So what exactly do you do in Nepal?

At last I can answer that question! These are the areas I’m working in:

The RAI Village:

The RAI community in Mahadevbesi was once a fishing community but the river dried up about 20 years ago and the community has had to switch to other forms of income mostly farming. Tevel Be Tzedek (TBT) runs a small demo farm here, with a meeting place for women’s groups, youth and child clubs and a literacy group for young girls. They attempt to teach new farming methods and technologies on the farm that the villagers can apply on their land. The village which looks like a set straight from a movie, tiny little houses, buffalo and cows grazing outside, chickens and naked children running around and playing in the haystacks (the children not the chickens). I’m working with the women’s group in this community. The issues we focus on range from health and hygiene, to ideas of unity and team work or simply teaching the women new things. All are illiterate and spend their days cooking, working the land and taking care of their children. It’s a new challenge for me trying to think of creative ways to teach adult women to wash their hair regularly, wash their hands with soap, put pants on their children or use the toilets that where built for them last year. One idea we came up with was a board game with simple true or false questions like, “toilets are for rich people”, “Germs are invisible and may be present even if I can’t see them”, or “you should wash your hands before and after the bathroom”- True or false? (The ironic thing is that last week I was washing my clothes at the communal tap and a young RAI girl who was also doing the clothes started instructing me on my cleaning, telling/gesturing to me that I was not doing it correctly and eventually throwing all my seemingly clean clothes back into my bucket and making me start again.)

I have also taken on an extra project in this community, tutoring 5 grade 8 girls maths. These girls are the only ones in the community at this age who still attend school, they are sponsored by TBT but 3 had not been attending school for the past month. We discovered two factors contributing to their reluctance to go back to school were that they were being teased by classmates and that they were well below the level of the rest of the class, especially in maths. On the first day I went with Sabita, our area coordinator to try encouraging them to go back to school, after half an hour of convincing they eventually got dressed and walked with us the 20 minute trek to the school. I began tutoring them that afternoon. At first I wasn’t sure how this could possibly work since they know no English and my Nepali is not much better. However somehow it seems to be working. We meet three times a week, twice at 4:30-5:30pm after school and once at 6:30- 7:30am before the women’s group meeting. We sit outside in the middle of the village or in the fields and usually have a crowd of little children and sometimes adults observing the lesson. I usually look at their homework and then try explain it to them. We have dealt so far with decimals and fractions, rounding off and basic geometry. Most of the time it becomes apparent they are missing the basics and it’s surprising to discover how much of this you can explain with a few Nepali words, pointing, diagrams and of course numbers. It great seeing how slowly the girls catch on and by the end are getting the sums I give them correct and even ask for homework. Slowly It seems they are getting more confident and they have even started attending the Hami Youve Youth Movement Meeting I also do in the school. It’s been a really great experience for me sitting each day in the village, watching the village dynamics as I wait for them to collect their books and get ready for the lesson (which usually takes a good half an hour). Yesterday I even watched them slaughter a goat while the girls finished their lunch. I’m not sure how far these lessons will go, or if my lack of Nepali will eventually become too much of an obstacle but so far it’s definitely been an empowering experience I think for both the girls and myself.

The Stone Quarry

The second community we work in is, the stone quarry. These are migrants from all over the country who come here to work cutting stone along the river edge. I work with a women’s group. These women begin work at 5am in the morning and spend most of the day breaking stones with their bare hands. Their work seems completely illogical with today’s modern technology (or even simple technology). I struggle to fathom how it’s still economical for these women to sit doing this tedious and often painful work with their bare hands. Yet they earn relatively good money by Nepali standards. Despite this they live in plastic covered huts on the river banks with the river serving as their washing area, toilets and source of income. One of the reasons we are told is that all the women are in severe debt to brokers who own the land. The picture we have been given is that they are in an almost slave-like relationship with these brokers where they are forced to sell their stones to them and buy all their groceries from them, regardless if they can sell for more elsewhere or by groceries for cheaper. TbT is currently looking at implementing some sort of microfinance and or income generation program with the women’s group who they have been working with for 2 years and are now eager for tangible changes in their lifestyles. The situation is really complicated and everyone tells you something else so one of the things I have been working on together with another volunteer who leads the women’s group with me is trying to work out what exactly is going on. Who the players are that are involved, whether microfinance could work in this situation, what income generation could be successful and what has already been done etc. (If anyone reading it has any experience in these areas/advice or suggestions be happy to hear them.) In a nutshell its really a crazy situation but either way a great learning experience for me. (Its also interesting that despite the clear hardships these people encounter new families continue to arrive. When I asked why? I was told that despite the hardships its work and therefore people do recommend to their family members to come from the villagers because at least they are earning money and have food in their stomachs. This in itself seems to say something about the peaceful village life I wrote about last month, where the people seem so happy ...)

Finally I’m also working with two youth groups, one in the stone quarry and the other in the local school. TBT is in the process of establishing a network of Youth groups called Hami Yuva (We are youth) which it is hoping to connect in its various locations. The idea is to make these kids into little leaders and social activists. Although I was never really involved in any youth movement I’m really enjoying this. It’s the one area where I feel we can begin to talk with and deal with “bigger issues” and try to develop little leaders. The idea is to get them to raise the issues they want to tackle in their own communities and think of projects or ideas of how they can deal with them. Last week we told one group to imagine they had just been elected Prime Minister of Nepal and to think of three things they would do. We then asked them to present it before the class and in the process we also gave them public speaking skills. We also introducing a project called “hero of the week” where each week we give the kids a hero (Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, Opera Winfrey and a few Nepali heroes among others). Each week two kids must present the Hero (we give them the information in Nepali) to the class, tell us why they think he/she is a hero and ask the class 3 questions about their hero. Last week we gave them Roma Neupane, a famous Nepali dancer who is disabled and started an organisation for the disabled in Nepal . (Interestingly I discovered she had been given a artificial leg by Israel after the Israeli ambassador saw her dance and heard her story.) This idea of presenting to the class it pretty new so it will be interesting to see how the class goes next week. You never know the level the kids are at, the first week we gave them puzzle pieces on which they drew what they wanted to do this year, we couldn’t believe how much difficulty these 13/14 year old kids had putting together a 9 piece puzzle! (Again to anyone reading who has experience in youth and leadership, always open to new ideas.)

So this is what I’m doing – with ALLLL the details!!! Sorry if it’s a bit long, but easier putting it all in one place than facebook/skype chat in my short bit of internet time on weekends. Feel free to share ideas or suggestions if anyone has any.