FROM COVID TO FLOOD

 

Photo Kishor Dangol

Recently, the team has been busy in Kathmandu and immediate surrounding areas distributing food relief to individuals and families.

From June 11th to 18th, food was delivered to 150 people on a daily basis. Thereafter, we halted our service for 2 days while our team surveyed for a newer population target. 

In total we reached 750 people over 5 days of outreach and services with packed lunches, vitamin c and masks.

During the five days of the food distribution program, cooking, the packing of lunches and deliveries were carried out by volunteers.  

In addition, our team surveyed and accordingly delivered uncooked food to 30 needy families: the supplies included rice, lentils and cooking oil to last a family for up to one week. We also identified 2 families in Pokhara and similar packages were distributed through our contact in Pokhara, a seven hour journey by bus from Kathmandu to the west.  The situation in Pokhara was also assessed.

Kishor Dangol arranged to have one month's food supplied to 30 families with young children.  These are the families of musicians who are currently unemployed due to the lockdown.

The route from Kathmandu to Pokhara.

As the lockdown became slightly relaxed, fewer people were in need of help and the team's work lessened; and disaster struck in Malemchi village to the north of Kathmandu.

Flood waters in Malemchi. 

Melamchi is the gateway to the Helambu region in the north.  Although many people and property has been badly affected, the news failed to make it in the western press.

The main landslides that triggered the flood are still posing a danger as 75% of the earth remains intact in the mountains with loose soil and scree on the surface and is awaiting another heavy downpour to release the rest. We are hoping and praying it doesn't happen. The monsoon has just started with its peak yet to come in July and August.

The flood took a heavy toll of damage in Melamchi river and the Helambu region affecting more then 400 families with their houses being washed away along with most of their belongings. All four major concrete bridges have been washed away cutting off several villages from communication from the rest of area.  The Nepalese government has focused on repairing the roads and restoring electricity in order to create a basic infrastructure that will be a help to inhabitants around the river bed. 

Photo Kishor Dangol. Gathering possessions from flooded homes.

The area lies between 3,650 feet and nearly 12,000 feet. In some parts of Helambu there  are no roads and a helicopter charter is the only way to reach villages. Electrical power has also been affected.  

Private parties have played a pivotal role in contributing to providing help for displaced families.  Helambu village municipality has 106 displaced families.  The local administration is now requesting help with the general relief of shortages of supplies such as dry food stuff including rice and flour.  Galvanised sheets to provide roofing is also being installed instead of tarpaulin in order to withstand severe monsoon winds.  

The team has purchased 250 solar lights to distribute where most needed to families with young children who are living in poverty. Also supplied are several bags of rice and lentils and depending on the availability of funds. For information I am in regular contact with local Govt authorities as well as local people.

Purna Lama helping to distribute solar lights

Now the affected people are surviving in camps.  

Thank you all for your kind help and generosity. Ours is a mission to bring smiles to the faces of people deprived of a means to find their way through this double tragedy of covid and the floods.

Purna Lama

Photo Kishor Dangol:  Food prepared and donated by Yangrima Party Palace.

🙏

 

THE LIVING GODDESS

THE LIVING GODDESS OF PATAN पाटनको  कुमारी देवी 

ललितपुर (Lalitpur)

Many years ago - about 35 - I watched a documentary about the Living  Goddess of Nepal.  That people should worship a little Newar girl as a living manifestation of a deity seemed to lock in with an uninformed beginning of an interest in Hinduism.  That, and the footage of skinny hippies carrying a five-kilo block of black charas back to their quarters in Kathmandu bucked me on to find a way to visit the country and perhaps work there.

The Living Goddess is believed to be a reincarnation of Taleju (तालेजु ) the Nepali name for Durga and serves as the goddess till her first sign of menstruation.  She is chosen from the community according to certain criteria:  she must have what is considered to be perfect features - straight nose, wide eyes and unblemished skin amongst other benchmarks:

• A neck like a conch shell
• A body like a banyan tree
• Eyelashes like a cow
• Thighs like a deer
• Chest like a lion
• Voice soft and clear as a duck's

Well-recessed sexual organs and a set of twenty-teeth are also prerequisites.

She must also show fearlessness on the night of Desai (देसैं )  or Kaalraatri (काल्रात्री  - black night) when she is taken into the courtyard of Taleju Temple where the severed heads of cattle and other animals are on the ground lit by candles while masked men with painted bodies dance around.  Should any fear be evident, another candidate is chosen and the process repeated.

BUFFALO HEAD SACRIFICE

On this visit of Nepal, I've discovered that there's more than one Living Goddess and she is found in Patan or Lalitpur, the third ancient capital of Nepal.  When I arrived there was a festival with tens of thousands of people milling around and visiting the various attractions.  And there she was! - the Living Goddess in the Kumari House, sitting and revealed in the courtyard.

Kumari seeming a bit distracted

Gave her some money but she didn't seem impress with me or the others who posed with her, in fact she seemed rather stressed.  I don't think anything will rub off on me but somehow I feel I have made another circle after 35-years.

LUMBINI

LUMBINI  लुम्बिनी 

LAST GLIMPSE OF FISHTAIL

There have been better journeys and there have been worse.  Pokhara to Bhairawa found us on a bus, having left the former at 6.30.  The road wound and wound through deep valleys with narrow river-beds that would be filled with gushing water in the monsoon, broadening out into flood plains and enriching the earth for the winter crops.  A last glimpse of Machapuchere was the final image I had, pointing proudly to the sky above darker, brooding foothills.

Winding on, we pass Sangye and Palpa, untidy little towns with a variety of weathered dwellings, rickety and sloping under rusting corrugated roofing pinned down against the sudden gales by large stones, tyres, and other discarded paraphernalia that Asians are loathe to discard in order to be cannibalised for whatever use in future time of need.  Then, the inevitable sight of the huddles of women in doorways outside shops and houses, young and old; and in their midst, the toddlers fawning and being preened by the women. 

Then lastly on to Tansen, that hybridised sounding name, not quite Nepalese or Tibetan, standing on a hill and seeming to look unaware and distant at the snaking road and the travellers below.  The hospital dominates the skyline above.  Mabel Maclean, now lumbering behind a Zimmer, remembers her time as a midwife there in the 60s, long ago, long before she moved to Edinburgh.

Suddenly we’re in the plains in Bhairawa, a largish Terai town bustling with people crowding the shops and stalls.  The passengers stand there in a group, looking and feeling a bit dazed and uncentred as if we've stepped off a boat having weathered rough seas.  Slowly, amoeba-like, the group splits and we find ourselves with a tall Australian girl and who I take to be a German couple but I find out the next day when meeting them in the bazaar are actually father and daughter.  We hire a multi-seater micro to take us to Lumbini.  Our bags are hoisted on to the rack at the top and we start our dusty journey along the highway to Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautama Buddha.

BUDDHA'S BIRTH PLACE

We make for the Korean Monastery as they have rooms to let within the vastness that is the home of Buddhism for pilgrims from all over the world.  We are exactly 300-kilometers away from Kathmandu, not that a measurement like that means very much here; 8-hours including stops would be more suggestive of the long, curving Prithvi Narayan  pass up to Kathmandu from the Terai.  But more than distance and time, the two-places are separated by culture and climate.  Here, in the market place, Bhojpuri and Hindi are heard more than Nepali.  There are fewer faces with the Mongol flatness and slanted eyes, more of the Aryan, darker features of a taller race who have lived, not in the forests, but on the plains. 

KOREAN MONASTERY

When we approach the office boy, he tells us, There are no double rooms available, only dormitories with eight to a room.

THE ROOMS AROUND THE COURTYARD

The rooms are grey concrete and quite austere.  The beds are wooden pallets with thin mattresses laid on them.  Dissatisfied, the German pair leaves in a rickshaw for the town, not happy with the accommodation on offer.  The Australian girl decides to stay.  Fulmaya talks to a monk and he instructs the clerk to give us the last double room.  This will cost us NRs600, or around £4 a night – plus three-meals a day.  We could have stayed in a hundred dollar a night hotel, but somewhere on the outskirts of the town miles away from the walled area. 

NO TRANSLATION NEEDED

A HAPPY WAVE FROM A DEVOTEE

 The Korean food in indescribably bland, innovatively bereft of imagination and almost indigestible.  Not the live boiled frog porridge you get in Thailand, but maybe the vegetarian equivalent would be in taste if not in ingredients.

The flocks flock to the central temple, The exact spot where Buddha was born, I’m told by a security guard standing at the door.  Within the building, you get a feeling you’re walking into a large area of meticulous preservation where even the dust must be kept in its place.  There are low walls and enclosed areas, some of it dating back to the fifth century BC.  Barricades surround the vestigial remains and from a distance, the gold leaf on a wall glitters.  This has been placed there by devotees.  The leaf is extremely thin and can be bought in little packets, not unlike sticky notes.  Around the inside of the perimeter wall, a few monks and laypeople sit in meditation. 

FULMAYA IN THE GROUNDS OF MAHA BHODI

I guess this is the point at which questions arise in my mind about the need for religion.  Under a tree, a distinguished looking man in brown kurta and pyjamas is regaling a crowd of westerners with words of wisdom, but I’m sure he’s not saying anything that I don’t know.  Other groups sit about on the grass absorbing (by some kind of osmosis?) the atmosphere of the place.  They will leave feeling holier than when they first came here, though for how long? 

Altogether, it’s a worthwhile place to be and the weather is warm, there is an atmosphere of peace: and finally, if true, then I am at the place where Gautama Buddha was born and lived to become one of the most influential figures in the history of human ideas and thought.

THE ONLY ARMOUR YOU NEED IS SUNCREAM