96: Lessons Learned from Nepali & Indonesian Children
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Laura Park Figueroa: Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always 100 percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors. com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in.
Hello. Hello everyone. Today. I am going to talk about the trip that I just took and some things that I. Learned from my reflections, as I traveled internationally to Nepal and Indonesia. I did not grow up with a lot of money. I didn't even go on an airplane until I was 21 or 22 years old. I still remember how scared I was when I went with two friends from college down to Florida to visit my grandparents from the Midwest where I was in college.
And I. Did not grow up traveling. And I only traveled internationally about two years ago. When I was 46 years old. So this was one of my first experiences really spending significant time in a different culture than my own. And. Despite being someone who feels educated and that I have a global mindset and want to learn about other cultures and really want to understand other cultures, there's something. Very unique about. Really. Being in that environment and seeing a different culture up close.
So this was a once in a lifetime opportunity I had, if you haven't listened to previous episodes, I'll just give you the quick rundown. So my son's best friend. Was going to be traveling with his parents to Nepal and Indonesia. They invited my son to come. And then my son invited me along. At first, I was really happy that he invited me like, oh my gosh, he wants to travel with his mom and he's 20.
And I must be like a really cool mom that he wants. To travel with me. And then the day before the trip, after we had done all of this planning, I realized maybe he just wanted me to come because he knows that I will pay for things while I'm there. Now I'm just kidding. He definitely did want to travel with me, but that thought did occur to me that, oh, it's nice to have mom along because her credit card will pay for things. But I do think he wanted me to come and I am really just full of gratitude for the experience and. So grateful to him for inviting me along on this adventure of a lifetime, because I really don't think that if Karen, the mom of this other family. I don't think if Karen hadn't planned the details of this trip. I wouldn't even have had the first clue as to how to plan this type of trip to again, cultures that are very different than my own.
And Living situations and places that we visited where I wouldn't even know, I wouldn't even know how to start to plan a trip like this. So we spent a few days in Kathmandu when we first arrived and then we took a. Plane from Kathmandu to Lukla. No, actually we took a helicopter from Kathmandu to Lukla, which is the first stop on the trip to Everest base camp, the trek to walk, to end to Everst base camp. And summit Everest, if you're going to do that. We did not.
And when from Lukla, we hiked, I think it's 12 miles to Namche Bazar, which is the last quote, unquote big city. It's still a very small city little village really. Which is the last kind of village on the way to the Everest base camp trek. And we intended to go a little bit higher up than that, but I got really bad altitude sickness and will my son's friend was also very sick, not with altitude sickness, but with some sort of gastrointestinal bug that he got from something he ate in Kathmandu.
And so we ended up doing just some really beautiful day hikes around , but didn't go much higher than that.
So Namche is at 11,286 feet. And we hiked a little bit higher than that. So I probably went to about 13,000 feet, I would say, but that was the highest I went. I got really sick because we went in too quickly. We basically did that entire 12 mile hike in one day. And the doctor. Kind of. When I visited the clinic there, she kind of lit into our guide because she told the guide, you should have stopped in this other. Little village on the way here to let her acclimate.
And so anyways, but I got medication and I felt better really quickly, like within 24 hours of visiting the clinic and Namche I felt a lot better. Just a fabulous doctor there. She was so great. So anyways. So we did some day hikes around Namche then we hiked out from nom. took two days to hike out. And state flew from Lukla to Ramachhap, which was six hours from Kathmandu because Kathmandu. Was closed due to airport construction or something.
So we had to take a van from Ramachhap to. Kathmandu. And it was the craziest most harrowing ride of my life. Y'all I actually, multiple times. In this van, it was like this bumpy Jeep road across like broken highways. And. Most of it was really high up on a mountain side with these steep drops right off to the side.
And the guy was like driving crazy around these blind curves and like passing other cars and beeping the horn. And it was just like this bumpy Jeep road with all these potholes and just. It was multiple times. I actually prayed okay. If I am going to die today, then this is how I'm going to die.
And I just need to accept that. Like I was serious. It was seriously a scary ride. But I, as much as with much of this trip, I actually in retrospect appreciate that I had that experience because we got to see these rural areas of Nepal that we would not have been able to see. Otherwise if we had flown directly back to Kathmandu, which is a big city.
Now I do have thoughts about Kathmandu as well. But. Which was an amazing thing to see. But I just the poverty that I saw driving through rural Nepal really gave me some perspective. And I'm going to share some reflections about kids, but I'm just kind of giving you guys the overall view of the trip right now of what we did.
So, okay. So we drove the six hour harrowing van ride back to Kathmandu, and then we stayed in Kathmandu a few days because we had built in kind of a buffer for in case we couldn't get back to Kathmandu because. Karen knew that the airport in Lukla is a little bit crazy sometimes. I mean, it was. Pretty miraculous that we even got on the flight from Lukla to Ramachhap because. Man.
I can't even describe to you the chaos. There's no lines. There's no announcements been made. You just kind of show up at a door and maybe catch your flight and maybe get on the right plane and maybe put your luggage in the right place. Like it was. It was a miracle that our luggage even got on the same flight that we were on.
And that we actually got to Ramachhap to catch the van that we were supposed to catch. So anyways, then we get back to Kathmandu after the van ride and we spent a few days in Kathmandu. And then we flew with multiple layovers to. Indonesia to sarong Indonesia, where we then took a two hour ferry, plus a 45 minute to hour long, tiny little boat ride. To the Raja Ampat islands of Indonesia where some of the only healthy coral reefs in the entire world are still existing with like loads of rainbow colored fish.
It was so phenomenal to snorkel in this area. I do not scuba dive. I have no interest in scuba diving. But we spent four or five days there. And stayed in these tiny little cabins right on the water. Now it sounds glorious, but one of the things that. Was a takeaway from this trip was it was just so hard, like being sick and cold, where we stayed in Nepal.
There was no heat in the building where we stayed in Nepal and. Or in our rooms, there was heat and like a main kind of dining area, but it was very small and it smelled kind of like kerosene or gasoline. I don't not gasoline, but I guess it was kerosene that they used or. Some sort of fuel that they used for the stove made it feel like not comfortable to kind of sit by the heater.
You weren't sitting by like a wood burning fire. It was this like, kind of. I want to say it was kerosene. I'm not really sure this. The smell that was kind of in the air, it made you feel like you were. Breathing in fuel of the fire. And so it wasn't really comfortable to sit by the fire. So I was cold and sick a lot of the time. The time and we were in Nepal.
And then when we went to Indonesia, it was the opposite. We were like 86 degrees all throughout the whole day, even at night. And like 80 to 90% humidity, I want to say. So you just felt sticky and hot all the time. Like even when you. Just get out of the water. You might feel comfortable for a few minutes, but then you're sticky and hot a few minutes later.
And there was no air conditioning and our, in our rooms in Indonesia. So. The trip was overall, this fantastic, unbelievable experience to see things that. I have never gotten to see, and I'm going to share some reflections on my observations I made of children. During this trip. For this episode, but but it was really hard.
It was much harder than I anticipated it would be when we originally made all the plans for this trip and I didn't choose any of the places we were staying. We stayed wherever Karen had selected to stay. But what surprised me is that I was really uncomfortable for most of the trip. And there were many days when I like, dreamed about being home and having a hot shower.
I think I took three or four showers the whole time that we were gone for three and a half weeks. So. It was, or for three weeks we were gone. Almost exactly three weeks total. I think so. I took maybe four showers. I think so. It just was because the places that we were staying, even the showers were like really not, they did not feel clean.
And like they did, some of them didn't even really have running water. They had kind of like a bucket of water that you could just like scoop water and pour it over your body. So it just didn't. Feel like desirable. I kind of just swim in the ocean and Indonesia to get clean. Quote unquote. My hair just was constantly like dreadlocked because of saltwater and I just kind of embraced it and went with it.
And. You know, wiped my arm pits and reapply deodorant. And. You know, it was just. You just felt gross. The whole time we were gone pretty much. So it felt really good to get a shower on the last night there before we flew out. And we stayed in a relatively decent hotel the night before we left.
And so like we could shower and get clean. It just felt so good to be clean. We ate really good. The food was always really phenomenal where we were eating. It was always like local food prepared by local people. So just really delicious, like rice and beans and. meat and curries and just, oh, such good food.
So, like pickled cabbage and vegetables, like it just, it was delicious food. It's just, I was uncomfortable the whole time. And so that was really difficult for me. And I did not anticipate that before we left, so okay. But not to complain, it was a fabulous trip. And this is one of the first takeaways I will share with you is that. I thought a lot about how most things in life that are worth doing. Are actually really hard.
So I don't think anyone would start a business. If they realized how much work it was going to be when they first started the business. And. This trip was very similar. Like I never would have paid money and taken time off of work and all of the stuff to do this trip. If I had known how hard it would be. And yet, in retrospect, I'm still so incredibly thankful for the opportunity to have seen Everest from far away to have met the people that we met to have observed the cultures that I got to observe up close and. Just these wonderful, beautiful people who live in these areas of the world that I was not familiar with and had never seen before.
So I wouldn't trade it for anything. And also it was really hard, so it can be both. It's one of the things I learned this year. I think and just reflecting on life and somewhat in my own personal, like faith journey and some of the spiritual reading that I've been doing. Is that. A lot of times in the spiritual realm and in our lives in general, I think we tend to have a either or mentality.
And I think a more mature view of things is to have a both and mentality. Like a lot of things in life, most things in life are not either or. They are both. And, And so I, I've learned to take that perspective in many different. Areas of my life this year. And this trip was one of them. It was both hard and amazing at the same time, so.
Okay. So that's kind of the overall view of the trip or like what we did on the trip. I as a side note on the way home, we had a 12 hour layover in Tokyo. So we actually left the airport and got to see a little bit of Tokyo too. That was a more like fun day. It wasn't really it was like a very urban setting.
We went and had sushi and went to this little cafe and had like Japanese snacks. It was just so fun. So my observations from the trip, we'll mostly be talking about children now will mostly be from Nepali and Indonesia and culture because I didn't really get to observe a lot of kids in Tokyo.
We were like downtown in like an urban area for the few hours that we were there, but that was like a super fun. Experience as well. I would love to go back to Japan to visit for a longer period of time, because it was just, it just made me want to travel there again to see the little bit that I did of Tokyo. Okay.
So I want to share some of my. Thoughts about children and what I observed. So I am going to. Make a, so every week when I do the podcast, I also do a post on Instagram. About something about the podcast. So I'm going to share for the post, for this episode, I'm going to share some of these photos that have some of the things that I am talking about and maybe some video too, because I got some incredible video and photos of kids. When I was traveling that I felt were very shocking to me.
And I'm going to give you the visual of these things that I'm talking about in that Instagram post, when this episode comes out. So you can find me on Instagram at Laura Park, fig. And see these photos. If you'd like to see some photos of the things I am about to share with you all. So the first thing I want to say is that. Aye. I think it's important for you to know some things about these cultures before. I share the lessons. That eye. That I learned, or the reflections that I have, I guess, about children in these cultures.
So. Like I said, I. Was taken aback by how little people live with in these countries. How the basics of life are are paired back to shelter, food safety, you know, like the basic things, like when we think about most of you probably know of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, and like safety and food and shelter are kind of at the bottom.
Like the things that kids really need. Right. So. When I looked up some data about Nepal and Indonesia. There are some really sad statistics about the kids there. More in Nepal, more than 45% of children die before age five, which is just. Heartbreaking. 21% of them are underweight. There are no laws against pedophilia and many girls are trafficked over 25% of girls work every day, often in dangerous conditions. So there's child labor concerns and just. You know, not the basic protections that we are familiar with in the U S at least I live in the U S so my perspective is always going to be a U S American perspective. And for education, 10% of kids do not attend school.
So I guess that means 90% of kids do attend school, but these are just some hard, you know, statistics, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. And it is on the UN list of least developed countries as of 2024. This similar things in Indonesia's. And in Indonesia, sorry. UNICEF the world organization.
I for, I forget what it stands for, but most people know UNICEF. They estimate that 90% of children in Indonesia experienced some form of poverty. So. This is. You know, in, in stark contrast to the United States where 86% of children do not live in poverty. Now that's still 14% that do but you just see these differences between the United States as an industrialized and highly developed. Country in the first world where we have, where I visited countries that had much less. Development and industry there and an opportunities and resources, really.
So, that's just a picture of the two countries. The things I observed though, are really interesting. Children. The first thing I noticed right away was that children tend to have much more. Freedom. It seemed to me just from my observations on the streets. Now these are not like formal observations.
I didn't like formally. Interview people. I didn't go there on a research experiment or anything. It wasn't a work trip necessarily. So. But I just noticed that there were a lot of children. playing independently. You know, children. As young as five to eight years old, maybe. Navigating Kathmandu, which is just crazy.
You guys there's no traffic lanes. There's no, like you constantly have a car or a motorbike or. Or Vehicle next to you. I'm talking like six inches away from you. If you are not aware while you are on the street, you will get hit by something like. So. Kids are navigating these streets in these busy city streets with like loads of people and. You know, Motorized vehicles. At young ages, often with another kid with them, but they're very independent and very they have to learn to be very self-aware I think at much younger ages specifically in Nepal, I guess I'm just speaking of Nepal. I didn't actually in Indonesia, that's something I should say too, in Indonesia. I didn't get to observe kids in a really urban environment very much.
I mean, maybe on a few little car rides that we took from the ferry to the hotel or the airport. But I really didn't. I really didn't do a lot of observation in urban areas in Indonesia. So that is something to note here, as I'm making these observations. So it's did seem to me though that in both places it was kind of like culturally accepted for kids to do more dangerous or risky things at much younger ages.
So. For example, some of the photos I will probably share on Instagram are families would ride on motorbikes like these little, they're not really motorcycles, but they're not a bike either. They're a motorized little two wheel motor motorbike. I don't know how to describe it any other way. There's probably an official word for them, but But they would. Very young children would be kind of wedged between two parents are wedged between an older sibling and their parent, or even sitting on the front of the motorbike to travel in the city.
So it's sometimes they would have helmets and sometimes not. So some of these things are like, I'm not saying these are good things, I'm just sharing my observations. Right. So. Obviously it's kind of dangerous to do that, but it was socially accepted. It was kind of something that you saw fairly commonly on, on the streets of Kathmandu. You'd also see kids, like I said, walking on busy streets in traffic at very young ages, like navigating the busy city environment by themselves. I saw a lot of kids alone with peers playing in like a vacant lot or in front of a building or on the steps of their house or in front of a store or but just alone, playing with peers, doing different games, or just sitting and talking like they, they weren't really. I didn't get the impression that children were being actively supervised by adults the way that they are a lot of times in American culture, at least so. I also saw amazing. You have to, if you are an Instagram, please go there. If you're listening to this episode and watch the video that I will post of the child using the machete, he probably was maybe 10 years old. I didn't ask how old he was.
My son might know actually, cause he talked with him a lot more using Google translate. But he uses a machete. He climbed probably 20 feet up in a coconut tree, got a bunch of coconuts down for us and then took this big machete and chopped open, super fast, like boom, boom, boom, boom. With the machete. I chopped open this coconut for us.
And then he carved using the machete he carved a little spoon from the hard shell of the coconut so that we could scoop out the meat of the coconut after we drank the coconut water. So. He the skill with which he used this machete by himself was incredible to me. He had just done it so many times and obviously had learned how to do it at a very young age.
And then the other crazy video I'm going to share is a. Maybe two year old child. I don't even know if he was to actually, I wish I would have asked his mom before I left, but using a knife to cut a bulb of garlic and cut the little cloves of garlic off the bulb of garlic. And he was so young using this knife.
Now, it probably was a pretty dull tool. I don't think that it could have caused major harm to him, but when you see the skill with which. He used this tool. It was just crazy. I also saw him playing with a handful of. Nails like three inch long nails. He had a handful of, he had a spear through a piece of fruit.
Once that he was eating like a really sharp knife through a piece of fruit. So I have some photos of some of these things that I'll share, but I'm just very intriguing to see. That and to watch a kid that young with a knife. And again, No adult insight, no adult around while he was doing these things. And it just shows. How. Well, I don't know that it shows how, I guess I would caution against making any assumptions about the culture based on my observations.
Right. But it's just what I observed. I observed that parents do not. Have such a tight hold on their kids as they seem to do in the U S there's just not this anxiety around constantly supervising the children. I saw that young boy climbing way up in the tree. Now I think maybe his dad or maybe older brother was underneath the tree while he was climbing it, but I'm sure he climbs trees that high without his, without supervision of adults, because how would he have gotten all the reps in to be able to climb so quick if he was constantly had to do that only with an adult there, like he clearly was skilled at it and had done it hundreds of times.
Cause he just shimmied up that trunk of the Palm tree. Got those coconuts down and then shimmy down the tree super fast. So, and then the last thing I saw that was something that I would consider quote dangerous was a four-year-old child. When we were in Indonesia on the island. Swimming without any supervision.
So without adults nearby now, maybe adults like walking by who knew him, this was a really, really small, there were no stores. There were no shops. Like literally it was like only the little cabins where we were staying and the, and. And the kitchen where they made food and then the D the dock for the boats and all the dive gear and stuff. So we weren't in an industrialized area.
So this child was swimming in water where I took a photo of a shark.
At a different time. Right. But there are sharks in the water. Swimming without any adult kind of standing right there watching him. And probably I don't know, a foot to a foot and a half of water, but you know, in the us, we're very aware of kids can drown and in a very small amount of water and. So it's just a very interesting thing to see children and other cultures who, you know, a child who grows up on the ocean, they probably learn. How to be safe in water at a very young age.
So it's interesting. It was just interesting observations of kids doing all these risky and sometimes dangerous things. At really young ages compared to what we see in the states. So. Tha. The final thing that I want to share is that I had kind of an existential crisis while I was on this trip, because I really had to come to grips with the fact that as a nature-based occupational therapist in the U S and as. You know, Nature-based educators like people who are concerned about connecting children to nature. I had to realize that. Our work is. A huge, huge privilege our our mission to connect children to nature is a huge privilege. Nature connection is a privileged thing to even worry about.
Honestly, it doesn't mean that it's not important. But it was a bit of an existential crisis for me because I had to be like, What is the purpose of my work? Like there are so many kids around the world who.
You know, Probably honestly, live in closer connection to nature than we do but don't have the basic necessities of life that they need. And some of them maybe lack connection in nature and lack the basic necessities of life.
Now, I don't know. About their relationships, right. I don't know. I think sometimes. When there is. A greater amount of lack of resources there is a requirement and a culture to live more inter dependently than independently. So perhaps there are relationships in. rural or impoverished cultures that, that simply can't exist in a more privileged or wealthy culture because we have this independence, you know, money gives us some independence. But I just, these are the type of things I was reflecting on as you can probably tell from how I'm talking, I don't feel like I have. Fully formed, established kind of. Principles or ideas from this trip.
It's more than just my reflections. Caused me to really think about the purpose of my work. Connecting kids to nature seems so privileged and. Something that we are privileged in the U S and perhaps in other industrialized nations to care about only because we have our most basic needs met. And the majority of the kids that we work with, if you look at statistics for poverty in the U S you know, the majority of the kids that we work with, Let's be real, especially if we have cash based practices. These kids have their basic needs met.
We are lucky that we get to focus on fostering their social skills or fostering their motor skills or fostering their connection to nature. I hope, you know, I do think that it's caused me to reflect more on how can we find ways to reach kids that. Maybe do have even more basic needs that we can help meet as professionals.
Right. I know there are many practices out there that are doing that very well. And I love that. I love that there are many of you who can take Medicaid and who can have, who can. Fund services through other programs or nonprofits that then let you expand the reach of our services to a wider variety of kids.
But. I have just been filled with a sense of like gratitude feels like such a Platitude word. It doesn't feel right. It feels, I feel like I do not deserve. The. Like gosh, I'm getting emotional. Um, I just feel like I don't deserve the life that I've been given, you know, so much of. What the opportunities that we have in our lives are simply due to where we're born. The family that we're born into um, the, the context and the culture that we're born into and.
I feel grateful. That I have had the opportunities that I have the business that I have, that I have the chance to podcast and share with all of you. The ability that you have to have a practice that connects children to nature and That supports their development and. So I just have been overwhelmed with. The appreciation that I have in a new way for access to things that I never thought twice about before. Healthcare. Variety of food, clean water, running water hygiene. Clean air having warm shelter and a warm, comfortable bed to sleep in at night.
I mean, there's just so many things that we have to be thankful for, even if we're not what might be considered quote unquote, rich or wealthy in America. So, yeah. A new appreciation for my life and for my work. And I, I don't know how this will impact me going forward, but I'm sure that it will.
And I'll share that as I share everything on this podcast with y'all as things unfold in my own life and business. So. Yeah. That's it. I think I'll end on that note. That was all of my notes. And keep an eye out for that Instagram post. I may make a few posts because I think I probably have two fo. Too many photos and videos to share just one post for this episode.
So maybe next week I'll do a few posts. Or this week, once you hear this episode, I always, it's always hard. Cause I record usually a week before, sometimes even more before. So it's hard to make sure that I'm saying the right thing. Like this week, when you look at Instagram, it will be there because if you're listening to this will be published.
Oh, my gosh. I almost forgot to give you guys the announcement that I meant to put at the end of this episode. I have decided to do an off schedule. Not normally when I would do it opening of the Contigo nature-based pediatric therapist certification program, because. In 2025, we are going to be raising our rates for the program for the first time in five years, since we started offering it. We did a significant revamp to the requirements for certification and the badges and everything that we offer with the certification program. In 2024 this year. And it requires a significant amount of time on the part of me and my team. So we are going to raise the rates just a little bit, but if you want to save $150 and you were thinking about enrolling in 2025, Now it'd be the time to enroll and you will have a year from the date of your enrollment to finish the certification requirements.
Now, most people are saying it does not take a year. To do it. It is approved for 30 hours of continuing education. That's 3.0 CEUs from AOTA. The American occupational therapy association. And everyone who finishes those requirements gets a certificate of completion and is eligible to be listed on our directory. Of nature-based pediatric practitioners who are certified.
Now I should note that this certification program is not just for occupational therapist or therapy assistance. We have had people attend who are speech therapists, mental health counselors, physical therapists. So it is for any pediatric therapist or therapy assistant to be certified, you do need to be a licensed therapist of some kind with children.
So that is a requirement of the certification program that we offer. But it is not just for OTs, even though it was designed by me as an OT, I purposefully. And very intentionally tried to include perspectives from different therapist and professionals in the creation of the content in the program. And when we do revamps in the future, I think it will only continue to move more multidisciplinary because I am thrilled to see that speech therapist and physical therapist and mental health counselors are all moving towards nature based work in more numbers then I've seen, you know, four or five years ago, so it's kind of cool.
So that is open for you until December 31st at 5:00 PM central time. So if you are interested, you can go to Contigo approach.com. You can find it on all of the emails that I send out. I will be putting this announcement in it so that you will not miss the deadline to get in. Before we raised the rates by about $150 in January. We will plan as we did this year, it worked out very well. We will plan to do. Weekly calls, weekly mentoring calls. So the calls are required to be certified. In February, may and October in 2025. That is the plan right now. And if you enroll, now, you can have a year to finish attending all four of the main modules of the mentoring calls. So you could technically, if you wanted to attend one in February two in may and one in October and finish, but ideally you do them in a month because I think it's nice to get into the flow of learning and to get to know people on the calls. It kind of is loosely a cohort model, but you get lifetime access so you are allowed to come to any future calls to get questions answered or ask me questions or ask the other Contigo therapist questions as well. So. If you have any questions after you look at the website, you can reach out to me at Laura at therapy in the great outdoors.com. And I will answer them. All right.
I will see you all next week until then get outside, connect, reflect, and enjoy therapy and the great outdoors. Bye!.
