One Day In A Rice Fields

And such an amazing day
The following post was written by Laura, from Lille in Northern France. Laura is one of our Volunteers from our NGO, Kay Garnay for Nepal. She's only been here at the guest house for a little over a week, but got into the spirit right away and has been a wonderful Helpx.net helper (http://www.helpx.net/profile.asp?email=lora.raph@yahoo.com). As one of her volunteer tasks, she wrote the following article:

We had an amazing experience in the rice fields in Changu Narayan. Almost all the team went to the Krishna and Bagvati’s fields and enjoyed a lot. For sure,  It’s Harvest time.

 On the road to the Fields

We went down to the valley through many houses, some half destroyed by the earthquakes. We did not cross paths with many locals along the road and the views is just peaceful. 

After 30 minutes, we were surounded by rice lands and finally arrived at our field destination. All the villagers were there. We finally understood why houses looked so empty.

Rice fields

Rice plant

And So On …

It’s time to work. After a warm welcome and some rice beer we are ready to start.

Armed with a sickle, we watched our co-workers who showed us Nepali techniques. 
 Really physical work! We tried to be as efficient as  the locals, but we still need more  practice. 

Sickles

Time to pedal

The rice was cut but work  wasn’t ending yet.  Now comes the shell times. And nothing is better than human forces so we pedaled the closest thing to modern equipment the day had to offer. 

After a  break for eating lunch we finished carrying loads and removing grains of rice of plants. 

We had a typical Nepali meal. So good and so spicy :)

Crispy rice and Dal

 

Well done

It’s almost 4 p.m when we moved to the river nearby..

Everybody relaxed and admired the quiet place near the river. Some took advantage of the situation and did their laundry.

Lets carry some loads

On the way back we met our friends from the rice fields. Theys asked us if we wanted to carry a rice bag to the Changunarayan Village at the top of the hill. Some tried but it was really heavy, around 22 kilograms/50 pounds. Kévin, our canadian volunteer, was the exception and carried the bag up to the top. Villagers and volunteers encouraged him!! Ah ! Canadian strength !

Well ! end of the history, end of the article but not the end of the adventure.

Everybody went home with many souvenirs in their head. Tomorrow is a new day with many other activities to do.. 

ByeBye

More informations about the NGO and volunteering :
http://kupfer.es/changu/
http://changunarayan.info/