Tell All The World

As soon as I landed in Nepal, and quickly made my way through the visa process and out to street where Kelsang waited for me, I began to think of a "You Know You're In Nepal" top ten list. As in, "You know your in Nepal when the truck in front of you does not have headlights, but is strung with fairy lights that twinkle on and off." Or, "You know you're in Nepal when you see a large bull sleeping in the middle of a traffic jam, I mean, right in the middle of the road with horns blaring, but he is contentedly chewing his cud with eyes closed, dreaming of something blissful while everyone takes great care to not even run over his very thick and bushy royal tail as it lazily swats a fly. You know you're in Nepal when you are having a conversation on the sidewalk and a legless beggar rolls up on his hand-made cart, knee-high to you to tug on your skirt and at the same time a sadhu (holy man) nearly naked, carrying a trident spear and wearing a silver milk pail on his arm, gently asks for alms. I had my first full day in Nepal after a very long flight of 30 plus hours, which includes a 10 hour layover in Hong Kong. It messes with your head to be strung out over two days in a time warp, but as soon as I set my foot on Nepal soil, I felt at home in a weird, familiar with strange and unusual things kind of way. It all seems so normal now, the pot-holed roads, the tight, narrow streets that can magically accommodate foot traffic, moped traffic, monk traffic, dogs, goats, cows, chickens, and the little taxis that zip about. The phrase "an assault on the senses" comes to mind as you drive past life to the edge of the road and sometimes in the road, piles of vegetables on blankets, mounds of red chilies, a blind man selling nail clippers, all strung on a cord tied to his ankle. Everyone has an enterprise here in Nepal, including the beggars, which is big business, and one I would like to learn more about. "Does anyone choose to beg?," I asked my new friend Rajendra today as we drank lemon water and enjoyed the fans at Himalaya Java, a place we often meet and do business at in Kathmandu because not only do they roast and brew their own coffee beans, but they have decent bathrooms and fans when the electricity is on. Rajendra would know about the begging world. He was once a street child himself, a runaway who left an abusive home life to make it on his own in Kathmandu at 11 years of age. He had a lot of competition in the streets and learned quickly about the rules of survival. Rajendra is now 30 years old, married with a child of his own, and has his own house. He runs a successful film and art business, a graduate of the university here, and documentary filmmaker who does a guide business on the side for those who want to see the sides of Nepal that most overlook. Rajendra is an amazing young man. He took me to see two orphanage/schools that he helps with, and that my friend Allan Aistrope also supports and helps through his organization "Virtue's Children". I will be writing more about that on our web site, for now, I just want to encourage those reading this to check out Allan's web site at www.virtueschildrennepal.org. He is doing some incredible work in Nepal! At the two schools today, I was able to talk and meet the beautiful children there, and will include some photos here. They are so lucky! All the children come from the poorest and even dangerous circumstances, as they are all orphans and easy prey for child traffickers. It is so hard to understand why anyone would subject such precious children to a life of sex work or slavery, but it comes down to money, poverty, ignorance and greed. Most of the time, from what I've been told, the children are made to work as servants if parents die and no one is there to care for them, often they make their way to Kathmandu on their own to live on the streets, where again they are vulnerable to kidnapping to be sold as "livestock" to anyone who wants to pay. You can read more about this horrible crime against children in the book Little Princes. So "Tell All The World," as the song written by my other "new" friends, Ranchers for Peace father-daughter duo Charles and Ray Duncan write and sing on their new CD. Charles and Ray brought tears to my eyes at the Live Oak Music Festival this past June with their heart-felt songs carrying messages of concern and social activism. The one song that kept ringing in my head, Tell All The World, seems to match up with an image I had of the orphans at Buddhist Child Home singing their hearts out last time we were there. BCH is the orphanage my son Danny first volunteered with in Kathmandu and it is because of Danny's work at BCH we began HANDS in Nepal and set about school building in remote villages. We continue to check in on the orphanage and do our best to bring over clothes, books, dolls, toothpaste, Dr. Bronner soap, and anything else people donate to us for them. Now I was bringing a song- because I have so much wanted to Tell All The World about the plight of the most poorest and vulnerable children I have ever known-the orphans of Nepal. Charles and Ray were excited at my idea of taking the song to Nepal with me and working with the kids on how to sing it-and Rajendra also beamed enthusiasm at my idea of his making a film of the singing-a short clip that would also show the home, the kids, and hopefully gain some more support and help for them. Our first rehearsal this afternoon was really fun. The children grouped around my laptop to listen to Charles and Ray sing it from my iTunes library-then we all tried the song together. Soon, their young, strong voices and sweet faces flung back to sing loudly the chorus together "Tell All The World--- We Will Still BE Here!" I hope to have some video footage on the blog tomorrow, but for now, enjoy a few pictures from today's visits at 3 amazing places, working hard to give some pretty amazing children a hand up out of poverty and what otherwise would have been a life on the streets-or worse. Namaste to all of you for your support!! Spread the word, Tell All the World-we will still be here helping however we can.

Amma on the road-again!

Summer is a time for travel when you're a teacher. Although I was in Nepal just a few months ago to officiate at the opening of our first library project in Phulkharta, I found myself on the road to Nepal again. This time I had solar lamps to deliver, thanks to a generous grant from Rotary Club International and in particular, the kind members of Morro Bay, California, as well as individual donors. These popular little green lights operate on a battery that recharges with sunlight, and holds the charge for many days at a time. We had been able to buy and bring some to our library in April, and the villagers, living without electricity, were mad about them, asking if there was anyway we could get one light for each family. Now my big black suitcase, filled to all 50 lbs. of capacity, held 20 lights, another dozen lined my carry on (in case the checked-in suitcase went missing, -the rest were in my purse. I wondered what the security checkers would think at so many steel goose-necked lights distributed amongst my bags, but no one batted a wand at me or my strange luggage. The little green wonder lights:

Beside the lights, there are books for homeless children, new teeshirts contributed by the Benevolent Sheriffs Society, pencils, erasers and school supplies contributed by the D.A.R.E. officer at our school, and toothpaste and toothbrushes given to me by a lady who had them given to her, but felt the kids we help in Nepal would benefit more from them. There is little room for personal items, but I don't need much when in Nepal. The emptied suitcase will be filled with items I find in my walks around Kathmandu and in the women's sewing cooperatives I try to help out. As dawn greets me after stage one of my slog over the Pacific to Hong Kong (the entire journey to Kathmandu will take 34 hours)I sit at Nosh cafe, with a nice view of the Hong Kong harbor next to the airport runways, humped-back mountains in the background. Warm, moist air greeted me as I walked up the gangplank and plotted my 10 hour layover here. I've brought enough office work to do for HANDS in Nepal, including a report and newsletter for our supporters-and as usual for long-distance travels-lots of reading material. For a mere $22 an hour, I can rent a booth and have a shower at one of 4 "pay-in" lounges here at the airport, but I opt for my next choice-a booth at Nosh, and a steady stream of espresso. My booth comes equipped with outlets to keep my laptop powered up, and a TV built in the booth, tuned to CNN. When the waiter brings my bill for 2 espressos and I see that it's $79 KH dollars, ($10 US) I wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper to go to the lounge, where food and drink are free. Here's what I am noticing about travel-since heading overseas has become at least an annual event. The first pull from family and friends is the hardest. No matter how much I travel or how excited I am to be off to new places, I feel homesick the minute I hug my lovely family, friends and world's cutest dog, goodbye. I know in my head how instantly I'll be taken up by the new sights and smells on the other side of the planet, but the familiar, and a life I love, is difficult to leave behind. Hong Kong is always cloudy when I've come here, and the skyline is beautiful with big, white and gray clouds that often rain, green hills, and a spectacular skyline. I often feel like a fish in a fishbowl, looking out the huge floor to ceiling windows at the China out there-the new and glittery, and further, beyond the ocean, where ferries wait, the old and ancient.

Scenes from HongKong-a "room" with a view, the "free" lounge sleeping area, and airport trash, neatly compacted.

Scenes From Nepal-Bringing Books to Phulkharta

The Long Road To Literacy-Part 2

The Day of Our Grand Opening-The First Library in Phulkharta

Finally, we arrived with boxes of books, tired, dusty and muddy from riding the jeep trails out to this very remote Himalayan village in the Ganesh Himals. A few words about village culture and this region of Nepal. Many people have spent their entire lives in these villages, some have never seen Western people like us, and many have never had books, most don't know how to read, and few have traveled extensively enough to understand the great picture of their world. I feel greatly honored to have had the opportunity to participate in bringing a concept such as a library to this area of the world. The villagers work hard daily, from hand to mouth, to put food on their table, and live one of the most organic lives I've witnessed. They toil long hours on steep hillsides which are all terraced by hand to grow their seasonal crops, their livestock and animals live with the families in intimate contact, everyone in a harmonious balance with the other. Children do chores from a very early age and work as hard as the adults, often side by side in fields, or in the home, where the cycle of making food, eating, cleaning, taking care of animals, cutting fodder, hauling water, gathering wood or dung for fuel is a never ending sequence of work. School is a luxury, and only a recent addition to the village life in the greater evolution of their existence. Everyone I've met in the villages support and love the bringing of education for their children.

Knowing how limited their live can be outside the village (we gave a ride out to Kathmandu the day we left to a teenage girl who has never been out of the village, inside a jeep or seen Kathmandu before) I searched for books not just for the children but for the adults as well, picture books with photos and maps of the area around them and beyond, even the oceans, deserts and rainforests of lands far, far away. I also found cookbooks, sewing books, child care books and books on the Himalayas. Kathmandu has many shoulder-wide bookshops that cater to school material, and it is easy enough to buy notebooks, grammar books and math books, but it takes a bit of searching to find books for pleasure reading, and especially those books written in Nepali.

I have now become accustomed to the traditional village greeting and inquiring stares as I come into a village, presenting our books, gladly accepting their many "Namastes" in gratitude for the work we westerners are doing for them. Despite their limited experience with life outside their remote hamlets up in the Himalayan foothills, they seem to understand that for a better life and brighter future for their next generation, their children need to know how to read, write and speak in more than one language. They get it that English is the key to the learning about the outside world, but also embrace the learning about their own history and other cultures around them. Nepali is a country composed by a colorful quilt of different ethnic groups, each with their own language and traditions. It is one of the most multi-ehtnic and cultural countries I have every traveled in, and also one of the most tolerant of each other's beliefs and customs.

One of the highlights of this trip was meeting and talking to a variety of other people from various countries who have also found their joy and purpose in life by bringing education and hope to the children of Nepal. Australian Mark from Logged On Foundation is doing his best to bring computers and the internet to Nepal villages, and we discussed future partnerships between his org and HANDS in Nepal to do the same for Phulkharta and other more remote areas. I truly feel, like Mark, that opening the world up to villagers and the next generation will help them understand how to overcome some of the difficulties of their life, and help educate them in other darker parts of Nepal's problems, such as child slavery. Astrid Beseler, from Belgium, who has started the Audrey Foundation in honor of her daughter, has just rented a home in Kathmandu to start a school for under-privileged children with her own money. Our Nepali friends who help us make contact with the villages, Bhupendra Adhikari and Rajan Shimkahada are always our most important contacts for our work, and a constant source of inspiration and help as we seek to learn more and more about the best way to help Nepal's children in the most remotest regions.

This effort to bring the first library into the village of Phulkharta was the result of many people supporting and donating money to HANDS in Nepal. The Dworak family, who so generously gave a significant amount of the money to build the school in Phulkharta, and then enthusiastically supported our dream of bringing a library next, plus a number of other supporters who heralded our efforts to share our love of reading and books. I just want to extend my deep thankfulness and gratitude for being given the opportunity to travel "out there" to the hills of Nepal, to be among these amazing, hard-working, and resourceful people who live in one of the poorest and most beautiful countries in the world. What an amazing experience it is, one I will gladly share with anyone willing to travel there with me or any of us in HANDS of Nepal.

And most of all, a deep bow and endless respect for my truly amazing son Danny Chaffin, without whom none of us would have this experience, for it was his first trip to Kathmandu many years ago, as a young and somewhat naive lad looking for a way to honor his brother, practice his belief in helping others, and finding a deeper purpose in life that took him to the land of the Himalayas and laid the groundwork for what was to become HANDS in Nepal, Humanitarian Acts in Nepal Developing Schools. I truly find endless inspiration from my son Danny.

Our future work is to now to do workshops in our library, which has two rooms, one will house the books, one will have nice rugs to sit on and read and do workshops-from english tutoring to community and village health education. Danny's fiance, Bree Huggins, who has a degree in Peace and Women's Studies, has started interviewing village women on their needs and desires to improve their living conditions. I look forward to helping Bree as she gathers more interviews and information from the amazing, strong women of the village.

Yeah! Way to go everyone! Tu de Shay, Namaste and Dhanyabad to all of you!

Greetings From Nepal, 2069- Part One

The new year has arrived and it is now officially the year 2069. I am not sure why Nepal is ahead of the rest of the year in this regard, my Nepali friends I ask don't seem to know why, but wonder at the rest of the world being behind. Despite the difference in years, Nepal is an amazing mix of ancient and old! As experienced from this recent trip and my experience staying with a Nepali family in their traditional Nepali style farmhouse sleeping over the livestock in the loft , sharing my simple wood plank floored room with hundreds of potatoes spread around the floor in storage. That was easy enough to do, the harder part of village life is walking up and down steep pathways, and watching your dinner go from walking around the yard to next being beheaded and ending up in the pot, but talk about fresh food.
It took a nearly all day jeep ride to go from Kathmandu to the village of Phulkharta, this was the end of a long week for me traveling to Nepal, finding my bearings, changing currency to rupees and then finding enough bookstores that had the right type of books for our library. Our library project was started earlier this year in January, a dream we have had for awhile to bring a library to the village where we built a school, finding a serious lack of books for pleasure reading, and just a serious lack of books in general. As with our school, our trusty friend in Nepal Bhupendra guided us through all the stages of building and acquiring material for the library, and added his input into our original design of a simple one room building. We raised enough funds to increase it to two rooms, thanks to the Dwork family who helped fund our school here, and other donations, one larger than the other for community meetings,workshops and maybe even someday computers.
In fact one of my first meetings in Nepal was with a young enterprising Australian named Mark who started an org called Logged On, and is now putting computers into remote village areas, although unlike ours, his villages have electricity. We talked of how to bring a power source such as solar to Phulkharta so they too may get logged on with the world someday.
The next three days of my stay in Nepal was a mix of meetings with other people running orgs similar to ours, finding out how we can combine resources and information, and shopping for books. With my trusty side-kick Kelsang, we walked many of the tight and crowded streets of Kathmandu hunting for books in Nepali and English. Because it is so expensive to ship books over here, it was decided before I left to do the book buying here, and it was worth the effort, because for as little as one dollar ( by the time I convert the money to Rubees) I was able to buy a child's reading book, and sometimes after purchasing several, the owner would begin to pitch in books gathering dust on their tiny shop shelves, especially when I told them what we were doing. The money went far, and after three days time I had boxes piled in our friend Bhupendras office, awaiting our trip to the village.
Rain was coming daily now in Kathmandu, and that spells big trouble for travel on dirt roads that wind up and down the Himalayan foothills. Bhupendra said we wouldn't make it without a jeep, and that meant renting one so we could take our books and keep them inside the jeep, protected from rain. It was very reasonable to hire a driver with a good Nissan jeep for the two day trip, he would also have to stay in the village with us, and then be responsible for breakdowns and jeep care himself ( this is always an occurrence on these rugged and insanely difficult jeep trails). Fortunate for us, Bhupendra found a cheerful Nepali with a great attitude who calmed my fears at each mud hole, and was able to negotiate hair-pin turns in slimy mud, with our jeep fish tailing madly and all of us hanging on for dear life trying to not look over the edge of the mountain.

The Birth of The Compassionate Yak

Want to know the story behind the yak hair blankets?

A Tibetan family and their yak

"HEART TO HEART" Compassionate Yak: How using a yak hair blanket brings warmth to you and helps impoverished children, women and girls, in Nepal

Two girls from the orphanage where HANDS in Nepal supports through education scholarships

A Tibetan Refugee woman weaves yak hair into a shawl on her treadle loom

At Jawalakhel Tibetan Camp, Jan Sprague and Tibetan "Amma" with Amma's hand-loomed yak hair shawl

My latest venture to help support our education in the remote and impoverished areas of Nepal is creating a store to sell yak hair products. Why yak hair? This warm, natural fiber comes from the yak, a high altitude bovine found in both Nepal and Tibet. The long under hairs when sheared and combed create a yarn that Nepalis and Tibetans can use for making shawls, blankets and scarfs-and handbags! The Yak is also a symbol for Tibetan culture. Yak herding and yak by products, like milk and butter, are staples of a Tibetan life and culture that has existed at the top of the world for hundreds of years.

My first few trips to Nepal, I was surprised by the piles of yak hair blankets and shawls in the market places. Bringing a few home, friends loved their soft texture and warmth. On subsequent trips, I brought home more and began to sell them, putting the profits back into our HANDS in Nepal school projects. At Christmas, the blankets became even more popular as unique gifts that held a special message-wrap yourself in yak hair, and help support an impoverished child in Nepal.

But the blankets do even more. A year ago, I went to Nepal to assist my son with school building and had my own personal mission-to discover the source and makers of the yak hair. I did not want to discover the blankets being made in a sweat shop or by children in some dark and dank 3rd world factory. It didn't take long to find my source-a Tibetan refugee camp outside Patan, one of Kathmandu's older neighboring provinces. Some 40 years ago, the Dalai Lama provided money and support to build a two story concrete structure for Tibetan exhiles who has fled Tibet under Chinese occupation.

Today, this bustling "camp" houses a few hundred Tibetans who work at a variety of handicrafts to support themselves. Under an outdoor canopy stood two large looms, and at one a woman worked diligently on her blanket design. Here was the true home of the yak hair. We also were shown a large building that housed rows and shelves of yarns-some yak wool and some sheep-all dyed in vibrant hues. Large yarn skeins as big as barrels sat in piles on the floor. Some of the yarn was used for the making of Tibetan hand-knotted rugs, and others for the blankets and shawls.

I have an arrangement to order from Jawalakhel Tibetan Refugee Camp. By ordering from these Tibetan refugees who are trying to support themselves through traditional Tibetan handicrafts, I feel I am accomplishing two things: supporting the Tibetans, and taking any profits made through sales of the yak hair to put into our education programs in Nepal.

It's a good cause, one where everyone wins. The Tibetans get well-deserved business and can continue practicing an art they have brought from the Himalayas-extremely poor children get an education and chance at a better life than the streets offer, and buyers of the yak blankets get to wrap themselves in a product that gives warmth-and beauty-to their hearts. So I call it "Heart-To-Heart."

Here's my goal in bringing the yak hair blankets and shawls to market:

1. Help save women from abject poverty
2. Help ease the suffering of refugees that don't have a safe country anymore
3. Save young women and girls from being put back out onto the mean streets and into potential 'human trafficking'
4. Keep kids safe by funding HANDS in Nepal school and scholarships
5. Help support the saving of a culture that China is trying to destroy by buying a piece of Tibetan culture. In the next several decades this entire culture could be wiped out.

I truly feel we can make a big difference-one blanket at a time. I hope one reaches your heart soon!

You can email me for more information at: jansprague2@gmail.com

Behind the Scenes of NGO Work

Wintertime means being at home, and working on fund-raising for our upcoming HANDS projects. Half way around the world, two schools sit competed and being used in two separate and equally remote villages in the Ganesh Himalayas-all due to HANDS in Nepal fund-raising efforts, and you, our kind and generous supporters.
Now the new project for 2012-a library in the village of Phulkharta, or sometimes spelled "Fulkharta"-where school number two was just completed. I am very excited about this new library project-it will be a trial in how necessary and useful libraries are in this remote corner of the world. It is something I've dreamed about for the past few years since involving myself with my son's NGO, and something I feel very strongly about.
Libraries have played an important role in my life-from the time I was small and my mother would park my sister and I there as a convenient and (back then) safe haven while she ran errands (being a single Mom she was always in need of such aids!). I discovered so much about the world in those musty shelves of our little hometown library. There were the children fiction books, but equally fascinating were the adult nonfiction, the rows of neatly arranged National Geographics, and the table with the "3-D" panoramic viewfinder View Masters! (you can actually still buy these on Amazon, and I plan to purchase quite a few to take to Nepal with me) The world seemed big back then, and full of intrigue! I wasn't a big reader at that small age but I became one because I wanted to learn what these books had to tell me about the world. I began with easy readers like Dr. Seuss and his play on words and worked my way up to Walter Farley's Black Stallion series and on to classics. I haven't stopped.
Much of my travel in Nepal is aided by my "Tibetan" son, Kelsang Lodue, a refugee we met some years back who has since become a trusted and dear friend while we are finding our way around Kathmandu's crazy streets and outskirts. He is a translator and helper in negotiating taxis and bus rides to the villages. Once he took me from Kathmandu to Delhi, India, a 3-day trip on a government bus that would have nearly killed me had he not been along. But one thing Kelsang cannot do is read. He has had to work his whole life and has never been to school.
We bring him and our other non-reading friends picture books and postcards and talk endlessly about the world outside their known borders. It has confirmed my belief in libraries-a place where one can sit and look and learn and browse and slowly ease into the literate world, picture book by magazine by panoramic View Master! It can be a place of refuge from the hard life of working in fields, cooking and endless chores, to go for a peek into what a villager cannot even imagine, but would love to see and learn of. Our talks of the "modern" world are endlessly fascinating, and while you may think those who hear these fantastical stories feel blue hearing of what they have not, it has been my experience that they are entertained, their minds broadened a bit, and a feeling more of being connected and having many things in common with modern world people-love of children, desire for a better life, health care, better schools and a quest to know the order and meaning of things.
So we are going to build a library! The villagers of Phulkharta are excited and so are we at HANDS in Nepal. I will keep a running blog account here of how it goes, and seek to inform those readers of how it happens. We will post it also on our HANDS website: www.handsinnepal.org-and encourage anyone to write comments or ask questions. That in turn helps us to learn and keeps us asking ourselves the right questions as we take one careful step at a time on the Nepali NGO path!
Namaste and Happy New Year to All! Amma Jan