Helping rural women be financially independent
Alisha Lamichane did not know much about cameras until a few years ago as she was worried over other things about her future. Now she is busy clicking pictures at various events, earning a decent living off it. Although the idea of women as photographers is still uncommon in Nepal, Lamichane is among a number of women who have of late taken up photography as their career. The credit for this goes to ‘Her Farm Films’ project of The Mountain Fund, a non-profit working for women empowerment.
“I was confused about my life, and felt like I had no purpose. With a camera in my hand, I now feel powerful. In the future, I want to train girls like me in the field of photography and videography,” says Lamichane.
With its programs based in rural Nepal, Her Farm Films encourages women to modernize their traditional farming skills and apply it to new commercial ventures. It also encourages them to learn modern and highly employable skills in the fields of digital and visual arts. It runs training workshops on film production and photography, and trains women to operate FM radio stations. These are saleable skills for women at the local level.
Eight women trained by the project are currently working as photo-and video-graphers. “There is huge demand for photographers for wed-ding and other events,” says Scott MacLennan, founder and executive director of Her Farm Films. “Pho-tographers from Kathmandu are not willing to go to villages, and hardly anyone there has the ability to use camera. Due to this, these women have to work more. Sometimes one photographer has to do three events in a day,” The organization boosts women’s financial empowerment by helping them take up careers beyond the stereotypes of tailoring and running beauty parlors often associated with them. “We aim to change the conversa-tion about woman’s empowerment from low-skill, low-paid work to high-skill, well-paid work,” MacLennan adds. MacLennan’s wife Sunita Sub-edi Sharma, director of the orga-nization’s Nepal Volunteering Pro-grams, recalls how she had to face many difficulties in life—from being an unwanted child in the family to enduring domestic abuse in an arranged marriage. “We established Her Farm Films to show that women can do anything and achieve success,” says Sharma. “I do not want any woman to suffer like I did. If I can pull myself up, why can’t they?”
“Media is a powerful tool to make people hear your story. We thus encourage women to get involved in mainstream media and to motivate others,” she adds. Her Farm Films is also serious about local self-sustenance. It has a guesthouse whose proceeds partially cover organizational costs. Women associated with the project work on the farm, do photography, and help run the guesthouse. They also have volunteers from different countries.
Visit wherein 2020?
I didn’t want to write about it. I still don’t. But it’s hard to ignore. So here I go... Visit Nepal 2020.Recently, I was in Lisbon, Portugal, home to around 15,000 working Nepalis. Yet every (English speaking) shop-keeper and taxi-driver looked at me quizzically when I talked about Nepal. Where is that, they asked.
In fact one stall-holder thought I was confusing Nepal with Thailand! No need for me to explain to the waiters in the restaurants and cafes as they were mainly Nepali. And right there, an untapped source of VNY2020 ambassadors who are interacting every day with travellers and visitors from around the world! And that is just in one city of one country!
Out of curiosity I Google Visit Lisbon 2020 and find a well-constructed, informative website aimed at me, the visitor. It’s the first site that comes up. Followed by Trip Advisor on Lisbon. I Google Visit Nepal 2020 and the first site that comes up is Virgin Holidays—Tours to Nepal. Okay so I am sitting in the UK as I Google, but the Visit Nepal 2020 official website comes only after a few more private travel company sites. I click on it. First words on the site are ‘We are Visit Nepal 2020’. What does that even mean?
I scroll down to the Latest News section to find an invitation to bid on being able to use the official Visit Nepal flag. I just need to submit my bid and proof of the not insubstantial security amount in a sealed envelope... hold on! Is this site for visitors or for those in the tourism industry? Has no one updated the site or sectioned it off? But far be it for me to question the reasoning of the authorities. So I move on...
Meantime, what is Portugal famous for? If you’re a football fan, you might say Cristiano Ronaldo. If you are not, you might say port wine or pastel de nata (pastries and tarts). You might also know that almost half the world’s cork is harvested in Portugal or that Azulejo tiles, which today still decorate the outside of many buildings, originate back to the time when the Moors ruled. Surfing beaches, Fado music (interestingly a UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage), and the explorer Vasco da Gama (first person to sail Europe to India in 1497: think Goa) are up among the top 10 things Portugal has to offer.
Wonderful as all these things are, I am sure Nepal can do better—I mean, custard tarts as a national treasure? Come on!
What Portugal does have is easy access from Europe, fantastic winter weather, and beaches. Well we can’t suddenly relocate Nepal to the ocean, but we do have stunning scenery and—dare I say it—mountains! Access to Nepal is however difficult and expensive and the welcome, which might be friendly, is not exactly what modern holiday makers expect on arrival.
Enough has already been said about TIA’s facilities and the drive to the hotel so I won’t bring that up again... But let me say, visitors who came to Nepal 20 or 30 years ago accepted the lack of facilities, terrible hygiene and sketchy information. But today we must update our thinking... this is not the 1990s anymore folks.
In the current climate of social media overload, well-travelled Millennials, and more retirees travelling to this part of the world than ever before, no one is going to accept below-par facilities. Regardless of how high the mountains or how wide the smiles.
Home is where the street is
For 72-year-old Arjun Thapa, being homeless was easy. Begging in front of the Mahankal temple abutting Tundikhel in the heart of Kathmandu, he was his own boss. Originally from Lalitpur, streets gave Thapa a home as well as a sense of freedom.
He doesn’t remember exactly when he first came to the street. “It could be over 15 years ago,” Thapa guesses. “After the death of my parents, my close relatives took away all my land and property. I then became homeless.”
For some time after that he worked in a meat shop as a butcher, but the owner didn’t pay him. He thought he would do better by begging where pay was guaranteed. Thapa says he was doing just fine. Then, he had to shift to a homeless shelter.
His ‘suffering’ started when the Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), marking its 25th anniversary on December 15 last year, decided to rehabilitate all the homeless in the city. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli had announced on different occasions that Kathmandu would be made beggar-free, not the least because of the high number of homeless deaths on the streets every winter.
The KMC started ‘rescuing’ the homeless from around town—Mahankal, Bhadrakali, Pashupati, Sankata, and other places. Nepal Police, Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, Manav Sewa Ashram and some other social organizations supported the campaign.
Somebody recorded the rescue operations at night and made it viral on social media, which drew mixed reactions. Thapa was also picked up as a part of this campaign and taken to a shelter home in Hetauda run by Manav Sewa Ashram, an NGO working for homeless folks. Thapa stayed at the shelter for around a month.
“I didn’t like the place. It was worse than the streets. They misbehaved with me there several times,” he says. That was not all that peeved him. “They made me wash dishes and clothes, which made me angry. I wasn’t used to that.”
He somehow convinced the shelter operators to let him go, pledging not to beg again. But he was soon back in business. The authorities found him begging and took him back to the shelter. And once again, he escaped.
Living on a prayer
Till date, the KMC has rescued more than 370 homeless. Of them, 145 have been handed over to their families, nine are being treated at hospitals, and the rest have been sent to different shelters run by the Ashram.
First, the homeless are brought to the Ashram’s screening shelter in Balaju, Kathmandu, where they are given counselling and motivational classes. A medical check-up is then done. The authorities then try to trace their family members and convince the homeless to go back to their homes.
“Our first attempt is to rehabilitate the homeless into their families,” says KMC Spokesperson Ishwor Man Dangol. “But if that doesn’t work, we send them to a shelter home.”
“At the Ashram, we engage them in different tasks such as cleaning, cooking, weaving doko. We also provide the facility of physiotherapy for the elderly,” says the Ashram’s Ramji Adhikari. “For the devout, we also organize Bhajan Kritan (religious chanting) in the evenings.”
Adhikari says the campaign will continue so long as there are homeless people on the streets. “We are even planning to find jobs for those who are physically and mentally fit,” he adds enthusiastically.
The KMC provides for the food, clothes, and medicine to homeless at the Ashram shelters. It’s a different story altogether that beneficiaries like Thapa think staying homeless is better as it saves them from being answerable to anybody.
Sital Chaulagain, 37, from somewhere in the erstwhile Koshi zone, has spent eight years in the street begging along with her three children and three grandchildren. She was abandoned by her husband before she took to the streets. Chaulagain too was taken to an Ashram along with her family. But a regulated life there made her uncomfortable.
“They made me to do a lot of work, from washing dishes to cleaning the floors,” says Chaulagain. “It made me sick. They didn’t give me proper medicines also. I was afraid if the same would happen to my children.”
She made a few pledges and left the place. As she had nothing to feed her children with, she got back to begging. These days Chaulagain runs away whenever she sees an official approaching. “Now we never want to go there [shelter home] again.”
Creatures of habit
Such is also the case with 40-year-old Kumar Subba from Illam, who has been begging for a ‘very long time’. He lost his parents when he was still a child. They also used to live in the streets. Subba too has been taken to the Ashram twice. “I escaped both times as I didn’t like the food there,” says Subba. “They gave clean beds and room. But the food they provided was disgusting.”
As the campaign is new for Nepal, authorities say they are yet to devise ways to keep the homeless from going back to the streets. And despite their best efforts there are plenty of homeless beggars to be found on the streets of Kathmandu. Perhaps the shelters they are kept in are not up to the standard.
But this phenomenon of many of the homeless people being uncomfortable in designed shelters is also global phenomenon—and one not easy to tackle. When the National Public Radio in the US wanted to know why some people chose street over a shelter, David Pirtle of the National Coalition for the Homeless, replied: “All I can say is that my fear of the unknown, of what might be waiting for me at that shelter, was worse than my fear of the known risk, you know, of staying out on the street. That was where I was comfortable. And I think people, we’re creatures of habit. We get comfortable in the most uncomfortable positions, and that just becomes home.”
Adhikari of the Ashram concurs: “After keeping them with us for a while, we hand them to their families, if they have one. But they are not used to the comforts of home. So they pick a fight and go back to the streets. This, says Adhikari, is “the biggest challenge we face” O
Pahenlo Batti Muni: Under the light of music
Back in 2015, as the country reeled under daily power cuts, sometimes for up to 16 hours a day, a group of young musicians were trying to create their own music under the yellowish light of a burning candle— and that’s how “Pahenlo Batti Muni”, an experimental rock band, got its name. When the band released its debut single “Bari Lai” on May 2016, the maturity of its lyrics and music brought it instant recognition, and also music award nominations, that created a space for it as a band not bound by genres or any other limits.
With some original members of the band leaving for abroad in its starting phase, the band’s founder members Rochak Dahal (guitars/vocals) and Pravesh Thapa Magar (guitars) were joined by twins Lav and Kush Jung KC on drums and bass respectively to form the current line-up.
The entry of the musically accomplished KC brothers helped shape the sound further, the band says. With Rochak’s acoustic guitar and non-anglicized Nepali vocals, Pravesh’s carefully placed guitar licks, and the tightness of the twin’s rhythm section, the band found new avenues and went on to release a few singles like “Lori” and “Bichitra”. These brought the band more attention and then, finally, it released its debut album “Asthir” in May 2019.
Although they prefer being placed under ‘experimental rock’, the band members don’t want to confine themselves to a single genre. Their sounds vary in inspiration from Nepali folk to alternative, grunge and even metal, while keeping the foundations of rock intact. “When the KC brothers joined us, we already had a visualization of the sound we wanted,” Rochak says. “Of course when there are new musicians, there are new interpretations. But we are finally headed in the same direction and it is working for us.”
Listening to the band, one can feel the fluidity in their music that the band members want to emphasize. “Our feelings are not bound and that’s what transmits to our music,” Lav, the drummer, says. “We create whatever we want without restricting ourselves to genres.” This results in each of their track sounding unique.
With sounds that are not facsimiles of the older generation of Nepali music, PBM is one of the few young bands whose lyrics are poetic and meaningful. Every song the band has released has a powerful meaning and when the lyrics are read without music, they sound like astute poetry. “I do poems and am also a part of the group called Word Warriors,” says Rochak, who writes the lyrics to the songs. “But I never sit down deliberately to write songs using heavy words. Also, my lyrics and tunes come simultaneously.” Sometimes, when he’s written the lyrics but has not found the melody, Rochak waits. “It is Rochak’s honesty in writing that probably makes audience relate to our music,” Lav adds.
The band members, aged 25-27, seem ahead of their time in understanding their own music and the direction they want to pursue. But when the band had started making music seriously with the new line-up, it was never for fame.
“Even when we first met Rochak and started making music together, we had no intent of becoming popular, or shaping our music to what’s trending in mainstream market. The band’s motive was purely to make the kind of music we wanted to play and put it out there for the listeners.”
But the band did get popular, with some of its videos crossing a million views on YouTube, and it started getting invited to play at live events. “People usually judge us by watching our YouTube videos and listening to a few of our tracks. They think we’re some kind of indie soft-rock band but that’s not who we are at all,” says Lav. “We are a whole different band when it comes to live performance. That’s our forte.”
As the band looks forward to 2020, it already has plans for more singles, music videos, and concerts across the country. “We have been lucky to have filmmaker friends make music videos for us. Now that we are financially capable and feel our music requires fitting visuals to better connect with our listeners, we want to make professionally produced videos this year,” Rochak says O
(Pahenlo Batti Muni will be performing at The Annapurna Express Music Festival at Tangalwood on February 8)
