Singular Humanitarian Expedition (SHe), partnered with Choice Humanitarian
 |
| Nepal |
Friday, Nov 16 - Arrive in Kathmandu, Nepal
Dinner as a group. Introductions all around. A little band with a couple dancers moved from room to room, performing for everybody in the restaurant, giving us a little taste of local culture along with the a taste of cultural food.
 |
| Sitting on floor while waiter fills our glasses with water |
 |
| Bishnu |
Saturday, Nov 17 - Attend LDS branch in Kathmandu (Bishnu, Choice in-country Director, is also branch president), then take 4 hour bus ride with amazing views to Riverside resort and spend the night there. At the resort, we explore, have dinner, and discuss the coming week in Jeeta and Choice Humanitarian's project model. Many nonprofits do more harm than good, despite their intentions, by creating dependency, or lack of creativity or motivation for villagers to find their own solutions. Choice has in-country directors and never takes a project to a village unless the village has first said they need it. Our group went to Jeeta, in the Lamjung district, and worked on a school renovation project (along with a health team putting on a clinic, an educational team doing training with local educators, and a business team consulting with local business owners). Bishnu gave us the example that if a construction project costs $100,000, Choice would donate $5,000 and physical labor. The village would have to come up with the remaining money, encouraging them to be invested in the project, work with government officials for funding assistance, and providing labor as well. If locals take a day off, we take a day off. There is also a strict 'no gifting' policy, which I think is great...but sometimes hard :) Their goal is also to provide a cross-cultural experience, where the volunteer and the local villager learn from each other.
Sunday Nov 18 - Arrive in Jeeta, Nepal
We left the Riverside Resort for another 3-4 hr bus ride, this time on what we called 'tank' buses because of how amazing they are at climbing steep, narrow, rocky roads. We passed a lot of people in their rice fields, manually harvesting their crop. Just outside of the village, the buses dropped us off and we walked into Jeeta and were welcomed with tikka (red dot on the forehead), a lei, music, and dancing.
From there, we walked to the school where we would spend the week and were welcomed by all the school children and villagers lined up to welcome us. We spend the rest of the day watching the people of Jeeta dance, getting our sleeping bags set up (we camped out on the school floor), exploring the village, eating dinner, and all that fun stuff.
Nov 19 -23 - Wake up every morning in Jeeta to this view.
 |
| A fellow expeditioner called this Yun Li (Sea of Clouds) |
Many woke up early and hiked up the road for an amazingly beautiful sunrise view. Breakfast was at 8/8:30 every morning. Then we had until 9:30 or 10:00 before we started working, so we'd play with any kids that came down to the school, or write in journals, or just visit.
Then we'd start working. Monday & Tuesday, I worked on sanding, priming, and painting one of the school buildings. The local people had already reinforced the roofs and had done a great job. The fun part about sanding and painting was that when the local kids saw us, they wanted to help. We referred to it as the Tom Sawyer effect :)
 |
| Stone Mason |
We'd break for lunch at about 1:00, and then go back to work until anywhere from 4 to 5:30. Wednesday and Thursday I worked on the unfinished building, shoveling or hauling dirt away and hauling cement. This was the project that the village adults worked on. Some built supports in back. Others, with the help of Bishnu (who is an engineer) helped design and set up framing for two staircases. The rest of us provided labor. The village women wore their traditional pretty red dresses, the men/elders wore their hats, and the school master and educators wore their pin-striped suit as they pounded the cement into the stair frames. One afternoon, instead of working on construction, I went to the health clinic and got to be a dental assistant.
On the first couple days we finished by 4 or 4:30, so a small group of us went to play ultimate frisbee and picked up some local boys to play with us. After the second day, they challenged us to a game of soccer for the next day - Nepali vs Expeditioners. Sadly, work went late the next couple of days, so we never got to play the challenge game. They would have skunked us in soccer anyway :)
Friday was a no-work day. There was some sort of holiday in Jeeta, so our group hiked up to JeetaKot (or something like that) for a nice hike and an afternoon of shadowing. This was the day that I truly came to appreciate the generosity of the Nepali people and this village. Halfway up the hike, we were met by a couple of men who had made bamboo hiking sticks for everyone. In the village, they gave us the tikka dot, another lei, warm (or burnt) goat or yak milk, and danced for us again. In all of this, one of our group fell over a little ledge and the local men immediately ran to his aid, brushed him off and picked off all his pickers, and one man pulled out his comb and brushed the expeditioner's hair. Before we began shadowing, they said they had something to show us, so we hiked up the trail a little further to an amazing overlook. Sadly, it was a bit cloudy so we couldn't see the Himalayan range as well as if it had been a clear day, but while eating lunch there we learned that the local people had come up the day before and cut down some of the trees that were blocking the view so that we would have a clear view!
From there, we split into groups and were taught how they harvest rice. My group threshed rice, hauled bundles of it to be threshed or stored, and tied bundles together. I loved the two little girls that would twist a couple strands of straw
together and then show us how to tie the bundles. Everything is done manually and I think we all appreciated the rice we had for dinner a little bit more after that. It was a great experience.
Dinner was always around 6:30 and on most evenings the local people would come down and dance. Sometimes we danced for them, sometimes we sat around the fire with a small group of them. On our last evening there, before dinner, I joined one of the more lively games of Uno I have ever played with a fellow-expeditioner and some local boys. They were pretty good...kind of, and way excited to play. We spent a couple evenings playing games as a group. The power would go out at some point every night, but would not stay out too long. Some things about Jeeta - there was no hot water (we got to take cold bucket showers while there) and no internet. Their goal is to get a computer lab for their school next year and the head master is hopeful for internet. There were no heaters and air-conditioners from what I could tell. But some did have cell phones and they did have electricity on and off.
And then, the week was over :(
Saturday, Nov 24 - Packed up, cleaned up the grounds, had breakfast, held sacrament meeting, and bid adieu. The local people gave us all a lei and a 'namaste' as we got back on our tank buses and headed out. We didn't know it, but that was basically our goodbye as a group as well, since a dinner was not planned that evening in Kathmandu. We spend the whole day on the road, seeing sights like these! Back in Kathmandu, a few of us went to the famous Fire and Ice Pizza place for dinner.
Sunday, Nov 25th - the morning consisted of going to the monkey temple (my one site-seeing opportunity in Nepal) and doing a little bit of souvenir shopping before having to head to the airport. A fellow expeditioner had connections in Nepal because his parents served their mission there, so I am now facebook friends with Manoj and if any of you go to Nepal and want to fly around Everest, I can hook you up with him.
And, just a few more of some of my favorite photos. It was a great trip.
The international experience was great, the views were amazing, the
people were marvelous, the physical labor was very much needed, and
being with a group of like-minded mid singles was fun. I'd recommend Choice and Nepal to anybody.
 |
| Peek-a-boo |
 |
| Prayer wheels |
 |
| squat toilets |
 |
| visit to eye clinic |
 |
| fun in the shower? |
|
 |
| Happiness |
 |
| village men |
 |
| tourist trap! |
 |
| More happiness |
 |
good friends
| |
Saturday, Nov 17 - Attend LDS branch in Kathmandu (Bishnu, Choice in-country Director, is also branch president), then take 4 hour bus ride with amazing views to Riverside resort and spend the night there. At the resort, we explore, have dinner, and discuss the coming week in Jeeta and Choice Humanitarian's project model. Many nonprofits do more harm than good, despite their intentions, by creating dependency, or lack of creativity or motivation for villagers to find their own solutions. Choice has in-country directors and never takes a project to a village unless the village has first said they need it. Our group went to Jeeta, in the Lamjung district, and worked on a school renovation project (along with a health team putting on a clinic, an educational team doing training with local educators, and a business team consulting with local business owners). Bishnu gave us the example that if a construction project costs $100,000, Choice would donate $5,000 and physical labor. The village would have to come up with the remaining money, encouraging them to be invested in the project, work with government officials for funding assistance, and providing labor as well. If locals take a day off, we take a day off. There is also a strict 'no gifting' policy, which I think is great...but sometimes hard :) Their goal is also to provide a cross-cultural experience, where the volunteer and the local villager learn from each other.
We left the Riverside Resort for another 3-4 hr bus ride, this time on what we called 'tank' buses because of how amazing they are at climbing steep, narrow, rocky roads. We passed a lot of people in their rice fields, manually harvesting their crop. Just outside of the village, the buses dropped us off and we walked into Jeeta and were welcomed with tikka (red dot on the forehead), a lei, music, and dancing.
Many woke up early and hiked up the road for an amazingly beautiful sunrise view. Breakfast was at 8/8:30 every morning. Then we had until 9:30 or 10:00 before we started working, so we'd play with any kids that came down to the school, or write in journals, or just visit. 
Then we'd start working. Monday & Tuesday, I worked on sanding, priming, and painting one of the school buildings. The local people had already reinforced the roofs and had done a great job. The fun part about sanding and painting was that when the local kids saw us, they wanted to help. We referred to it as the Tom Sawyer effect :) 
We'd break for lunch at about 1:00, and then go back to work until anywhere from 4 to 5:30. Wednesday and Thursday I worked on the unfinished building, shoveling or hauling dirt away and hauling cement. This was the project that the village adults worked on. Some built supports in back. Others, with the help of Bishnu (who is an engineer) helped design and set up framing for two staircases. The rest of us provided labor. The village women wore their traditional pretty red dresses, the men/elders wore their hats, and the school master and educators wore their pin-striped suit as they pounded the cement into the stair frames. One afternoon, instead of working on construction, I went to the health clinic and got to be a dental assistant.
Friday was a no-work day. There was some sort of holiday in Jeeta, so our group hiked up to JeetaKot (or something like that) for a nice hike and an afternoon of shadowing. This was the day that I truly came to appreciate the generosity of the Nepali people and this village. Halfway up the hike, we were met by a couple of men who had made bamboo hiking sticks for everyone. In the village, they gave us the tikka dot, another lei, warm (or burnt) goat or yak milk, and danced for us again. In all of this, one of our group fell over a little ledge and the local men immediately ran to his aid, brushed him off and picked off all his pickers, and one man pulled out his comb and brushed the expeditioner's hair. Before we began shadowing, they said they had something to show us, so we hiked up the trail a little further to an amazing overlook. Sadly, it was a bit cloudy so we couldn't see the Himalayan range as well as if it had been a clear day, but while eating lunch there we learned that the local people had come up the day before and cut down some of the trees that were blocking the view so that we would have a clear view!
Thank you so much for posting about your trip. I love that I can share it with my kids. Hopefully they can appreciate how much they have.
ReplyDeleteLove,Fawn
Looks like you had an amazing experience. Wow, the people of Nepal sound very amazing and kind and endearing. I love how they cut down the trees so that you could have a better view when they heard you were going on a hike. Chante you got to work in a rice feild- so awesome. I am so happy you got to do that and I wish I was there too but I am glad a could experience a little of it through your eyes.
ReplyDeleteDayna
Wouldn't it be nice if every sign began with "Dear Human!"....
ReplyDelete