Once she stepped beyond 26,000 feet on the way to the top of Mount Everest, Wasfia Nazreen, the Bangladeshi mountain climber who graduated from Agnes Scott College in 2006, entered “the other side of fear.”
As she traversed the final ridge to the summit at 29,029 feet, on her right was Tibet and on her left Nepal. The question that came to her mind was, “Which country is better to die in, Tibet or in Nepal?”
Death was never far away. She had to pass dead bodies on her way up.
But then there was life as well — life really as she never experienced it before with the sun “at eye level.”
“On top of the world, the overriding emotion was gratitude,” she recalled. “And thoughts were mostly on how impermanent and short life is. Made me realize on a deeper level the interconnectedness of every being on the planet and how crucial and urgent it was to leave the world better than we found her.”
She had begun the climb on March 26, 2012, in honor of her native Bangladesh’s independence day. But to reach the summit took longer than expected as her camp three was demolished by an avalanche and she had to re-establish that at 24,200 feet.
Upon reaching the summit at 6:26 a.m. on May 26, she knew that the descent also would be full of danger. Yet having succeeded to arrive at the top, she dedicated her heroic accomplishment to the women of Bangladesh “and all those who were fighting for women’s freedom in Bangladesh.”
Ms. Nazreen has not completed what she terms “a spiritual journey” of climbing the seven highest mountains on seven continents including Aconcagua in South America, Mount Elbrus in Europe, Denali in North America, Mount Vinson in Antarctica, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and Mount Everest in Asia.
She has one to go — the Carstensz Pyramid in the Papua Province of Indonesia, the summit of Oceania or Australia — and is anxious to climb it so that she can officially launch her foundation “Bangladesh on Seven Summits” to highlight the progress made by Bangladeshi women since the birth of the country 40 years ago. She has delayed, however, because of reported threats of inter-tribal violence.
“On one side there are bow and arrow clad tribes and on the other is the world’s largest gold mine,” she said of this final ascent. But she hopes to have completed the climb by the end of the year.
“To me, mountains are like pilgrimage sites,” she responded to the “Why climb Mount Everest?” question at Agnes Scott unlike the “Because it’s there” response of George Mallory, the British mountaineer who disappeared in his summit attempt in 1924.
“They’re like a pilgrimage,” she added. “For me they are sacred journeys and provide personal healing for a troubled childhood and teenage life. Mountains are like nature’s hospitals.”
Born in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, her mother was a school teacher and her father an employee at a Scottish trading and shipping company. Scottish friends of her father first showed her a hula hoop when she was eight years old, and she learned how to make it rotate around her body.
But an “auntie,” not a real aunt but a neighbor, severely criticized her for playing with the hoop. “It’s not right for a girl to exercise her hips that way,” she was told and the hoop was taken away.
“What she had said wasn’t necessarily the issue,” Ms. Nazreen added. “But what was more dangerous is that I made myself believe for so long, that in order to meet the ‘good’ girl quota, I will not play with hoops!“
She was not allowed to be outdoors and her “biggest ‘Everest’ was to claim an education.”
A scholarship from Agnes Scott provided her an escape from the confines of the traditions in which she felt shackled. The school provided her with opportunities to learn and travel that, she said, transformed her life.
During an introduction at the evening meeting, which was attended by former teachers, classmates and undergraduates, Agnes Scott’s president, Elizabeth Kiss, said that “while Agnes Scott changes students’ lives, the students also change the college to the point of inspiring their teachers.”
As an Agnes Scott student, Ms. Nazreen was able to study in Scotland and took one of the college’s faculty-led “global awareness” trips to India.
During that trip she visited Dharamsala, which serves as the capital for exiled Tibetans and met a group of nuns who had been tortured in Chinese prisons. Despite their suffering, these women forgave their captors and spoke with such compassion about them that she was motivated to return to Dharamsala following graduation where she worked with Tibetan refugees.
It was there that she met the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, whom she now considers a personal friend and mentor. “People wait for years for a meeting, I am forever grateful that I was approached first by his office instead,” she said. “Kundun had heard that there was a young woman from Bangladesh working for Tibet and wanted to see me.”
Ms. Nazreen is a prolific speaker and it’s no surprise that she was identified by the U.S. embassy in Dhaka and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a candidate for its Global Sports Mentoring Program, which takes place annually in partnership with espnW and in cooperaton with the University of Tennessee’s Center for Sport, Peace, and Society.
Under the department’s “Empowering Women and Girls through Sports Initiative,” the program pairs women leaders from around the world with top American female executives in the sports industry for a month-long mentorship experience in the United States.
For her mentorship Ms. Nazreen was teamed up with the owner and president of Burton Snowboards, Donna Carpenter, with whom she has worked side-by-side to help develop her sports enterprise, entrepreneurial and outreach skills.
Burton Snowboards is a Burlington, Vt.-based manufacturer of snowboards and a product line including–besides snowboards themselves—bindings, boots, outwear and accessories.
From her own entrepreneurial background and as a female in the sports world, Ms. Carpenter provided support and insights as Ms. Nazreen embarks on her future strategies to “pay it forward” through her philanthropic efforts and outreach to underserved populations around the world.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kiss said that Ms. Nazreen’s experience was one of many influences for prompting the college to plan a new curriculum focused on global learning and leadership development that is to be launched in the fall of next year.
The curriculum is to be completed by all the of the students regardless of their majors and is to be individualized by each one to develop her leadership abilities and understanding of complex global issues
Before leaving Agnes Scott, Ms. Nazreen accompanied a group of students to Stone Mountain on the outskirts of Atlanta where they all took hula hoops and danced with them at the top as the sun began to set.
More about Ms. Nazreen’s participation in the U.S. State Department and espnW Global Sports Mentoring Program can be found by clicking here. To learn more about the department and espnW’s partnership, click here.
To learn more about Ms. Nazreen’s foundation, click here.
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