Tie-up with Tukuche brings vitality to Toga

By Loknath Sangraula

An oasis of greenery and home to beautiful nature, the village of Toga in Toyama prefecture, central Japan stands perched amidst breath-taking rolling hills bedecked with beautiful pine trees. Absorbing mountain-range views and stunning surrounding natural vistas provide the backdrop for surreal thinking. Tiny houses dotting the thickly forested landscape seem to be playing hide and Tukuche, a tiny mountain village 3,000 metres up in Mustang district in Nepal, had established the sister-village relationship with Toga, some 5,000 kms away, ten years ago. Tukuche, once a thriving village buzzing with trade and business seek when you snake up the well-tended road. Ninety-seven percent of the village area is covered by forests.

activity with Tibet, has been now reduced to virtual non-entity with dreary bald hills and youths leaving the village for better opportunities. Sandwiched between the mighty snow-capped mountains of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna, Tukuche meaning flat land in local parlance, gave birth to such poets as Bhupi Sherchan and sheltered Ekai Kawaguchi, the first Japanese monk to visit Nepal.

"The 10-year sister-village affiliation with Tukuche opened up a new dimension in our rural development. We realise that spiritual depth and richness serve as the lifeblood of vitality for the new age," former village mayor Michimasa Miyazaki says.

What ties up these two tiny villages together in the beginning was "soba" or buckwheat. Prof. Uzihaka of Hiinshu University was the first man to make a scientific study of soba 20 years ago. Toga has been in a slump for years due to de-population and an aging population, common issues across Japan and declining local industries-chiefly charcoal-making, logging and silkworm-raising. Worried, the people decided to revitalise their village, and towards this end, they singled out their traditional soba as a key word for reinvigorating the underpopulated village. Toga’s population has dropped significantly from 4,500 shortly after World War II to 1,000.

Soba or buckwheat, which originated in the Himalayas and China’s Yenman province is regarded as a symbol of privation. The Toga people conceived the idea of building Japan’s first-ever soba museum for the purpose of which an 18-member mission led by then village mayor Miyazaki had paid to a visit to Tukuche in late 1980s.

"A violent storm left us stranded for four consecutive days, while all the 600 residents of Tukuche were waiting for our arrival enthusiastically," one of the members of the mission recalls.

The mission was given a warm, hearty welcome and Toga mayor Miyazaki and Tukuche VDC chairman Dhan Bahadur signed a sister-village document at the local Gompa temple amidst a ceremony attended by the local residents.

When the "Soba-no-Sato" or hometown of buckwheat was completed in 1989, eight Tukuche villagers attended an opening ceremony. The soba museum is located in the complex. In Japan, soba noodles are quite famous, but little is known about buckwheat as it is eaten in other cultures. The museum brings together and furnishes information on buckwheat growing, research and food cultures from countries around the world including Nepal.

During his first visit to Tukuche, Miayazaki was so impressed by mandala painting in a village temple that he immediately asked Shashi Dhoj Tulachand, a world famous Tukuche-based Buddhist painter, to draw new mandalas in Toga. He created six mighty works with help from two assistants in one year from 1990 to 1991, each costing millions of rupees. His are regarded as world masterpieces of esoteric Tibetan Buddhist art. He stayed in Toga several times over a period of six years.

The Toga village office also built the "Meiso-no-Sato" or hometown of meditation wherein these mandala paintings lie. Many Japanese tourists totaling some 100,000 a year visit the meditation centre. Fifteen people from Tukuche had taken part in the 1992-Soba Fair spread over 31 days.

In 1996, the two villages organised an international conference on rural development in Kathmandu. Depopulation is one of the biggest problems Japanese and Nepalese villages are facing today. Toga has been making an all out effort to reverse this trend and leads the rest in this connection.

"The 65 year old plus people account for 32 percent of the total village population. Every sector including agriculture faces crisis. This reality prompted the necessity of revitalising the village," says Mr Nakatani who has visited Nepal 12 times and has been involved day in and day out in reinvigorating the village for the past 30 years despite his failing health.

Shortage of doctors, hospitals, schools, etc. inflicted a serious setback to the village. But it lacks nothing from hospitals to schools to banks. The philosophy underlying such efforts is that the young who leave for cities would return to the village some day thinking how desperate their predecessors were in revitalising the village for their sake.

Some three years ago, Nepalese film director Gagan Birahee produced "Miteree Gaon" or the Friendship Village, a film portraying the cultures, traditions and different life-styles of the two villages which they are trying to preserve.

The Toga-based theatrical company "Waseda Sho Gekijo" organised the first-ever world drama festival in Japan featuring actors from different countries. The theatrical company now renamed as SCOT led by famous dramatist and art director Tadashi Suzuki had moved its central headquarters from Tokyo to Toga in 1976.

Each year prominent actors from around the world come to Toga to receive training from Mr Suzuki who is a household name in the theatre community. The Toga Festival draws over 10,000 spectators each summer from Japan and abroad.

Presently, the two villages are engaged in mutually reinforcing each other’s efforts in controlling erosion and disaster prevention activity. Toga has been helping Tukuche in taming Thapakhola (river) which has threatened the entire village and invites four to five persons to stay in Toga for a period of six months for carrying out Nepalese stone masonry. Toga introduced environmentally friendly traditional Nepalese techniques in disaster prevention.

" When our visa expires, we leave for home. We are treated here as if we are small children in need of care and love," says a Nepali worker.

In the past decade, 200 Toga villagers have visited Tukuche and some 100 Tukuche residents have been invited to Toga. "Tukuche has helped us more than we did for them," says Juichi Shimizu, a former village deputy mayor.

Toga, where nature and man co-exist and interact, conjures up an image of a remote area since it remains cut off from other parts of the country for six months from December onwards because of snowfall measuring up to 20 metres. It is virtually turned into a snow country. The Village Authority is considering a 10-year perspective plan in order to intensify the process of rebuilding the village so as to rope in more tourists.

Dukhini

By Sanjay Neupane

"I’m not a whore, I’m a person, somebody’s mother, and yours too ....".

This is a dialogue, from the play ‘Dukhini’ based on the issue of girl-trafficking plaguing all the South Asian countries in this ultra-modern twenty first century.

Put together jointly by the much talked about Pakistani drama group Ajora theatre and Bangladesh’s WITA Theatre, the play played out its misery and pain recently in front of an audience in the Rastriya Nachghar.

"This is not only a story based on the trafficking of around ten thousand Bangladeshi girls to Pakistan, but it is also about the thousands and thousands of Nepali girls trafficked," Even while the director, Sara Jakir was announcing the end of the one and half hour play the audience was already lost in deep thought. Just for a moment all the girls sold to brothels in India came alive before their eyes. The two minute long rhythmic clapping that began before the director could finish her words justified what she was saying.

The Nepali audiences’ high respect for the play (staged without the help of a single mike) was evident with frequent clapping with each scene raising their curiosity for the next. It was not only portraying the trafficked Nepali girls, but it also gave one the experience of the essential values and norms that are inherent in a powerful play.

Written by the most talked about film director Sahid Nadim, the play was just as powerful in its direction. Even the actors did not leave room for negative criticism.

Despite being half in Bengali and half in Urdu the players were equally adept.

The powerful presence of the 83 year old artist Ujara Bhatt (Mai) came as a slap in the face to those Nepalese actors who use theatre merely as a ladder to the world of film. It felt as if it was not really a stage but that the brutal reality of real life was passing serially before one’s eyes.

With the setting of the sun, behind the white curtain a silhouette of a girl singing a Bengali song ‘Bhawaiya Geet’ draws the audience’s attention.

While one Bangladeshi woman lies buried in a grave in Pakistan another kneels by the side and prays. Once meeting her, the gravedigger and his assistant (Badshah) come to know that she is a ‘Dukhini’ (the one who has suffered)and that she had committed self-immolation. Sold to old men, to madmen and to brothels, these women continuously worship the Dukhini.

The Dukhini in the grave starts to dance. The middlemen in the presence of Badshah, the Grave Digger and journalists turn in fright.

"You can talk to Dukhini, talk your heart out," saying this, Ujara Bhatt appears in the scene as their protector. "We’ve been raped, tortured and taken to a brothel like animals." Mai feels their pain and gives them comfort, telling them how her own father in law killed his baby daughters for the sake of protecting his family. She even speaks about her own rape and how the family spurned her when she had no one to turn to.

There, the play successfully brings to the foreground the exploitation of women’s’ pure and fragile nature by the middlemen. As the situation turns unpleasant, not only do they make false promises of taking them to a safe haven of protection, they send these women afresh to the brothels of Arabian countries.

However much excitement is created in the audience by the sight of the customers selecting and dragging the prettiest girls by their necks just like consumers choosing the juiciest pieces of meat at the market, the point when the girls locked within the four walls of their captivity try to escape from the clutches of their hapless situation fills the audience with huge perturbation.

The Grave Digger’s request to the journalist to highlight the living is not less touching. If the dead are already dead, then write about those who are living a dead life. "She lives even after her death but we are dying day by day", says a Bengali artist thereby giving life to a dead "Dukhini".

The conversation of the Embassy officials adds fuel to the fire as the women start crying even louder. The play makes evident that passports and visas are necessary to travel between two countries because of closed borders, but these women do not have the necessary documents and they cannot return back.

The Bangladeshi side does not pay heed to the call of Pakistan to take back the body of the Dukhini lying in the background of two national flags. "Where is the proof of her Bangladeshi nationality?", immediately the phone is banged. The play thus makes the controversial role of the police clear.

Now that the scene changes and the pain of the women is transferred to the Arabian countries the play reaches its climax. And it does not stop even there.

Though the play revolves around the problems of Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is also about Nepal and India as well. Except for one difference - there are no open borders. And it is an eye-opener to the citizens of both India and Nepal.

Had there been more shows, there would be more awareness among the Nepali citizens with regard to girl trafficking. The director of Sarbanam, Ashesh Malla says that he’ll never hesitate dishing out fresh foreign plays to the Nepali audience. Sarbanam has already organised plays like — The big wind, Gorkhali, The Pink and the Purple and through the South Asian Drama Festival, many other plays in the past.

"The play has put the burning issues of human pain into artistic representation. The fact that the play does not deviate from its theme is powerful, and not even a trace of publicity is seen in the script," said critic Dr Abhi Narayan Subedi.

Even if, for some, the presence of these actors seemed a bit out of place for those who vividly recall the violence and trauma that were a part and parcel of Bangladesh’s struggle for freedom from Pakistan, these artists did prove something. Dr Subedi pointed out that the realisation of both sides could contribute to the strengthening of regional relations. Bidding adieu to the audience, the play group left for New Delhi and Calcutta.

Rain Water Harvesting

Meena Kaini

For Luk Raj Bhattarai of Madan Pokhara, Palpa, drinking water has not been much of a problem. But for his nine cattle he needs an enormous amount of water which the piped water to his home cannot support.

"Rain Water Harvesting" came as a pleasant surprise to him and his family of five. The only problem he had to face financially was: he had to change his thatched house to a tinned one. However, he is happy that he changed the roof as he says, "I have gained much out of the effort. Moreover to loan to change the roof was provided by the project which I had to pay back either in cash or labour."

Madan Pokhara VDC, having piped water supply to each houses does not exactly face the scarcity so much as other villages in the hilltops do. Birkot VDC is one of the many VDCs, where the technology to conserve rain water has come as a blessing. For the people of this VDC, rain water gives them a continuous supply of drinking water which is not so much used for drinking in places like Madan Pokhara where there is an alternative.

Experts say that conserving rain water can avert the shortage of water especially in the hills where one has to walk for hours to fetch a pail of water.

Nepal is not a water scarce country, infact it has a geographical construction where hills prop up from anywhere and everywhere and it is not an easy task for those living on the hilltops to cope with the demand of water. Despite having abundant resources life in the hills is extremely hard because they have to live under perpetual scarcity of water.

In an effort to seek alternative technology to store safe drinking water for the ever-increasing population, "Rain Water Harvesting" could very well be one of the right solutions that helps utilize the rain water.

In the hills where there is inadequate supply of ground water and surface resources are absent or insignificant, this technology can very well avert the perennial scarcity. On top of that these sources vary considerably in yield and many are seasonal, drying up completely in pre-monsoon months. Experts feel the rainwater and its utilisation in the right manner could be one of the solutions.

Location of villages on the ridges and seasonality of the available sources makes access and reliability of the water a critical problem.

Increasing demand for water on the one hand and depletion of existing resources on the other have aided in search for fresh resources and rain water is just one of the answers to the continuous search.

"Rain Water Harvesting" has been initiated in water scarce hilly areas of Gulmi, Arghakhanchi and Palpa districts where accessibility is the main problem and people are bound to spend hours on round trip to get water. The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (RWSSP) is jointly funded by the governments of Nepal and Finland.

According to a 1996 survey, the coverage of reasonable rural water supply is 61 percent at the national level, and the annual rainfall of the country is estimated in the range of 1000 - 3000 mm averaging 1500 mm over most parts of the country, of which about 80 percent of rain falls in the monsoon season between June and September.

Research conducted by Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project (RWSSP) in 1992 shows that nearly 14 percent of people residing along the ridges, hilltops and bhabar (Tarai) fall in the category of the people who face perennial shortage of water.

At the moment the jars with the potential to store 2,000 litres are being used but it hardly meets the demand of the people. According to the local users the jar sustains them for only one month after monsoon. Experts implementing the project say that the jar size has to be increased to a size of 10,000 litres to accommodate the increasing demand. The jars are technologically benefiting.

The project gives mason training to the local villagers so that they can do the maintenance of the jars themselves. Dhruva Pandit, Palpa district co-ordinator says that the project would cover 100 percent water supply for the targeted districts within the next four years.

The District Development Committee of the districts where the project is implemented works as the focal point, whereby roles and responsibilities of both the partners — the Nepal government and the Finnish project is shared.

Jhapendra GC, DDC chairperson of Palpa takes pride in saying that the district will not be self-reliant in drinking water within the next four years with rainwater harvesting meeting much of their demand.

MAIN