Gratitude for the "Good Things"

   It would be easy in Nepal to focus on the things that are just not great like the dirt and the garbage and the smells and the water.  But if we did this our mission would be long and laborious and it is not.  There are so many great parts of Nepal, and I would like to show you a few of the "good things" in Nepal.  There is no particular order to our pictures, but we hope you enjoy them and can imagine how grateful we are to be here.  The "good things" are, . . .

Dressing up in Nepali kurdas and topis to go, . . .

meet Nepal's Brad Pitt whose name is Rajesh Hamal at his wedding reception and, . . .

attend the exquisite Rice Ceremony for our landlord's six month old granddaughter .  When a baby is ready for solid foods, there is a huge party and each guest gives the baby a small spoonful of water. Then at the appointed time the baby is finally given a little rice.  I can't imagine the baby wanting much rice after having all that water, but it is the way it is done here.

Laxmi at her sewing shop.  I am talking to Laxmi.  For years she took care of the senior missionary couples in their homes. She worked hard but has since developed some back problems.  She is the sole bread winner for her and her daughter, so she needed to find work.  She happens to a be a very fine seamstress so with the help of LDSC and our Nepali partner,  we helped her to find a small place for a sewing center, bought her 6 sewing machines and some sewing supplies.  She had to do the rest.  She found her students to teach, and as you can see she has been sewing for others.  She lives behind her shop. 

Getting Laxmi another sewing machine.  Laxmi needed one more machine to help her to bind edges.  Fortunately we had a little money left in her budget to be able to purchase one more machine.  She seems to be very happy as she begins this new chapter in her life.

Going to a children's hostel/orphanage to sing and to dance.  There are literally 1000's of "orphanages" in Nepal, but rarely is a child an orphan.  Parents in Nepal die early in life to disease and when the other spouse remarries, the new spouse will not parent another person's child or children.  Sometimes the child goes to live with a grandparent or an aunt or uncle, but if this is not possible, they are taken to an "orphanage" or put out on the streets to fend for themselves.  See the little girl in a green shirt standing close to me.  She had just been dropped off that afternoon and she was so frightened.  The bigger girls know how she feels so they keep her very close.  This orphanage is run by a dynamic LDS German lady.  Her children are very well taken care of with enough food and good schooling and many after school programs.  If the child is excelling in school, she does not turn them out when they finish high school, but allows them to stay and helps them go on to university.  She is unusual.  Here we are in a circle and the kids are singing songs for us.  We sang Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree and, . . .

Do As I'm Doing as well as others.  Doesn't this little guy just melt your heart as he leads us in the song?  He does ours.

Receiving Hindu blessings on our foreheads.  The paint signifies a blessing and we have been blessed over and over.  My bangs are now a wonderful Christmas red thanks to all those blessings.  The scarves and flower leis around our necks are also a part of Nepali ceremonies.  We are the honored guests at a latrine ceremony.  One hundred latrines were constructed in tiny villages in the mountains by LDSC and Choice Humanitarian.  The mountainside is covered with people who want to attend the festivities.  Our hope is now they will learn to use them and help curb the disease that is rampant from polluted water.

Learning about bio-gas digesters from the villagers.  Another thing LDSC helps to finance are these waste disposal systems that provide fuel to heat one small propane burner in the home to rid homes of smoke from open cooking fires.  What you see in this picture is the start of bricked latrine on the left.  The round concrete structure is where the village women put water buffalo dung and mix it with a large metal spatula.  The concrete square to the right will have a concrete dome on it where the human waste and animal waste will mix and make a gas that will be piped into the house to fuel the little smokeless stove in.  The sludge left over from the gas formation is piped out and then is used for fertilizer.  Everything is used and there is no waste.  The villagers do all the work.  We only provide the materials and the experts to help them to do it.  The man in the cap in the front is one of the rural development facilitators who lives in the villages for 3 years to help them manage all their new systems and help them to develop their village councils to address water and hygiene issues.  

Jim giving a speech encouraging villagers to use their latrines and to work together.  He has a translator to his left.  For generations these villagers have gone without any bathroom facilities.  It is sometimes difficult to get them to use them, but this village council has enacted a fine if they find human waste around a home.  The fine is about 20 cents - not much in America but a huge fine for them.  The villagers produce everything they need themselves except perhaps clothing and a few other odd and end items.

Giving out Helping Baby Breathe materials to one of the Nepali trainers that the American team of doctors trained to teach others how to resuscitate babies on delivery.  Since March our trainers have trained over 1000 other medical professionals. Rukmina is on the left, and she helps us at our apartment, translates for us, and helps us find places around the city.  The lady in the white is a public health officer and she needed more HBB student books.

Congratulating a blind student who just finished a 6 month knitting class sponsored by LDSC.   She now has a skill for knitting products to be sold in her village or in the markets.  Often times the disabled or handicapped are shut off from the world.  When you teach them a skill, they feel a sense of confidence.  Two of the blind students who finished the computer training 6-month class have Fulbright scholarships and one student is headed to India to do Braille Across Borders.  (Notice the red bangs from Hindu tika blessings.)

Cooling off before we climb the 8 floors to our apartment.

Riding in a rickshaw.  Our poor rickshaw driver really had to work to pedal us around.  Unfortunately Nepal has not taken off any pounds - dang!

Hiking back from checking out a water tank project.  Once again we were ceremonially blessed with tikas, flowers and scarves.

Spending our 41st anniversary in the mountains.

Finding a water source for a water project.

Getting new visas for an entire year.  This was no easy task!!!!!

Helping Yak (the young man on the right) with his English class.  Yak is one of those amazing people who rises above adversity.  He was 10 years old when he had to quit going to school and go to Kathmandu and find work to provide for his family.  He was beaten and abused and half starved, but he continued on.  He met a tourist from Denmark that befriended him and taught him the gospel.  He went on an LDS mission to India and then returned to Nepal to go to school.  At 21 years of age and with only about a limited 4th graded education, Yak wanted to go back to school.  The church is helping him to go to school and he is now in 9th grade.  He studies hard and wants to be a doctor.  The two others in this picture are his brother and sister who he is helping to raise.  They all live in a boarding school hostel.  (For my kids who were not too sure they ever wanted me to help them write essays, Yak seems to be more willing.  It is hard for him because besides just the mechanics of writing he must learn, he also has to think in English so sometimes words are misspelled or non-existent.)

Seeing a little boy get a tiny piece of corn for his breakfast before he goes to school.  This is not sweet corn, but field corn that they eat.

Getting away from the water buffalo who charged us.  He obviously didn't like our white faces.

Taking a Preparation Day to go see one of the largest Buddhist stupas in the world.

Still there are some very obvious "not-so-great" things about Nepal.  This is one of them.  We are sitting in a cab along a busy street in Kathmandu.  This little beggar boy comes to the car window looking for money or candy.  He should be in school, but families have their children out working the streets to beg for money.  People who take taxis must have money and at this intersection, the cars are often held up in traffic.  These little beggar boys just work their way down the cars.  Their mothers are working the cars too.  The mothers always have an infant in their arms nursing as they work the windows.  The mothers with babies are very aggressive.  The little boys are just cute.  There just has to be another way to get these families off the streets.  We just don't know what that is.


Jim and I are doing well.  There are new experiences every day that keep us on our toes.  We have made friends with the people on our street.  And Dad continues to make friends with every little child he meets.  We find ourselves becoming accustomed to the life style here.  We are so excited to have Doug and Brooke here this week.  We can see the wisdom of why Heavenly Father sent us to Nepal.  He has made sure that our needs are met and we are safe, but the work is humbling.  These are good people who need help and while Christ is not on the earth to do the work, we are.  His hands are our hands and His heart is our heart.  So the adventure continues.  We hope you can feel our devotion to Nepal.  

May Flew By

       We feel we could write a book about May here in Nepal, but we will try to just hit the high points.  We have been in and out of Kathmandu, worked diligently to get new visas which expire any day now, endured some ups and downs (normal when you are away from home and family), and still have more humanitarian work to do than we have hours in a day.  We are slower to accomplish things.  I think it is because Jim is a project manager and he is use to being very thorough in an engineer sort of way, and I have been accused of being a perfectionist.  I only want to do things once.    We just hope that when our time here is finished, we have done some good and if possible - we have done a lot of good.  That remains to be seen.
       We wanted to see one more wheelchair and blind stick distribution before the monsoon season hit and we couldn't get out of the city.  Early in May we headed to Jiri which is about 8 hours from Kathmandu.  It is only about 150 miles to Jiri (which is by the Tibetan border) but the roads are single lane, rough and windy, and it takes a 4 wheel drive to get there.  We hired a driver and a Land Rover and drove almost 6 hours to Charikot.  Our Nepali partner got us the best hotel in town which cost $10 a night and was in the new section.  It came complete with bed bugs, stained towels, and a dirty bathroom with no toilet paper.  But it did have a western toilet.  Yeah for me.  The drive was beautiful.  We wound around rivers and up and down mountain roads.  Part of the road to Jiri was built by the Swiss.  The Swiss had been there years ago, and since the mountains were so Alp-like, they decided to build a resort up there and make Swiss cheese.  Unfortunately the Swiss did not take into account the Hindu religion and their belief in the sacredness of cows, so their idea of a resort area in Nepal complete with wine and cheese was fruitless.  However we did buy some yak cheese in Jiri at the cheese making place, and it was very good and very reasonably priced.  In fact it was the best cheese we have had here.  Needless to say we have had very little cheese in Nepal.  It is about $30 for a tiny block of cheese in Kathmandu.
      We arrived at the Jiri hospital the next morning where 12 chairs were given away.  Most of these recipients were adults who were very respectful and very serious.  One man literally crawled down the mountain with tire pieces strapped to his knees and flip flops on his hands.  Another disabled woman keep squealing with delight.  Her family had kept her indoors most of her life, and she was getting outside and seeing many things for the first time.  She could hardly contain herself because she was so happy.  Jim and I stand in awe as Rakesh and his small staff of 3 - Gokuhl, Kabita, and Sunita - assess clients, put together wheelchairs, and teach wheelchair skills.  After a closing ceremony with happy wheelchair recipients and their families and local dignitaries (Nepali love ceremonies), another Nepali partner fixes these people a lunch.  For many of these people it will be their only meal of the day so they have dahl bhaat and fried potatoes and a little meat and beans.  They will eat well and then they will be off to find their way back home before darkness hits.
     We climbed back in the Land Rover headed back 2 hours to Charikot to a blind and deaf school.  Their were 10 students and teachers waiting anxiously for a white stick which represents independence to them.  With it they can get around without always having to have help.  Getting around is no easy job for even a sighted person in Nepal with their narrow dirt roads complete with pot holes, but it is a chance for them to be independent.  We were met at the gate by a whole bunch of deaf children who wanted us to put our arms around them and hold their hands.  A little love goes a long way in Nepal.  They were fascinated by Jim's hearing aides and wanted to try them on to see if they could hear.  Wouldn't that be fabulous if hearing aides would allow them to hear?  They led us to a small room where the blind teachers and students waited to introduce themselves to us in English (they had been practicing) and receive their sticks.  This was a happy group and we were humbled to be so blessed.  As we left we saw another group of girls sitting on the steps.  They were not deaf or blind, but perhaps were homeless and boarded here at this school.  We told them they were beautiful and we would think of them as our Nepali princesses.  They loved the thought of being called beautiful.  What a small gift it is to tell someone they are beautiful.  And they were beautiful.  Perhaps after reading this blog, we will all remember to be just a little more kind.
     Enjoy the pictures of Charikot and Jiri.  Some day we will look back at this adventure and think how lucky we were to have this opportunity.

The Nepali people work hard to garden on the mountains.  The mountains are literally covered with terraced gardens.

Wheat laid on the road so vehicles will drive over it to separate the wheat from the chaff.  

Women do almost of the planting and harvesting.  They cut the wheat with a scythe, bundle it, and then lay it on the road.

Wheat being moved the old fashioned way.  This is just the way they do things here. 

Look how hard this guy works to move his produce.  Remember this is all up hill.

Planting the terraced grades with a team and a wooden plow.

Traveling between the villages can be an adventure.  There are buses going up and down the mountains all day.  This is a  stopping point because the road is wide, but wide roads are few and far between on the mountains.  When we meet a bus on the single lane roads it is quite a feat to get both vehicles past one another.  There are times when I just close my eyes because we are so close to the edge and I am afraid the mountain road will fall away and we will go crashing down the mountain.  When the buses get too full, people and their goats just hop up on top.  I can't imagine riding up on top because the roads are twisty and bumpy and the people must have a heck of a time staying seated on top.

This was a little girl we passed on our way.  She was having a drink when she saw our white faces.  She immediately put down her drink, and welcomed us with a "nameste."

Charikot town square.  You can't see it but in front of us is an open sewer line.  The smell was horrific and we didn't linger.

This little boy was more fearful of our white faces.  We are walking up to the hospital at Jiri.

The disabled come with their families to get their wheelchairs.  This chair is called a Rough Rider and is bigger than a standard wheelchair.  Its wheels are tougher and the chair is bigger.  These kind of chairs are more difficult to get on and off buses but they are great for rougher terrain.  They are also a little heavier so a recipient must be stronger than those who get standard chairs.

This man was so serious.  I had to work really hard to cross the communication barrier and get him to smile which I did later on.  He is the man who crawled down the mountain with tire pieces tied to his knees and flip flops for his hands.  You can see the flip flops on the side of his wheelchair.  I can only imagine what a wheelchair meant to him.

Here is the same man as above.  After the wheelchair ceremony is over, the staff shows the people how to transfer in and out of their wheelchairs as well as other necessary skills.  This man wanted to know for himself so he climbed out of his wheelchair so the staff could show him personally how to do it.  Notice the flip flops on his hands.  The girl in the white shirt by him is one of Rakesh's staff.  The staff literally drive all over Nepal fitting wheelchairs.  Also notice the girl on the left side of the picture who has an aqua shirt and purple sweater on.  She didn't get a wheelchair.  She doesn't need one.  Her disability is her hands.  They are all deformed.  She was brought in to show the people that they should look for ways to go around their disability.  She showed everyone how she writes with her toes.  Nepali writing is picture-like which is difficult even with hands, but she wrote with a pen between her toes on the line on a piece of paper.  She was incredible.
 

Rakesh is on your right.  He is the best!  We have a great deal of respect for the man.  The man on your left is a man who would like help building a water project from LDSC for his village of Dolkha.  We met with him to see if he had a water source and a few other details.  Rakesh also helps with water projects.

Look at how serious these men are.  I did my best to share my happiness that they could now have a wheelchair.  All I could do was smile and shake their hands.  Hopefully they knew we genuinely care.

Gokuhl is the main assessor on Rakesh's staff.  When someone needs a wheelchair, they call Rakesh's office.   The office receives about 60 calls a day from people looking for wheelchairs.  When a distribution point has been identified, then Gokuhl travels out and interviews, measures, and assesses each person in the area that has called.  If a person can have a wheelchair, Gokuhl determines what kind and size of wheelchair he needs and then tells him where and when the next distribution point is.  The government requires extensive record keeping on all wheelchair recipients.  Many people in these villages cannot read or write so Rakesh's staff get a fingerprint.  Gokuhl works very hard and the disabled seem to really like him.
  

Lunch is served.  The girl in the red top on the left, you just see her back, is the one that hardly, if ever, got out of her home.  This was her first trip even out of her village.  She squealed with delight at the things she saw on her way to and from Jiri.

That was as close to a smile I got with this man.  I said goodbye and wished him well.  I don't believe the disabled are treated well here in Nepal, and they are a little surprised with the respect we show them.

Back to Charikot.  This little deaf girl came running to us and gave us a big hug. She did not want to leave my side.  She just needed a love.  It took me a while to figure out she was deaf.  I wish I had known some sign language, but a touch and a smile was all I had.  It seemed to be enough.

Dad had the honor of giving out the white sticks.  I love how even the ones that were not blind were happy to see their friend get a blind stick.

Dad gave these sticks to children of all ages.  Isn't this guy a handsome kid?  I hope the stick gives him confidence.
  

This young man had not been able to leave his academic school outside of the blind and deaf school gates to get back to the blind school to get his own stick.  He came running with the assistance of a helper to get to us.  He was kind of panicked that we might have left.  We do not know who is getting sticks before we come so we could have missed giving him one.  I am so glad we lingered to take pictures.

Last but not least, a group photo at the school.  You can see the blind kids.  Most of them have blue shirts on which is part of the uniform required for the school outside of the gates.  The "Nepali princesses" are the group on the right  The youngsters kneeling are the deaf children.  Two teachers also received blind sticks - one is on the left with the orange shirt and green scarf.  The other is a man with sunglasses on who is standing just to the left of the "Nepali princesses." One of the  teachers asked for a computer program called JAWS - job access with speech - which is a program LDSC also provides.  It allows the blind to "see" the screen using voice commands.  Jim is here in Nepal as a JAWS specialist.  We have used all of our LDSC money for the year so we won't be able to honor their request this year.

     I will continue the activities for the month in a new post.  The posts are too long.  Sometimes as we look out of our apartment window and we see the beautiful mountains, we feel what a beautiful place Nepal can be someday.  Then we look down at the garbage and torn up roads and the small shutter stores and the humble people as they are walking, and we wonder how a transformation like this will ever happen.  There is only one way and that is through the help of our Father in Heaven who created our earth.  He knows how to take something that seems beyond hope and turn it into something beautiful.  So faith moves us ahead and allows us the opportunity to live and work at this adventure in Nepal.