More from Khorbari, Pokhara & Tansen

FRIDAY -

Hello everyone! How are you? Hope you are well! Thank you again for another nice little pile of emails - always enjoy hearing from you! Time for another update... lots more this time.....

I am back in a stuffy little internet cafe in Tanesn. I haven't missed computers!

I just came from a wedding in Khorbari...

The parents of the groom were busy running round putting tikas (red paint mixed with rice) on everyone's foreheads and cans of oil were being carried out from a shed to be transported with all the guests to a nearby village where the bride was from and where they would cook pigs and chickens and eat doughnuts made from rice and lentil flour...

Everyone piled into and ontop of a decorated bus ready and waiting on the "highway" and a procession of motorbikes followed behind. I hopped off half way to get a jeep up to Tansen.

One of the steep windy streets in Tansen. I'm sitting just a little further up this one right now.

Tansen highlife...

Last weekend I went back to Pokhara to meet baby Manish! He is very tiny and sweet and healthy and I was honoured to have him open one eye to look at me after traveling 5 hours to see him! His sister Manashee has coped well with suddenly getting half the attention she used to and it is amazing how quickly she has taken on the role of being big sister. She rocks him gently in his new cot and watches him sleep. He seemed very good and quiet but apparently keeps his crying (which sounds just like a little cat!) for the night...

Krishna had gone off trekking for a few days to catch up on sleep and came back the day I arrived with his clients and armfuls of rhododendron ("laliguras") flowers from the mountains and (incredibly strong!) apple brandy from an orchard in the Mustang Valley which borders Tibet.

Here is Bishnu warming her tiny baby by a fire we made in the garden

I love this one

The other children were excited to get a new little sibling - especially the older girls who spend every moment with him and barely put him down!

The boys were having endless fun with two little magnets...

After the usual games and dancing in the park we had a trip to a temple beside the lake

and I made a huge cauldron of macaroni cheese - a success!

We had fantastic clear skies and sunshine all weekend and incredible panoramic views of the Annapurnas. Here they are from the main street

I walked into a festival in Lakeside one day - beautiful costumes and dancing all down the street

Back in Khorbari since monday. It has been lots of meetings starting as early as 6am and finishing sometimes late at night, any day of the week! Sitting in on community meetings, running focus groups to gather more data, explaining to everyone what I am doing, endless training to the volunteers who have kindly offered to carry out the household surveys and recruiting a new translator. It's really helped having Bashanta now to translate (Dev disappeared off to Kathmandu), his English is good and he is very efficient - also good to talk to which I really appreciate as he is the only person I can speak with apart from Tilak at the school and friends on the phone!

We have finished all the surveys now and am looking forward to looking at all the data. We are finding that almost every household has at least one man away in the Indian Army or working in the Middle East - bringing in about 90% of the total household income!! Even though the women are working hard in the fields all day growing rice, corn and breeding pigs, goats, buffalo and hens, they get only a few hundred pounds a year from it at most - and there seems a lot of pressure for the men to work abroad. It is sad to see how some women are living all alone, waiting for the next year when their husband will return home for a few weeks.

Here are Sarswatti and Perma carrying out surveys in the village- great to have people who really know the area and culture doing it and nice to see them using their skills

MONDAY
--The power went off before I had a chance to finish so here I am again--

I have ust come from a meeting with the community and CCODER staff where I presented all the findings from our surveys - everyone was very receptive and keen to do anything they can to help improve things for themselves. A good start! We actually found that the avg income was almost the equivalent to 3,000 pounds a year which is good byNepali standards and although a third are living under the UN/World Bank poverty line of one dollar a day, most are doing well off it and everyone apart from two are managing to send their children to school. It seems that the biggest problem is that all the men are leaving and understandably the women are keen to do anything to get them back...!


As it seemed water is the main thing preventing people from doing well with their agriculture with everyone having to walk 1 1/2 hours to collect it in the summer, and lack of training. I will be making a proposal to the local and district level govt for funding for a proper water and irrigation system, and also try to find NGOs to support training in business skills and agriculture including identifying and treating the diseases that are killing off so many of the animals. Will also train everyone how to keep records of their consumption, investments and expenditure as trying to gather this mainly from their memories was a nightmare and its going to be important that we continue to gather it every year to measure how their businesses/agriculture are doing.

This week will be writing up a report to send back to Kathmandu and following up the poorest households to see what kind of training they need. May have to go back to Ktm to discuss with Govinda before making proposals and hope to combine it with a meeting with Laxman who runs the UN micro-enterprise programme - really love the opportunity to let people at the top know what is going on at the bottom and sharing some of the good ideas of the villagers who otherwise don't get heard... there is so much scope if we can do anything with the UN (who have said they are interested) as they will be supporting these enterprises all over Nepal...

I've been enjoying teaching at the school in my spare time - and like to make it as creative as possible, giving the children some idea of life outside Khorbari where it seems many have never left - I was teaching about water systems the other day and no one had ever seen a lake! Even with beautiful Pokhara not so far away... and some had never seen the Himalayas despite them being visible on clear days from the hill above the school...!



Here's a typical evening in Khorbari with neighbours - Goma and her baby, daughter Elina (also student at the community sch and has been in awe of me ever since seeing a pic of the python draped around my neck in Pokhara! and holds my hand all the way back from school after all the other little hands have dropped off) and mothers of other children at the school. They had all been drinking Raksi (like whiskey) out of pots like saucepans...


Dinner with Rupa "Ama" and Chander "Baba" last night. They were ecstatic to hear that their photo would be put on the internet...!

Hope to write to you again soon. About to visit the Mission Hosp here and looking forward to meeting some westerners and having easy conversations for the first time in weeks!

Lots of love

Esther xxxx