Journalist & Historicus
In the early 1970s, two women from very different backgrounds met in Kathmandu and became intimate friends. Both were ‘hippinis’ whose unique stories will be part of the Photo Kathmandu festival next four weeks.
Mahabir Pun’s National Innovation Centre tests medicopters to treat patients in remote areas
In an unassuming office in Kupondol, electrical engineer Suraj Karki turns on the DC power supply, and the room goes quiet as his team waits for the octocopter on a table to show signs of life.
Sure enough, its coloured lights blink, and the rotors start spinning with a whine. Relief and excitement floods the office. Later, after a successful outdoor test flight, Karki’s team names the medicopter Puspak, after the legendary flying machine from the Ramayana. Lees verder
William smoking bong “I brought this bong from Kathmandu and used it for a while. It is basically a bamboo water pipe. It got me so stoned that I forgot what day of the week it was. So I gave it up.”
A Muslim relief agency joining hands with a Christian organisation to help Buddhist earthquake survivors in a largely Hindu country may sound implausible but that is exactly what happened in Rasuwa earlier this month. Lees verder
First published by Nepali Times
Pics: Paul Jeffrey
Sanogaun, a small Newar settlement on the southern fringes of Kathmandu was flattened by the earthquake last year. Now, the community is using an innovative technology to rebuild all its 49 homes so they are cheaper and resistant to future quakes.
The interlocking brick technique developed by Nepali inventor Gyanendra R Sthapit at the Habitech Center of the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand combines the strengths of rammed earth and compressed blocks. It has been used in post-tsunami reconstruction in Thailand in 2008 and after Cyclone Nargis ravaged Burma in 2010 to build more than 1,000 homes, schools, and health clinics. In Bhutan, over 100 quake-proof houses and schools have been built using the technology. Lees verder
First published by Trouw
Orgaanhandel | reportage | Nepal worstelt met zijn huidige transplantatiewet. Die is te strikt en houdt daardoor de illegale orgaanhandel in stand, zeggen experts.
Hoe koop je een nier? Met wat valse documenten kom je een heel eind. Dat leerde Nepalees Sarju Shrestha, illustrator en kunstenaar, toen zijn schoonvader vorig jaar begon te sukkelen met zijn nieren. Lees verder
First piblished by Trouw
Vandaag werd in Nepal de aardbeving officieel herdacht. Op het moment dat de Nepalese premier een krans legde bij de Dharahara-toren, waar veel mensen om het leven kwamen, versjouwden Sunita Tamang en Srijana Maharjan gezamenlijk een partij modder. Ze droegen rubber handschoenen, veiligheidshelmen en stofmaskers. Samen met zo’n dertig andere vrouwen restaureren Sunita en Srijana een waterreservoir in hun dorp Dakchhinkali.
First published by Nepali Times
Just a few minutes into Narbahadur’s film the audience gasps. After four days of walking the 18-year-old former child soldier arrives home in a remote part of Humla district. He has warned the viewers: ‘There is nothing in my village.’ But they are unprepared for the images of grinding poverty in the young filmmaker’s home: malnourished sisters swatting flies, an emaciated mother, and his grey-haired father, a blacksmith who is going blind.
Narbahadur’s film, My Sun Rise, is part of the Through Our Eyes trilogy produced by three teenagers who joined the Maoists when they were only twelve. Like Narbahadur (back centre, pic), Sukmaya (centre) comes from a Dalit background, and as a child was painfully aware of the fact that she was ‘at the bottom and always the last’.
First published by Nepali Times
When my Hero Honda Splendor bike got stolen last year, I felt a deep sense of loss. The Honda had grown on me like no other bike had before. The bike (re-baptised as ‘Heroine Honda’) took me to remote destinations inside the Kathmandu Valley, opening my eyes once more to the beauty of this place we live in.
Buying a new Honda did not seem like a good idea. Valley bikes get stolen at the rate of 140 a day. Queuing for petrol for hours no longer appealed to me. So instead I decided to find an e-bike: the Foton TDP33ZWG, fresh from Zhucheng, China. It somehow reminded me of a centaur. The bike’s front looked feminine, with a cute white basket and a scooter-like dashboard. It had an extended back part, with a solid battery compartment and tool box under a comfortable seat, and a sturdy back seat. I did not even take a test drive. Just paid and drove off.
First published by Nepali Times
Yesterday I heard the news: Dana had died. She probably died the way we knew she would go, on a cold winter day, on the street, unwashed, staring at occasional passers-by with her unwavering dark eyes until they became uncomfortable and left her to die.
A train of memories. Her first appearance in my Patan neighbourhood. One day a well built, barely dressed person collapses in front of my two-storey house, face down in the mud. When the person is still there some hours later, in the same position, I start to worry. “Dai, please wake up!” I call and shake the foul smelling body.
© 2023 Lucia de Vries
Thema gemaakt door Anders Noren — Boven ↑