Dashain, Pings and Problems

Its natural, beautiful, rugged and its also a huge problem. That's the Nepali landscape. People travel thousands of miles to trek in it and provide a valuable source of national revenue. Yet the inaccessibility presents a huge challenge to everyday life, and to development. " Why is that a problem?" I hear you ask. If you cannot easily get to villages leave them alone and they will stay in a time warp. But they don't and they can't. An isolated house may not have running water, may be a two hour tough walk from the nearest secondary school but it could have a television dish and all the male members of the family working overseas.

A village isolated on the hillside

If it has to move, then carry it, Jude meets a porter.

Equine transport still an essential.

We are in the festival season of Dashain. Its now that families return to their home villages to celebrate and renew relationships. The paths and tracks are full of family groups and individuals making that return journey. Bright colourful clothing and the traditional forehead adornment of rice and tika, worn by returnees, seem more akin to a trip next door rather than the reality which may be a 3 hour gruelling slog to a village 900m up in the foothills. Together with the tika, new shoots of maize seedlings are worn in the hair, or behind the ears, giving the whole occaision a fresh earthy feel. As we wonder through our neighbouring villages its not long before we are swept up in the festivities and given the full treatment.

A group adorned in tika return to their home village

Forehead tika and maize seedlings are shown off

The yellow tika is worn to remember relatives who
have passed away.

Judith gets the full Dashain treatment

Another Dashain tradition is for villages to build huge swings, or 'pings' as they are called. Long, readily available, bamboo poles form the main structure and all, young and old are happy to give it a go.

A ping of different design

Pings in action!

Beneath this happy festive veneer lie problems the roots of which are in rural inaccessibility and poor youth job opportunities.

In the two family groups shown above there are four men working in the middle east. Their work is in the hotel trade and transport and they have not been able to visit home for two years. The social consequences of such a scenario, coupled with the high financial costs of migration, amongst many other issues make the real benefits of migration hard to quantify. But the costs are easy to see.

The burden shouldered by the women, and old folk who remain, is huge. The food production system of using terraces and irrigation is driven by a massive human effort. Once the cereals are harvested they must be carried for further processing or sale. Since terraces are easily damaged by wandering animals and land ownership fragmented, livestock farmers gather forages daily to feed their tethered stock.

I don't think that anyone imagines that these isolated rural communities should have a growing population. So there will always be some movement to the cities. The need is to retain a core of young people who can maintain the population numbers and continue this way of life. The huge question is How?