London to Freetown

Welfare Pensioners: I am back in the district of lamjung after a four hour hair raising bus trip to stay at the gurkha welfare office and meet some of the ex British servicemen who receive a charitable welfare pension.  The driver of the bus here was in an awful hurry.  With undetectable suspension, cramped onto a seat of a wooden board, and winding roads punctuated by the odd overturned vehicle the journey was not the most fun. Maybe he had heard about the prediction of a massive earthquake coming the way of the Kathmandu valley (don’t worry the fortune teller who peddled that well believed prediction causing mass hysteria is now in police custody for ‘causing mass hysteria’.

But I made it and am here to see the welfare pensioners collect their pension of 10’000 Nepalese rupees ( about £78.00).  Welfare pensioners are ex-soldiers who fought for the British Army but because they had not served the requisite 15 years they get no pension from the British government.  Instead they are reliant on a charity called the Gurkha Welfare Trust who raise money to, inter alia, provide a welfare pension of £26.03 a month to those most destitute.  It is enough to buy food with.   Well it is enough in some areas, with all the political upheaval and difficulties in Nepal, in many villages it is not really enough for food.  But of course for many it is a life saver. 

Every quarter the welfare pensioners make their way to their local area welfare office to collect the handout.  And so I spend a day observing the process.

Two hundred and two attend at the office from very early 6.30-7am.  But they will face many hours waiting, pension distribution won’t start until 10am and then it will last until around 5pm.    They have faced, to many of us (ok particularly Londoners like me) an epic journey.  Walks of up to eight hours, up and down steep inclines. This mountainous region  made all the more perilous, it is monsoon season and some paths quickly turn into rivers.  Some of the welfare pensioners, well into their 80s, are no longer able to walk.  Family members or paid porters carry them here.  They must attend once in every three payments to show they are still alive and so eligible for the welfare pension.  The journey leaves one world war two pensioner dizzy and too ill to stand, he vomits then sleeps on a mat on the floor.

They have their proud stories of service from,  world war two, borneo  to  Malaya.  They fought in Burma and India  during world war two.  I value growing up in a free country.  I value the sacrifices made by so many in world war two.  They remind me of my own grandparents these proud veterans.  It is sobering that they are utterly reliant on charity now, nothing from the government they served.

 They keep on arriving wave after wave of ;  need, threadbare shirts, worn shoes, walking sticks, frailty, fatigue, calloused feet and  resignation.  The journey looks painstaking for some.  The wait is until 5pm for some, there’s no tv to watch, not a great deal to do all day.  It’s very hot. A local shop owner sets up a makeshift tent under which they can sit and buy some sustenance for the journey home. 6 rupees for a boiled egg serve with some salt seems to be the only thing on the menu.

Some take the opportunity to see the Doctor that the Gurkha Welfare Trust have employed for them for the week.  He explains that mostly they are in need of some attention and sympathy.  The youth in their family, their children have all had to leave village life.  Village life, subsistence farming, has become harder with all of the political upheaval in Nepal.  And so those that can, that are not too old have moved away to the cities.  Leaving these veterans even more vulnerable and lonely.  It’s tiring to meet all of these ex – soldiers, whose achievements we are taught about in history lessons,  in Nepal  and facing such hardship.