Our dear Bal has created a book about ANSWER and Nepal. It’s a great way to introduce your friends to the organization, so buy a copy today.

Note: Click on each thumbnail to see a full size photo.

I just had a reunion of sorts a few weeks ago …..with a beautiful, young Nepali woman. I used to meet her on the streets almost every day, but I hadn’t seen her for so long that I was afraid something dire had happened. I included her in part of a sermon once as a prospective Martha Stewart for her spunk and determination to sell and prosper.

Her name is Sanu Nepali, Sanu means “Little One.” Nepali is a common name, very low caste, as opposed to the surname Nepal, which is the name of the previous Prime Minister. Sanu is a hard working street girl who obviously loved her job as she was omnipresent, hitting on the tourists. Sanu carried a little babe on her back and begged foreigners to buy her a carton of powdered milk for her baby brother. It is a scam, of course. A scam that kept her alive, taught her English, and touched many in a multitude of ways. For example, I once found her in a greasy spoon with a foreigner…some good-hearted soul trying to learn Nepali from her in exchange for some lunch. But Sanu didn’t know grammar or parts of speech, so it is next to fruitless to learn a foreign language this way (I know this from experience!), unless you enter their world and learn their language “Are not!  Am too!”

I will never forget the day, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, when I rounded a back street near my Guest House and chanced upon this little one about to scam two young women, probably Brits or Aussies, into buying milk for her baby brother. I caught Sanu with her “babe on her back” just as they were reaching into their purses. Quickly, I blurted out to them that it was a ruse and to put their money away. I felt a bit proud of myself for discouraging children from begging….

Well, a few days later, I stopped at an outdoor snack shack for “finger chips” (french fries), when a little girl came by and stuck her tongue out at me. Taken aback, and not recognizing her from a 100 other dirty little street urchins, I quipped, “Whats that for?”

Little Sanu, put her hands on her hips and said, “Don’t you remember? Milk for my brother?”

“Oh, Dear!”….and now I felt a sense of shame descend upon me. I recalled how noble I felt at the time, and not a thought about the impact of my actions on this little girl. Quickly, I responded, “Please come up here and join me for some finger chips.” Sanu climbed up on the stool and with her dirty little hands, hungrily dug in. So, now it was my turn to gain the upper ground by reasoning with her.

It just so happened that at this very time, my staff and I had been working the river banks in Katmandu helping the squatters living there. We set up a tent school in the morning, and I worked it as a clinic in the afternoon with amazing results that still reverberate today, but that’s another story to share in another installment in a few weeks. The point is that my staff had been pressuring me to support them in their condemnation of their lifestyle of begging…which I was debating with myself–I wanted to support my staff, who understand the cultural norms, but who was I standing outside their culture and passing  judgement? So, I guess some of that must have rubbed off on me when I had encountered Sanu and was being judgmental and interfering.

So, as Sanu and I were enjoying our finger chips, I asked her questions and  began building my defense. “Sanu, don’t you know that begging is bad?”

At which point, she sat up straight and tall, fire leapt into her eyes, and she looked me in the eye and said defiantly, “Sir, Begging not bad. Stealing bad!”

“Wow, from the mouths of babes….,” I thought.  I could’ve reverted to building my case again, but it would’ve been pointless. It was black and white to her, and I knew that she had me. I smiled, and said. Yes, Sanu, you are right. I was wrong. When we are done here, let us go to the store, and I will buy you some food….I remember, we held hands on the way there, and she picked out a box of cookies.

The next day, when I visited the squatters on the mud flats, I told our staff that they were living here in squalor instead of in their homes back in their village in order to beg. They had traveled all ths way to make their livelihood, and I am sure, it was a carefully rendered decision. So, it was up to them to want to change their lifestyle, not up to us to make them quit. Our job was to teach school and to treat their illnesses . As a result, to this day we are welcomed on the mud flats and greeted back in their home village 100 miles away whenever we stop by. We are respected for simply being their friends and helping them on their terms. Consequently, the kids we later mainstreamed into government schools are now too old to beg with their mothers, and are still in school! I may write about their remarkable progress later.

Sanu and I have been friends ever since. I never bought into her scam, but later she was into selling little brocade purses, and those I would buy from her. But then, like I said, she had been missing from the streets. Years had gone by, and many times I wondered what had come of that little charmer. I feared that she might be selling more than just purses, but dispelled the thought with….”She has too much self respect and drive.”

Well, Like I said, this week, as I was turning down a little alley to deliver my laundry, I caught sight of a pretty, young Nepali woman. I did a double take, and couldn’t quite place her. I tried English first: “Haven’t we met?”

She beamed, and said, “Don’t you remember? Milk money?”

I couldn’t believe it; so many years had gone by….I couldn’t even remember her name! “Yes, yes, of course,” I said, ”And YOU still remember the “Milk money!” How many tourists she must have tapped for a handout, and still that incident was as important to her as it was to me! “Tell me your name.”

“Sanu,” she said.

“Oh, Sanu,” and we hugged. Well, we played catch-up over tea, and I found out that she was now 19 and in the 9^th grade, and sure enough, she had indeed charmed a sponsor  into sending her to a private boarding school. Because the Strikes had shut down the schools, Sanu had come back to her old neighborhood and was helping her “auntie” in a back alley restaurant.

The next day I introduced her to Mary Jane who knew her only from the sermon, and we all relished the story once again, “Begging not Bad, Stealing Bad!”

Note: Click on each thumbnail to see a full size photo.

Having talked extensively about  our travels, I want to talk about our achievements beyond just our oversight and letter delivery duties.

For the past couple of years I have made the opportune and warm friendship of Rob Rose, a photographer in Bellevue, WA. Rob has a program (www.trfic.com) that works with all kinds of “specially abled” children in Nepal. He has networked with all kinds of people and organizations in Nepal in addition to cross-linking with local Rotarians all over Nepal. Mary Jane and I first linked up with Som back in 1997 when we were all working for HRDC, the Hospital and Rehabilitation Center for disabled children.  Of course, MJ had a leg up on all of us with her 25 years of special ed teaching to begin with. Over the years we have helped educate a number of HRDC children.

Well, it was back in those days at HRDC where Som first encounter Rakesh who must have been about 10 years old. Rakesh has O.I., or osteogenesis imperfecti, a genetic disease in which bone is not properly laid down and is weak. Some variants have brittle bones which break easily; some have bones that do not ossify and are pliable. The latter seems to mimic Ricketts (vitamin D or sunlight deficiency) and  predominates in Nepal, and we even have such a case Ram that we had picked up and referred to HRDC for surgical correction. Ram is the brother of a little girl Shova who gave us fits because she kept skipping school, but who is now in the 9^th grade and  5^th in her class. Her sponsor Harry in Seattle has bent over backwards to keep Shova off the streets….and as soon as he learned that the surgery was a success and that Ram could stand up and walk for the very first time (he was 4 or 5).

Rakesh has the brittle bone variety for which there is no surgical correction beyond repairing the multiple fractures these children sustain. Like Rakesh these children are of short stature as a result. Rakesh has 3 sisters. One who is married and out, one who is a few years younger, and one who had his condition and died around the age of 22-23—Rakesh’s current age.  Som figures that unless something is done, the same fate awaits him before too long. Rakesh is lke Rapunzel, locked away in a tower with no escape. He has a few callers, Som and I, who climb three sets of stairs that are harder than climbing up braids of hair to reach Rakesh in order to visit occasionally and deliver some magazines. Rakesh when he was younger, smaller, would be carried down the stairs and placed in a wheel chair and go to school which Paula Doyle, our President, along with a group of friends sponsored. This lasted about two years and he has been able to develop his own reading skills on his own along with survival skills like knitting. I remember when a big sack of mittens, scarves and hats arrived in the mail for us to sell. I went ballistic over having to now become a hawker, too, but Paula stepped up to the plate and was able to sell them all. All this to say that Rakesh never complains, always wears a smile, is so glad to see anyone, and has some real talent and initiative. However, his father is older, his older sister gone, and those stairs are deadly if you tried to carry him or the wheel chair down the stairs.

Well, remember Rob? Last year Rob, as is his wont, came to Nepal to ride elephants with a host of specially abled children, along with doing a hundred other things. I had told Rob about Rakesh and asked Som to invite him to meet Rakesh….I don’t know if Rob was as horrified at his situation or was simply enchanted with Rakesh’s warm personality, but Rob mobilized his forces, Rotarians, govt and hospital agencies, NGOs. By the time I arrived in Nepal, a complete evaluation had been done, including a recommendation—Rakesh should be relocated to a bedroom apartment at Jorpati’s Home for the Disabled in Katmandu (about a half hour drive from Rakesh’s tenement apartment in Bhaktapur).  It would cost a $100 a month to be located there, but would include medical access and coverage.  But as importantly, he would be a hired as a handicraft teacher at the facility, and paid a small allowance!

As soon as we returned from the two weeks of travels in the bush, we visited Rakesh, Jorpatti, and some of those managing his case. Rakesh was excited about the possibility, so the Social Workers arranged for him to visit and see the place for himself. I have no idea how they brought him down the stairs…they are steep, dark, and only about 5 feet of clearance to the flight coming down overhead.  At any rate, they did it and we met him, his married sister, and the social worker at Jorpatti…he was grinning from ear to ear! It was a done deal, we thought.

That evening Som got a call from the family saying they wouldn’t sign on. Too bad for them, I thought, until Som explained to me that the legal rights of the disabled in Nepal are owned by the family…they had to sign their consent on the dotted line, not Rakesh! I couldn’t believe it. The disappointment we all felt, not just for all the work we put in, but for Rakesh….now, he would be destined to die like his sister. At this point, with my Western mentality, I had two quick fixes: bribe or Gurkha knife their consent!  Som, in his Nepali frame of mind, was accepting: Ke garne (it can’t be helped. Live with it!).

About a week later, we heard back from Rakesh. He must have either convinced his father and sister, or made them feel so guilty that they gave in and consented to a one month trial.  We jumped on it before anyone could change their mind, and the next day had him seeded into his new quarters. Som initially felt that this trial would be a bust because Bhaktapur Newars (the ethnic group to which Rakesh family belong) are so conservative that they have a hard time adjusting to anything that’s not traditional.

Throughout the first week, Som was getting daily phone calls from Rakesh reporting how great he found this new home to be, and the new friends he is making, etc, etc…Finally, Som got a call from him saying that he wanted to enroll in a school over there!  At 25, and entering the 5^th grade, he would be their oldest student, but they were open to it! Talk about take charge…Rakesh didn’t ask anyone; he just sought it our and decided he wanted to do it. All the Social workers were emailing each other about Rakesh, so I have to share this one with you:

Dear All,

Latest and great news that Rakes dialed me yesterday night at 10 and he wants to go disabled school in Jorpati and I just dialed Mr. Rudra to manage everything for his school. So things are going well. I don’t know when this boy is going to stop dialing me at night and my busy time…….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Som

To be followed by this email from the head of NAD Home at Jorpati:

Dear Som sir,

I was also desperately hunting you after Rudra could not reach you about Rakesh’s enrollment in NDA school.

I am glad you confirmed to Mr. Rudra. Else I had requested Mr. Rudra to please consider till tomorrow until I obtain consent from Rob and Earle.

I am glad to share the feeling of 14 years NDA career of Mr. Rudra, who has not come across any person as happy as Rakesh in NDA premises.

He feels very good to be part of this achievement.

Regard

Rajan

Well, it is not everyday you read about fairytales coming true. But, Rapunzel did make it out of his tower and found his new home-charming, and hopefully will live happily ever after. I don’t know how long Rakesh will live, but there is no question in my mind that his quality of life has made a phenomenal leap skyward, and this alone should carry him a long ways. And should something dire happen, the hospital is just down the hall, not down three death-ladened staircases and across town! What also brings joy to my heart is that I am sure that the other residents there are also benefitting from Rakesh’s outgoing personality. A diamond has no sparkle unless it is brought out for all to see.

Rob must believe in fairy tales, too, because he offered to pay $600, or half of the annual cost of Rakesh’s apartment, if ANSWER could come up with the other half.  I initially told our board that paying for the home of a disabled person was not part of our mission, but what did they think?…They agreed with several dissensions. So, I personally covered the initial trial month just to see if the darn thing would fly.

But now, if Rakesh is going to school, this changes everything. (Honest, I didn’t even know there was a school! This was divine intervention –God having his laugh!) ANSWER’s mission is to support students, especially potential leaders. You read the assessment  of Mr. Rudra that he has never met anyone in his 14 year career as happy as Rakesh is in his new home and that even Mr . Rudra is ecstatic, is a sure sign that others too are thrilled.  He is a pigeon let out of the coop and is spreading his wings—socializing, teaching handicrafts, and returning to school, at last.

Finally, if any of you out there would like to help sponsor Rakesh, please email Lisa (lisa.durham@gmail.com) or me (jecan314@gmail.com). Yes, you will be writing to him and getting  a letter back from our new student, his photo, report card and a drawing, too. Deadline for your letter is August 1, so please let us know right away. Dhanyabaad (thanks).

Getting to Nepal

Note: Click on each thumbnail to see a full size photo.

One of my favorite sayings is “If you want to make God laugh, make a plan!” So, when faced with 40 hours of flying, there are plenty of opportunities at God’s disposal to foul up a potentially restful flight. So, I was not surprised when three days prior to departure, we received a phone call from Som in Nepal: “Expect a delay. The radar is broken at Tribhuvan Intl Airport (in Katmandu), and there have been delays all week.”

Anything can change overnight in Nepal, so I took the news with a grain of salt and didn’t even mention it to Mary Jane (Second thought, I probably simply forgot).  I felt we were fortunate to have the most direct flight to Nepal in all our years–thanks to a new Mid-Eastern airline Etihad Airways. We had just two connections: GR to Chicago to Abu Dhabi to KTM. But again, to presume it would be so simple was an invitation for divine intervention.

Sure enough! We departed on the very day of the volcanic eruption in Iceland. We weren’t even aware of it until we reached Chicago and witnessed the many flight cancellations there. All flights to and through Europe were canceled. We lucked out (God was merciful!) as our flight could still dodge the volcanic ash by detouring south of the Great Circle Route,  passing over Gibraltar to Abu Dhabi, extending our flight 2hrs and 1000 miles.  We had plenty of time with which to play since we had a whopping 14 hour layover in Abu Dhabi. In Abu Dhabi, one of the newly emerged, oil-rich emirates, all the rooms were taken because of the canceled flights to and from Europe. However, we could pay $128 and luxuriate in a comfortable lounge for 8 hours with a fine buffet, free bar, and even a shower room (the rooms are prohibitively expensive).

We chanced upon this airport lounge because we met a young Nepali man escorting an empty wheel chair, and so MJ took him up on his offer to wheel us around, and even tried his best to get Etihad to credit a room to us, but no luck: too many cancelations and all the rooms were taken. This young man is part of 200,000 plus migrant labor force from Nepal working in the Persian Gulf for slave wages….which is still more than they can make unemployed in Nepal. In the exclusivity of being in a first class lounge in an Oil Emirate, Mary Jane and I were out of our league in a sea of white robes, hajibs, burqas, and  custom-tailored and designer wear; and although we enjoyed people-watching, I couldn’t help but feel that we, clad in fashionable Goodwill togs, were the objects of others’ people-watching.

With T minus 6 hours to go, MJ’s heart opened up to a woman in a burqa with 3 small kids trying to make it from the lounge to her gate. With bags, a stroller, a babe in arms, a toddler and a wild rapscallion who was running and bouncing off of the furniture like a bee in a meadow. MJ quickly recruited me, transcended the language barrier, and began parceling out the children and belongings to the obvious relief and appreciation of the mother. Unable to slow down little Abdullah, I took his in hand, and steered him towards the gate about 10 minutes away. MJ and mother embraced at the security check in front of the gate. Meanwhile, I released the boy who ran through and back, and then around the metal detecting pass-through, setting it off each time—great fun! The guards exasperated, mother embarrassed, and we were in hysterics. Mother quickly grabbed hold of Abdullah and sat down at the nearest set of chairs inside to wait the boarding call. As we turned away, we again noticed that there is not just free wi-fi in Abu Dhabi International, but rows upon rows of laptops for travelers to use free of charge to catch up or wile away their waits. We’d done that already, so it was back to the lounge.

The remaining hours ticked off slowly until finally, it was our turn to report to the gate, and we proceeded to board for the relatively short flight to Katmandu (4-5 hrs). We were flying against the sun so the day was well-spent when we landed on time at 430 PM and the sun low in the sky was reflecting back up at us off of tin roofs, and Katmandu sparkled like a diamond. The clear skies and go visibility did not necessitate the airport’s radar which had been repaired by that time.

We passed straight through Immigration, Customs, and Baggage Claim without a hitch, and even our friends from the Guest House were there to meet us, greet us, and deliver us. Now that we had made it, we had several days to adjust our biorhythms before our sponsors began arriving, so we had a light snack and crashed early. Great in theory, but God had protected the dear dog out behind the Guest House over the past year, whom I affectionately call Midnight…so named for his penchant to begin barking intermittently all night long at about that time. After a good nap, we were now awake, unable to go back to sleep, during the long, early morning hours. Before long came the pre-dawn crowing of cocks all around the city, reinforcing the intermittent barking, and a little later this was supplemented by the cawing of the crows near sunrise. Our insomnia could easily be treated with a good book….except that the electricity was being rationed, aka “load-shedding”. So, the room stayed pitch black until dawn. Lying awake in bed, one of us would end up waking up the other by tossing and turning. By morning we were exhausted. Daytime hours are lengthening this time of the year, but in actuality, they were being truncated by our naps from midday narcolepsy. For two weeks we struggled with our day-night schedule.

Getting into the Swing of it and Tripping out

After a few days of recovery, however, we decided to get to work despite our jetlag. So, Som and I engineered a trip north to the Langtang National Park on the Tibetan Border. We would visit some schools in the Highlands of the Himalayas…new territory for us.  Som, his new wife Nisha, MJ and I, and two of our “ANSWER children” Uma who is now a nurse and Sujana, a second year nursing student would be escorting us.

The trip, which was intended to be fun and scenic, turned out to be a nightmare. We hired a large Indian Jeep cum driver as we knew there were unpaved portions of road. We soon learned that the greater portion of the way is still in total disrepair: it was 4-5 hrs of “bumpy, dumpy roads”, as Som calls them, which even our jeep had a hard time navigating. Half way there, in Trisuli, we all welcomed a rest stop (to scout out a school) as much as we dreaded climbing back in for another 2 hours of bumpy-dumpiness to Dhunche.

Finally, in the late afternoon, tired, stiff, and weary, we made it to Dhunche, unloaded our bags in a rustic hotel, and marched down “main street” to a very nice school where we met the principal and recruited another set of candidate children, two prospective nurses and one doctor wanna-be! The Question for us is….do we want to spend two days traveling on jarring roads two to four times a year, for just a half dozen children? We soon rationalized that we could probably do this in rotation with our staff, so everyone bares the onus. With schools both in Trisuli and Dhunche, we could probably make it a dozen children and even pick up another school somewhere else along the way.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that we do this outreach into the interior. These children in the remote areas are the ones who are totally out of the flow, totally overlooked, and forgotten. If we made sure that the bright ones get good educations through college, they would set the example for others and promote rural development as well. Only within the past two years or so have TV and cell towers linked them to the happenings of the rest of the world. This means educational and career opportunities beyond farming, shopkeeping, or portering supplies in and out for trekkers are now conceivable. With TV they are now aware of how the other half lives, but with no hope for improving their own lot, their once contented lives would soon transmute to despair and resentment, and possibly even  violence and  rebellion.

On the other hand, TV has a wonderful way of modernizing thinking. I read a nice piece in Super-Freakonomics (the sequel to Freakonomics, a must-read) about the frustrating experience family planning programs have faced in rural India. With bazillions of illiterate peasants, everything India has tried, from educational programs to making injections and devices available, including sterilization, nothing has made a dent in the population growth outside the cities where the vast majority of Indians dwell. Nothing that is, until TV towers and cables began to penetrate the interior. Once rural women were finally able to see well-to-do women on TV with small families and careers and enjoying “the good life”, the birth rate plummeted and attendance in family planning programs began to swell. This is now happening all over the developing world.

And so it is in Nepal, too, with additional ramifications. For example, we used to see EVERY little girl expressing her desire to be a doctor, and we still do, but now one in ten or twenty is now saying, “I want to be a pilot!” One girl this year told Som she wanted to be a lawyer! Where did that come from?” I asked. Som pushed it aside with, “Just a TV program.” But the point is that boys and girls now have a new source of information and they are paying attention to options beyond just what daddy wants. That’s a huge step in individual choice and independent thinking!

Anyway, as dusk was setting in and around Dhunche, things were getting a bit chilly. Dhunche is at 6200 feet and things cool down quickly after sunset. In Katmandu we slept under sheets. Here we had several heavy blankets (albeit, the cheap Chinese rayons have replaced the wool and yak hair ones even out here). The next morning, with no hot water, we skipped our showers, had our tea, and all went out to explore the town some more. With the goats running around everywhere in a bucolic, alpine setting with children running all around, I couldn’t help but think of Heidi and Grandfather! And yes, the icy peaks of the Alps, or rather the Himalayan range, were visible at last. Dhunche is built on the north side of a mountain facing the Himalayas, but we needed to hike higher to appreciate the full majesty of the range. Even so, it was a glorious morning with jagged, glacier-ladened peaks jetting up beside us.

The splendor, however, was short-lived as we had to jump back in the jeep for a long “bumpy, dumpy” and uneventful ride back to Katmandu. Uneventful is a good thing: Som’s wife Nisha is “a little bit pregnant” and in the throes of morning sickness, MJ couldn’t help but focus on her condition.

Our Sponsors Arrive and the Political Turmoil Begins

Within the next day or two, our sponsors began to arrive: Mary with her two teenage boys Pat and Duncan from Michigan, and a couple from Maine, David and Marty, who had visited Nepal with us in 2007. With their arrival we switched to a more upscale hotel to be rid of Midnight’s barking, and it made a significant difference.

However, as our sponsors were recovering from jet lag, a nationwide strike was called by the Radical Student Union ANNISU-R (Maoist) against all 6000 private secondary schools for tuition hikes. AND, no sooner had the Private schools agreed to roll back the increases to appease the Radical Student Union, than the Maoist Party called for a nationwide, general strike to get the current Prime Minister to resign and hand them the reins of power. So, for a week and a half we were ready to roll, visiting our schools and students, reading and writing letters, etc., but completely thwarted by the political situation.

To describe what all this entails would require another one of my ten page letters, so enough to say that this is one of the tightest lock-downs Som and I have ever experienced. In this case essentially, many rural Maoists were bussed into Katmandu, and coalesced with urban Maoists in the streets in such numbers that shops were afraid to open and defy the strike. All transportation except Army, Police, Ambulances, and a few Tourist Buses were forced off the road….if not, a barrage of stones, or worse, would pummel the vehicle. Roads were blocked off in the cities, the villages, and the highways running between them.  Only the airports remained open, but taxis, buses and even rickshaws are all verboten.

This was one of the most effective strikes ever…nothing was running, nothing was open. Som and his brother had to walk 4-5 miles each way to and from their homes to visit us. Usually, taxis run after sunset, but not this time….it took Som well over an hour to walk home after dark. Graciously, from 6-8pm the tourist area is allowed to open for dinner…the Maoists recognize that this is not our dispute and do not want to alienate a large portion of those who bring in tourism and foreign aid.  Even so, few restaurants wanted to go to the trouble of opening for only two hours, and soon the exodus began and the arriving tourists began cancel ling their visits. Even Mary and her boys got tired of waiting it out and left to finish their vacation time in California. We were so disappointed, but no doubt they were even more so.

During this time Prachanda, the Maoist Leader, made a speech to his cadre saying it was time for the rural people to bring the aloof urbanites to their knees. This essentially alienated a good number of Katmandu citizens, especially the intellectuals in the press. Prachanda had cut his own legs out from under himself which led to his having to lift the strike. Since then, the Maoists have been surprisingly conciliatory and haven’t even mentioned reinstating the strikes.

Nowadays, with the heat and impending monsoon, there are few foreigners left. I am now one of the few remaining bideshi (or foreigners) which makes me the sole object for every shoe shine boy, open-hand child wanting a rupee, and itinerant street hawkers of tiger balm or hashish. I am so fed up with it all that I even bought the classic Katmandu tourist t-shirt that reads: “No Rupee, No Hashish, No Rickshaw, No Tiger Balm, No Problem.” Before, I tried to be polite, now I simply say, “NO!” and point to my shirt.

To continue with the saga, while the schools and highways still closed due to the strikes, we had to delay our plans to tour and visit schools for the time being. Because the planes were still flying, we flew out to Pokhara simply for a change in venue. Like I said, the airports were open, but nary a taxi or rickshaw to be found. All of us had to walk nearly 2 miles to our Lakeside Lodge. MJ and I arrived on a later flight and were lucky to have two bicycles available to us. MJ hadn’t ridden a bike for 3 or 4 years and was a bit nervous, so she sat sidesaddle on the back of a hard, bare bicycle rack and survived. It turned out that there was a bicycle rental store just up the street from us, so we did one or two school visits in Pokhara pedaling, and while we were at it, there were pedal-boats and paddle-canoes and hikes to keep us further occupied.

Finally, after a few days, the strike was lifted, and we made  bee line to the airport to fly into the Annapurna Range of the Himalayas to the village of Jomsom at 9000 feet of elevation. This was really a stark, rocky passage between two tall mountains through which the Great Kali Gandhaki River flows southward into India and the Ganges.

Mary Jane and I were accompanied by Marty and David, Som and Nisha, Bal and Sanoj, an ANSWER graduate in Accounting and our newest staff person.  We had no trouble finding a room for all of us…a large party of tourists had just canceled their trip to Jomsom!

We had at last begun our visits to the schools, and for the next two weeks needed to visit more than 100 schools, or at the very least all of them outside the Katmandu Valley, and be back by the 28^th of May, Constitution Day. It was pretty clear that the interim government had not produced the Constitution over the last two years, as was promised, and the Maoists would have a field day once again, demonstrating and most likely, it would mean more strikes. We had to make record time! No telling what God was going to throw at us next.

Profile: Earle Canfield

Sunday, January 3, 2010 by Terri Hamilton

Earle Canfield wears a 3-inch parrot on his shoulder and his heart on his sleeve.

The bird, a miniature parrot called a parrolet and named Birdie, rides on Canfield’s shoulder most everywhere he goes, nibbling on the top edge of his turtleneck.

“If he thinks I’m about to fall asleep, he bites my ear,” he says.

His heart becomes apparent whenever he talks about the children of Nepal. Canfield has made it his mission to save them.

When he speaks of them, he cries.

Canfield, 62, is the founder and executive director of ANSWER, a nonprofit that stands for American-Nepali Students’ and Women’s Educational Relief.

It all started 10 years ago on a trip to Nepal, when he met a little girl named Uma. She was on a corner under a street lamp selling cigarettes to support her family. In one arm she held her baby brother, while she wrote her lessons in her copy book with the other hand.

“Every night, she was faithfully multitasking under the street lamp,” Canfield recalls.

He decided to help Uma, paying to put her into private school and pledging to support her education through college.

Three years later, she was speaking English and was first in her class. Uma graduated from nursing school in May, works and has an apartment.

If he could make that big of a difference, Canfield figured other folks might want to help other Nepalese kids, too.

Now, more than 500 children are in 100 schools all over Nepal through the efforts of ANSWER sponsors, most from Michigan and many from around here. It costs $5 a week to sponsor a child’s education, he says, including tuition, uniforms and books. The program also offers job training for women, supports a clinic and a soup kitchen, and helps villagers and migrants start businesses. Canfield focuses on educating girls, who are undervalued in Nepal, tracks youngsters through college, then offers them career counseling — something previously unheard of in Nepal.

“I never had the desire to make money,” he muses, padding around his kitchen in slippers, carrying a plate of chocolate chip cookies he just took from the oven. “But I always wanted to help. I thought, ‘Where can I help the most with the least amount of money?’”

Because he takes no salary for his work as ANSWER’s director and runs it from an office in his basement, all of a sponsor’s money goes toward his or her child in Nepal, Canfield says.

He lives on the rent he gets from a big Victorian house he owns in Seattle. The house is paid for. Two families pay rent. That’s his income.

Canfield shares a home near Grand Rapids Christian High School with his longtime partner, Mary Jane Schmidt.

“I can’t say I understand this deep commitment he has to Nepal children,” says Schmidt, a retired special education teacher. “He’s a very private person. He doesn’t tell me a lot. He doesn’t tell anybody a lot. But this is his passion. It consumes him.”

She has accompanied Canfield to Nepal on eight of the dozens of trip he’s made there over the years. He typically spends two or three months at a time there, checking on students and conferring with the Nepalese director he hired to run ANSWER on that end.

“He pores over their report cards,” Schmidt says. “If they’re not doing well, he scolds the principals. When one girl hadn’t been to school in 17 days, he called the mother in and scolded her. He’s very stern with them. He doesn’t want these kids to fail. He just loves all these kids.”

‘A Renaissance guy’

Canfield is big-word brainy, tossing around words like theocratic and hegemony. He needed 180 college credits to graduate, but had 240. He oozes world politics, often meandering off into intricate political discussions that leave you a little dizzy.

“He’s a Renaissance guy,” says Roger Durham, a longtime friend and Aquinas College political science professor who invites Canfield to speak to his classes every semester. “He knows a little about a lot of things. Every time I’m around him, I learn something new.

“He’s already had a life’s worth of experience — more than most of us,” he notes.

Get talking with Canfield and plan to think deep thoughts, Durham says. He’s not a “Did you see ‘Dancing With the Stars’ last night?” kind of guy.

“He sees bigger pictures,” Durham says. “Why do people get sick? What is help? Some help creates dependent structures.”

Stuff moves him.

“He can’t talk about ANSWER without crying, and it’s genuine,” Durham says. “He wears it on his doggone sleeve.”

A former physician’s assistant, Canfield does medical work in Nepal, too. He shows up with suitcases full of antibiotics.

He traces that interest back to his father, a Navy doctor passionate about his calling.

Canfield — whose first name is James and middle name is Earle — grew up with his dad, Earle, his mom, Florence, and younger siblings, Sally, Smitty (Robert) and Mark.

His family moved every two or three years because of his dad’s job, and young Earle lived all over the world.

“I’ve maintained wings at the cost of roots and friends left behind,” he observes.

“One night, my dad got a late-night phone call. It was a sick patient. I said, ‘Can’t you tell them to take two aspirin and call you in the morning?’”

Canfield pauses, remembering the scene.

“He got angry,” he recalls. Tears fill his eyes. “He told me, ‘I’m a doctor. They’re in pain. I have to help.’”

An emotional man

Canfield is an emotional man, often choking up as he talks about his life. “I’ll probably need some tissues,” he says. “Nothing to be concerned about. It’s just me.”

He recalls defining moments in his young life that shaped him. One was that day his father scolded him for thinking he came before a person in need.

Another came when the family was living in Taiwan and his physician father was summoned to perform surgery on an aging Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, president of the Republic of China. Because his father was a senior officer, his family was invited to come along as honored guests, escorted by Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

She took them to see her social projects, Canfield recalls — orphanages, schools and then to an aboriginal Taiwanese village in the hills above Taipei.

“We were driven up in black limousines, boarded small rail cars and were pushed up the mountainside by coolies until we reached the village,” he recalls. “I was 14 and dressed to the nines, and felt very out of place — everyone was dirt poor. No one had shoes, and people were cooking outdoors over wood fires.

“Suddenly, out of one of the huts emerged a young girl my age — dirty, shoeless, clad in a grass skirt and torn blouse. Instantly, our eyes met and dropped together. My sense of privilege was supplanted with her sense of shame.

“That was when I began to ask: Who am I to deserve all this? I felt as if she and I had played ovarian roulette in a previous life. She rolled snake-eyes and was seeded into a womb and a world of impoverishment; I rolled a seven and was born privileged.

“I still feel the anguish.”

Medical studies

After spending his high school years in Japan, Canfield studied pre-med at the University of Washington in Seattle, planning to do some sort of international medical work.

“I admired my father and I wanted to help people,” he says, “so medicine seemed like a good job.”

He went to graduate school and pursued a master’s degree in Tibetan language, then started his career as a physician’s assistant, working at a community clinic in Kalamazoo and at a homeless shelter.

He traveled to Honduras with doctors from the University of Cincinnati, distributing antibiotics and anti-worm medicine. It left an indelible impression about the best way to help.

“What did the people have to show for it? Six months later, the worms came back,” he recalls, shaking his head. “It was a very good experience on how not to do it.

“If the help is not sustainable, it won’t help them — it’ll hurt them,” he says. He offers more examples.

“You give them enough for a turkey dinner, or you pack up a shoe box full of gifts — just enough to spoil them — so they know how much we have and what they don’t,” he says. “What good is giving a woman six months of literacy? So she can sign a document — but she can’t understand what the document says? You give a poor person an education, but don’t give him a career? You need to take him up to the point where he can help himself. That’s not a turkey dinner. That’s not a shoe box.”

Stepping back in time

He went to Tulane University and earned a master’s degree in tropical medicine. He did polio eradication in Ghana for the World Health Organization.

He worked in a hospital for disabled children in Katmandu, Nepal.

“Those three months opened my eyes,” he says. It was like stepping back in time a century or two, he says, dealing with diseases that no longer exist in the West.

He traveled with a team into remote areas to help set up temporary clinics. The people had never seen TV or movies.

When Canfield decided to do a slide show on health education, one of his slides was a close-up of an anopheles mosquito — a carrier of malaria — that filled the screen. Immediately, he recalls, the room went quiet. The villagers’ reaction was so eerie, he asked a young Nepalese intern what the problem was.

“They’re afraid,” the intern told him. “They want to know if this mosquito can be found around here.”

Yes, Canfield told her, that’s the point of this talk — they need to use bed nets to avoid getting malaria.

“They’re not afraid of malaria,” she told him. “It’s this mosquito — it has a 4-foot wing span!”

“I came to appreciate that health education was predicated upon education, period,” he says. “Education is a prerequisite to health — and to effective helping of any kind.”

Family, then tragedy

While at the University of Washington, he met and later married a woman from Japan named Yuri. They had a daughter, Maya, now a 30-year-old management consultant in Seattle.

When Maya was 8, Yuri died of stomach cancer and Earle lost his wife of 17 years.

Grieving and floundering, dad and daughter took off for Spain to get away, touring museums and soaking up history while they began to heal.

They still bond over travel. Last month, they spent six days together in Ecuador.

When life stresses him out, Canfield retreats to a quiet room downstairs and turns to his biwa, a Japanese lute.

Ask him to play a tune, and he kneels down — it’s how you play a biwa — and strums the stringed instrument, tweaking it into tune.

“No one plays this anymore,” he observes as he strums. “It’s a dead instrument.”

Then, suddenly, he starts to sing along as he plays, a mournful, haunting melody in Japanese. It’s one of several languages he speaks.

Thrives on learning

Canfield thrives on learning and thinks everybody else should, too.

He tells of a recent conversation he had with some of the Nepalese youngsters ANSWER sponsors about why strangers help them.

“I said, ‘Americans are 10,000 miles away. Why is it they want to help you go to school?’ They said, ‘Because we’re poor.’ I said, ‘You don’t think there are poor people in America? There are people there who live in their cars.’ One child said, ‘Because America is like heaven and they have everything.’ Eventually, a little boy stood up and said …”

Canfield pauses, overcome with emotion.

“He said, ‘Because they know we’re just like them. And we need to help other people.’”

He pauses, thinking about his doctor dad.

“These are peoples’ lives,” he says, echoing his dad’s words from decades ago.

“That’s where it all comes from,” Canfield says. “Back to my dad. If someone’s in pain, you don’t give them an aspirin.

“You help them.”

A senior government minister has said that efforts are being made to establish link with armed outfits of Terai for holding dialogue with them.The Minister for Peace and Reconstruction and head of the government talks team, Janardan Sharma aka Prabhakar, said, Saturday, that his team is making such efforts.Two other members of the team Minister for Education Renu Yadav and Minister for Local Development Ram Chandra Jha are making efforts to forge informal contact with the leaders of such groups, he informed.

Earlier, Minister Sharma had said that the talks with the Terai armed outfits would begin after Dashain festival. nepalnews.com sd Oct 11 08

Sunday November 15, 2009

3:00 p.m. — 7:30 p.m.
Wege Auditorium—Wege Building, Aquinas College
1607 Robinson Rd., Grand Rapids, MI 49506
(enter off of East Fulton)

4:00-5:30    Hors d’oeuvres, cash bar, and a Nepali Bazaar
5:30-6:15    Dinner (select chicken, salmon, or vegetarian)
6:15-7:00    Concert
7:00-7:30    Presentation
7:30-8:00    Concert
8:00-8:30    Dessert
8:30-9:00    Surprise Guests
9:00    Concluding remarks

$50 per person, prime reserved tables for 4 = $300, for 8 = $600.
RSVP by Sunday November 8 to Paula Doyle at pauladoyle@hotmail.com or call 616-336-1090

An Evening with David Lockington and Friends from the Grand Rapids Symphony, including David Hall, Sean Ivory and John Varineau.

The musical program will include various selections for cello, marimba, clarinet and voices.

---

Menu includes:
• Atlantic Salmon
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Vegetable medley, Roasted garlic jus
• Signature Chicken w/ Ricotta and herb stuffing
• Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Vegetable Medley, Buerre Blanc
• Caponata Stuffed Cabbage
• Herbed cous cous, Roasted root vegetables, Roasted tomato vinaigrette

ANSWER presently supports 500 destitute and low-caste children in 120 primier, private schools all over Nepal. Its mission is to help develop leaders and role models for low-caste communities in order to help build an equitable society and lasting democracy there.

I failed to mention that I have been reading a couple of excellent books while I was in transit to Nepal and for the week my body adjusted to jet lag. Maya presented me with a birthday present: a couple of beautiful, black-market, silk ties off the streets of London and a book “The Telephone Gambit, chasing Alexander Graham Bell’s secret” by Seth Schulman. The book is an exhaustive, but condensed and very readable account of how Alec Bell stole the patent for the telephone from Elisha Grey….a fascinating “tale of romance, corruption, and unchecked ambition.” It is just out, but may already be on the bestseller list and most likely part of your Book Club’s reading list. This is the important story of how Ma Bell came into being, and Western Union never got beyond the telegraph. One of the author’s avocations, as a journalist, is reporting on the dark side of how science and technology advances, and Bell’s story offers great insight into that process. For example, the swindling of Elisha Grey calls to mind how Gutenberg, and five centuries later, the developer of DOSS who sold his rights to Bill Gates, both lost out on huge profits of their major contributions.

The other book I am presently reading is another piece of nonfiction called “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier, an Oxford economics professor and a former director of research at the World Bank. It refers to the 1 B people (of the 6 B in the world) who live in neither the developed nor the developing world, i.e., all those who live in failed states which are getting poorer, and of course, Nepal is a shining example. Even though I am not of an economist’s bent, this past year I vowed to read from this genre to get a better idea of what it is that I am witnessing in Nepal. I am also blessed with a nephew working in the private sector of the Development Field and had referred me to this book. Like I said, “The Bottom Billion” is referencing the population that are stuck in countries who fall into “traps” and fail to develop, while the middle 4 billion (including 1 B in China and 1 B in India) in the developing world were able to globalize their markets and are indeed developing. The top 1 billion people, of course, are in the First World (US, Canada, and the EU) which continues to grow richer. What Collier says is certainly apropos to Nepal—its development has been arrested by 5 of his “traps”: it is landlocked, lacking rich natural resources like oil and diamonds, highly dependent on its neighbors, emerging from a recent civil war. Interestingly, democracy is not a prerequisite for development and that it is often a set up for further instability. Foreign Aid also is often counter-productive as the waste inherent in “the giving” only serves to build up bigger debts without it necessarily fulfilling the needs. Nevertheless, since the election a stable government with friendlier relations with its neighbors appears to be emerging in these initial weeks and developed countries (even the US) are promising continued, if not increased assistance.

Nepal now has two years to draft and institute (hold new elections) a new constitution. This week the 601 member Constitutional Assembly will meet, reaffirm the nation as a Republic and begin their business. The “Five Year Plans” that the Maoists here are proposing (generating 10,000 MW of hydropower in 10 years compared to 605 MW per year presently) sound like the pie-in-the-sky targets of Mao Tse-tung, which almost always fell disastrously short of expectations. However, the authoritarian regime of Fidel Castro realized phenomenal successes almost overnight in a country much closer in size and population with Nepal.

It is interesting that Collier in “The Bottom Billion” has only one reference to Cuba and that is to present day Cuba’s economy as “stagnant.” Collier says nothing about the early days, before the “U.S. Embargo” left Cuba’s economy reeling. A Cuba which eradicated went from 1 to 4 medical schools in 5 years, eradicated TB, Polio, and other infectious diseases within a decade, and from 10% literacy to 100% in a generation. Today Cuba’s major export is medical doctors to the developing world. While doing disease surveillance with WHO in Ghana, I met and talked with many Cuban doctors in hospitals there, and they were excellent. (They were teaching and serving, not spying, not propagandizing, and not evangelizing.) Castro had the help of the Soviets, to be sure, but the Nepali Maoists are not reaching out to China first and foremost, but to everyone across the board for aid…and they are doing it in the right way: promising security, stability, business support, moderate politics (no totalitarian threats of nationalizing industries, promising to work with other parties), etc. Two weeks after the election the US Ambassador to Nepal Nancy Powell finally met with Prachandra, the Maoist leader, and promised continued US foreign aid to Nepal. She is being recalled to Washington to review our policy with Nepal…she is all but promising that the “terrorist tag” on the Nepali Maoist party will be removed soon. Over the coming year, it will be interesting to see what begins to surface from the inter-party wrangling and if development is going to happen.

Shortages: Food, Fuel, Water, Electricity
The headlines and photos of food riots in Africa, the Philippines and Bangladesh that we see in the Katmandu Post or the Himalayan Times here are as disturbing as they are foreboding. No rice riots in Nepal yet, but one of my friends here complained that the price has shot up almost 50% in the past two months. Moreover, there was a fuel riot in Katmandu right before I arrived. All petroleum comes into Nepal by truck from India (all of which is imported to India), so you can imagine that gasoline is horrendously expensive. The government has to subsidize the cost to make it affordable. Well, even the government couldn’t cover the $100/barrel crude cost +refining +transport & delivery, and so they tried to remove the subsidy….that lasted about two days as the people were storming the guards! As it is taxis, have to wait a minimum of an hour to get their tanks filled in Katmandu. My fare to the office is now $2 up from $1 last year (before the dollar was devalued here), but the cabbies around the foreign quarter won’t take a foreigner for less than $2.50! So I often walk a mile and catch the public minibus for 20 cents when I have the time.

Besides the escalating price of petrol, there is the problem of availability. This problem is compounded by fueling stations selling gas illegally to blackmarketeers! On our visit to the West last week, we would stop repeatedly for fuel even if we had ¾ of a tank left because we never knew when diesel would be available again. Finally, we bought three plastic gas tanks and through Som’s many connections, we were able fill up our vehicle, as well as add an extra 20 liters in the trunk. Som has two cell phones each with 500 recorded phone numbers. Time and again, he finds a way around a problem.

Rice production worldwide is up, but so is the price! Two weeks back, our driver pulled the van over to the side of a road while we were visiting some schools away from KTM. Unfortunately, he accidently backed over a two pound (1 kg) sack of rice that was being peddled by the road side, and we had to compensate the merchant. The merchant then carefully picked every grain from the mud, washed it off and repackaged it.
While riding over hill and dale making our rounds, I am always enthralled with the terraced rice paddies which stretch out as far as the eye can see, ascending up the slopes to the tops of mountains or until the angle of inclination increases beyond the capability to terrace. The paddy terraces are carefully plowed, carved, fashioned and maintained. If not, it is a set up for an avalanche of mud, which can take out houses and terraces below. One of the natural disasters in Nepal, far more common than earthquakes, is landslides, usually during the heavy rains of the monsoon season. We have several children in ANSWER whose families and homes have been swept away by landslides. These children, I am sure, are affected by Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome, but you could never gauge it from their academic performance…they have taken life by the bootstraps!

I haven’t read a good analysis of the current food shortage, but every day the newspapers here carry stories and the latest reports on the issue. It is no accident that fuel costs and food costs are going up together. It is not just the higher transportation costs to bring the food to market that hikes the food prices, but also the need for petrochemicals to produce fertilizers and insecticides on the one hand, as well as the global cultivation of biofuels in lieu of produce which limits supply. Adding insult to injury, Global warming is playing havoc with weather patterns is yet another part of it. But Mr. Bush is not pointing the finger at biofuels (which is his darling) or global warming (which he defiantly minimizes), but squarely at India’s and China’s growing middle class as the major cause….as if no one but Americans and Europeans have any right to the world’s wheat and rice! “Let them eat millet cakes!”

Growing rice is labor intensive…especially the more common, wet-cultivated rice. It requires paddies to contain the rains or irrigation water from the rivers, so paddies preclude the use of heavy machinery. Rice is densely planted in one paddy and after about a month, the seedlings are transplanted carefully by hand to other paddies. Paddies must be hand tilled with a shovel, or plowed by oxen or small, two-wheeled cultivators which represent a mating of rototiller with tractor. Once mature, the rice is harvested by hand: a clump of rice stalks gathered in one hand and cut with a sickle in the other, then bundled together and tied with a couple of rice stalks, and set aside to be gathered up. To do this, a woven basket worn on the back with a headstrap is loaded up with the rice bundles so that it towers high above the brim, and toted back to the house where it is hand threshed, winnowed and sun dried outdoors. Finally, the rice is swept up, the little stones individually picked out, and the rice is finally bagged in gunny sacks and stored under the roof beside the house. Whew!

It seems that increased yields or efficiency have already been reached. Even worse: those areas where rice is most highly cultivated in the lowlands of SE Asia are to be the most impacted in the next 50 years by tidal flooding due to rising sea levels! Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam produce the most of the exported rice while India, Nepal and China essentially produce only enough to feed their huge populations. India and Nepal along with a few other countries are adding insult to injury: outlawing the export of their rice to insure that their own populations can be fed! Urban sprawl in the Katmandu valley, as elsewhere, represents yet another loss in rice production as another fertile valley is paved under.

So, the World food experts who championed rice for the third world initially because of its high caloric value, are now back-stepping as it seems that the green revolution has maxed out! These experts now contend that we need to start switching to other grains that can be grown more efficiently, sown and harvested by the world’s poorest while the rest of us enjoy rice and bread.

Another hardship placed on Nepalis these days is “load-shedding”. These are 4-hour blackout periods that are rotated across districts and wards of the cities in order to stretch the limited generated electrical power. Before the election we had two black outs a day—this means that we have only 8 hours of power each day since loading-shedding does not occur between 10pm and 6 am (when most everyone is asleep) but smack dab when power is needed the most: morning and evenings. Nepal with its raging rivers coming off of the Himalayan glaciers has the greatest hydroelectric potential of any country in the world, but what isn’t factored in is that the glaciers will melt away to nothing in the next 50 years. Yes, even those of Mt. Everest!). The sad fact is that Nepal is so underdeveloped even the limited amount that they have harnessed is more than sufficient to electrify the country. However, India has financed the lion’s share of the dam building in Nepal, and by international agreement bleeds off 90% of the generated power for India! The 10% share for Nepal is enough to meet about half its needs, hence we have load-shedding. Whenever I step into a cybercafé I have to ask, “When is the power going off?” to make sure it is even worth my time to start emailing. More times than not, I have had to come back later. I have two things I carry with me at all times these days, my cell phone and a 60-cent Chinese lighter for lighting candles with a built in LED flashlight for me to see well enough to thread my room key into the lock at the end of a dark hallway! I also carry a $3 Chinese version of the Swiss Pocket knife with two saws, scissors, multiple blades (all dull), and a bent corkscrew that always snags the inside of my pocket which makes extricating it an ordeal. I have lost the invaluable toothpick included, but it is still handy. I’d love the Swiss version, but I know that I would immediately lose it…Karma!

So many Indian cars, trucks, and buses are sold in Nepal, so many large hotels and businesses in Nepal are now owned by Indians, so much of the lobbying money comes from Indian vested interests that the indignation that many Nepalis feel towards Indians is palpable. In so many ways Nepal’s development is reminiscent of the pre-industrial West and in a similar way controlled (hampered) by its domineering superpower, that it is easy to imagine how our colonists must have felt towards King George III! After all my years in Nepal, it finally dawned on me to ask Bal (our co-director who is also studying for a degree that would allow him to become a stockbroker for the Nepal Stock Exchange) if non-Nepalis could own stock. It was reassuring to hear that only Nepalis with citizenship papers could own Nepse stock…until he explained that many of the Regulators of the Stock Exchange are big Indian bankers in Nepal!

Fuel, electricity, rice and foodstuff are not the end of it. Now as the hot season begins, the city wells are drying up. As they put out less and less water, and people are walking around trying to find a public well that is still putting out. Our children will be wearing dirty uniforms for the lack of water as laundering becomes a luxury item few of our families can afford! I keep telling myself that this is nothing compared to what we have done to Iraq’s infrastructure: many places in Baghdad have power two hours a day, people stand in line all day for a couple of gallons of rationed petrol, etc. It’s a sad commentary when we can only feel grateful not because we are so fortunate, but because there are so many so much less fortunate than we. So, this brings us to solving the problems, viz., to the Election in Nepal.