“We must bring about change ourselves,” explains Kali Bista, center, holding two of her grandchildren at their home in Bhageshwar village, Achham, Nepal. Kali followed the example of her neighbor Maheshwari five years ago and now sleeps in a room inside her home during menstruation instead of outside, as many of the area women do. Bista said years of public campaigns did nothing to stop this practice in the village until Maheshwari led by example. “NGOs come and go but we, the villagers, are here to stay.” Image and caption by Pulitzer Center grantee Allison Shelley. Nepal, 2012. Read and see more photos here.
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“We must bring about change ourselves,” explains Kali Bista, center, holding two of her grandchildren at their home in Bhageshwar village, Achham, Nepal. Kali followed the example of her neighbor Maheshwari five years ago and now sleeps in a room inside her home during menstruation instead of outside, as many of the area women do. Bista said years of public campaigns did nothing to stop this practice in the village until Maheshwari led by example. “NGOs come and go but we, the villagers, are here to stay.”

Image and caption by Pulitzer Center grantee Allison Shelley. Nepal, 2012.

Read and see more photos here.

nprradiopictures:

It took a long journey, several 10-hour jeep rides, and many bumpy unpaved roads for photographer Allison Shelley and writer Allyn Gaestel to reach the rural villages in Nepal where women practice chaupadi.

Chaupadi is a traditional Hindu practice that banishes menstruating women — considered unclean — from the rest of the house. According to Shelley and Gaestel, they are not allowed to touch kitchen utensils, share the same water source, go to school, or sleep inside the home during their periods.

Instead, they sleep in huts, animal sheds, caves or even in the open. The crude spaces are often not heated and provide little protection from the elements — or from rape. Despite being outlawed in 2005, social and cultural traditions keep chaupadi alive. Shelley told me that women and children have died from exposure, burning or animal attacks, all while practicing chaupadi.

Shelley says she was shocked when she first learned of chaupadi while researching global women’s health issues back in the U.S. But she came to realize it was a much more complex issue than simply ordering women back into their homes.

In Hindu Ritual, Nepali Women Are Banished Once A Month

Photo Credit: Allison Shelley

Read stories about chaupadi and see more photos here, from Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel.

allisonshelley: “Every woman here has thought about staying in the house [during her period], as many women have died due to snakebites and tigers. Also, men storm into the hut sometimes.” —Mahashwari Bista of Bhageshwar village, Achham, Nepal, on the regional practice of sending women to live in animal sheds during menstruation I am reporting from Achham with writer Allyn Gaestel with a grant from Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Follow us on Pulitzer Center’s “In the Field” tumblr. Read more of Allison and Allyn’s work here.
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allisonshelley:

“Every woman here has thought about staying in the house [during her period], as many women have died due to snakebites and tigers. Also, men storm into the hut sometimes.”
—Mahashwari Bista of Bhageshwar village, Achham, Nepal, on the regional practice of sending women to live in animal sheds during menstruation

I am reporting from Achham with writer Allyn Gaestel with a grant from Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Follow us on Pulitzer Center’s “In the Field” tumblr.


Read more of Allison and Allyn’s work here.

pulitzerfieldnotes: (Photo: Radha Devi Swar stands in her family compound in Ridikot, Achham, Nepal. Photo by Allison Shelley. Nepal, 2012.) MIGRATION MEDITATION We arrived in Achham, a distant ripple of mountains in far western Nepal, only to find everyone else heading the other way. Dotted along the terraced hillsides are homes in the traditional style, intricately carved wooden window frames, multiple stories built of stones covered in red, brown or white earth. The ceilings are low enough for tall visitors to stoop, the walls thick enough to insulate against the nightly chill.  Three three-story homes, one more dilapidated than the next, share a single courtyard. Stately and elegant in structure, the houses look nearly haunted now. Rounded mud corners; saplings growing through the window. In the yard, Radha Devi Swar surveys the remnants of her family compound. She points to the first house, owned by a lawyer, the second a doctor; four brothers had lived here with their families before trickling off, one by one, to the cities.  Radha has the wizened wrinkles of a rural working woman. Toes stained and calloused from walking in the dirt, face molded from squinting against the sun. She walks stiffly and apologizes for the state of the house; busy caring for a dying relative, she has had no time to re-plaster. The brothers return sporadically, when the temple behind the house needs attending, but not every year. So Radha battles entropy to maintain the estate. “If no one stayed here,” she said, “it would be destroyed.” All along the twisting footpaths of Achham, houses stand half vacant. Achhami men, and increasingly the women, seek schooling, jobs and urban luxuries somewhere—anywhere—else. They venture to the plains, the capitol, Mumbai, the Gulf. One hill over from Radha Swar’s home, another weathered woman, also named Radha Devi, but of the Kunwar family, is preparing her own departure. “Everything is nice here, fresh vegetables, fresh water, fresh air, good food,” she says, bittersweet, “but I like Kathmandu…you can travel on a bus, you don’t have to walk everywhere.” She too will leave her tidy courtyard, the cows, the goats, the papaya trees, the spinach fields to join her sons and husband in Kathmandu. And the homestead? The farm? “We are planning to lock the house and go.” In its place will be another crumbling legacy of the ones who left. -From Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, who are in the field in Nepal. Image by Allison Shelley. Text by Allyn Gaestel.
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pulitzerfieldnotes:

(Photo: Radha Devi Swar stands in her family compound in Ridikot, Achham, Nepal. Photo by Allison Shelley. Nepal, 2012.)

MIGRATION MEDITATION

We arrived in Achham, a distant ripple of mountains in far western Nepal, only to find everyone else heading the other way.

Dotted along the terraced hillsides are homes in the traditional style, intricately carved wooden window frames, multiple stories built of stones covered in red, brown or white earth. The ceilings are low enough for tall visitors to stoop, the walls thick enough to insulate against the nightly chill. 

Three three-story homes, one more dilapidated than the next, share a single courtyard. Stately and elegant in structure, the houses look nearly haunted now. Rounded mud corners; saplings growing through the window.

In the yard, Radha Devi Swar surveys the remnants of her family compound. She points to the first house, owned by a lawyer, the second a doctor; four brothers had lived here with their families before trickling off, one by one, to the cities. 

Radha has the wizened wrinkles of a rural working woman. Toes stained and calloused from walking in the dirt, face molded from squinting against the sun.

She walks stiffly and apologizes for the state of the house; busy caring for a dying relative, she has had no time to re-plaster. The brothers return sporadically, when the temple behind the house needs attending, but not every year. So Radha battles entropy to maintain the estate. “If no one stayed here,” she said, “it would be destroyed.”

All along the twisting footpaths of Achham, houses stand half vacant. Achhami men, and increasingly the women, seek schooling, jobs and urban luxuries somewhere—anywhere—else. They venture to the plains, the capitol, Mumbai, the Gulf.

One hill over from Radha Swar’s home, another weathered woman, also named Radha Devi, but of the Kunwar family, is preparing her own departure. “Everything is nice here, fresh vegetables, fresh water, fresh air, good food,” she says, bittersweet, “but I like Kathmandu…you can travel on a bus, you don’t have to walk everywhere.”

She too will leave her tidy courtyard, the cows, the goats, the papaya trees, the spinach fields to join her sons and husband in Kathmandu. And the homestead? The farm? “We are planning to lock the house and go.”

In its place will be another crumbling legacy of the ones who left.

-From Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, who are in the field in Nepal.

Image by Allison Shelley. Text by Allyn Gaestel.

pulitzerfieldnotes: QUALITY VS. QUANTITY Bayalpata, Achham, Nepal: Mahendra Secondary School is tucked halfway up one of Achham’s countless steep peaks. Everyday but Saturday at 10am a seamless stream of girls in pleated skirts and boys in tucked collared shirts clamber up rocky paths to reach the broad schoolyard. Students gather outside chilly classrooms, learning lessons under the bright, warm midday sun. Clusters of girls—giggling, whispering, reading, gossiping—are new to Mahendra, according to the principal, Indrajit Thakulla. He says a decade ago girls made up 5 percent of the student body. Now they outnumber boys, at 53 percent. Thakulla links the population jump with the government’s “Education For All” strategy, which provided cash incentives for girls to attend school starting in 2001. “At least they are giving priority to education,” he said. But while girls’ attendance has grown enormously, their performance lags far behind their male counterparts. Thakulla says only about 10 percent of girls achieve grade standards, compared to 40-50 percent of boys.  The problem, he says, is girls “don’t focus.” Their distraction? Thakulla says girls do almost all the household chores. “This is a problem in most of Nepal, but in Achham it’s even worse.” Puja Rawal, an outspoken 8th grader, enumerated her extracurricular activities: feeding cattle, beating rice, cooking food, fetching water. Her brothers, on the other hand, “go and play. Wherever they go, they just come back for dinner.” She insists that she prioritizes her studies, but as the outcomes show, balance is more precarious for her than her brothers. Thakulla, with his deep smile lines and the perspective of a quarter century experience at the school, has faith in the slow march toward gender equity. “I think in 10 years they will be more equal,” he forecast. -From Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, who are in the field in Nepal. Image by Allison Shelley. Text by Allyn Gaestel.
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pulitzerfieldnotes:

QUALITY VS. QUANTITY

Bayalpata, Achham, Nepal: Mahendra Secondary School is tucked halfway up one of Achham’s countless steep peaks. Everyday but Saturday at 10am a seamless stream of girls in pleated skirts and boys in tucked collared shirts clamber up rocky paths to reach the broad schoolyard. Students gather outside chilly classrooms, learning lessons under the bright, warm midday sun.

Clusters of girls—giggling, whispering, reading, gossiping—are new to Mahendra, according to the principal, Indrajit Thakulla. He says a decade ago girls made up 5 percent of the student body. Now they outnumber boys, at 53 percent. Thakulla links the population jump with the government’s “Education For All” strategy, which provided cash incentives for girls to attend school starting in 2001. “At least they are giving priority to education,” he said.

But while girls’ attendance has grown enormously, their performance lags far behind their male counterparts. Thakulla says only about 10 percent of girls achieve grade standards, compared to 40-50 percent of boys.  The problem, he says, is girls “don’t focus.” Their distraction? Thakulla says girls do almost all the household chores. “This is a problem in most of Nepal, but in Achham it’s even worse.”

Puja Rawal, an outspoken 8th grader, enumerated her extracurricular activities: feeding cattle, beating rice, cooking food, fetching water. Her brothers, on the other hand, “go and play. Wherever they go, they just come back for dinner.” She insists that she prioritizes her studies, but as the outcomes show, balance is more precarious for her than her brothers.

Thakulla, with his deep smile lines and the perspective of a quarter century experience at the school, has faith in the slow march toward gender equity. “I think in 10 years they will be more equal,” he forecast.

-From Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, who are in the field in Nepal.

Image by Allison Shelley. Text by Allyn Gaestel.

pulitzerfieldnotes: SEX IN THE CITY, AIDS IN THE COUNTRY Bayalpata, Achham, Nepal: Candles glowed against the deep black early night in this sleepy far western town tucked between Nepal’s endless ripples of mountains. A small crowd of AIDS activists, local children and a few nearby shopkeepers gathered around a red ribbon drawn on the concrete in abir, the red powder used at Nepali Festivals, to commemorate World AIDS Day on Saturday.“Achham has a dreadful situation around AIDS,” Nirajan Khadka told the crowd. As a community health program officer for Nyaya Health, the American-Nepali organization running the local hospital, Khadka has witnessed the toll AIDS has wreaked on the local population. The simple gathering and the rural pace of life belie a hidden epidemic here. In two-thirds of families, men migrate to India to work, according to surveys by Nyaya Health. Most of them go to Mumbai or other bustling Indian cities. Long periods abroad spur sexual relations away from home, and male migrants make up 27 percent of Nepal’s HIV positive population. But the cycle swirls further: returning home, many migrants infect their wives. Women make up two-thirds of diagnosed HIV cases in Achham.The AIDS symbol glowing on the concrete in this tiny, remote town is a reminder of the quiet burden rural women bear in the global epidemic. — From Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, who are in the field in Nepal. Image by Allison Shelley.  Text by Allyn Gaestel.
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pulitzerfieldnotes:

SEX IN THE CITY, AIDS IN THE COUNTRY


Bayalpata, Achham, Nepal: Candles glowed against the deep black early night in this sleepy far western town tucked between Nepal’s endless ripples of mountains. A small crowd of AIDS activists, local children and a few nearby shopkeepers gathered around a red ribbon drawn on the concrete in abir, the red powder used at Nepali Festivals, to commemorate World AIDS Day on Saturday.

“Achham has a dreadful situation around AIDS,” Nirajan Khadka told the crowd. As a community health program officer for Nyaya Health, the American-Nepali organization running the local hospital, Khadka has witnessed the toll AIDS has wreaked on the local population.


The simple gathering and the rural pace of life belie a hidden epidemic here. In two-thirds of families, men migrate to India to work, according to surveys by Nyaya Health. Most of them go to Mumbai or other bustling Indian cities. Long periods abroad spur sexual relations away from home, and male migrants make up 27 percent of Nepal’s HIV positive population. But the cycle swirls further: returning home, many migrants infect their wives. Women make up two-thirds of diagnosed HIV cases in Achham.

The AIDS symbol glowing on the concrete in this tiny, remote town is a reminder of the quiet burden rural women bear in the global epidemic.

— From Pulitzer Center grantees Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, who are in the field in Nepal.

Image by Allison Shelley.  Text by Allyn Gaestel.

pulitzerfieldnotes:

We chose to report from Achham because it is a place still bathed, toweled and wrapped in tradition— every action colored by a deep and abiding belief in something.  A spoonful of rice offered to the fire while cooking.

Here in the crisp Nepali mountain air, ten hours by jeep from the nearest airstrip, it is festival season.  Here, to reach anywhere worth reaching you must walk.  And anyone who can walk walked to a place called Dauthegada on Wednesday— emerging onto an open hill terraced for planting, the green carpeting of first shoots garlanded as if for Christmas by thousands of spectating women in red festival saris. 

But this holiday is in honor of goddess Barba Devi.  In what is part bullfight with a dash of county fair, male cattle are chased across the steps and hacked at by men brandishing sticks, knives and strong buzzes under a full moon. Sticky orange donuts, peanuts, apples.  Couples elope on this day as the meat is consecrated and distributed to the poor.  The heads are carried triumphantly home.

— Allison Shelley

Ed. Note: Allison and Allyn Gaestel are reporting from Nepal with a Pulitzer Center grant. Photos by Allison Shelley. Nepal, 2012.

We’re very proud and excited to announce the launch of a new and incredibly important project, Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides, by world renown photographer Stephanie Sinclair.

In subsequent years I traveled to Nepal, Ethiopia, India and Yemen researching and photographing this issue for several publications, most recently for National Geographic. In almost every situation, I wanted to take the girl, throw her over my shoulder and get her out of there…

I hope people will hear the voices of these young girls, see these images and talk about what they have witnessed in this film. I believe those conversations will lead to actions on their behalf. There is a lot of work to be done on this issue, but change will come. It can be daunting, but it’s not impossible.

Take a moment to view powerful video above, and read more about her work: Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides

The Bloody Crossroads

At 6:45 am, Golf reported six more injuries and called again, frantically, for reinforcements. The company was now caught in a textbook ambush, with the Maoists occupying the raised ground and the CRPF pinned down in an open field, under fire, or so it seemed, from all sides. A Maoist machine-gunner on the top of a hill was picking off targets at will, even as guerrillas taking cover in shallow ditches and gullies threw grenades and petrol bombs at the hapless soldiers. Well-positioned Maoist snipers took aim at CRPF machine-gunners and communications specialists. Survivors from Golf Company later said they saw machine-gunners shooting from trees, with replacement fighters taking cover behind the trunks, ready to climb up in case the gunners were taken out.

At 7:45 am, Golf Company’s deputy commandant, Satyawan Yadav, made a phone call from the vortex of the ambush to say that his company had been completely surrounded—and then the phone went silent.

When reinforcements finally arrived from Chintalnar at 9:30 am, three and half hours after the first call for help, only seven badly injured troopers were still alive. The remaining 76 corpses had been arranged 15 to a pile, carefully stripped of their rifles, munitions, grenades, mortars and wireless sets. The Maoists, meanwhile, had laid their fallen comrades on makeshift stretchers and slipped back into the forests.

Back in 2009, we had Jason Motlagh, multimedia journalist extraordinaire, do some reporting on the Maoists in India and Nepal. Definitely worth a look!

(via the-feature)

globalvoices:

The citizen media video that inspired an Indian village to come out in support for gay rights.

Read more

Read more about the challenges gay people face around the world:

In Haiti, Jamaica, Istanbul, Nepal and many others members of the LGBTQI community face widespread discrimination, risk of violence and even death. As the global voices article linked above demonstrates, slow progress is being made but a lot of work remains.