The Road to Solambu

Tara was just another illiterate girl from her village of Panchet, hoping to make a better living in Kathmandu.  At the age of 19, she had never learned to read, write or count – she could barely write her name.  Then something miraculous happened; Tara fell in love with someone who barely spoke her language.  Utaka fell in love with Tara and whisked her away to his home country of Japan, where they went on to have two beautiful girls.

But Tara was still illiterate.  It didn’t matter to Utaka, because Tara had learned very quickly to speak Japanese and he loved her, but it upset Tara when her daughters asked her to check their homework and she couldn’t read a single word.  Tara decided that if she wanted to prove to her children that education was important, then she would also have to learn, so she enrolled in Japanese classes.  She studied whenever she could and worked hard, in fact she worked so hard that she went on to fulfil her childhood dream of becoming a nurse; something unheard of for a girl from her village especially.

Yet Tara still felt something was missing.  She was happily married, had her own loving family but she never forgot about Panchet or the people whom she grew up knowing before she met Utaka.  She knew that she had to do something for the people in her village because she had been lucky.  Her dreams had come true, but there were thousands of people from her village who never dared to dream.  Working in healthcare in Japan had made Tara realise that this level of medical help could be provided in her village, if she could find the funds.  Each month from then on, Tara put aside a portion of her salary, until one day she had saved up almost five million Nepali rupees.

There was just one thing – Tara didn’t know how to build a health centre.  She could only remember basic Nepali, and she spoke no English.  One evening, she decided to ask her kind-hearted Japanese teacher Kyoko (whom she had remained close to even after graduation) for help as she knew Kyoko had contacts who could speak English.  Kyoko and her husband Yukio listened to Tara as she expressed her pain at her inability to help after all this time.  Yukio, who at the time was the Director of a Japanese bank, agreed to go to Nepal with Tara then and there to help her find doctors and contractors.  Together, they left Osaka for Kathmandu.

But when they got to Kathmandu, nobody was willing to help them.  “Why would you want to put money into Panchet?  It’s so far from any big city, spend your money wisely and invest it in hiring doctors in Kathmandu,” hospitals told her and Yukio.  Every night, Tara cried herself to sleep and felt sick at the prospect of being so close, yet further than she had ever felt from home. 

Tara had told her family of her plans for Panchet, and had asked all of them to find help and extra funding for the health centre she wanted to build.  Her cousin, Hira, was one of the few in her family who had left Panchet with a full education.  At the time, he worked as an Office Manager at one of Kathmandu’s most prestigious hotels, and as a result had met many people who worked in business and healthcare.  One of the people he met, just so happened to have recently accomplished exactly what Tara was setting out to do in a small village named Bolde.  Hira’s friend told him that he had gone directly to one of Nepal’s NGO hospitals in a small town called Dhulikhel.

Tara, Yukio and Hira set off for Dhulikhel the next day.  Tara told Dr Ram, Dr Koju and Dr Biraj her story slowly, in her broken Nepali and about her fears that her money wasn’t enough and she had no idea how much everything would cost. All three doctors listened intently and after Tara had finished her story, there was a calm silence.  Dr Ram finally spoke.

“Tara, you came to us with a brilliant idea, why dwell on the amount of money you have?”

With that, Dr Ram, Dr Biraj and Dr Koju accompanied the three on the treacherous six hour journey from Dhulikhel to Panchet.  The doctors loved Panchet, and saw for themselves the beauty of the village which Tara spoke of.  How could it be that in a village where there was no plumbing or electricity for most of the evenings, that there could be such raw compassionate people?  All this time Westernisation had taught people world-wide that modernisation was the key to development, yet there was more civilisation and humanity in this tiny village than you could imagine in any regular city in the West.

On the way back to Dhulikhel, the doctors stopped off in a village named Solambu.  Roughly two hours walk from Panchet, the doctors came up with an idea.  They asked Tara if it would be OK to build a health centre here instead, as it would almost double the catchment area for patients.  Tara was so thrilled, she agreed, because two hours walking for the people in her village would be better than two days to get to the nearest hospital.  Together with Yukio she returned to Japan with hope, not despair.  Yukio later used his knowledge to gather funding for building the health centre. 

What you see in this picture is the finished result of what started as a dream, and was completed brick by hand-carved brick (literally) by people who dared to believe in it.  Tara never stopped dreaming, and together with Yukio she started an International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO) called Nepali Tara which translates as Nepali Star.  And because Tara truly is a bright shining star, she went on to build a school near her village.

Yukio san quit banking permanently, and now runs Nepali Tara from an office in Osaka.   Hira also quit his well-paid job in hotel management to oversee a new bridge project which will connect Panchet to Solambu Health Centre (SHC).  Once completed, this bridge will increase SHC’s catchment area to 75,000 people – that’s more than twice the number who can currently reach SHC.

 This weekend, I accompanied Yukio san, Hira and two representatives from the Japan Overseas Cooperative Association (JOCA) who are monitoring the funding given by Japan Post to build Solambu Health Centre’s latest development; a Community Centre where micro-finance meetings can be conducted, and various programmes can come to life. 

If you ever decide to visit, which you might well do, walk down the steps to the right of the Health Centre towards the canteen.  About six feet down the footpath, you may notice a small orange tree.  This small orange tree, rather like the person who planted it, will one day grow to see other small trees planted around SHC to provide fruit and vegetables for the storage rooms in the completed Community Centre.