Nepal Wrapup
from the Bellevue Rotary Club bulletin March 25th 2008

by Robert Rose

What a wonderful and successful two-month trip to Nepal! My sincere thanks go out to all of my Nepali Rotary friends whose extraordinary efforts made it happen. Listed below are some of the outstanding accomplishments from our journey as well as some random thoughts and insights!

Rotary Accomplishments

• On many of our Rotary Club visits we were accompanied by Nirmala Gyawali or her sister, Sita Gyawali who are both women with blindness. Having a representative of the community with disabilities made for a very compelling presentation on disability awareness.

• Rtn. RR (Rabendra) Pandey and I traveled to four other cities within Nepal besides Kathmandu and met with representatives of over 40 Rotary clubs to discuss the ‘Disability-Awareness’ project. All of the clubs we spoke to were interested in participating and inspired by the project.

• We spoke to most of the country’s 49 Rotaract clubs about disability awareness simultaneously at the Rotaract District 3290 Conference held in Chitwan, Nepal.

• Representatives from eight USA Rotary clubs and one Rotaract Club visited Nepal as part of our group for volunteer projects and sightseeing activities.

• The Rotary Foundation sent DGN Rtn. Scaria Jose from Kerala, India to evaluate the 3-H Grant proposal for disability awareness in Nepal. Past project site visits and cooperating organization meetings were held throughout his five-day visit. We await a final decision on the grant by the Trustees of the Rotary Foundation in April.

Random Thoughts…

• When trying to communicate with the guy cutting your hair, be sure he understands if you are showing him how much you want cut off of your hair, not how much hair you want left on your head!

• This is such a dusty place. I think if you left something sitting on a table for a couple of months it’d be buried in dust.

• Momo’s (Nepali chicken or veggie dumplings) should be declared one of the four basic food groups. They are tasty!

• Bucket-baths aren’t too bad as long as the water is warm.

• Occasional candlelight dinners are romantic but with twice-daily power outages the romance kind-of goes out of it.

• On the flip-side, you feel a bit like a pioneer reading nightly by rechargeable lantern.

• On our way to the airport at the end of our trip, I saw a dog look both ways before crossing the street and then he/she crossed within the crosswalk.

• Never go anywhere without your trusty roll of toilet paper!

We Should Feel Fortunate…

• That when we make a cell phone call, it usually goes through.

• That even though gas prices seem expensive here, at least fuel is available.

• That we have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.

• That we have electricity at a consistent voltage on an ‘on-demand’ basis.

Click here for photos from the 2008 trip to Nepal