The World’s Least Reached Are on Our Streets

CHARLES RIJNHART. On an American university campus, a tattered library card rests inside a book. Its familiar American names would be utterly inconsequential until an entry from 1997 reveals the name C. Gurung. The last name Gurung indicates an ethnic group from Mustang, Nepal. This region is remote and unreached, an inhospitable high-altitude desert located on the border of Nepal and China. Somehow, an individual from an isolated Tibetan Buddhist village made their way to the US in the late 1990s to receive their education. Amid forgotten book covers, evidence of a spectacular treasure is found. The unreached are among us, not actually unreachable at all.

The World’s Least Reached Are on Our Streets