Nepal Revisited – Day 9

This morning Heather & I needed to be up before the crack of dawn, so that we could head to the airport by 6:00am. As I noted yesterday, Mountain Child were able to organise a flight to the Upper Gorkha region via helicopter. This was so that we could do a site visit to one of the remote schools that they have been working in.

Mountain Child are partnering with The Salvation Army to provide earthquake relief assistance to 4 schools in the Upper Gorkha area and also work in 31 other remote locations.

Shree Nubri is sort of nestled in the river valley between 3 villages that are on the surrounding ridges and is not far from the main village Ghap.

It is also reasonably close to the worlds 8th highest mountain, Manaslu. In Nepal this mountain is also known as Kutang, and its summit is 8,163 metres (26,781 ft) above sea level.

Located in the Mansiri Himal, part of the Nepalese Himalayas, in the west-central part of Nepal, its name means “mountain of the spirit” and is not far from the Tibetan border.

The Salvation Army has provided tents for the Temporary Learning Centre, so that the school (which was significantly damaged in the earthquakes) could continue educating the children of the area.

After the monsoon season however, these are showing obvious signs of deterioration, and mildew is forming on the canvases.

The staff and children stay on site 6 days a week, sleeping in dorms usually, but these were also destroyed. So up until now the tents have also been home for up to 50 students at a time. They start duties from about 8:30am, starting school at 10:00am with morning prayers and finishing at 4:00pm in the afternoon. They fill the remainder of their time playing sports, reading, studying and going for walks in the surrounding area.

The school is starting to rebuild this month as supplies have not only been hard to locate of late, but they have also taken a while to get supplies transported to this remote location. Some of the teachers are local but the majority are interns from around the world and spend 3 months on site at a time.

The founder of Mountain Child, shared with us the history of how they came to be, which is a moving and tragic story – but out of it, they are bringing hope to hundreds of children:

“It all started when a small team trekking through the Himalayas stumbled across a group of young children being escorted out of the mountains by two adult men … It didn’t take long to sense that something wasn’t right.

Our worst fears were quickly realized when the two men openly spoke of their plans to sell the children into the booming sex trade industry of south Asia.

That’s when we started crying. It wasn’t a shallow type of cry. This was deep, real deep, like a well, that frankly, we haven’t found the bottom of yet. We are still crying. But a few of us, decided to band together and to turn the tears into tactics. We started getting organized, started making plans about how a small group of people could make a big impact. That was in 2000.”

It was a quite trip back in the helicopter to Kathmandu!

In the afternoon we headed back to the office to catch up on paperwork; but my mind kept going back to the thought of – how can I help?

In part this blog is one area in which I can try to do exactly that, by raising the awareness of the issues that face the people of Nepal.

So the question is; How can you play your part? By checking out their website Mountain Child and seeing how you to, can support the work of their mission.

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Nepal Revisited – Day 8

This morning MJ headed to the Shelter Cluster while Heather & I went in to the Mission Aviation Fellowship (M.A.F.) booking office to organise flights for Runchet. The subsidized prices at the moment for flights, due to the fuel situation, works out cheaper for us to fly by helicopter rather than hire a driver for a few days and pay for fuel. It also reduces the number of days spent out of the office at the moment.

After this we went out for a spot of shopping as we are running out of a few essentials, including water. The water supply at the house (tank water) had taken a day and a half to organise. Thankfully by yesterday afternoon this had been sorted. Sanga (the local C.O.) had had to organise a second firm to deliver some water, as the first company would have taken at least a week to deliver some to us due to limitations on fuel.

In the afternoon Heather got confirmation that we will be flying to the Upper Gorkha region tomorrow, as Mountain Child have been able to schedule a flight up there and fit us in for a monitoring visit. Which is awesome!

We also headed across the other side of Kathmandu to meet up with Child Nepal, as their was a complication with the cheque that we had given them yesterday at the bank. We were introduced to the whole team and given tea which was very sweet and refreshing.

While we were there they showed us a sample of the bag and exercise book that they have had made, which is to be presented to each child at the Temporary Learning Centres (TLC’s) in Sindhupalchok. Also to be included are some other stationary supplies, such as pencils, pens etc. We suggested that rather than giving us the sample now, that it would be much better to do a presentation @ one of the TLC’s when we visit in November, which they agreed.

Sumita, Mohan and Heather discussing the next steps

We also spent some time getting introduced to the rest of the team that works at Child Nepal.

They are a small dedicated, friendly and committed team working in a rather confined space with limited office essentials such as workstations, office chairs etc.

Which shows that the majority of funding that they do get, goes directly to the resources for the children that they cater for.

As we were leaving we got drenched as the heavens opened, not only rain mind you, hail as well! But it was fascinating that within five kilometers of where we were, it was clear skies above and it looked like not a single drop of rain had fallen. By the time we got back to the house the temperature had risen by at least 10 degrees I reckon.

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Nepal Revisited – Day 7

We had a very productive day today as Heather & I started the morning off by having a meeting at Mission Aviation Fellowship (M.A.F.) to re-register our credentials with them, while MJ headed to the Logistics Cluster.

We were each amazed by the amount of motorbikes and cars that lined the road waiting for fuel and also the number of vehicles to-ing and fro-ing on the streets.

The traffic is the busiest it has been for days!!!

Heather & I then headed up stairs to have a meeting with Sarah @ Mountain Child, who has been doing work in the Upper Gorkha District, which is a very remote area of Nepal. They have been an implementing partner in the area of distributions to communities and Temporary Learning Centers (TLC’s) at the schools which have been severely affected by the earthquake. While we were out of the country they had tried to organise a monitoring visit. Now that we are back they will look at rescheduling one at the earliest convenience.

Obviously, with the transitioning from initial earthquake assistance through to recovery, the needs have been constantly changing for the communities, especially in isolated areas such as these. So if we do get the chance to head up there, we will do a pseudo evaluation and provide recommendations to head office so that we can continue working in the area.

We also had a meeting with Child Nepal (another implementing partner) at Sisters to discuss progress to date with the TLC’s that they have been working on. There assistance has been hampered by the landslides in the higher regions of Sindhupalchok, caused by the monsoon season. Also the current fuel crisis has had an affect on their progress. However, they have completed four centers and are looking forward to our monitoring visit in early November.

The latter part of the afternoon was spent catching each other up on where things are at with the different projects and us sharing information that we had each gathered today.

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