Namaste

Into the Heart of Kathmandu

The first time I went to Kathmandu, my experience was one of underwhelm. I found it to be a busy, dirty city full of white hippies attempting to prove their spiritual enlightenment. I had no desire to go back.

Fast forward more than ten years and I found myself sleeping in the familiar rooms of the Kathmandu Guesthouse. An easier transport from airport to hotel this time, rather than the illegal, back road expedition over the mountains from India, via jeep, 3 Japanese tourists, my travel partner, and under the cloak of the darkness of night, sure I wasn’t going to make it home again. This time, it was a quiet evening, exposing all of the wires in the lamplight fooling me into believing they were the earth climbing up Kathmandu’s walls, like ivy.

There was purpose to this trip, beyond being a tourist, and where there is purpose, the experience of a place changes. Here I was again, waking up to the deep remembering of the smells and sounds of Kathmandu’s Thamel district, readying myself to meet some of the poorest women and children of Kathmandu and tell their stories of how education changes lives here.

Assigned through Photographers Without Borders to work with Hands In Outreach (HIO), an organization providing access to education and a supportive social network that empowers marginalized girls and women in Nepal to lift themselves from deep-rooted poverty, my purpose was to document and through imagery, tell the story of the transformation of lives through education.

From day one, I was told by HIO co-executive directors, Laura Hunt and Ricky Bernstein, that this tranformation is slow. It’s one girl at a time, and often two steps forward, ones step backward. The bureaucratic slog often takes it’s toll on the spirit and passion of the people on the ground working hard to make change possible.

Every morning, as I entered Chandra Kala Learning Center, I was greeted with the little voices of children excitedly exclaiming “namaste, ma’am” to me over and over, each vying for the front of the line, and always asking, “what is your name, ma’am?” and “where are you from, ma’am, a look of confusion crossing their faces when I responded with my name “Deedee”. In Nepali, the word “didi” means big sister.

The air is dusty, the streets so, so noisy, it was an overwhelming sensational exercises each day, but there is a peaceful oasis inside of Chandra Kala, of children singing, playing, lunch cooking, tea brewing, roosters crowing and staff chatting. This is the hub of HIO, where all the brainstorming and daily operations stem from.

Poverty is never ending in the world and in Kathmandu it’s no different. Here, as in many places, it’s a systemic issue derived from much more than the lack of education, however, education can bring about real, formidable change in their lives. For women and girls it is much worse. When they hit 13, they are often either sent to work or married. If they aren’t bringing income in, they need to be someone else’s burden. Marriage is still, more often than not, arranged in Nepali culture and, although they deny it, class is a defining feature, leaving education and a better job, their only way out of poverty.

The goal of Hands in Outreach is to provide education for women and girls to open up possibilities for their future, because, nothing uplifts a society more than educating it’s girls and women.

I saw firsthand the difference education makes in the lives of women and children in Kathmandu. Each day, I set out walking around the city, visiting the homes of the girls sponsored by HIO, always offered milk tea or hot lemon tea and biscuits. Most girls lived with their families in one room. The family’s bed mats rolled up and stacked in a corner or on top of the single wardrobe, propane tanks and two burner stoves as their kitchen, food stored under and in whatever space they could find. Their homes were spaces to sleep and eat and most often, not much more than the smallest bedroom in my house.

Each girl we visited was asked “what do you want to do?” There was so much ambition in each of their responses, to do better, to provide more, to live better. The way they spoke about their futures was mind blowing. There was a determination and grit behind their words, a knowledge that if this is what they want, they have to put everything they are behind those words. Every day, I left feeling like a very lazy person, a person able to be lazy because of the sheer privilege of growing up in Canada as a white person. I didn’t grow up well off, we were financially quite a poor family, but we were rich in land, rich in education, and rich in choices.

I’ll stop writing now and post both a slideshow and a little video I put together of my time with HIO below so you can get a taste of the city of Kathmandu and the beautiful people that inhabit it.

Please enjoy!