Art for Social Change
20-7-17 During the 10 days we have been in Chilkhaya, what has surprised us most is the number of students attending the secondary school (from class 6 to 10). We attended classes with 70 students, “luckily” missing 70 or 80 more. That is, the list of students for these classes was up to 140, 150. […]
10-6-17. Moving 4 personal rucksacks, 2 suitcases full of materials, 1 bag of cameras and 23 metallic buckets from one village to another in these remote areas can be really complicated! From Rachuli to Cnilkhaya, according to Googlemaps, there are just 9 km. and a slope of 400 m. First we had to get somebody […]
Photographies made by the students of the participatory photography workshop #breakthesilence © of each student. 7-6-2017 We have not yet found in Kalikot anybody referring to the tradition using this name, they call it “Chuii” “Chuiigoath” or “Chuiighar”. But as to existing, it does exist the same. Maybe the conditions seem better (in Rachuli, so […]
Writing and Photos © por Alba Parrado Puente, Spanish Nurse and Midwife, Volunteer of be artsy in Achcham. From one of the most chaotic Indian cities (Varanasí) to one of the most peaceful little villages in Nepal there are around 800 km. and a four days journey by local bus, a bus as hellish as […]
31-5-2017. We already have the first results form our participatory photography workshops. Seeing how girls start freeing themselves and start explaining things through photography is exciting. The first thing that surprised us was that most of them are convinced to follow the tradition. There are few Chhaupadi huts here, most girls sleep in the cowshed […]
28-5-2017. 7 days after leaving Kathmandu we were able to start teaching at the school. Our first school day at Rachuli’s school had cracking-up moments. We started with 10th grade, which means some of the students were 17 years old, only 3 years younger than the two nurses we hired. Being so close in age […]
26-5-2017. Our contact people in the area (all male) told us that here there was no Chhaupadi unlike in Achcham: that there are no special huts for women on their period, that they have a room inside their homes. However, during our journey we saw a few of them. There are some characteristics that make […]
May 25, 2017. Getting to Rachuli (pronounced RAH-chuli) took us 5 days. At the moment of writing this, I can’t imagine having to leave this place. The ways to get up here are mountain roads with very few paved parts. There are lots of rocks all around, landslides everywhere, heavy rocks in the middle of […]
We had it very clear that getting out from Basti wasn’t going to be easy, the descent we did the day we arrived had as all quite scared. On my side, I found a walking stick and decided not to follow the same path we used to go down; following the blood track left by […]
Whenever one gets to a town in such remote areas – in spite of their beauty – the first thing coming to mind after seeing the life conditions waiting for us for the next few days is: I would go away right now. Basti was no different. Despite being aware such hard conditions were awaiting, […]