Real People | Real Stories

My new favorite picture of me.

Besides working on our own independent documentary, Scott and I are here in Nepal filming a promotional video for the Bo M. Karlsson Foundation. This NGO is really unique in that it is providing scholarships for Nepali women to go to UNIVERSITY. There are quite a few organizations helping girls go to primary and secondary school, but BMKF is the only one I have heard of that is paying college tuition for females. According to UNESCO, less than 3% of women get a higher education in Nepal. Wow!

Sarita is one of the few. Today we went to one of the main government colleges here in Kathmandu to film her in class. Sarita is studying  to be journalist. Her goal is to report on women’s issues and to return to her village  to be an advocate for girls’ education.  Her village is about a day’s bus ride and a half a day’s walk from Kathmandu. Her scholarship from the Bo M. Karlsson foundation pays for her tuition, for her sweet little one room apartment, her books, and a small living stipend. This girl is rocking it!

She is a long way from home and says she misses her parents a lot. They don’t get to talk on the phone very often and she only gets to go home during long breaks from school. However, she finds community in her building. Many of them are from the same caste, Tamang, and share her native language. Most of her days are either spent in class or studying. She reads the newspaper everyday as well as reads history books ‘just to learn all the things’. (She picked up what looked to me to be a very dry book about the political life of the last Prime Minister and hugged it to her chest.)

“I love to read about the histories!” Then she looked up at the bare bulb on the ceiling—”When there is light.”

This city only has 6-8 hours of electricity a day. And as far as I can tell, when you get  or don’t get electricity is pretty random. Sometimes it is on, sometimes it is not.

She also has to ration her water. A truck comes to deliver it once a week. I forget to ask her how she gets the big drums of water up her stairs.

Sarita. She is amazing!

Even though she was a little nervous in front of the camera, she was so eloquent speaking about how the Bo M. Karlsson made it possible for her to go to college. She is the only one from her village to do so. Wow!

I am excited to edit this piece!

I left there promising myself I will learn Nepali. Although our translator, Nitu, could not have been better,  I so badly wanted to really talk to Sarita myself. I still have so many questions for her.

I can’t wait to see what she is doing in 5 years. (I think I can learn Nepali by then!)

Sarita in her class

The door to Sarita’s classroom.

Sarita’s apartment.

Nitu, our translator, Sarita and me

Rama works in the little guest house my friend, Kristin, and I stayed for a few nights in Bandipur, Nepal. She cooks and cleans.  She doesn’t have all that much English and I have hardly any Nepali.  We overly “Namaste-d” to compensate— knowing if we spoke the same language we would have a lot to talk about.

After a long hike in the hills, Kristin and I moved some chairs from the guest house restaurant into the sun and Rama brought us tea.

Rama asked me to guess how old she was. I thought I was really being conservative by saying 27. I was sure she must be in her 30′s. But no, she told she was twenty-five and with two daughters. One is 11 and one is 10. She busted out all her English now.

Me married. 13. Chitwan (a region hours away)

(she shakes her head as if to say, “I know, criminal right?”

Divorce.

New wife.

Me. No house. No see daughters.

Me work Bandipur. Very difficult.

No house. No see mom. No see daughters. No husband.

Daughters husband house.

Nepali culture no new marry.

(Rama looked at me right in the eyes for a long time. Then  let down her gaze. She changed her painful tone to one of conversational optimism.)

America? America is beautiful?

I got the feeling all her English is reserved for her story. These tourists coming through this small town are her only hope.

Later on our hike up to see the sunset I daydreamed about visas and South Seattle Community College with all its English and immigration classes and taking Rama to the airport.

What would it take to rescue her?

I know I could… and I can’t, but what will happen to her if I don’t?

What is my responsibility?

I am trying so hard to figure out what this story is about. There is one. There is a big one. And it is about women and their struggle for empowerment in this complicated, changing-too-quickly-for-it’s-own-good world.

This is what I have done in one week and two days:

I have filmed over 10 hours (not including little asides on my Flip and  Canon G9 cameras). I am pretty much filming EVERYTTHING. Filming it like it might be a personal documentary —Nina Davenport style. I watched Operation Filmmaker before I came to Nepal and it inspired to keep the camera rolling. I don’t know what the story is. At this point, it is ALL IMPORTANT. Even the drinking tea part.

I have been drinking a lot of really yummy tea.

(That said, having me be part of the documentary still kind of makes me queasy.)

(That said, I kind of like filming my own reaction to things. It makes it like it really happened. This place is so OUT OF THIS WORLD to me, I question its existence even when I am existing in it.)

I have been working with the raddest fixer, translator, scooter taxi, filmmaker ever, Ramyata Limbu. She is seriously rad. She has made two documentaries: Daughters of Everest about the first Sherpa women to summit Everest and Sari Soldiers about 6 women in the Maoist conflict. She also runs the Kathmandu Mountain Film Festival. She is really good at her job and I am so thankful to have her.

I have found a translator/ transcriber named Era. She has worked for Al Jazeera and other news organization out of Kathmandu. She has the most lovely smile. She speaks Nepali, English and French and has a six year old son. I am excited to get my first tape transcript back. There is something so solid about having a tape both logged and on paper.

I have talked about my project A LOT with A LOT of different people and everyone is interested.

I have thought a lot. I am constantly thinking about what I am doing and what it means and what the story is and what will help the world.

Here is me thinking TOO HARD while enjoying a salty lassi.

I also prayed about it after lighting one of these candles in a Buddhist Monastery.

Things I have NOT done:

slept (very little anyway)

go to the Bryan Adams concert (First western concert EVER in Nepal. It was a HUGE deal. HUGE! But I didn’t go. My host and good friend here works for the embassy and handles logistics of all American deaths in Nepal. The concert came with a stampede warning. Luckily there wasn’t one.)

relaxed (Oh, well there was that one hour and a half massage where they massaged everything including my eyelids and it cost $20).

You can navigate to this link to download the radio interview about Girlworld that Amy had bit more than a week ago. It’s a 25MB MP3 file that once you download it should play just fine on iTunes or whatever media player you have. Just holler if you want to hear it and can’t make it work.

Pass it on if you like it.