Progress pics of the new rooms we are building on the roof in Pokhara. 

This extension will give us another treatment/training room, a private office/staff room with much-needed storage space and one more bathroom (which should help with the hand-washing queues!). Our contractor has promised us it should be ready by mid-March and we are looking forward to kitting out our new space when the time comes. 

 

We are still planning to open a third clinic this year as well, but building more rooms now will allow us to fulfil our need for extra space more cheaply in the short term. It will also enable us to move training activities back to Pokhara again from Kathmandu. Training in the capital did have some advantages but it was much more difficult for students to find nearby accommodation and make their way to the clinic for lessons. 

New signage in Pokhara

Christmas in Bardia National Park with Mel Cash (ISRM founder & SHN Member), Cedric Jeanson (SHN Trustee) and Stefi Addetta (ISRM Tutor). Since Cedric and Mel both happened to come to Nepal at the same time, and we are all connected with Seeing Hands, we took a trip together to Bardia (one of Nepal's more remote National Parks) with the hope of seeing tigers. Sadly the big cats eluded us but we had a great time in the jungle all the same, and stunning scenery on the way back to Pokhara, via Lumbini.

Mel and Stefi also spent a few days teaching both the students in Kathmandu and the therapists in Pokhara during their stay in Nepal and were particularly impressed with their skill levels. Mel helped us to devise a 30 minute remedial massage routine to suit runners taking part in the Annapurna 100km race on New Year's Day (which SHN supported with discounts for participants). The therapists who treated the runners also got a good education on what a calf muscle feels like after a 100km race (like stone apparently!).

 A fond farewell to Andrew!

At the end of October, everyone at SHN was delighted to welcome back Andrew Salvietti, who volunteered for us previously in June and simply couldn't stay away! He arrived during Tihar and has done great things with our students. Sagar and Santosh are making excellent progress now, competently performing leg massage and really developing their massage skills in general.

The students and therapists have had some treats too, courtesy of Andrew. Pictured are Chiran, Sagar Santosh and his wife Manisha enjoying a live Blues concert in Thamel in the evening, and exploring Bhaktapur in their leisure time.

In addition to teaching, Andrew has also helped us by painting the front entrance and designing and gifting to us two beautiful new signs for our gate. The smaller sign is carved from slate and Chiran is pictured giving it the 'smell test'!  

We also owe a massive thankyou to Andrew for once again raising a substantial sum of money for us to support the continuing training programme (Andrew is pictured handing it over) and bringing a rucksack full of donated equipment (assistive aids for the blind), chocolate, downloaded music, whisky for Chiran's birthday (which he is pictured opening) and many other goodies. :) :)

Andrew has built lasting bonds with all our staff and students and will be sorely missed. Pictured are Sagar and Santosh saying their goodbyes.

Tihar Celebrations

High season is now upon us and we have been frantically busy with both clinics hitting record numbers in October. This is particularly good, considering that both Dashain and Tihar (Deepwali) fell in that month so we had the usual festival-related disruptions with staff and students heading home to celebrate with their families. Fortunately we managed to keep both clinics open for all but a couple of days. Pictured is the Kathmandu clinic adorned with candles and a mandala for Laxmi Puja, a special festival day in Deepwali when people light their homes to tempt in Laxmi (the Hindu goddess of wealth) and bring them prosperity for the coming year. The mandala was made by Sneha who is pictured with her handiwork and we lit it later in the evening, at the same time marking our first year's anniversary for the new clinic in Kathmandu.

Laxmi and Chiran are both well (Laxmi came back to work in September) and seem recovered from their traumatic experiences. Both have asked us to pass on their thanks for the many messages of condolences they recieved at that time. A busy clinic in Kathmandu has helped to keep them distracted and we are all really pleased to see client numbers increasing so well after the slow monsoon months.

In other news - we got new stairs at the existing clinic (first step towards a planned 2nd floor expansion) and Govinda got himself some new teeth - which look fantastic. Both are pictured.

SHN on facebook
If two blogs and a website weren't enough..we now have a facebook page as well. If you are on facebook, please give our page a look..and hopefully a 'Like' too. There are lots of interesting photos on there and we particularly like these before and after montages of our staff - their faces say it all!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Seeing-Hands-Nepal/172867839460992

Sad News

This month we have some very sad news to convey, as many of you were aware, our therapists Chiran and Laxmi were expecting a baby at the end of June. Their boy, Endeavour, was born on 19^th with a healthy weight but sadly died just 35 hours later in the hospital after contracting meningitis. Obviously both parents are devastated and still struggling to make sense of such a traumatic event.

Andrew – our latest volunteer was here alone with them (we had left for the UK 10 days previously) and coped bravely, providing the support and compassion they needed in the early stages of their grief and shock. We are immensely grateful for this – and relieved that he was there in our absence. We returned as fast as we could (unfortunately not quite fast enough to catch Andrew before his departure back to Sydney) and can see that he has had a very positive and supportive influence, and forged deep and lasting bonds with staff and students alike. Sneha and Didi (aka Bhagwati) also did (and are continuing to do) an amazing job looking after Laxmi and Chiran, and the Seeing Hands family in Kathmandu is now much stronger as a result.

In happier news...
The students are making excellent progress (thanks again to Andrew) and are now extremely well acquainted with Henry, our skeleton. Their level of English is much better than previous student intakes, and this is allowing us to teach the course in more depth and really test their understanding.

Pictured is some origami (a basket and helicopter) made by Deepak (just one of his many talents). We now have a collection of paper birds, boats and boxes and we’re rapidly running out of paper for him to fold!

The clinic in Kathmandu is also doing much better than we expected – now we are into monsoon season it is actually beating Pokhara in terms of client numbers. We are unlikely to break even while the rains pour on but this is a very encouraging sign and the few clients we are getting are helping to keep Chiran distracted. Ramji has also temporarily relocated from Pokhara to work alongside Chiran until Laxmi is well enough to return. He is enjoying his time in Thamel so far (spending most of it playfighting with Sagar!) and is keeping us all entertained with his antics.   

Thanks and a plea for more help!

Special thanks to Andrew Salvetti..again! Also to Daniel and Laxmi Sweeting, a Nepali-English couple who asked their wedding guests not to give presents, but gifts of money for a charitable cause in Nepal. After meeting some of our therapists and seeing our work firsthand, they chose to donate their marriage fund to Seeing Hands and we are touched by their gesture. Right now, support like this is crucial for the charity, which would be running on empty were it not for our regular donors. Income from the clinic businesses is helping to support day to day operations but we are in low season now, and expecting to make a loss in both clinics for the next 2-3 months. We also need volunteers (therapists) – particularly for the first half of 2012 so if you can support us in any way (physical or financial), please get in touch.

New Volunteer Arrives!A warm welcome to Andrew Salvetti , who will be teaching the new students in Kathmandu for the next month. Andrew is our 2nd Aussie volunteer to date, he runs a successful mobile remedial sports massage business in Sydney and has treated several notable clients including Sir Ian McKellan! He has also done an amazing job raising funds for us, raffling off massages and other prizes donated by clients and friends to collect a fantastic total of $1740 AUD which is a huge help for the project and especially the continuing training programme.

For more pics see SHN in Pictures

Why no girls? Although we are anxious to help blind women in Nepal, we do not yet have sufficient funds to open a third clinic in the next year, so it is possible these latest students will have to seek work in local spas and hotels when they graduate. Since such places would expect female therapists to massage males too, we feel the risks (the seedier side of massage still exists in Nepal) would be too high. We do however hope to train more girls in the future when we are sure we can offer them work within a safer, more caring environment.

New Students! We are delighted to announce we have taken on 3 new students, their names are Santosh Sapkota, Sagar Subedi and Deepak Pradhan (pictured below) All are totally blind and purely coincidentally, all of them are also 24 years old!

Santosh comes from Goldhungha district near Kathmandu and has 7 siblings, his blindness is a result of medicine that should not have been prescribed to his mother during pregnancy (we’re not sure what). Until recently, he was receiving a scholarship to study at Bachelor level but it was cut after he failed his 2nd year. He says he is not a natural academic but really enjoys learning English, and wants to do something more practical with his hands.   He plays the guitar well and clearly has good dexterity so we think a hands on profession like massage will be ideal for him. Santosh is recently married and like many other blinds here, plays cricket in his spare time.

Sagar comes from Syangja district.  He was partially blind from birth due to nerve damage, but then lost his sight completely following a failed operation in his teenage years to correct the damage.  He is the only son in his family and so desperately wants to earn a living to support his parents, but even though he is studying for a bachelor, his job prospects are extremely limited because of his blindness.  Sagar says he’s been interested in learning the skill of massage for a long time now (this was his fourth attempt to get on our course!) – and is delighted to get the opportunity to train in something that can actually lead to a job. He also plays cricket in his spare time and says he loves to swim when he gets the chance.

Deepak comes from Ramechaap district and is currently living in a rented room in Koteshwor on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Like Sagar, he was partially sighted from birth but became totally blind following a bungled eye operation when he was 9. Somehow he has managed to survive on meagre handouts from the government and his family for the past few years while completing a bachelor in Education at the local campus. He is clearly academically bright but is also realistic about his future job prospects, knowing that even if he goes on to complete a Masters his chances of finding paid work are very slim.  Deepak is positive and motivated with a very enquiring mind, he describes himself as athletic and says he thoroughly enjoys physical training. He also loves to play chess (when he can get his hands on an adapted board) and modestly says he is ‘quite good’ at it.

New Things
Thanks to a fantastic April and May at both clinics (Kathmandu has now broken even!) the project has also generated (itself!) some extra spending money for some much needed new things. We have now got a new generator for Pokhara (our 3yr old one spluttered its last gasp a few weeks ago) and had stairs made for easier access to the roof, in line with our future plans to build a basic room up there (now we are using all 3 rooms, secure storage space is at a premium!). We’ve also bought an outside table, chairs and shade, as with 8 therapists, staff and guests we are rapidly running out of places for everybody to sit! In Kathmandu we’ve splashed out on a water filter (the tap water was beyond brackish and not healthy to wash in) and a new skeleton for the forthcoming training programme, who we have named Henry, as sadly George was just too broken and inarticulate for our needs.

We are delighted to announce that all our students have successfully qualified – pictured are Ramji, Hari, Saraswati and Shanti with their certificates.

All are now working full time in the Pokhara clinic, which is a little over-staffed now with 8 therapists (and only 5 couches – one broke!) so we’re hoping to move a couple to Kathmandu as soon as we can. Thankfully April is already shaping up to be a busy month so hopefully there will be enough clients for them all!

We will now be taking a couple of months break before starting our new student selections, as we are considering shifting our training base to Kathmandu so blind people from a broader geographical area can benefit. Our most experienced therapist, ChiranJeevi, who previously worked for 3 years as an Assistant Teacher in Pokhara, is also based at our Kathmandu clinic now, and we don’t want to see his excellent teaching skills going to waste! So we now need some time to sort out the logistics of running the training programme in a new location – and to make space for more therapists – and potentially students in or near our clinic in Thamel.

Samrat (pictured) has now been promoted to Senior Therapist, he’s been working at our Pokhara clinic for 3 years now and has been showing a lot of maturity and responsibility lately. He’s experienced enough now and we think he’ll do a great job keeping the others in check!

Some bad news

Unfortunately in March we had a break-in at the clinic in Kathmandu and lost our monthly takings (equivalent of about £250). The thieves broke through two padlocks and two locks to get in, so we’ve stepped up security now and started banking more regularly. No insurance in Nepal and there’s no hope of catching the culprits, we’re just hoping they get some seriously bad karma for ripping off a charity! The new clinic still hasn’t broken even so a loss was the last thing we needed.. but we’re dusting ourselves off and hoping for a better month in April. We can see a sustainable future for both clinics, but may just have to wait until 2012!