Jon Crispin's Notebook

Last week I went to another temporary housing site in Kathmandu.  This one though is very likely to be temporary.  It is supported by the Dwarika Foundation and I was told that by autumn the residents should be moving back to their village.

I was again accompanied by Shanti Thapa Magar who works for World Education Nepal.  She is amazing and helped me so much on all the visits to the Pourakhi projects that I photographed.

Here is another SEEP class sponsored by Pourakhi.  The fellow on the lower left is Kundun Gurung who is the facilitator  of the class.  He is a great guy who studied for a time in London, and is now back in Nepal teaching.

These pups and their mother kept wandering into the class.  The students would shoo them away and they would quickly walk around to the other side of the tent and come back in through a different opening.

I have come to really like the dogs around Kathmandu.  You definitely don’t want to approach them, but sometimes they come up to you to say hi.  This little guy kept smelling my legs.  I’m pretty sure these trousers still had Olive’s scent on them.

Tea is almost always offered in Nepal.  It is very sweet and always welcome.  I like this little cup.

This is Kundun on the right with Manju Gurung who is Chairperson of Pourakhi and another facilitator, Sanjin on the left (sorry,  I can’t seem to find his surname in my notes).

After the classes, Shanti took me around to some of the tents and introduced me to a few of the residents.

Bivi Sherpa is a knitter who is making hats to sell.  She gets 100 Rupees per hat and sells them to a dealer who picks them up for resale.  I offered to buy one, but she politely declined, as the buyer has a deal with her to get everything she produces.

After photographing various Pourakhi projects, I have been really thinking about a way to raise some funds for the organization.  They do phenominal work, and are really unique in the services that they provide.  I will speak to the folks at World Education to see if there is any way that they can be a conduit for them, and since I will be coming back here later this year, it is always possible that I can just collect cash, which in many ways is the easiest way to support this type of organization.  I will post an update sometime soon with details.

In the taxi on the way back from the camp I was pleased to see that the driver had some of my favorite Hindu gods on the dashboard.  Looks like Krishna, Hanuman, and Ganesh (who is my absolute favorite as he is the remover of obstacles).

As we were heading back to the World Ed office, Shanti stopped by her house to introduce me to her son.

Huge thanks to Helen Sherpa at World Ed for connecting me with Shanti, and for making arrangements to get me into the camps.

We are flying back to the US late tonight, and I will begin editing the photographs from our trip to Achham.  I hope to get a post up about that trip very soon.  Thanks for following.