Background on Nepal -Civil War - Impact of Poverty - Conditions Where Children are From
 Food Deficit Map of Nepal -  Pemba Sherpa's Story, A Life Affected
Life in the Mountains - Mountain People - Living in the Mountains - Mountain Landscapes - Life in the Nubri Region
Buddhism in the Mountains

Background on Nepal

Landforms Map of Nepal

Our Children Come From the Snow North

(Map Courtesy National Geographic MapMachine)


Nepal is the poorest and hungriest country in Asia.
82.5% of Nepalis survive on less than $1/day.
48% of children are underweight. In Afghanistan, it's 43%

Extreme poverty causes more illness, suffering and death than any disease.





Living with Acute Poverty
This is how long it takes to earn...
1 kilo fo rice = 3 and a half hours of work
1 liter of milk = 4 hours 26 minutes of work
1 kilo of sugar = 4 hours 52 minutes of work
A bicycle = 436 hours of work

Thrangu Rinpoche's schools serve the needs of children who come from the remote Himalayan region.

The areas these kids come from are high altitude, and subject to climate extremes. In Himalay villages, there are no roads, no electricity, no telecommunication, no running water, no sanitation, no health care and no schools. Most of the people are illiterate. Their births are unrecorded and so are their children's. They are, to all intents and purposes, non-existent, invisible people.

Our kids' parents are semi-nomadic yak/goat herders or subsistence farmers. At these altitudes it is only possible to grow potatoes and barley, survival is extremely hard. The loss of an animal or a bad crop can mean the family won't make it through another year. Under such harsh conditions, 71% of mountain children over the age of 5 must work to ensure the family's survival.

Nepal was closed to the outside world until the 1950s, and had a late start in economic development compared with the rest of S. Asia. After decades of absolute monarchy, Nepal finally moved to parliamentary democracy in 1991. A strong start was made in public reforms, including education for the masses but democracy was derailed by corruption in the highest places and a combination of hunger and neglect elsewhere. The reforms were brought to a halt in 1994 as a result of political instability and civil war broke out in 1996. Civil war raged for ten years.

A peace accord was struck in April 2006, but the people still do not have a voice. The country is being running by 8 political parties, all squabbling over money, power and privilege. The UN Human Development Index published in December 2007 showed what all of us on the ground know very well: costs are going up and income is falling and Nepal has slipped down a few notches in the index, ranking below Bangaladesh and Sierra Leone, but above Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

After ten years of war, not much infrastructure is left. Roads, bridges, airstrips, government installations and schools have been destroyed. Rural people have less access to food, medicine and education than they did when the war started (and it wasn't good then). The UN World Food Programme is flying emergency food rations into the remote northern districts as the peace talks drag on. Lots of talk. Not much action, except by outside agencies. Plus la change...