June bug stories

RAJU LAMA

The Nepali Terai plains! It’s an amazing place to discover. They call the plains of Nepal an overcooked country, but even in the scorched flatlands you’ll find green vegetation and lush green waterholes. You’ll also find meandering hills and fiery sunsets and temples, colourful and sometimes strange people and ancient shrines. Here in the wide, open spaces, a new adventure awaits you with exotic Asian wildlife, an exclusively off-the-normal-tourist track destination, here is an excerpt from a social worker’s scrapbook below of what one area has to offer while backpacking Nepal.

Dark shadows stretched thin fingers towards the Siwalik foothills.

River Lakhandi’s vast riverbed was bone dry still. Sal forests silhouetted behind the tiny Tear Eye villages grew smaller and smaller every passing year.

It was a day just like any other the day…

Pre-monsoon rain, the occasional thunder shower is always a cool welcome blessing despite all the noise and the fury. Farmers busied themselves. The parched land began to slake its thirst. We live to sow this earth. It feeds clothes heals. The draught had left us alone mercifully. Plowing the fields was the life blood. The long hot days stretched ahead until monsoon’s serious onslaught began.

In expressing his feelings and ideas; he was honest with himself and his community members. He tried to live what he asked others to do.

Because the wide range of governmental and voluntary agency services were not available in the village neighborhoods in a coordinated way, the three of us, close friends, could ignore unmet needs, complain about them or do something about them at the time.

In a community without a welfare council, the community can rarely meet the needs itself, nor does it often have the skill, time and basis for broad support to mobilize for such an effort.

Locals must also undertake community organization responsibilities to a certain

extent when we are confronted with unmet needs or lack

of communication and coordination between agencies serving the area. The village where

new corn sprouted now was where living could be contemplated upon in an unhurried manner. The first rainfall

came before the thunderheads from the Indian Ocean. Morning sunshine in the soft drizzle was a little sun and rain known as ‘Ghampaani’.

He seemed to forget why his hands were out of his wind cheater pockets where they usually found comfort. Then they reached up and clasped his chin. A moon sickle . . . that’s what he made of them . . . Smile.