thewills'wanderings

Share and Care Nepal is a Christian organisation that is supported financially by Tear Fund NZ. As part of the 25 year celebrations for Adventure Specialties a trip to Nepal was planned. Of course, a major part of this was about climbing and trekking but while in Nepal we also wanted to see if we could do something for some local people here.

Well, through Tear Fund NZ it was arranged for us to spend some time with Share and Care Nepal and help out in some way. Until we arrived here, we weren’t at all sure of the detail but they had plans for us and it was great getting an insight into the fantastic work that they do here.

We were picked up in jeeps at our guesthouse and taken to the office to meet the staff and learn about their work. We learnt that they work in a number of areas including community development in a number of villages and helping prevent child trafficking into the prostitution trade in India.

We spent a night just outside Kathmandu in their training centre where we discussed what we could do with our time here. We were all really aware that we were only here for such a short time and what we could do would be pretty limited so we took the lead from the project staff and started planning with them. They were really keen for us to do some work at the school. They suggested we paint the school and spend some time with the kids in the area. It was great for our girls to be involved in the planning and they had lots of ideas about what we could do. We decided we wanted to fund whatever we decided to do so that would involve buying the paint and other supplies the following morning.

So, morning came and we split into 3 groups and hit the streets to get supplies. It was so much fun trying to find what we needed and great to see the girls getting confident at hunting things down in a foreign country. They’re actually turning into quite hard bargainers and can’t bear the thought of getting ripped off! Mark, forever the optimist had the most successful morning. We had decided it would be fun to play some parachute games with the village kids and Mark thought he could get one made in a local shop. We thought it would be unlikely, but at 11.40am he found a shop, chose lots of colourful material and managed to explain (using lots of body language) that he wanted it all sewn together to make a parachute. I don’t think the guy had any idea what he was making but he did as instructed and 20 minutes later Mark walked out with a very cool, colourful parachute for NZ$20! What a legend!

Meanwhile, I was with the food buying team in a little corner shop. We wanted to do all our own food so we didn’t cause lots of stress for the locals, so we had fun buying lots of food to get us by. Share and Care have a community centre with a gas ring we could cook with so that made it easy. It was also decided that we would tent next to the centre. We didn’t realise quite how fascinating this would be for the locals, who had never seen tents before!

After a very long bumpy drive on a dirt road we finally arrived in Haibung, a remote village north of Kathmandu. The distance isn’t actually that great but because of the bad roads it takes about 1 hour to travel 10km! Unbelievable!

As we arrived we were greeted with children running alongside our car and it seemed like our visit was big news in the village. While we put up our tents the crowds gathered and we soon realised that we would not have a moment where we didn’t have dozens of little faces peering at us. Even when we woke up and unzipped the tent, they were there waiting to see what these strange white people looked like in the morning.

We wandered down to the school and checked out our project. We were all shocked at the state of it. The school has about 300 pupils and they are all crammed into a few dirty concrete rooms with nothing in them but some broken down desks and benches. The school was on a break while we were there so it was a perfect time to paint. Children and a few teenagers from the village started to appear at the school as we cleaned out the classrooms and began to paint. After a while they also helped out a bit, along with teachers and others in the community. While the painting was happening some of us played games with the kids. They loved the parachute!

Our time at Haibung was really challenging in many ways. Seeing how poor these people are is hard to deal with. When I look at my children who are so precious and compare them with these children who are just as precious, it makes me want to cry! I don’t think I’ll ever forget the little faces that followed us around. One little boy who was probably Charlotte’s age had pants shredded on the back, revealing his bare, little brown bottom. I just wanted to take him home and scrub him clean and give him some clean clothes. The community centre where we stayed was the local health centre where the village people come and seem to wait for hours to see the health worker. Often they have walked for days just to get the health centre. It broke my heart to see families waiting with a sick child and thinking about how easy it is for us to care for our children in NZ.

Share and Care staff took us around to see some local peoples’ houses, one where women’s group meetings are held. Once a month classes are held to try to empower women and are run by local women covering things such as reproductive health, self-defence, basic health and nutrition. All these things are so important in helping stop the exploitation of women and children.We also drove to a nearby village and saw an irrigation pond being dug which a new Share and Care innovation in the area to help with crop production.

After having seen in some of the village homes, which are mud, often no electricity and with a fire for cooking in the corner, it struck me as I was packing up our gear and tent the next day how much “stuff“ we have. We think that right now we are living pretty minimally while we travel, but compared to what these people have in their homes, it’s excessive.

When we look back now at what we did in Haibung, we all agree that painting the school was probably of little long-term benefit. It was still worthwhile but any short-term project such as this is limited in it’s effect. However, to know that Share and Care Nepal has a long-term commitment to this village and are doing such practical, worthwhile, life-changing work there, we feel privileged to have been able to assist them a small way. For our family we will continue to support them and it will great for our girls to be able to remember those little faces from Haibung as we do so. If anyone would like to support Share and Care Nepal, let us know. We would really like to support the school and want to help resource them more. The have nothing and I mean nothing! No posters on the walls, books,pens etc. If you are keen to donate some money or resources towards this please let us know! It would be really cool if as a group we could support this school in some way.

Well, after a very memorable 40th birthday Nepalese style, including the killing of chickens in my honour,(ask Tim for the details)it was back to Kathmandu to get ready for our trek. Read on for our next adventure…….

Photos coming soon, trying to sort out some technical difficulties.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.