Visiting Lila

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After our trip to Nepal in 2002, Marg & I returned home feeling quite connected to this country & its people. We had had a great time visiting the country & met some wonderful people. An opportunity to strengthen this connectedness presented itself in the form of a shopping mall stall run by Plan International. We took up the option to sponsor a child & Lila, a 7-year old Nepali girl, came into our lives.

In the years since we have received annual reports from Plan about Lila & her community. It includes recent photos, but not much personal detail about Lila, the greater emphasis being on the Plan activities that affect her community. If I ever had received greater detail - birthdates, sibling names & ages, etc - I had lost these early on.

Early this year I contacted Plan about the possibility of visiting Lila. I received a fairly prompt reply which included information & forms for Police Checks & for the details of our travel party & dates, etc. Once our travel plans had firmed up, all the paperwork was done & a visit date set.

Once in Nepal & only a week or so from the visit date, I was able to exchange emails & phone calls with our local contact, Anil. We were lucky in that a Plan vehicle was passing through Kathmandu, heading to Hetauda, on the day we were travelling there & could hitch a ride. We were collected from Thamel, along with an elderly German couple, who were also visiting a sponsored child.

So, on Sun 18/Nov, a little after 2pm, we were on our way to Hetauda. The Plan 4WD was not taking the more major route but another that would be a little more direct, a little less congested & so likely to be a shorter trip.

The weather was superb &, again, the scenery amazing as we travelled through the mountains, crossing 2 or 3 high passes on narrow winding roads that were sometimes sealed & other times not. The landscape colours were incredible, an endless range of pasture & forest greens, the yellow from the mustard crops, the pinky mauve from the buckwheat, the blue of the sky & the white of the snow on the distant ranges. Incredibly beautiful landscapes of mountains, valleys, forests, rivers & lakes that belie the difficulty involved in actually living here.

Anil reminded us of the child-centred approach Plan takes that necessarily involves working with the community empowering them to make their own, informed choices. They have helped communities to maximise the use of their land by educating them about better crop choices, providing seeds, & connecting them with regular buyers for their produce. Previously all the farmers had farmed maize which is a less efficient crop.

Some of the roads we drove on, were fairly new & partially funded by Plan, & had changed these people's accessibility to the world beyond their homes. Plan has a good reputation in these parts & receives some extra privileges like being able to use certain roads not generally available to road users - such as the one we used taking us past a man-made lake with associated hydroelectricity capabilities.

Made it to Hetauda, in the Makwanpur region, after a trip of ~4.5hrs. It was quite dark as we arrived at our Plan assigned Motel Avocado, our overnight accom, for the 50% off rate of 1500R=$27. Our room, I mean suite, was quite comfortable with room fans, AC, TV, hot water, etc. Even got to watch a HBO movie, in English (been missing my TV).

An early start the next day, Mon 19/Nov, as we were heading back to Kathmandu in the arvo. Around 8am our Plan vehicle arrived with Om as our main host for the day. We were heading to Lila's house first which meant driving back to the river, then along the riverside, in true 4WD style. A couple of K's in we left the car, met a local Plan man, who was to take us on to Lila's. This entailed walking further along the river, crossing it, in bare-foot fashion, before tackling some tricky goat tracks up the hill. First sighted Lila's home, just a few minutes off, sitting up a slope amongst stepped fields, overlooking a bend in the river below. I imagine this household must be quite isolated in the monsoon season.

Lila was on her porch when we arrived at the house. There were a number of people around, Lila and her mum, a very elderly looking couple - her grandparents - and several other children (siblings). A few other "onlookers". Lila was shy & hesitant. Our Plan man confirmed that this girl was indeed Lila (although she and her mum were instantly recognisable from the yearly photos). Lila, with her mum's encouragement, applied tikka to each of our foreheads & placed a garland of marigold flowers around our necks. It was all pretty exciting, even emotional. The number of spectators was growing constantly, with children, neighbours , in fact the whole village, there for the show.

Soon a mat was placed on the ground alongside the house for us to sit on. Om was speaking to family members trying to get us all a little more comfortable with each other. He had us introduce ourselves to the assembly & he translated our words. Then the family was introduced, mostly by Lila's mum. Lila's Dad also arrived and looked particularly chuffed to have us there!

We shuffled around a bit to take some photos but it was hard not to feel self-conscious with so many eyes trained on all of us. Not only was Lila's family here but many of the neighbours & friends. Lila, her siblings, her friends & her neighbours had stayed home from school or the fields for this unusual event. Some children had returned home and changed out of their school uniforms before re-joining the crowd.

Lila was still quite reserved & Marg was asking her questions through Om &, despite encouragement from Om & her dad, she could only manage very short answers. We sat back down on the mat & had some milk (straight from the family cow) & biscuits as a group. Marg struggled a lot to get that down, but did Australia and Plan proud in the end!!

We were proudly invited by Lila's mum to look inside the family house & took up this opportunity. It was a small mud brick farmhouse of really only one living space; although, there was an upstairs, under the thatch roof, used for storage of farm produce. (Grandpa also slept here) The other family members (grandmother, parents and the 5 children) obviously shared the other room, which did contain one single bed!! Cooking was undertaken on the covered "porch" in an open fire. No bathroom facilities were apparent. Lila is the second of five children, having three brothers (one older) & one sister. They all live with their two elderly grandparents, that's 9 of them, in the small farmhouse. The house does have an electric light & a single powerpoint but no other services are connected. No running water, no stove, no plumbing.

The atmosphere, the greeting, the family & the spectators made our visit seem to me to be disproportionately important. Our visit wasn't this big a deal! I tried to say as much to Om - that it's so easy to give the little money we do, in the mindless way we do (automatic monthly transfer) - it's not noticed & not missed. It's such a little thing really! Yet, this fuss. But, it wasn't to do with gratitude, it was to do with this being a special event; a special visit from special guests. The entire family were proud & dignified. It was really a wonderful, almost overwhelming experience, that made me almost cry with the mix of emotions involved.

After a while, it was time for us to move on, so we said goodbye & gave Lila a bag of some small presents - a couple of books, bangles, toy, etc. Lila thanked us for our visit & came to each of us, head bowed forward for us to touch her cheeks, as the appropriate response - a cue we took from Om. Her mother also thanked us for our visit & said she hoped we could visit another time as well.

We headed off, down the hill, toward the river on narrow, difficult tracks. Needed to take shoes off again for another river crossing. Next stop was an Early Childhood Centre, supported by Plan, only a few hundred metres away. Scored a 'piggy back' across a wider irrigation channel when I showed some reluctance at removing my shoes yet again - for which I received unfair criticism from Marg & Sue.

The ECC was a little like kinders in Australia, but on a greatly reduced scale - a peg for each child, own bag, comb, toothbrush, etc. Children's artwork around the walls, books read to them, nap times, snack times, the whole deal. Even kinder duty!! Only about 10 of the 25 kids in today as many families were still away as part of the festival season. Each child had a flower to present to us but only 2 or 3 of them could manage this as they were awed by us & our entourage which had now swelled to ~7. These children are aged between 2 and 4, and the facility of the ECC means that both their parents can work in the fields, rather than one being housebound with child care responsibilities. The Centre is not just child minding however it has an educational focus, despite the lack of qualified staff and the tender ages of the children.

The nearby school was our next stop. We entered the grounds just as the morning recess bell went & soon hundreds of interested students were milling around. Celebrities have arrived - even got a round of applause from a bunch of students as we made our way upstairs to the staff office area. Here, some students placed another floral loop around our necks. By now Sue's hayfever was under strong attack. We sat down & found the entire staff were filing in as well & taking up seats directly opposite us. All 20 staff introduced themselves & we returned this pleasantry. We were able to ask a few questions about their school & then they asked questions of us.

The school was from primary through to Year 10, and had just commenced a Year 11 in 2007 making it also a Senior Secondary School. - a rare thing in this neck of the woods. Yr 12 will follow next year.
It runs two teaching sessions - classes from 6am to 9.30am for the new Year 11 class, & the other classes, from 10am till 4pm. Classes were pretty big - a year 10 class having 65 students. (and this was not the biggest!!) The student culture is to be co-operative & compliant but there is not much room here for individual learning plans! Had a look in the new computer lab - 8 computers; the library - small, but some new resources, & then that Year 10 classroom. Wow. Not all 65 in today (again, it's festival time) but 16 4-seater desk-benches arranged in two columns - can certainly pack them tight! No room for decorations, (hardly room for a teacher out the front) teaching equipment was white chalk & blackboard.

Next stop, just down the road, was the Women's Cooperative. This was a real success story. Starting with a seed subsidy scheme the women - with assistance and facilitation originally from Plan - then instigated a savings scheme and now are running what is for all intents and purposes, a community bank : but only for shareholders, who must be women!! No men here. Loans are mostly to do with funding animal husbandry & there is even insurance for the buffalo or cow to reduce the loan risk. Previously women had no access to any finance, and most men borrowed from money lenders at very high interest rates. The women have acquired a great deal of independence & confidence from the project: not only because they now have access to money, but because they have control over some aspects of their lives, and have acquired new skills as they work on the Committee or in the "Bank". There are many of these co-operatives in the region and this one was affiliated with an umbrella organisation, which has a lot of status (two of the women from the larger organisation are actually running in the election - if it ever happens). The women also speak out and take some action, where possible, against the problems as they see them in their communities e.g. alcoholism, gambling, and domestic violence. As with most community development projects, empowering and educating the women is seen as the best strategy to fight poverty.

That was pretty much the program. Back to the Avocado for lunch & Anil had booked our 3 bums into 4 seats of a 4WD vehicle heading back to Kathmandu that arvo. This was not as exciting a trip as that one coming, a little more crowded for a start - we 3, the driver, 7 others & one bloke on the roof! One family of 5 in the car with us obviously had car sickness issues and all but the 2 year old vomited throughout the journey. This vehicle didn't get the privileges of the Plan car so we spent a lot of time on bad, bumpy, unsealed roads going around a valley instead of through it. (not good for chuckers) A lot of this travel was in darkness too, but we made it back to Thamel for a late dinner.

What a great experience it was visiting Lila & the communities around her. It has truly strengthened the bond between us. No more of those jokes about someone in the Melbourne Plan office doing those crayon drawings & sending them on as artwork by non-existent sponsored children. I'm convinced - Plan has done & is doing wonders over here in Makwanpur area of Nepal & I will encourage others to help out with sponsorships too. So, watch out!

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Photos

The 'Plan' vehicle
Our lift to Hetauda from Kathmandu - another spectacular drive.

Shoes off!
A bit tricky getting to Lila's place.

Our man Om
Om gets ready to cross the river on way to Lila's house.

Lila's House
This was our first view of Lila's house as we trekked in to see her.

Lila's Family
The family group (but, elder brother missing).

Us & Lila
Marg & I with the family group.

Piggy-back
Why take your shoes off when . . . . .

Local School Class
Here is a Year 10 class we disturbed. 65 in the class!

Girls this side of the room.
Tight packing makes for a cosy class.

Celebrity hits town
How's the throngs of students, & others, that milled around our little party.