Lars Jensen is telling:
The Nepali rising started far away in west Nepal in 1996. The very same year I went for my first trek in Nepal, Ganesh Himal. Here I met Roshan. He was sirdar/chief-guide on this trek. We tried to cross the Singla-pass in 4100 vertical meters.
We were sixteen trekkers with sixteen different walking paces. Roshan was racing backwards and forwards with his metal-medicine-box in one hand, wearing cheap basket-boots. In fact it was Roshan’s lacking of hiking boots that put ‘Roshan’s Friends to work. I asked him why he didn’t wear proper hiking boots and he answered that they had been stolen from his small room in Kathmandu – and that the burglars at the same occasion had stolen every single piece of his trekking gear.
This story became an eye-opener to me. All of us sixteen participants were wearing expensive, technical hiking boots, while our guide was wearing nothing but cheap basket-boots without being able to buy some new ones. I recommended my fellow travelers that we should buy a pair of new hiking boots for Roshan when we got back to Kathmandu.
We were trekking through villages, noticing a lot of poverty but people were not miserable. The locals were growing rice, millet, vegetables and fruit – but according to material goods they owned absolutely nothing. If they got ill, nor medicine or treatment was available to them. I was taken by surprise from these smiling, apparently satisfied, maybe happy, people and they made me want to help them. Therefore I asked Roshan if he knew a real poor village that we could help with non-prescription medicine and other basic needs. ”I know a very poor village. Its name is Chepang Gaon and it is located south from here, at the foothills towards India. They used to be honey hunters* and is now providing themselves by being roustabouts for people further down the mountain. I know the clan-leader”.
* The Nepali state forbid honey hunting in the traditional way a good deal years ago. This French produced movie shows how it took place.
When we returned to Kathmandu, I spoke to the owner of the trekking agency, Hari Dharel, about my ideas. Immediately I was offered a desk and a PC and started to describe the projects.
The next year – in 1997 – Roshan and I went by the local bus four hours towards the west and got off at a little village by the foot of the mountain area where Chepang Gaon is located in 1700 vertical meters. After having gone up for four-five hours, we hit a beautiful little village which I immediately named Shangri-La. Here we were invited for lunch by the clan-leader Ananda. I was completely exhausted by the trek and a hard-boiled egg and some noodle-soup has never ever tasted better than this.
Ananda and I immediately had a good contact to each other and I decided that this village should have medicine aid and Roshan saw to that it happened.
After another four-five hours trek up the mountain, through a beautiful river-bed, in the gleam of the fire-flies, we hit the Chepang Gaon in a late night hour.
We were sleeping on the clan-leaders porch and the next morning we had Dal Bhat with rice, even if they themselves only would afford to eat millet.
The evening before, we had invited all the villagers to a joint meeting to tell about our ideas and in the morning haze people slowly started to turn up. They were squatting in the Nepali way. The elderly women were wearing their party clothes and they reminded me of prairie native Americans. Many of them were smoking the pipe with tobacco and probably also other good things. In the village there was a single elderly man who could read and write so he was held responsible for the medicine distribution. I held a Ghandhi-inspired speech where I said that knowledge and learning through schooling was essential for the development of the village. A school had to be built.
We (RF) wanted to pay the building materials and one teacher’s salary. The villagers were expected to build the school themselves – within tables and benches and so on. We also wanted to pay for the teaching resources and to get it delivered from Kathmandu.
Beside that the villagers would continuously have the non-prescription medication they needed and also warm blankets for the hard winter-time. I made it clear to them that we were not here to give them a big nice layer cake but that we would return year after year.
We were forming different committees: Schooling/Health/Medication/Forest-Decline/Garden Centre. I told them that in Denmark we have equal rights between men and women and that I would be pleased if also women were to be elected for the different committees. That was well received. Laughter and giggling broke out and the discussion went on with animation. Since the women are controlling the home and are holding the purse strings, many women were elected for the committees.
The following years we laid a water pipe, so the women and children didn’t have to walk for two hours each day to get water. A few years later the water pipe was lead to the school which is placed half an hour walk from the village, further up the mountain. Every time Roshan and I visited Chepang Gaon the years to come, we had a meeting with the clan leader and the teacher in order to discuss what they needed most. A special touching story took place one year when I brought my family and some friends to the village. Entering Chepang Gaon, I noticed an old man, standing next to the path, welcoming us all with the beautiful Namaste-greeting, your palms put together in front of your forehead, nodding and bowing. Where his left eye used to be, he only had a patch of skin. I asked Roshan who the man was and Roshan was telling this. The new young clan-leader had phoned Roshan and told him that the old man had a bad infection in his left eye and was in great pain. At Roshan’s request the old man was escorted to the bus six hours walk to the foot-hill and from there another five hours bus-drive to a hospital in Kathmandu, where he had his eye surgically removed and the infection treated. The old man was standing right there, nodding, smiling, greeting and my eyes were watering and I got a lump in my throat. Eventually it was 2pm and we were told that he had been standing there since 7am in the morning.
