know-your-neighbors-rajiv-rimal

A warm smile and an engaging manner are valued everywhere. Perhaps that is why Rajiv Rimal has found it so easy to move between cultures in both developed and less developed parts of the world. Born in Katmandu, Nepal, Rajiv moved as a teenager from Nepal to the United States. Today, as an Associate Professor of Public Health at Hopkins, Rajiv travels four times a year to Africa, where he helps the people of Malawi, Uganda, and Ethiopia in preventing the spread of HIV and other diseases.

Rajiv’s first taste of the United States came as a child when his father moved the family from Nepal to Rockville during a two year stint at the World Bank. Anxious to return, Rajiv applied to a number of colleges in the U.S. and ended up attending Southern Illinois University in rural Carbondale, Ill. Summers during graduate school he drove a cab in Chicago, working as many as 17 hours a day while gaining valuable insights into American urban culture.

After receiving a PhD in Communication from Stanford University, Rajiv began teaching at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas. Even for a man used to traveling between cultures, life among the Texas Aggies was a unique experience. After a passing reference to a football game the Aggies had lost, a student loudly interrupted his class by declaring the truth that all Aggies lived by: they hadn’t lost, only that the time had run out.

In 2003 Rajiv began working at Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. During his many trips to Africa, Rajiv has observed that while the countries he visits are impoverished, the people are almost always generous and appreciative of the help they are given. AIDS and other diseases have taken a toll on these countries (of Malawi’s 12 million people, 750,000 are orphaned children) but the number of deaths from AIDS has slowed to a trickle thanks to the current availability of Anti-Retroviral medications. Rajiv reports that traveling to some of the poorest places on the planet makes him all the more thankful for the wonderful life he has with his wife and daughter here in Mt. Washington.