Real People | Real Stories

Trevor and Ramesh , talking to each other on the phone.

Order of Business: Big-time thank yous to the amazing domestic staff of LSF, in particular our immediate collaborators, Ramesh and Nutan.

Ramesh has been with the organization for  going on ten years, and knows just about everything about just about everyone who’s even remotely involved. From what we can tell, the girls, and their parents, are crazy about him.

With all respect to Kathmandu, from our perspective there would seem to be some logistical hurdles to running an organization here–lack of full-time electricity and water service, slow and spotty internet service, etc. (the usual ‘developing economy kinds of stuff). But Ramesh runs LSF’s operations as smoothly as I’ve seen any org run, anywhere (smoother than most, in all honesty). 

As for Nutan… OMG (as they are so fond of saying), this woman is a powerhouse. She is taking the task of being our full-time guide/translator/fixer to heart. We have worked on shorter term projects with translators on a couple of occasions before, and the experience taught us to fear the experience.

We haven’t done it enough to know just how we want to/like to/need to do it, so our interviewing and translation ritual is very much a work in progress. Nutan, is right there with us, intuiting the changes that need to be made in real time. 

We are so excited by her excitment to be part of this process. Inasmuch as we are learning how to do our jobs better as filmmakers, Nutan is on a much steeper learning curve. And like the Sherpas and porters on our trek, she’s in many ways up ahead of us, pulling us up the hill.

Both Nutan and Ramesh are crazy modest about how much help they are giving, and Nutan laughs when we mention it, like if we talk about putting her name in the credits (um, duh!) But if we can figure out how, we’ll make their names appear in flashing lights.

This is not just to embarrass these to remarkable people, but to say how much Amy and I are learning about the value of the kind of help they are providing.

Lesson: Do not underestimate the importance of local fluency to any work of this type. And the importance of thanking those who provide it to you.

Thank you, Little Sisters Fund; Thank you, Ramesh! Thank you, Nutan!