Camp Hope / Kathmandu
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.
Pourakhi Nepal
Since my last post, I have been busy shooting, and just got back from 5 days in Achham District (more on that later). I didn’t have my computer with me out there, and as we just got back late last night, I am only now getting to an update.
I am really grateful to the folks at World Education Nepal who connected me with a wonderful organization called Pouraki who are doing work with Nepali women who have been exploited and abused as workers in foreign countries. I spent some time on Thursday photographing at the shelter for women who have managed to return to Nepal after suffering serious abuse abroad. Most of these women arrive at the Kathmandu airport late at night with nothing more that a small carry-on, and many of them have only temporary travel documents. This woman did manage to still have her passport, but not much else. Pourakhi have people meeting these late flights who screen for women who are in an obvious state of distress. They are then taken to the shelter where they receive attention relating to their physical and mental health.
In addition, once they are settled, the women are given vocational training which helps them get back on their feet and eventually return to their families, if that is possible. Because of the nature of the shelter, and the stigma that is attached to this issue, I can’t publish faces of any of the women, but the shelter is totally amazing and I am so grateful to have been made to feel so welcome.
After the shelter, Shanti Thapa Magar who works for World Ed took me to a temporary housing camp in the Chuchepati area of Kathmandu. It is basically a tent city in the middle of a large open area. Pourakhi is running SEEP classes for the residents. The Self Employment Education Program helps those who have been displaced by the recent earthquake. We dropped in on a math class, and this fellow was really happy to have a bit of an audience.
Here’s the class, who were nice enough to take a break and come out for a group shot.
After we left the SEEP class, Shanti took me around the camp and introduced me to several residents.
I was amazing how open people are in the camp.
People were curious about seeing me walking around with a camera, but were so nice to chat with.
Here is Dhalak Kumari Dotel with her grandchild, standing outside of her family’s tent.
And here they are inside where they live with her son and daughter-in-law.
Here is Shova Khadka sitting outside of her tent working with wool. / A vast number of Nepalis lived in villages that were more or less destroyed in the earthquake, and many of them are now living in these temporary camps in Kathmandu. The day after I shot these photos, I went to another camp in a different part of town. I hope to get a post up about that visit by Friday. Tomorrow, Shanti and I and another World Education staffer are off to Sindhupalchowk to photograph an area where over 95% of the houses were destroyed by the quake.
Jon Crispin's Notebook 
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