From Nepal Journalist to U.S. Citizen Over Earth's Highest Peaks

Did you know that the first Nepalese TV journalist to reach the summit of Mount Everest lived in El Cerrito for three years and now resides about four blocks from El Cerrito's border in Richmond?

Kami Sherpa, 36, became a local celebrity this past week when his remarkable past – including topping Everest six times – was covered by the news media. The occasion was his taking the oath of U.S. citizenship in a ceremony at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on April 9.

One of his goals for becoming a citizen, he said, was to speed up the process for bringing over his relatively new wife, Sunita, who's still in Nepal.

"I want to bring her as soon as possible," he told Patch.

He looks forward to other benefits too, he said.

"Being a U.S. citizen means it is easy to travel around the world," he said, adding that it also means greater political participation.

Sherpa, who worked as a Nepalese TV journalist (the first to broadcast from the top of Everest) and a guide for mountain climbing and trekking, immigrated to the United States in 2007.

"The political situation was not good," he said, adding that journalists there faced risks from a lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

He now works as a plumber and is developing a trekking and mountain-climbing business with a partner in Sweden, Everest Sherpa Travel. His mountain-climbing experience has been extensive, not just in the Himalayas but also in Africa, where he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro three times.

A news release from the San Francisco office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offered a vignette of the attention Sherpa received at the swearing-in ceremony, saying he "surprised the television reporters who came to the ceremony to interview him by providing cameramen with a 'white balance' without being asked.

"On the day he naturalized, he graciously gave interviews to four television stations, three radio stations, two big city newspapers, the newspaper in the town where he lives, and two wire services. He even gave reporters a sample of his mountain-climbing skills when he veritably flew down, then back up a set of stairs in the theater where the ceremony was held."

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