I learned how to loosen a screw, tighten a handle, install a doorknob. Righty tighty holds true in America, if not the Western world. But in Nepal, the padlock on our front door unlocked the other way; when I closed our front door I had to keep telling myself, “Lefty righty, lefty tighty.” Lefty tighty seems to be a metaphor for life in this country. You shake your head no for yes. Doors to businesses open inward. Our house was formidably barred against burglars, but it was Nightmare on Elm Street: someone could come along and latch the door from the outside and we’d be stuck if there was a fire or if war broke out. People who think nothing of using the filthiest toilets imaginable refuse to drink from the same cup with a family member. The national tests rule the country, and the futures of the students who take them. The passing grade for the test is 35%, and only 28% do pass. It is compulsory that teachers finish the required textbooks, so they hurtle through, without regard to whether students understand the material. Teachers can discourse at length on whether the ending to “Story of an Hour” is ironic or paradoxical, or what Eve would say if she had written the “This is Just to Say” poem by William Carlos Williams, and yet can’t pick out six events in a short story. Teaching in Nepal is a difficult, low-paying, low-status profession. And yet, the teachers I worked with are passionate, dedicated, sincere, willing to work long hours and to volunteer their time and money for the betterment of their profession. They are, as one distinguished gentleman from a remote village said, “the builders of the nation, laboring without acclaim.”