MEDIA: One night photo from Dunche at Flickr; the intro to the documentary I’m working on for PA.
I got out of the Kathmandu valley early on Wednesday morning with MBM of Practical Action. We jumped into a nice, large, somewhat uncomfortable Nissan 4×4 and left town pretty quickly. The first sixty or so kilometers were on a reasonably paved road; we climbed pretty high out of the valley and were graced with some amazing views. It has been a cloudy, rainy week — which didn’t let up until we reached our destination. However, said cloud-rich atmosphere really lent itself to some amazing peeks of the valley and surrounding regions. As we drove further north, we gained elevation. The region is lush, wet, beautiful — we saw, across the valley, a number of enormous waterfalls cascading down cliffs and into a large river. Villages were literally carved into the sides of hills; agricultural steppes formed a giant-size staircase down the side of mountains.
We stopped a few times along the way. Our first stop was for delicious Chai [pronounced chee-yaa here]; the second stop was for an early lunch at a roadside stall. This was, unbeknownst to me, the first of many meals I thought would kill me. We feasted on a simple Nepali thali, which consisted or rice, liquidy dal, pickled veggies, and luke-warm aloo/potato. It was quite filling and pretty damn tasty… and at around 50 cents, cheap. Our third stop was at a village where Practical Action [PA] had done an improved stove intervention. PA’s intervention revolves around installing a smoke hood and chimney in homes. Ostensibly, when properly used, the hood/chimney will filter most of the smoke out of the house and away from the living quarters. In the village w visited, around ten stoves were installed. We saw usage in one home; it worked pretty well. There was some smoke leakage into the house, but as I later learned, the amount leaking paled in comparison to houses in which there was no smoke hood or chimney. Orders of magnitude. A cup of water versus the ocean.
The road to Rasuwa deteriorated pretty rapidly. Eventually, we came to a dead halt at a huge landslide. MBM mentioned it would take around an hour on foot to get through it; when we got to the other side, we’d catch a public bus to Dunche, our base away from Kathmandu. I swung my backpack onto me back, and we took off. The pack was loaded with every bit of video equipment I’ve got and a large, 20 lb tripod. The total weight was probably around 65lbs — not a light load, and by no means a comfortable one. We took off and made it through the landslide [probably some of the trickier hiking I’ve done anywhere] in around 40 minutes. A bus was waiting on the other side… a broken bus. So we walked the 7 miles to Dunche, moving at a pretty fair clip. When we finally made it, I collapsed into an aching ball and passed out for an hour.
The guest house was pretty nice; Dunche is the starting point for treks in the Langtang region of Nepal. There were a fair number of foreign trekkers around, which was a bit startling. Along the road, there were a ton of shops, Nepali-style eateries, and hotels. Down below the main road, though, was the village. The people of Rasuwa are Tamangs, descended from Tibetan/Burmese origin. They speak Nepali/Nepali Bhasa, though their native tongue is closer to Tibetan. Religiously, there’s a bit of Hinduism, Buddhism, and bön.
Day 1 wrapped up with some rakshe [sp?], a local rice-wine, and dinner. In this case, the rakshe was diluted with hot water. It was pretty tasty and strong. I restricted myself to one magical cup, while the others we met knocked back quite a bit.
Day 2 involved filming around Dunche and going to a workshop organized by PA for local officials. The filming went really well; we visited a few houses with improved cook stoves and a few without improved cook stoves. I got around 40 minutes of footage, much of which is quite good. The workshop was a little boring for me; it was conducted in Nepali, which when spoken quickly I can’t get much of.
Day 3 started early, around 6. We left Dunche on the public bus that stopped at a village near the landslide. It was crowded, crowded, crowded; fortunately, we had seats. We filmed there a bit and then got back on a busy bus which took us to the landslide. It was crowded and we didn’t have seats. The backpack and tripod went on the rough. The experience was a bit nerve-racking and claustrophobia inducing. Once the bus was over, we trekked back over the the landslide and started walking. Our vehicle was meeting us somewhere along the way… When it arrived, we piled in and hit the road. We stopped briefly for a comedic purchase; the driver and MBM each bought a 50 kilo bag of potatoes — they got a good deal because they ‘got rid of the middle man.’
That’s the day by day. Now the soapbox.
I was struck by the similarities and differences between the poverty in Dunche and back in Kumbharwada. The communities were both living at an awe-inducing level of poverty and marginalization. In Kumbharwada, the residents found ways to access residential services like electricity and water [we’ll suspend discussions of legality here]. Kumbharwada’s residents create material goods for export around India and SE Asia. In Dunche, the brand of poverty was different — less materially available, more access to natural resources. Dunche’s inhabitants work at a more local level, catering to community members and other people in Rasuwa.
More overwhelming, despite the variation in the type of poverty, was the environmental health in both communities. It was overwhelmingly poor. Toilets weren’t present; the air quality was awful. Access to water was limited and of questionable quality. The experience continues to reify my belief that environmental health/environmental justice are vital issues at urban, peri-urban, and rural levels. Air and water quality in these communities are components of a larger milieu of socioeconomic, political, and environmental concerns. Understanding and impactfully communicating risks associated with environmental pollution is one way to ensure that traditional lifestyles are not eliminated and to ensure that the poor are not left waiting endlessly for the promises of development.
The issues facing the marginalized poor everywhere deserve our attention. Both communities struggle not only with environmental pollution, but also with a fragile hold over their land, oppressive poverty, and a diminishing voice in local and regional politics. It is unsurprising, given these myriad challenges to their welfare, that environmental pollution is far from the primary concern of their daily lives. The onus, then, falls on policy-makers and the public, who should be offered evidence that the continued exploitation of generations of urban and rural poor must be stopped; that the wealthy are not the only who are to be afforded such rights as clean, safe water and breathable air.
