We started the day by boarding our bus for the 45min journey down into the valley. For those of us who had not travelled on such roads before it was an interesting experience as we wound down the terraced hillside with cars and motorbikes tooting as they pass us on blind corners.
Our first stop was an eastern part of the Baluwa area where we were welcomed by members of the community and Maina Danuwar, the leader of the woman's cooperative, which includes around 300 women. She described our arrival as "the sun and the moon had come to earth"., which was very touching. Jim presented her with a Paua shell teardrop pendant and told her she was his Nepali mother, to which she replied, "when are you taking me to New Zealand?".
We then began the presentation of pairs of goats and a cow to the village people. It was so gratifying to see the smiles and thank yous from these shy people. We have many photos and when I get a chance I'll put them all up.
The next stop was the Bhuwaneswori School. This was perhaps the most emotional moment if the day. The school is where the $15000 matching grant was used to supply filtered drinking water, build hygienic toilet blocks and reroof the school buildings. As we walked through the entrance to the school, the children had lined up on either side and as we walked through they cheered and threw flowers and gave us flower lei's. By the time we had reached the point where we were to sit down there was barely a dry eye between us. The reception was just simply amazing.
After we were welcomed and had exchanged a some letters from Marlborough Girls College, we then had the privilege to hand out supplies to the approximately 300 children. The smiles and thank you's of the children will stick with us for a long time. As will the images of us high fiving them (something Jim managed to teach them within 2min of entering the school). It's hard to put in to words exactly how overwhelming the response we got from the school was.
After the school visit it was off to lunch supplied by the woman's cooperative. It was nice to sit under the mango trees and eat real Nepalese food. Once lunch was over we went and saw the two house sites we will be working on over the next three days. Although we can't expect to finish them in the short time period, we can at least help accelerate the build.
The final part of the day saw us handing over more goats and cows to the village people.
It's hard to look around and see how these people live and not want to try and do something to help them. It's very difficult to try and change the world but hopefully we are at least helping to change one small part of it, if we each could do that, then the problem isn't so big.
nice posting.. thanks for sharing..
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