Babies Are Still Being Born in Nepal in These Harsh Times

Written by Sajana Bhadel, Chairperson of Kay Garnay for Nepal

Many people were left homeless and alone after the devastating earthquake April 2015. When I look out from the window of the bus we can see many temporary camps with tarps and aluminum shelters along the side of road. This week we went to a camp in Bhouda to distribute some clothes for new born babies. Imagine being born in Nepal during this time, or being suddenly a single mother due to entire families being swept away. 

What shocked me the most is that I came to meet a 16 year old girl who just gave birth to a baby 14 days prior and they are having to live in this harsh lifestyle struggling with the cold every day. She is thinking of going back her own village in Sindupalchowk, but the continuous trembling has weakened the hills and left the villages either cracked, fallen or beneath tons of earth from the landslides. We are providing what few resources we have to share and joining with other NGOs to help and try to make a difference.

Sajana brought this young mother money to go back to her village.

Our volunteers from NZ brought a couple of huge bags of baby clothes lovingly knitted by women in a knitting club and even some lovely, quilted blankets. The mothers were so appreciative and I enjoyed handing them out to the mothers, one hat, a knitted shirt and booties each.

I know this isn’t enough.

Our NGO, Kay Garnay for Nepal, is mostly funded with Ama’s little bit of money or donations from our volunteers. These baby clothes came from Kerensa Clark's friends, NZ and were hand carried by Steve and Wendy Trevella, also from NZ. Steve and Wendy brought Andy and Fynn and they all worked full days to get more shelters built-25 more! We are so happy to have been a part of building over 50 high quality shelters in the area already. 

An INGO donated 7 sewing machines but left without giving training.

Changunarayan is on the Valley Rim trekking route. Lots of bikers come through, too.

Here Steve and Wendy are giving Ama $1,000 for 2 more shelters.

It seems the big picture is not even being looked at for Nepal's future. What these women really need is a job and warm place to live. We have plans for a women’s initiative, but no money to buy the carpet looms, wool yarn, etc. We will be putting a crowd funding project up very shortly for this project.  We plan to get the women trained and putting them to work in our knitting/carpet initiative. We hope to work with some of the existing carpet manufacturing factories to help fund our administration costs-rent and my salary, etc. 

Hope you follow along with us as we help during this time of rebuilding Nepal. We plan to be a big part of it. http://KayGarnay.org

Sajana and Steve distributing the clothing they brought from NZ

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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