Dear Friends,
something happend in the stagnating political situation in Nepal this spring: the four most powerful parties in the country agreed on a compromise. The maoist pime minister refused to resign from charge if the army assumes power. Therefore an interim authority under the Supreme judge R J. Regmi came into power. Regmi is considered to be incorruptible and respected by the majority and calls the election with his ministers.
For years, Nepal does not have a constitution; democracy is supposed to make a new start for Nepal possible. But the majority of the Nepalese is illiterate and not really interested in politics. They believe that all politicians are corrupt and they accept their daily life as it is.
Unfortunately our employees are ignorant of their political situation: often they are energetic in the morning and willing to do their daily work. But then: streets are empty; nobody is allowed to drive along the streets as they are stoned by others, and vehicles are set to fire. Rumours say that it is either the taxi drivers protesting against prices of petrol or teachers are fighting for more money. Sometimes it is the very left winged party, who is regularly demonstrating against the other parties. Shops and schools are closed then, everybody is afraid of reprisal. While middle-class people are happy for a day off, this general strike makes the daily life for the poor even worse: they have to do without the income and rice portion of a day.
If people are so ignorant of a political situation, how can there be fair elections? It seems to be likely that the winner of the election is going to be the parties, who pay the voters of - a strange way of establishing democracy in Nepal. The inflation and the rising prices turn Nepal in the eight poorest country in the world. The majority of the people are surviving by only rice or only white grits and suffering from undernourishment. Especially small children up to five years old need a proper nutrition to make sure their physical and mental health develops normally. A shortage of vitamins and minerals causes irreversible damages. Although the level of the Nepalese school system is not that high, lots of pupils have difficulties with studying. It is not only the nutrition, which is short, but also drinking water. The Himalayas' water is turning into a polluted stream due to excrement and waste. The air pollution causes respiratory infections; 30% of the children are suffering from that. Kinderhilfe Nepal is fighting against these main problems: our aid program helps with nutrition for babies, grown-ups benefit form the fresh and drinkable water which we deliver to the inhabitants of the slums.
The government stopped destroying the slums for now. 1500 inhabitants of the slum Thapathali, which was already destroyed, are still living under plastic covers and police is immediately getting in the way of people who are trying to rebuild their homes.
Sija, who is studying psychology now, stopped working for us now but still helps out, if necessary. MUNA and SUSHMA are leading the project now. Due to her education in health, Muna is allowed to distribute medicine and do small surgeries. We take the costs of surgeries as they could not be done without us. As parents often do not know what to do in hospitals, our employees help and attend them. The site of Sinamangal is the starting point of the weekly visits of Muna and Sushma in six different slums. We found out that it is not worth to wait in the medical ward for people to come. Only if people are really sick and urgently need to go to hospital they will come to us. Therefore we decided to come to them.
Muna and Sushma are going to all barracks in the slums and assist the inhabitants with medical advices before the state of health is getting critical. They also leave their phone number to be available all the time. In March we recruited a doctor, who examined children in the slums and supported Muna and Sushma and their fight for a better care of health in the slums.
Due to your help we could extend our help for hundreds of moiré children. As most parents cannot afford more than one plate of rice, we decided to give away our nutritious milk pudding in the slums to children up to 15 years old.
Many thanks to everybody who makes our help possible. We get in touch with again in the beginning of September.
Yours sincerely
Elisabeth Montet