Empowering Women of Nepal - one woman at a time

One of the exciting things about the kind of journey I am on, is the ability to change course if the inclination arises. I am lucky to have found an opportunity that has inspired me enough to (temporarily) give up the plan to head west back to India and finish retracing the steps of my visit all those years ago. I am going to have to finish that another time as I have agreed to volunteer on a training project for a few weeks.

Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN) is an organisation based here in Pokhara. They train women to be guides and porters and offer employment at the end. There is a trekking service and a guest house which supports the project. One of their smaller projects is mobile training and this is what I shall be doing. I am going to teach very basic English to village women from a remote part of western Nepal.

http://www.3sistersadventure.com/EWN/Project/Mobile%20Training/index.html

We are going to fly from Nepalganj (12 hours by bus from Pokhara) to Jumla and teach there for six days. Then we trek for four days to Mugu where we run the same six day course, and then we fly back to Nepalganj from there and return to Pokhara. There are three of us going - me, another volunteer and the project coordinator. I don't know much more but it is a set curriculum which apparently is very basic. The women I will be working with have little or no education and the course is simple so my lack of teaching experience should not be an issue - I hope!

This is exactly the kind of opportunity I was hoping would come along. Since I arrived in Nepal, I have been inspired by different women that I have met. It is known that many customs and traditions here give women a really tough life. That thought has been in my mind a lot since my time spent in Bhaktapur with Meera, who talked about the lot of a daughter-in-law in a traditional Newari family.

When I came to Pokhara and saw the sign, "Empowering Women of Nepal" - it was another kind of sign for me. I went to see what they were about, thinking maybe even during the strike I might be able to help out in the office or something, and I came across another sign that they were looking for volunteers. I am very excited and a little nervous. Whatever happens, it will be an experience I will never forget and I expect it will be much more than that.

We leave on May 14 and return early June. During that time, I will be out of communication - no internet or phone. When we return, I will only have two weeks of my time remaining (my return from Mumbai to London is June 16) and I suspect, rather than rushing to squeeze a little time in India, I will stay in Nepal - explore either Chitwan National Park (although it will be very hot) or somewhere else, and then fly out of Kathmandu to Mumbai - assuming the volcanic ash is behaving itself and the strike hasn't resumed.

So that is it! I have five days now to get myself organised (I need to get a visa extension and maybe buy a sleeping bag) and I might even try to squeeze a little 2 or 3 day wander up to Sarangkot and maybe a little beyond - I probably need to give myself some conditioning for the trekking portion of my trip. I'm not sure if I am more concerned with being able to teach or being able to walk for four days with a rucksack on. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how I fare.
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