I am an incredibly privileged human being. I fully recognize the inherent privilege I have just because I was born in the right place in the right time. I have two incredibly supportive parents and grew up in a wonderful neighborhood where everyone actually checks in with each other and borrows cupfuls of sugar. I went to amazing schools and graduated from a great university. I know that my family would always support me but I also know that not everyone is as privileged as I am.
I have always known how lucky I am to be living the life I am, but sometimes it is easy to forget about the other part of the world that does not have those luxuries. With the amount of travel I have been on this past year (another privilege I have been granted) it becomes harder to forget these people.
These people are the vast majority of the world.
While searching for somewhere to travel on my September break from school, up popped a post on my Facebook newsfeed. Read More...
I was bitten by the travel bug at an early age. When I received a catalog in the mail from a teen travel company when I was just 15 years old, the pictures and stories from faraway places immediately gripped me. It was possible to scuba dive in Costa Rica? To visit a school in Fiji? Sail around New Zealand? Sign me up! After convincing my parents that this was something I needed to do, I was soon on my first solo plane ride to Miami to join around 10 other kids my age to visit Costa Rica and Belize with two adult guides. The next summer, I continued to pursue the world by visiting New Zealand, Fiji, and Tahiti. It was in New Zealand that I met Orion, who was our guide.
The summer ended, and after quickly Facebook friend requesting everyone I had met, I continued on with my life. I graduated high school, studied abroad in college, and finally ended up teaching internationally.
So, as I was daydreaming about spending my September break on a tropical beach somewhere, I spotted a Facebook post.
#cometonepal it said.
My guide from 8 years ago, Orion, was living in Nepal and his organization, Conscious Impact, was looking for volunteers. The first week they were looking to have people come? The exact week I would be off work.
With my heart pounding, I quickly shot off an email offering my minimal services to a village in Nepal. After a skype session with a face I had not seen in a very long time and probably less than a week later, it was official.
I would be spending a week living in a village in Nepal helping to rebuild after the earthquake.
Truthfully, Nepal has not been on my list of countries to visit.
But I am infinitely grateful that I made this decision because Nepal turned out to be one of the most amazing and eye opening experiences I have ever had.
Conscious Impact picked me up from the airport and a few other volunteers and I immediately began the four hour journey to Takure, the village we would be living in. Takure is located in the district of Sindhupalchowk. After the earthquake, 96.8% of the homes in Sindhupalchowk had been destroyed. In the village of Takure, every house but one fell down.
We stopped in the town of Melamchi for food before finishing our journey. There happened to be a women's festival going on which made it hard to drive through, but we got to see a lot of beautiful women dressed in red dancing in the streets. Welcome to Nepal!
We finally made it to Takure! I set up my tent (the blue on on the end) before eating my first local meal. We got a small tour and were even introduced to the idea that there may or may not be (there is) a tiger in the village. I was reassured that the tiger would much rather enjoy some of the local livestock than me, I headed to bed. Needless to say, I didn't sleep all that well the first night.
For the rest of the trip, there would always be rumblings of the tiger spottings. Only in Takure?
The Conscious Impact volunteers have made quite a camp in the village. They had been in Takure for over a month and had already made quite a few changes to the land.
These stairs were made (thank goodness!) as well as a communal area, latrines, a kitchen, and the most amazing outdoor shower.
I spent the first couple of days either shoveling dirt and gravel and rocks or helping to build a bamboo shelf and bamboo shower. Needless to say, I was exhausted. It was also a bit hard to sleep as the torrential downpour was not only loud on my poor tent, it also caused it to leak a little bit. Thanks to my friends that took in my poor wet orphan self at midnight! :)
As amazing as camp was, getting to walk around in the village was amazing. As I stated before, almost every structure fell down in the earthquake. But, you would never know from the smiles on the people's faces. It is no exaggeration when people say the Nepali people are the kindest and more welcoming people in the world.
Every person we passed gave us a "namaste" and smiled brightly.
We even managed to snag some local guides on our walk to the local Shiva temple.
On our way, we passed through one of the local schools.
We explored through the Shiva temple while being woven stories about the Hindu God by Saati, who was an amazing storyteller.
We climbed up a somewhat questionable hill...
but were definitely rewarded. Just beyond all of those clouds are the Himalayas.
I was assured that if the clouds were not there, I would have been greeted by some amazing snow capped mountains.
I'd still say the view was pretty great.
On the way back down, we stopped at a small tea house. I would soon be sitting on a balcony up on the top left of that building.
Not a bad place for some bomb Nepalese donuts, samosas, and milk tea.
I was enjoying the wildlife of Nepal, complete with many dogs, a cat, and a man walking his goats in the street. I am still trying to forget about the wild tiger.
But I can't forget the man washing his buffalo!
That night, I moved down to a lower terrace (fancy!) that had a bit more tree coverage.
I spent a lot of time chatting about life with all the other amazing volunteers. There were people from all over the globe that donated their money and their time in Nepal. Although I was just one of many coming for the week stay, there were quite a few people planning on staying months at a time.
I can't think of a better place to spend my time.
I truly believe in what Conscious Impact is all about. Conscious Impact is partnered with YUWA Unity Nepal to help bring volunteers to rebuild in Takure. One of the founders of YUWA Unity Nepal, Dheeraj, grew up in Takure and is in direct contact with all of the villagers to ensure that what is happening in their village is what they need. One thing I love about these two organizations is that they are truly about helping the people, and really- making sure the people can help themselves. Everything that happens in that village is what the people of Takure have expressed they want.
One of the projects I was helping with was building a training center. This training center will soon house a composite earth brick maker that will provide earthquake proof earth bricks to rebuild the local school. Takure is a very small village and getting concrete and bricks from Kathmandu is costly and time consuming. These bricks will be sustainable and much cheaper for the people to build with as they are made from the earth around them. These organization plan on training the people of Takure and using as much local labor as possible.
At camp, there were many faces from the village that came throughout the day. It was an open camp so many times families would wander through to see what we were doing. Every day, we were treated to lunch and many times dinner as well by Nita and Mama. They were amazing cooks and even showed me how to use bamboo as a rolling pin!
After hauling rocks or building with bamboo all day, this shower view was kind of awesome.
Seriously- nothing beats showering in the middle of the jungle. Never felt freer!
The next day, I finally got a chance to visit the school that Conscious Impact would be helping to rebuild.
As we began our walk, many local children joined us.
Although this school may not have much- it does have an awesome view.
The dog sure knows he's lucky!
Felicia, one of the volunteers, brought paper and markers along and let the children have some fun!
These kids LOVED to have their picture taken.
They even walked us back up the hill safely!
There is nothing quite like drinking hot tea while overlooking the hillside with a rainbow at your back. I can try to write down the feeling, but I could never capture it.
Which is really how I feel about many things happening in my life right now.
The next afternoon, a local man from the village stopped by to teach us how to weave baskets! After watching everyone split bamboo "50/50" while also slicing up their fingers "50/50" I chose to just watch the process instead of lose a limb.
Though the brave souls that persevered did a great job!
I finally brought my camera down to the training center the last day.
I also happened to leave for five minutes to get my camera and come back to a full on dance party on the dirt pile. When in Takure?
As fun as it was, there was also some hard work going on. After spending about a week building trenches around where the structure will be, we then started in on the retaining wall. Which was really about strategically stacking rocks.
Small gravel anyone?
One of the most amazing experiences of my trip came on this last day. I finally had a chance to walk around and do a "community walk". With the help of our interpreter, we got to visit the villagers and have a chat and see their homes.
We met a variety of people, including a woman who had just gotten back from selling her homemade alcohol in town. The earthquake and the devastation was obviously not something many people would want to speak about, but they loved to talk about their families and their land. Stories that slipped out about family members that lived abroad to make money to send home and life stock that they had lost in the earthquake gave us a glimpse into the horrific things that these people had been through.
While walking, we ran into one of our basket weaver friends! He insisted we come see his house and we ended up meeting his entire extended family.
(I guess someone didn't want to do their homework.)
We eventually ended up at the one home that had not fallen down in the earthquake. The couple that still lives on the property gave us delicious tea and cucumbers and even brought a huge amount of produce down to our camp to share with all of us. They told us that they do not enter that part of the home anymore because, although it did not fall down, it is too dangerous to go inside.
As we were leaving, they brought us in to another part of their home to serve us more tea and some fresh baked roti.
It was here that I had the pleasure of meeting one of the happiest babies ever.
Leaving the next morning was a bit painful. It was emotionally painful to leave the little camp that had been my home for the week and was also physically painful as four other volunteers and I shoved ourselves into the back of the public bus for one of the scariest four hour drives of my life.
The views out of the window were great. As long as I didn't look down (there was nothing there as we were on the edge of a cliff almost the entire time).
While the views were hard to leave behind, the 2 for 1 drinks in Kathmandu were also pretty spectacular.
I spent the afternoon in Kathmandu with a few other volunteers that were leaving to do some trekking. I finished with a bit of shopping before jumping on a plane back to Doha.
I have tried to put in to words what spending this week in Nepal was like. From home cooked meals to spectacular views, from tigers to home visits, I feel like I was gone for much longer than 9 days. So much prep went into my trip and I can never thank the people that gave donations and the words of encouragement before I left. I appreciate everything that Nepal has given me and I appreciate even more now the people that I am thankful to have in my life.
Namaste.
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