London to Freetown

So my training in a big organisation starts on the 12^th July.  And I have decided to grab a flying visit to London. Only five days but I need to stock up on nutella.  The nutella can’t come here, I have to do the food miles for it.

It’s funny what you miss when you leave somewhere.  What would you miss most?  I think it’s the things we take for granted and don’t really think of. 

Apart from the obvious and most compelling miss of friends and family: I miss;

London traffic.  It is at least organised in its misery.  The road fatality rate is high here, apparently too high to bother counting .  For those drivers out there who want to drive in Nepal here  are the  simple road rules:  go where you can, when you can, whether you be, car, truck, cow, person or street hawker.  Beep your horn endlessly.  Never wear a motorcycle helmet as a passenger, whether you are 2 or 80. Make sure your vehicle constantly emits black acrid smoke.  Drive fast, drive like a lunatic. 

Newspapers.   Sometimes there is an information overload in our daily lives.  But it is the other extreme here.   Although not so extreme that the news of an overprivileged blonde doing a bit of time isn’t in the news here.  I crave a big juicy daily newspaper.

Getting what I ordered.  I can’t wait to go to a restaurant and have what I actually ordered turn up on my plate. And not having to worry too much about food poisoning when it arrives.  There have  been deaths from cholera in kathmandu recently.  All the rain, the flooding: polluting the water with excrement.  Nice detail , i know. 

Trains, the underground.  The Himalayas are obviously not suited to trains of any description.   This is unfortunate, trains could be a safe and efficient way for people to travel here avoiding the inherent dangers of traffic here (see road rules above).

Not being completely ignored if I am with a man.  Nepal ranks 111 out of 115 countries in terms of the level of discrimination faced by women.  The ranking measures things like health care, education, political and economic engagement: women in Nepal face almost  the worst levels of  discrimination in all of those areas.   For me this means not being spoken to if I am with a man in restaurants, having my credit card I’ve just paid with in a restaurant returned to the nearest sir to me- even when they’ve just seen me take it out of my wallet. It means meeting women and wanting to talk to them and the nearest man explaining that as an unmarried woman she is shy and doesn’t want to speak. It means a number of situations that make me want to scream, where I feel almost invisible as a person.  But that’s ok for me because I grew up with boundless opportunity and one day I can leave Nepal. 

But for women here it means; facing the highest rate of fatality in child birth, living in one of only three countries in the world where the life expectancy is lower  for women than men, where the life expectancy of  only 55 is  attributable purely to the high levels of death rates for women, where prolapsed wombs will be left untreated, where girls are more likely to be illiterate ( why bother paying for a girl to go to school who will one day only be an ‘asset’ for her husbands family), all of the well paid jobs going to men, doing all of the hard work in the villages whilst men play cards, and maybe being  traded in for a younger model when they look older than their husbands from the back breaking work they have done.  The list is endless.

 I miss London

Village Life: 20th June 2007

Village life starts early: 5am. I have to confess not to being up until 6am. Meanwhile Managre ( the british army veteran I am currently stalking) and his wife are up off of their veranda bench bed and already working. He has fed the buffalo, who is endlessly hungry, some greenery and hay like substance. I will confess at this point to not being overly familiar with the country side and farm type things. There aren’t that many farms in London that I am aware of and if there are, my weekends tended not to involve them. None the less I have successfully identified some of the livestock here; a buffalo, some goats, very scrawny chickens and some cow like creatures but maybe they are cows or ox, not really sure. Mangre sweeps and cleans around the buffalo. He feeds the scrawny chickens. The chickens sleep in the roof of the house. They were so noisy all night, I just want to eat them. I drink chai and eat some freshly picked and then grilled maize. I don’t think I have ever eaten such fresh food. My entire diet is growing around me. Food miles- zero. I can definitely cancel out some of my air travel sins with this. The daughter in law and sisters life takes place almost entirely in the dark, smokey kitchen. The potatoes are washed then peeled, the cabbage chopped, the rice cooked, the food served, the plates scrubbed under the outside tap. All day every day, this is their routine. I am already starting to get a bit bored, which is not very good. But excitement Mrs veteran wants to take me to the village ‘ market’. Sounds like my cup of tea. Off I go and we are there. A small room in a house selling not very much: cigarettes, sweets and crisps. I buy some sweets, mostly to please Mrs Veteran. And then more excitement, I am going to school with the children from the village. I follow the eldest, the rest follow me. I feel a bit like the pied piper. Up and up and up and up and up- today I am being lapped by four year olds- to school. We walk up for about forty minutes. I am drenched by the time we reach the school. Excited children gather round. A man comes out, looking scruffy and tired, he introduces himself as the head master. I introduce myself. He explains that he has to pop to lunch (lunch is at 9.30am in Nepal). The teachers had to meet earlier about another proposed strike and so classes will start late. He would like me to stay and take a class. I agree. Before he goes the teacher complains about, the buildings- too small, teachers not being respected in the village, not having enough books: he complains about everything, which is maybe understandable but he doesn’t seem to notice the eager, committed, motivated student body he has around him. That is a shame. He informs me that only 1-3 of the students will make it to further education, out of a subsistence farming life. I fear his prophecy will continue to be fulfilled. I take a class- relay some basic facts about the UK, population, religion, democracy. I invite the children to ask me some questions. But I fear the headmaster, whose class it is supposed to be, puts them off. He has done nothing all lesson. I ask him to translate, maybe that’s the problem. He explains the children are shy but they would like to know some things I will ask for them, ‘are you married’? I leave the school building sad for those children. Back to the village. Mr and Mrs veteran go about their daily tasks; feeding the animals, digging up potatoes, ploughing a field with oxen or maybe cows, planting rice, replanting rice. It is hard work in unbearable heat. And this is life day in day out. Plant food, dig it up, eat it. I confess that after two days of this I was ready to climb Everest to escape. In fairness to myself I did discover a dead rat rotting in the bedroom which explained an increasingly bad smell. I just wasn’t up for another night there. So I’m out of there. Glad to be trekking again. And reflecting. The next time a person who tells that the ex-gurkha soldiers are better off than most Nepalese need to come here. And they need to spend their lives growing what they eat and they need to send their children to the school in Maling.

 It’s day two of welfare pension collections.  I hit upon the genius idea of following a welfare pensioner back to his village.  I want to understand his journey better and get the full flavour village life. Seven hours, of the toughest trekking I have faced, later  I am reflecting on how stupid my ‘genius’ idea has turned out to be.   I am  following a veteran of Borneo.  Managre Gurung of the 2^nd Gurkha Rifles served from 1961 until 1970 when he was made redundant without any pension.  After service he returned to his village life in Maling as a farmer and so it is to there that I follow him back.On what becomes a torturous journey, up, up, up,up, up, up and up steep mountain side in the blazing heat, I try to think positively to keep myself going.  All of this exercise must be good for me: no I don’t care.  Didn’t Charles Dickens say, ‘walk and be happy’: he was obviously not thinking of the Himalayan country of Nepal when he said this.  I am so tired I don’t think I can go up any more.  I contemplate paying the veteran five times his pension to carry me.  After all I am spending the journey eating his dust.  He is 62 surely he should be finding this hard, at least perspiring a little: I am drenched.  One foot in front of the other I keep going.  We eventually stop after hours – I drink water and coke as fast as I can.  Manbagre cracks open a beer.   And then we are off again, through jungle and then down and down steep steps made out of the mountainous rock.  I am quite grateful to be going down but also hate it: at some point, unless I decide to settle in the village of Maling, I will have to walk back up.   We make it to his village.  I vow never to go on a trek again.   I wouldn’t do it again if I was paid and if I was paid it would have to be for a lot more than the 78 pounds Managre has just received. I arrive at Manbagre’s home.  It is his sons home.  His son introduces me to the family who live their;  his wife, his sister, his mother and his children.  The mud and stone home has three rooms.  A kitchen, where most of the family seem to be sleeping, a very small store room, full of potatoes and maize and another room with a bed in where I will be sleeping ( his sister usually has this room).  His father sleeps on a sort of bench with his wife on the veranda.  I note the lack of wardrobes, but they don’t seem to own enough clothing to need them.   Managre sleeps outside within an arms length of the buffalo he cares for.   The kitchen is the hub of life.  It is constantly smokey from the open fire sans chimney.  I put my stuff in my village bedroom home and look forward to a good nights rest before starting my village life in earnest.  But first outside to sit and have some chai.  There are suddenly thirteen villagers- mostly children all staring at me.   I quickly deduce the following, not many foreigners have stayed in the village and there is not a great deal of entertainment in the village.  Every move of the foreign English girl seems quite exciting to them.  I do feel slightly like an animal in the zoo and feel quite bad for them that I have no tricks.  But apparently they seem easily entertained, my nepali, ‘I am hungry’ ie when is feeding time around here?, is greeted with a great deal of excited discussion.  The children are also keen to try out their english.  I of course introduce myself.   This precipitates a chorus of rebeek, rebeeka, rebek, rebik, ikah and  much excitement. Time for dal bhaat though.  I bade farewell to my new village friends and go into the kitchen to sit and tuck into some rice and veg.   Then to bed, exhausted.  I get into my sleeping bag, ignore my roomies- big spiders and try to sleep.  The rain is thundering down.  It’s  monsoon season.  The corrugated roof makes the rain sound harder.  I think of the homes lost in villages through the increasing landslides caused by the destruction of the forestry in the jungle.  People cut the natural protection of trees down to grow more rice and food and the firewood is used for cremations. 

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.

 Love and Marriage:  This is going to require some serious time.  A complex subject for a non love and marriage expert to tackle anyway, let alone in Nepal where the theme becomes even more complex to a novice and foreign novice of the subject.  But here goes.

 The Himalyan Times, a popular daily newspaper, provides a few introductory clues to the subject in the personal adds section entitled, ‘The Rite Walk, Wishing you an Everlasting Relationship’.   Accompanied with the informative by line, ‘ By ourselves we can enjoy life, but to really appreciate life we must find companionship’.  Great info for a, ‘by  ourselves person’.  Better take a look at the ads.   First off the ads are broken down by ethnic group, entries appear under, ‘  brahim, chhetri, newar, limbu, rai, chaudhari, Marwari, thakuri- I am not going to have much luck here.  Where is the white foreign English girl column?   Ok ok there is an , ‘others ‘column’ I must fall into the others grouping.  Which reminds me what’s going on in lost- who are the others?    The others column is not looking good for me, most entries mirror this one,

‘ a hindu citizen, 32 years of age, currently working in Nepal looks for a good looking  nepali girl from any caste or community from a reputed family.’ 

No caste bar but coming from a reputed nepali family may be problematic.

The rest of the columns tend to be caste specific,

‘ 34, handsome, elegant and divorced gentleman looking for an educated, open minded practical girl from the Brahmin community’

’28 years old boy seeks a good looking newar girl.  She must be the only daughter and belong to a rich family’

I am going to remain a novice of ‘love and marriage’.

 and if you are wondering there is nolink between the cows and the title today- just couldn’t upload the right picture.  But look at the happy cow family- sweet 

Life in Nepal: a list

So I return to my list of the basics of life in Nepal.  I have left the crazy tourist trap of Thamel in Kathmandu.  A seven hour micro bus ride has landed me in pokhara from where I continue.

Wildlife: I need to first return to wildlife and make a confession or two.  Yesterday in my rented room in the holyland guest house pokhara I stood on a very large cockroach.  I then ensured the cockroach was dead by beating it with my shoe.  Luckily there were no budhists around to watch my display of hatred toward the crunchy cockroach.    

Two weeks ago ambling down the street I came upon a very cute looking goat and three men.  One of the men carried a machete.   Before I knew it the goat was being placated pre sacrifice.  The goat had its head chopped off.  There was a lot of blood. Apparently  meat does not grow in packaging in supermarkets: I know  this will be a shock to other city dwellers like myself.  This has made me think about things.  I think I cried when I watched chicken run, I definitely cried at watership down and bambi and yet here I was, I could have saved the cute goat but I didn’t.  Indeed I even ate goat in a village the next day.  My provisional conclusion is that the movies I watched are pretty stupid, how can I care about a goat and what people eat in Nepal when there is so much else wrong in the world.  The sacrifice was fast, the goat didn’t have time to cry or get distressed and it fed a family welcoming a loved one home.

Weather: monsoon season has started.  I am either hot or wet.  On the plus side the monsoon makes the super polluted Kathmandu air more bearable.  On the down side there is a lot more nasty stuff floating around in the water that your food might be washed in: watch out bellies.

Food.  Back in Pokhara I have returned to the scene of eggogate where I suffered the worst bout of food poisoning in history.  I felt like I had to return to the restaurant to face my demons head on, and because off season there was  no  where else  open for me to write my blog and drink a coke, obviously I’d never eat here again.    

Approximately three weeks ago, myself and a friend had attended at food poisoning restaurant for some breakfast.  We both selected an egg option which seemed ok at the time.  Sadly four hours later still sitting in the same restaurant, but joined by an ex- major with some Gurkha research  info, the unfortunate symptons began.   I recall excusing myself from the major at least two times to acquaint myself better and better with the hole in the ground, ‘fragrant’ smelling bathroom.  The major must have thought I was uninterested in his gurkha information and in the end I had to confess to feeling just a little unwell and making my way back to my room.  This I succeeded in doing but by now in a little more pain I thought perhaps a doctor might be an idea.   I still had my London head on- doctors don’t make house visits as the hotel staff informed me, ‘they are too busy at the hospital’.  I was taken to Fewa emergency room Pokhara.   At this point the pain renders me less than choosy but upon arrival at the ER room I am not  convinced that it is an actual ER room.  The small building is mostly  chaotic and very dirty.  The antiquated trolley didn’t look like it would stay upright if I sat on it.  But it did.  A number of different men then took turns prodding my stomach- I deduced they must be doctors, though there was no white coat.  An iv was inserted and injections followed.  I’ve no idea what and no one explained.  Still I felt slightly better and was anyway distracted by the number of seriously ill people around me.  A very elderly woman with endless family members  saying goodbye.  An unconscious young man carried in, a dented motorbike helmet following.  I worried at the lack of modern medical equipment I’m used to seeing.  

There were a limited number of nurses at the hospital.  As my accompanying guest house owner informed me its up to the family to care for their loved ones in hospital, to bring them food, to collect the medicines prescribed.  And so Nirmal who had brought me to the ER had to stay in the hospital with me overnight, sleep on a bench, collect water for me to drink and call the Dr when the IV kept on blocking.  I am touched by the way people, family members care for each other here. 

This makes the hospital, lacking in equipment, and maybe staff, somehow look more inviting.  I am discharged the next day, fully recovered, I think the Drs and staff are amazing.  Waiting outside for a taxi home I am approached by one of the ubiquitous street children and asked for money for food.  There is no free hospital treatment in Nepal, for those alone in society they don’t get brought to the hospital at all.   A street child hurt or injured will most times be left.   

Anyway  anyway . Lunch time, where’s that waiter, I feel like an omelette.

Devi Gurung is a  60 year  old, widow .  She suffers from paralysis on the left side of her body, probably caused by a stroke.  Devi’s future looked bright when she had married Narbahadur Gurung.  He was in the British Army in the 6^th Gurkha Rifles.  But  he wasn’t in the army long enough to receive a penion, he was made redundant after nine years service on the 1st May 1970. This was a bitter blow for him and his family. 

But 12 years ago Narbahadur contracted TB.  Retired from the British Army he could not afford to buy the medicines he needed.  He went to India to work and to save the money for the medicine.  That is where he died alone in 1995.  This is what upsets Devi the most, her husband dying alone, working in a poorly paid job in India.  She feels the UK government should not abandon the medical needs of their ex-serviceman in Nepal, perhaps if they hadn’t she would still have her husband today.

Devi can’t work, she is completely dependent on the charity the Gurkha welfare trust .  They provide her with a welfare pension of £26.03 a month.  This is enough  for food each month.   

Chaturman Rai lives in a small village on the outskirts of Kathmandu.  His three roomed shack lies next to his livestock, his livelihood, on the banks of a rubbish infested river.   He lives there with his wife, son and daughter.    Chaturman is originally from the eastern part of Nepal but it was impossible for him to eek out a living there.  He swapped village life for the banks of Kathmandu ten years ago.  Chaturman still has a lot of family in his village in the east but the five- six day journey is prohibitively expensive for him. 

Chaturman’s day begins at three am when he starts clearing out the livestock, the  pigs, that he owns.  He doesn’t have far to travel to work, the pig pens lay directly next to the three roomed cramped shack he resides in.  The work is hard, tiring and with little financial reward at the end but it is enough for him to survive on.

Chaturman’s life is a far cry from his previous life in the Birtish Army.  Charturman served in the british army for nine years and 192 days and then, like so many, he was made redundant.  Chaturman served in Malaya and Borneo.  He thought he had a job for life when he signed up and was devastated when he was told he was being made redundant.  He received a parting ex gratia payment of a few hundred pounds: enough to buy some livestock. 

Because Chaturman served in the British Army for less than ten years he receives no pension at all.  He has asked the charity the Gurkha Welfare Trust for a charitable pension of £26.03 a month, his living conditions are unarguably impoverished, but he was told he needs to be 65 for that assistance.   

Chaturman is one of many made redundant in the 60’s and 70s.  They gave their all, their peak working years to take part in and win campaigns for the British Government : they were too easily dispensed with when their services were no longer required.  Chaturman feels;  he, his service and contribution has been forgotten by the country he served.

AWO Lamjung, 21^st- 25^th May 2007

Field trek to see welfare pensioners with the charity the Gurkha Welfare Association and their  mobile Doctor, Dr. Deoman Limbu

Lamjung is currently difficult to access, there is a road block protest going on: calling on the government to build a bridge in the area.

The Gurkha welfare office in Lamjung  gives out 220 welfare pensions(£26.03 per month from the charity the  Gurkha Welfare Trust).  This amount is based on calculating enough to buy basic food stuffs for a month, although the increasing cost of living in the inaccessible hills means it is not quite enough even for that).  Most of the recipients of this charity are world war two veterans, although increasingly those made redundant from the British Army in the 1960s are qualifying for the handout because of their dire needs.

Captain Kishal Gurung , the Area Welfare Officer explains that these men were told to go with the galla walla (recruiter) and did not question where they were going or why, they just went to their unknown destiny.   Very few knew for who they were fighting or why.

Man  Bahadur Gurung served from 1941- 1947. He was recruited when he was 27 years old.  He served in Cairo, Egypt, Cyprus and Haifa.  He didn’t know what he was fighting for. He did learn he was fighting the Germans’ but he  didn’t know why.  During guard duties one night he was injured by a bomb.  It left shrapnel permanently embedded in his leg.  Now 95, the scars from his WWII experience still remain visible.  

He complains that they were  not given enough rations,  boiled rice in the morning : badly cooked and two slices of bread in the evening (most of his salary went on subsidising the miniscule rations) His pay,  16 rupees a month, ten of which went t on supplementing the rations provided. At the end of the war he was given a lump sum payment of 200 rupees, he was asked to stay on but the pay wasn’t good enough.

Being in the war was tough, no sleep, constant incoming fire, carrying too much weight on the meagre rations. It was a case of killed or be killed.  He received a medal for his war time efforts but it was left to the British colonel to reward him with 5 rupees out of his own pocket for that.

Man has received the welfare pension for the past 15 years, he also receives an additional 500 rupees a month (approx £4.00) for his war injury.  Unable to walk now, his on a driver in the village carries him once a quarter to the gurkha welfare office to collect his welfare pension.

Dil Bahadur Ghae

Dil settled in Lamjung relatively recently with his third wife. They have seven children, all living in the one roomed rented ‘hut like’ property.   Dil is originally from Gorkha, that was where he was recruited from at the age of 18 in 1963 to serve with the British Army. The galla walla came and said the army were recruiting, he went from his village, no questions asked. He was one of eleven to go from his village.  From there he fought in Malaysia, served in Hong Kong and Brunei. He preferred fighting in the jungle in Malaya for months on end, although it was tough it was not as hard as the burning oil polluted air of Brunei.

 In 1969, like so many, he was told his service was no longer required and he was made redundant.  Now, 23 years old Dil was devastated to lose his job, a job he had given his everything to and a job he thought would be permanent. He faced a very uncertain future..

With a small lump sum payment, enough to build a small property, Dil returned to Gorkha and married.  He found odd jobs  as a labourer.  It was hard to readjust to life back in the village in Nepal: a far cry from the years spent in the British Army, travelling different parts of the world.  He struggled on but then his wife and their new son both died.  He doesn’t know why: there were no hospitals to take them to, no one to even record the cause of death.

Feeling the property was plagued by bad luck and advised to by a lama he moved, losing the one thing he did have to show for his years of service in the British Army.  He married again and this time was blessed with two daughters but tragically his wife died.  On the advice of a lama he moved completely from his birthplace of Gorkha and settled in Lamjung.

This is where he lives now with his third wife and their  five children, his two daughters from his second marriage,  also live there.  One of the daughters is very lucky, she qualified for an educational grant from the Gurkha Welfare Trust and so for now she has the scarce gift of learning.  She would like to be a teacher one day. 

Dil has received the welfare pension of £26.03 a month for thirteen years now.  It is a mark of how poor he is to qualify for a charitable handout provided only to those most desperate in this impoverished and harsh terrain.

The one roomed hut costs him 800 rupees a month to rent and there is the livestock: he has five goats, they cost 5’000 rupees each and three pigs at 7’000 each.  It is only during very special festivals that he , his wife and seven children get to enjoy the taste of meet. 

The rented room is tiny and dark. It lies below another person’s room.  How nine people are able to eat, sleep, live in the space is incomprehensible to my western eye.  But that is this British Serviceman’s life.

22/5/07 Tarkughat , Harrabot village: road side clinic.

Whilst waiting for transportation to the next part of our medical trek  with the gurkha welfare office in Lamjung, the Dr is approached by a welfare pensioner, C Kumari Chetri a 76 year old widow of a world war two veteran.  Her husband passed away two years ago.  The Dr sees her on the roadside and gives her a basic check up.  This invites a large audience from the village but Kumari doesn’t seemed perturbed by the lack of privacy: although there is little other option: Dr Limbu is the only health care, the only doctor available to her.

She complains of a bad knee, shortness of breath and a cough.  The Dr is able to prescribe anti-biotics for a chest infection, ointment for the arthritic knee and anti-acids for gastriotitus on the road side.  His assistant hands over sufficient medicine until she can next attend the area welfare office where she will have a three hour walk  to collect her welfare pension in a month.

Kolki

Is our final destination of the day, many people had been waiting since early in the morning to have the opportunity to see the Dr, providing the only healthcare in the hills.  Sadly because of the terrain and torrential rain we arrive late and word reaches the village before hand that people will have to come back to see the Dr tomorrow.  Some have journeyed for hours to see the Dr. but as the Dr explains, ‘this is Nepal’.  People accept this happens.

When we do eventually arrive at the village at 5pm , one patient who has been waiting since 10am has remained.  Sergeant Dhote Gurung fought in world war two from 1940 and then served in the British Army until 1958.  Now 85 years old he is still able to recall vividly his service for the crown.

 ‘ I served all over, although I had no idea where I was going when I was recruited and left Nepal, Egypt, Iran and Italy.  At times it was really frightening for me. One of the hardest aspects was the lack of proper rations: rice and bread was all we had.  I felt permanently hungry but would have to be ready to fight.  We were given whisky before a battle, this alone would fuel our charge’

He is very grateful to see the Dr in the village.  He has a problem with the use of his legs and couldn’t easily make it to the teaching hospital in Pokhara, about a days journey over, as we discovered, very tough terrain.

23/5/07 Tasyo Village

We walk up to visit Amrajan Gurung of the 6^th Gurkha Rifles.  Amrajan joined the British Army aged 19  on the 26^th October 1948.  He is unable to walk now.  His daughter in law makes the long trek to collect his pension for him at Lamjung area welfare office, every quarter. She is young fit and healthy and the journey only takes her from 10am until 5pm.  But once a year he must go in person or lose the pension altogether.  He pays porters  1’500 NPRs to carry him down in a basket on their backs when he has to make this long, painful  and uncomfortable journey.

Amrajan recalls his day fighting the Malaya insurgency.  He was a gun runner at the time, carrying the ammunition.  Once the commander got them lost in the jungle, this was a terrifying five days without any rations left. Luckily he and his comrades were found.  Jungle warfare was tough, often going for days in mud up to your thighs.  The jungle around Lamjung provided a better training for the gurkha soldier.

Amrajan now suffers from very bad asthma, each breath sounds like a battle.  He, like many of his forefathers believed that the higher up you live, the healthier and cleaner the air.   But the Dr advises him that the ‘property’ he lives in is making his asthma worse.  There is no  chimney for the fire that serves as the kitchen in the room: the stifling smoke permeates, the endless dust is choking and the high altitude all combine to make his asthma worse.  He has a son who lives closer to the main town and he will think of asking him if he can go and live there.

The Dr. also sees Amrajans unmarried fifty year old daughter.  Not many women are unmarried in Nepal and if they are there is, to put it mildly, a certain stigma: woman are described exclusively on their marital status.  She has sores on her feet for which the Dr prescribes and provides medicine, free of charge.

 The Dr also sees one of Amrajan’s grandchildren, aged five years old. He has a matted open wound on his head. It is lucky the mobile Dr came he can advise the family of what to do and provide ointment.  If left the wound could have turned septic and ultimately caused blood poisoning.  The lack of medical facilities in the hills is  particularly stark at this point.

23/5/07 Taltu Dada Village

Sam Sher Gurung an 82 year old world war two veteran.  He now receives the charitable welfare pension from the Gurkha welfare trust of £26.03 pence per month.  He greets us outside a shed containing some livestock, goats and a pig.  The shed smells of livestock and is open on three sides to the elements.  This is where Samsher  lives, with the livestock.  He has lived there for the past four years.  The most terrifying time for him was when a tiger came during the night a few years back. He heard it attacking the goat and terrified waited until the tiger left.  None of these experiences were quite as scary as fighting in a country he didn’t know for a country that didn’t know him and for a reason he didn’t know.  But still life is very hard for Samsher.  The rest of his family live in a one roomed property but with eight of them in there, there is simply no room for him.  Sam Sher is suffering from low blood pressure and is very grateful for the free medicines the Dr from the Gurkha welfare Office provides.

Rebekah Wilson 29/5/07 ©

Tirtha Raj Gurung enlisted in the Brigade of Gurkhas British Army on the 22^nd October 1976  and was retired  on the  10^th August 1993 after sixteen years and two  hundred and ninety two days of service.  His exemplary service took him to  the UK, Hong Kong and South Korea.

 Recently with his closest family  residing in the UK; his niece, nephew, brother and  his son, who himself  serves in the British Army,  Tirtha  decided to apply for indefinite leave to remain , to go and live for a while in the country he had served and to be closer to his immediate family.

It is not cheap to apply for Indefinite leave to remain, 72,500 NR (about five hundred and eighty pounds: over six and half times the average monthly gurkha pension) and there is no refund on that substantial figure.  Tirtha spent many months and most of his savings putting together his application for Indefinite leave to remain in the UK.  

As Tirtha was discharged from the British Army before the 1^st July 1997  the home office have a discretion to grant indefinite leave to remain where there are strong reasons as to why settlement in the UK is appropriate, these include demonstrating strong family ties such as a child living in the UK, as in Tirtha’s case.

 On the 18^th May 2007 Tirtha received  the home office response to his application,

‘ I have carefully considered your application….. however I am not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that your application meets the requirements.. This is because…

You have not produced any satisfactory evidence that you have any close family such as…children in the UK as opposed to Nepal.’

Apart from his long and loyal service to the British Army (surely demonstrative of ties to the UK) the one thing that Tirtha could show beyond a reasonable doubt was that his own son was living in the UK and indeed intends to settle there at the end of his service. 

Tirtha saved for months for his application to enter the country he served so long for.  He expected his application to be at least considered on the basis of the information submitted. 

The recently publicised refusal of Tul Bulhadur Pun VC’s application for indefinite leave to remain only underlines a worrying trend of seemingly Ill considered refusals to these loyal soldiers.  One can only surmise what is going wrong with the Home Office attachment here in Nepal, perhaps it’s the heat in Kathmandu, maybe they are too overworked  : whatever the reason their ill considered rejections of applications are causing serious hardship and injustice to these loyal soldiers.