Making New Friends in Hetauda

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Sunday 2-20 to Saturday 2-26
We left the cold and altitude of Kathmandu for the warm foothills of Hetauda, a more rural district capital south of the KTM. But before we could get there, we first had to traverse those hills in quite a perilous jeep ride. Thank goodness our driver was actually a slow, cautious driver because it seemed like everyone else in oncoming traffic was driving like a bat out of hell around some very narrow and very steep cliffs! During the drive we saw one car (empty of people) smashed head first into the side of the cliff and a pick up truck (also empty, thank goodness) completely upside down on the edge of the road in what appeared to be the aftermath of a nasty spill off the edge of the switchbacks! We also saw a goat sitting on someone’s roof rack, untied; how on earth the poor thing was able to hang on and not go flying off was impressive.

We arrived in Hetauda and were met, sight unseen, by the absolutely wonderful Tiffany! Tiffany was the former roommate of my brother-in-law’s (Will’s) girlfriend (Danielle). Tiffany has been in Hetauda for a year with the VSO (an international peace corps-like organization), volunteering with a non-profit (COSAN) that’s working on women’s empowerment programs and providing primary education for impoverished kids. Knowing that we were going to be in Nepal, Danielle put me in touch with Tiffany and it was a match made in heaven. We were so thankful to be hosted by Tiffany and allowed to help her out with her programs for a week. Thanks to Tiffany and her coworkers, we got amazing insight into Nepali culture that we couldn’t have had as regular tourists. And we were given the opportunity to volunteer with COSAN’s field programs, which was great.

I was able to see first hand the need for women’s empowerment programs. I had the opportunity to travel into the remote hills around Hetauda (Ward 8) to sit in on a monthly micro-finance program meeting among the village. Given the tools to help organize themselves, and supposedly with their husbands support, the women in Ward 8 put aside a significant portion of their monthly earnings into a communal pot. That money is then used to award small micro loans to the women among the group as needed – for repairs to a home, buying more livestock, creating a small textiles business, whatever the community sees as a need for improvement or future investment. They keep track of the funds and make decisions for the village on their own; the NGO is only there to provide training and support as needed. I was very impressed with this pilot program and wish it the best of luck. It seems like a cooperative with great potential to improve a woman’s standard of living and improve to a small degree the level of control she has over the well being of herself and her family.

The most rewarding aspect of volunteering in Hetauda was working with the kids in COSAN’s supplementary education centers (SECs). We visited two sites of informal education classes that COSAN had set up in poor communities where many of the kids had never gone to school or were at risk of dropping out. It was kind of heartbreaking to see how malnourished some of these kids were; some had hair that was almost blond due to lack of nutrients and others were so small for their age! One kid told me he was 10 years old and he was only about the size of a 6 year old (even the babies are so tiny and frail)! Some of the neighborhoods were a sight to see: small shacks, no enclosed toilets and one school consisted of a just a concrete floor and tin roof, no walls. One school did have an enclosed building with desks and a chalkboard, though. At this school, we were able to invite local kids outside to play games and it was amazing how the language barrier completely dissolved when everyone was having so much fun just watching and mimicking each other, singing songs and dancing. They even had their own version of duck, duck, goose, which was great!

We were able to help the SECs by creating a collection of lesson plans and supplies to package and give to the tutors for use in the classrooms. (Sound familiar AOP folks?) Interestingly enough, most of the learning in Nepali primary schools is by rote memorization. There’s really no interdisciplinary lesson plans or peer-to-peer learning. The kids are just required to repeat after the teacher or copy verbatim what they see in the workbook. Oddly enough, all Nepali kids learn English in school, so we were able to relate to them on the level of singing the ABCs (which Nick led beautifully) and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” which is apparently standard curriculum in Nepal!

It was quite a trip volunteering in Hetauda. A town of about 50,000 people with a total of 12 foreigners, including us, meant that our presence on the street never failed to solicit the curiosity of everyone we passed. Kids especially, some of whom had never seen a white person before except the few NGO workers in town, loved to practice their English and say hello, ask us where we were from and how we liked Nepal. Nick, of course, was of particular interest due to his height; compared to the short Nepalis, he was a giant among men! One little girl stood amazed and Tiffany overheard her say in Nepali “He’s so long!” Nick has always turned people’s heads but never as much as in Hetauda. A man at a corner store motioned about how tall Nick was and even pinched him (maybe to see if he was real?). [Nick Note: I am taller than the average bear! Or maybe he was pinching me because I was fat, it is hard to tell with the language barrier.]

The tall man’s 33rd birthday was the day before we left, so we invited Tiffany and our new Hetauda friends to join us for dinner. Nepali food is an interesting thing…it’s wise to order the same food when possible, as it takes a very long time to make each dish and nothing is pre-prepared like you would find in American restaurants. So it can easily take 30+ minutes to get your food or wait 30+ minutes only to be told they don’t have what your ordered. But at Nick’s party, I discovered a wonderful thing: mutton! I hate goat’s milk and goat’s cheese, basically any goat dairy. But I guess I never realized how tasty the actual animal was! I have found a new yummy food to eat in the beef-less Hindu world of the Asian subcontinent! We also baked a couple cakes at Tiffany’s house for the occasion. (On a related note, it was SO NICE to be able to cook again at Tiffany’s house! Eating out at restaurants for nearly 3 months straight makes you miss the ability to make your own food. And we made some DE-licious vegetable curry soup! Mmm, it still makes me hungry just thinking about it.) But back to the cakes: without the use of a conventional oven, Tiffany had a “miracle oven” that looked like a metal bunt cake and baked really good banana bread on the stove, but not so good for brownies. The brownies tasted OK, but were basically chocolate crumbles. Not to worry, the Nepalis, who normally have very little chocolate, LOVED it! All around, it was a very nice birthday. Nick even got presents! One of which was a little Ganesh (Hindu god of good luck), which has come in handy ever since!

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