Week ending March 10 2019

On Monday evening we attended a ward Family Home Evening to celebrate Kundan Yadav who is leaving this week for the India Bangalore Mission. He is in the center of the photo holding a Book of Mormon. We had fun playing Book of Mormon Pictionary and eating a pot luck supper.

Tuesday morning we flew to Kathmandu and were met by the Wilkinsons and VanDenBerghes, humanitarian missionaries living and serving in Nepal. We spent the night with the VanDenBerghes.

On Wednesday we arose early and flew with the Wilkinsons north to the village of Phaplu. It was about a half hour flight.

Phaplu is the headquarters of the Solukhumbu District of Nepal which includes Mt. Everest or Sagarnmatha ("Peak of Heaven"). The airport is 7,918 feet above sea level.

The village is a starting point of the trek to Everest base camp. From Phaplu we traveled about three hours by jeep to the village of Mukuli.

Mukuli was lower and warmer than Phaplu. People grow wheat, barley, rice, and potatoes there on terraces created on the mountainside. The tree in the foreground has been pruned to provide fodder for farm animals.

About half the road from Phaplu to Mukuli looked like this.

We met this woman and her son on the road. She turned out to be our hostess for the night. Below in the canyon is the Milk River.

Mukuli had no center. It is more a collection of farms than a village.

Our reason for going to Mukuli was to observe this woman, Anji Sherpa, conduct HBB (Helping Babies Breathe) and HMS (Helping Mothers Survive) training. Both programs are sponsored by LDS Charities and Anji, a nurse is a master trainer for HHB and HMS.

Anji had 13 students who came to Mukuli for two days of training. One woman walked two days to get there. She was assisted by Lakpa Lama, a paramedic.

The students were nurses and paramedical health care providers who work in small villages where medical services are limited. The man in the foreground is wearing a traditional Nepali "topi." Mother and infant mortality is high in the remote villages where these people work so they were happy to receive this training.

In the evening we stayed in a farmhouse near the community center where the classes were held. The woman in the center is the matriarch of the family.

This is a view of the farm house starting with the toilet and shower and ending with the kitchen.

This is the kitchen. The floor is covered with a mixture of mud and cow manure. It was hard and smooth like concrete and was swept clean.

Cooking is done over a wood burning fire. To the right is a stove that burns dried cow manure. There was also a gas stove along the wall to the left.

Our hostess wove rugs. Here is a basket of raw wool sitting in the courtyard.

This is the traditional spinning wheel she uses to spin the wool.

This is the spun wool.

Here is a rug she wove. Her oldest son is helping her hold it up for us.

We had dinner that evening in the family's little restaurant. A daughter-in-law was the cook.

These local peppers were supposed to be "hot in the mouth but gentle on the stomach." We didn't attempt to verify the claims.

Dinner was actually quite good. We had mustard greens, potatoes, rice and an omelette.

After dinner we retired for the night. Our room was unheated and lit by a bare bulb. We slept in our clothes, coats and sleeping bags. Grant had a mattress on the flood and I had a wooden plank bed.

First thing in the morning, people started coming on foot to the family's grain mill with sacks of wheat, rice and corn to have it ground, including this little boy. He is holding a measuring pot used for the grain.

We attended some of the HBB training in the morning before heading back to Phaplu. We took a detour to catch a glimpse of the Himalayas, "abode of the snow."

We were rewarded by this great view.

On the way we came across these people preparing a field for planting potatoes. You can barely see the Himalayas there behind the man.

We spent the night at the Everest Hotel in Phaplu. Our room was again unheated but comfortable.

The dining room of the Everest Hotel. Notice that both here and in Mukuli, diners sit on one side of desk-like tables that face each other. We met trekkers from France, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Interesting people in Phaplu.

Construction worker carrying stone.

We flew back to Kathmandu on Friday afternoon. Because Saturday is the only day off from school and work in Kathmandu, the branch meets on that day. It was a sweet meeting held in an awesome old mansion.

Primary was a little wild but fun. That is Sister VanDenBerghe, half of the other humanitarian couple, at the piano in the back. Sister Wilkinson was the chorister.

Saturday after church we flew south to Bharatpur in the Chitwan District to visit Tara Maharajan. She and her sister (who is currently living in the U.S.) run an NGO called Eternal Hope Nepal. Sister Wilkinson has been helping Tara with her educational programs. Tara is a member of the Kathmandu Branch although she is able to attend only once a month.

Saturday afternoon we joined Tara at her "open air classroom" near a city slum to distribute hygiene kits. Tara encourages parents to enroll their children in school rather than keep them out to work. She also supports the children before and after school, helping them with homework and preparing older children to start school.

Afterwards we visited some of the families. Sima, age 24, is the mother of four girls, ages 3 months to 10 years. Her husband cleans sewers and she sweeps streets. She wants her girls to do well in school and so has enrolled them in Tara's NGO.

This is Sangita Patel. She is a widow with one boy and 2 girls. She also supports her children as well as her parents by selling boiled eggs and roasted corn. All three of her children are in school and enrolled in Eternal Hope Nepal. Her oldest, eleven-year-old Soni, (on the right) helps Tara teach the younger children in the open air school. Like Sima and her children, they live in a one room corrugated tin shack.

Yasin Ansari, his wife Nasima Begam and their four children Nasir , Basir , Kushi (not pictured) and Aashik are a hardworking family. They have a laundry business and formerly had to wash the clothes in the river. Sister Wilkinson arranged for them to get a washing machine and now they have a shop and are doing well. All their children are enrolled in the NGO.

Sunday morning we went with Tara to the Shree Mahendra Smarak Basic School to observe her do a Days for Girls training and distribute hygiene kits. The girls and female teachers were spellbound.

Beautiful girls.

Our next stop was the National Basic School near the Narayani River to do craft with the children who attend the open air school.

Tara uses these activities and the distribution of things like hygiene kits, blankets and shoes to encourage parents to enroll their children in school and her support program.

In the late afternoon we returned with Tara to the "open air classroom" for after school study time.

Tara is a trained Montessori teacher and taught for nine years before starting this NGO with her sister. The children and their parents love and respect her and are so happy to come and work with her. Here are just a few of the beautiful children we met in Bharatpur. They liked practicing writing their names.