Nepalgunj is located in Banke District, which is a part of the Mid-Western Development Region of Nepal. COCAP has members in several districts in the region including Bardiya District, which is next to Banke. Bardiya is essentially farmland with a few small towns and lots of rural villages. Our member organization in Bardiya, the People Centered Development Forum (PCDF), does a lot of work with income generation programs, scholarships for Dalit students to study in Kathmandu, and farmer’s rights advocacy.

On Monday we went to PCDF for a meeting on Krishna’s motorcycle. It was about an hour away over a bumpy road on which we saw more water buffalo than other vehicles. It was a beautiful day for driving with just enough cloud cover to keep it from getting too hot. With Krishna in charge of the driving, my job was just to sit still and not throw off his balance. This left me with an hour to watch the countryside shooting by. While every moment offered beautiful views and interesting scenes from daily life in the Nepali countryside, there were a few things that stuck with me.

First was the number of children left to their own devices in the fields, villages and even on the roads. At one point we swerved to avoid a group of girls sitting right in the middle of the asphalt road playing a game. We also passed many children in uniform at and around their schools, but it seemed that for every child heading to school there were several staying home. While the school system in Nepal, like all school systems, suffers from a lack of funding, poor facilities, over crowded classrooms etc., the biggest problem is that so many students just do not show up. Some families need the kids to help work around the farm and others probably just do not see the need to send the kids to school as even with a basic education there are few opportunities to leave the villages. In the 1950s Nepal had a literacy rate of 5%…5%! By 1991 it had increased to 40% and has since surpassed 50%. It still is an incredibly low number and is indicative of how far Nepal has to go in terms of development.

While passing over a bridge stretched over a wide, slow moving river, we came across a crowd of people staring down at the banks of the river below. It is on the banks of that river where the local dead are cremated. A small group of men had built a pyre and were about to lay the body on top. As they pulled away the sheets that had been covering the corpse, they revealed the body of a middle aged man covered in blood. A wave of excitement ran through the crowd above on the bridge as this had clearly not been a natural death. Krishna and I continued on our way before the fire was lit and also before the crowd had finished guessing what might have befallen the deceased. People are so fascinated by death and this fascination routinely eclipses their respect and compassion for the families who suffered the loss.

Passing through the villages you could see the communist scythe and sickle painted on half of the buildings in some areas. Many of the villages also had one building crowded with people. Each time we passed one of those crowded buildings I would ask what was inside, and Krishna would tell me it was a trade union and those were the unemployed members of the union. This countryside was one of the areas in which the Maoists had found their largest support base. Most of the population of Bardiya District is made up of impoverished families, the chronically unemployed and people who have been socially and politically discriminated against. Knowing and seeing this takes away the mystery of why a communist insurgency would garner so much support.

After our meeting we took a side trip to see a small conservation center that is home to 144 Black Bucks. Black Bucks are sort of a small antelope with black faces and tails and from what I was told those 144 are the last of them left in Nepal. As we watched the last of the Black Bucks graze, it started to rain. What began as a drizzle soon turned into a steady downpour, so we took refuge at the houses where those responsible for the upkeep of the conservation center live. While Krishna and I sat on their beds inside, the men played and danced in the rain like primary school kids. Kicking puddles and trying to push each other into the mud, they could not have been happier for the start of the monsoon. No electricity means no ceiling fans to chase away the summer heat, and with a tin roof on a house without any natural shade the heat must be unbearable. So when the rain chases away the heat why not dance and play.