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.