OUR SHORT INTENSE VERY PERSONAL VISIT TO NEPAL

After arriving in Mumbai, we took a quick trip to Nepal to meet special friends.  I have a long history with Nepal, having visited in 1983, 2002, & 2012.  It is an amazing country!

Our visit this month was to meet two special Nepali friends, Shashi and Jumuna, and to visit the music school founded by my dear German friend Gert Wegner. 

Shashi Bhandari

I first met Shashi in 2001 in Columbus, Georgia (my birthplace).  My mother had died, and my father, in an assisted living facility, needed a “sitter” to help him through the day.  The assisted living facility did not have enough staff to give the care my father needed.  I contacted an eldercare agency, and they sent Shashi.  We became instant friends.  I visited Shashi at his home in Pokhara, Nepal, in 2012.  Pokhara is the starting point for many tourists visiting the Himalayas.  It is surrounded by mountains, the most famous being Annapurna, the “Fishtail.”

Shashi works as a Christian missionary sponsored by a church in Columbus, Georgia.  He works with foreign aid organizations providing relief work to earthquake, flood, and landslide victims (among others).  Shashi is trained as a nurse.  Due to the lack of a healthcare system in Nepal, Shashi plays the role of a visiting doctor to isolated villagers with no access to healthcare.  If any readers are interested in contributing to Shashi’s work, please contact me, and I will refer you directly to him.

Jamuna Lama

On our visit to Nepal in 2002, we met Jamuna.  She and her sister Sharmila were teenagers selling handicrafts in the city of Bhaktapur where Gert lived and founded his music school.  We lost contact with Jamuna for some years, until we were able to reconnect, first online, and then in person in Dubai, where she and other family members work as domestic helpers.  We had last seen Jamuna in 2019 in Dubai.  When we learned that she would be in Nepal while we were in Mumbai, we made it a priority to visit her in Katmandu, because we don’t know when we’ll be visiting Dubai again, where we might see her.

Jamuna was born to a Buddhist tribe living in the Nepalese border area close to the Tibetan border.  (There are many distinct tribal groups in Nepal and India.) Jamuna is necessarily quadra-lingual, speaking her native tribal language, plus Newar, the language spoken in Bhaktapur, standard Nepali, Nepal’s official language, and English.  She is the most educated of her family members.  She was initially sponsored to go to school, but the school took the money.  She only went through early grades formally.  Then, like many others, she was on her own.  In 2017, we gave her a tablet and a mobile phone.  She is adept at using her phone and writing texts to me.  In Dubai, she lived with a Belgian family, with the mother being an English teacher.  Jamuna is a diligent student.

Jamuna and her siblings earn ten times as much in wages working in Dubai as they would in Nepal, though Dubai’s payments to immigrant workers are low by Western standards.  Nepal is one of the world’s poorest countries.  Jamuna is sending her earnings to her family, which they are using to build a new house after their original house was destroyed in the tragic 2015 earthquake.  Anyone wishing to contribute to Jamuna and her family, please contact me.

Gert Wegner

Gert was the first person I met when I went to study the “junior year abroad” in Kiel, Germany in 1969.  I first heard him playing Debussy and Ravel on the piano, music that I love.  Fifty-five years later, we are still best friends.  I stayed out of the US between 1969-1971, until the Vietnam War was over.  Gert and I took the overland “hippie trail” to India in 2001, traveling overland through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally reaching Mumbai.  This was the trip during which I first discovered the bansuri, the Indian bamboo flute.  Gert discovered the tabla drums, which he studied for many years. 

Gert continued to live in Mumbai for over ten years, after which he relocated to Bhaktapur, Nepal, where he remained for over thirty years.  In Bhaktapur, Gert established a music school, located in a historic temple grounds.  Susan and I visited that school in 2002, which is when we met Jamuna.  His school provided instruction in Indian and Nepali classical music, as well as introducing students to Western music and recording technology. 

Unfortunately, the original school site in Bhaktapur was destroyed in an earthquake and flood.  Luckily, his school’s reputation had spread, and he was invited to relocate his school to Katmandu University.  Again, the site offered to house the music school was an ancient temple ground.  This temple and its surrounding buildings needed major renovation in order to reopen the school.  Gert (somehow) obtained a $1.5 million dollar grant from the government of Thailand.  Major repairs were done, though more funding is needed.

Lochan Rijal

Gert has retired to Germany, putting his school in the hands of its new director Lochan, whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time.  Lochan is a former rock music star turned ethnomusicology teacher and reconstruction supervisor.  Lochan is also a multi-instrumentalist and recording artist.  You can see and hear him at his website: https://www.lochanrijal.com/index.php

Luckily, I was able to spend half a day with Lochan, visiting the school grounds, and learning of the challenges faced in order to complete the school.  Unfortunately, Katmandu University disassociated itself from the school, closing its music department, and firing Lochan, who had been the head of the KU music department.  Lochan was forced to seek other funding to continue the renovations.  He related to me that the prospects look good for receiving a $3 million dollar grant, which would finance the reconstruction work remaining to be done.

Quick Visits to Major Tourist Sites

Finally, besides meeting Shashi, Jamuna, and Lochan, I made a point of visiting ancient temple sites in Katmandu that I had last visited in 2002.  The 2015 earthquake destroyed many important historic buildings.  Many of them have been reconstructed just as they were before.  But some structures are still being repaired and restored. 

Stupas are the round structures containing the remains of Buddhist saints and other historic relics.  They have Buddha’s eyes with the Nepalese symbol for the number one placed in the position of what would be Buddha’s nose.

Katmandu has many Buddhist refugees from Tibet, who left Tibet in the 1950’s and afterwards due to the authoritarian atheist Chinese rulers who annexed Tibet as “originally” belonging to China. It was during this period that the Dalai Lama, the most holy Buddhist leader, fled from Tibet to India, where he continues to live.  We visited the largest Buddhist Stupa in the world, Boudhanath, dating from the 15^th century and named a UNESCO World Heritage site. One sees many Buddhist monks wearing their traditional maroon-colored robes. 

I was happy to once again visit the excellent museum that is housed in the former royal palace in the city of Patan, adjacent to Katmandu.  It contains many historic artifacts as well as panels highlighting major events in Nepal’s history.  Nepal has a large population of Buddhists, as well as Hindus and Moslems (and a smaller number of Christians, including some converted by Shashi). 

Last but not least, I visited the Swayambhunath Stupa Complex.  There are several stupas/temples located on a hill overlooking Katmandu.  It is also known as the “Monkey Temple” due to the presence of thousands of monkeys on the hill.  The monkeys generally coexist peacefully with the resident monks and visiting tourists.  

There are many photo opportunities in Nepal.  Almost all the photos in the accompanying gallery were taken during my one half-day spent visiting the sites.  The Buddhist influence on the art and architecture is striking.  The people didn’t mind being photographed.  In general I find the people Nepal (and India as well) to be very friendly and open to interaction.  This makes these countries very pleasant to visit.  Enjoy the photos!