– Sojourner Truth[break]
For she is the creator of life, and her identity is characterized in different forms. Her traits are embodied in goddesses—from nurturer and a warrior to compassion, divine energy, wealth and education. But perhaps, amid male dominion, their values and the definition of womanhood sometimes become insipid and go unrecognized.
But there are woman—and some exceptional—who have paved a way for themselves, setting examples for others. Acknowledging some of these women from various aspects of life, The Week would like to pay tributes to their sheer compassion, commitment and core values for withstanding the test of time and becoming who they are today.
The women we have presented encapsulate a story in themselves. They are some of the recipients of Celebrating Womanhood 2010, which is based on the belief that positive and possible examples need to be identified, illustrated and projected to find solutions and achieve results to uplift the status of women in Nepal.
Defeating disability: Reeta Shakya
Reeta Shakya did not struggle to climb up the few stairs and get to her boutique with her crutches. She is accustomed to her way of life. Affected by polio, for this 37-year-old, disability is not an obstacle: she has finished her undergraduate in English and Sociology, runs her own boutique, Yeipu Boutique, and is the general secretary at the Nepali Disabled Women’s Association in Godavari that covers eight wards.
“Certain sects of the society always have negative attitude toward people with disability,” she said. “But that shouldn’t discourage us.”
And with sheer faith in her capabilities, Shakya endeavored into the boutique business. A family history of tailoring business and her sister-in-law with a fashion designing diploma pushed her motive to become a success story.
“Instead of thinking you’re doomed by your disability, you should seek opportunities,” said Shakya who looked for jobs after her undergraduate degree. Though she got some offers, accessibility and using public transportation however posed as problems. “But nothing is impossible,” she added as she sat on a chair at her boutique, giving instructions to one of her employees. Her boutique employs eight people.
Apart from her own venture for the past 10 years, Shakya also oversees projects at the Nepali Disabled Women’s Association that helps 240 children with mental challenges, autism and cerebral palsy.
“I joined the organization so that I can work with people with disabilities, and if I can inspire or motivate some, my mission will be accomplished,” she said.
Shakya thinks that being a woman and disabled is already a challenge, but she said family support and self-confidence help to battle the shortcomings.
“People look at us, they comment,” she said. “But we shouldn’t be listening. We should have a positive attitude to life and have a strong ‘I can do’ attitude.”
Reaching new heights: Zubeida Khatoon
Zubedia Khatoon is defying the rules. A mother of four, at 25, she had the urge to learn and thus she went back to school. Born and brought up in a conservative Muslim society, Khatoon only had an opportunity to study upto primary school. But after four children, she asked her husband if she could study again.
And currently, she is living her dream. The 27 year old cycles three kilometers to school and attends classes from 10 am to 4 pm in her village of Deulakala of Laxmana village in Bardia.
Khatoon remembered the first time she walked out of the house. It was for a 16-week class on women’s violence and women’s rights conducted by a community forest group.
“I took these classes and felt I had to learn more,” she said.
Along with fulfilling her appetite for education, Khatoon is also involved in social work. She is the member of the recently established 16-member women’s network in her village that focuses on how to involve women in community-based works.
“I don’t dream of getting employed in an organization,” she said over a telephone interview. “I just want to become a social worker and take the community forward. I want to do it because the Muslim community is quite backward.”
To do so, Khatoon thinks that it can be done only through proper education. She believes that a person without education is similar to a blind person.
“In the past two years, after joining school, it has given me vision,” she said. “No one can stop us from pursuing our dreams if we’re educated, and we can do this following our social and religious norms.”
Khatoon credits her husband and mother-in-law for being supportive and allowing her to study again. Along with her, three of her daughters also go to school and she wants to see them successful.
However, for this mother, she does not know how far she will give continuity to school but she said she is determined to excel to higher levels of education.
Healing hands: Sarala Lama
After graduation, Sarala Lama became a teacher, and then she joined the Sushma Koirala Memorial Trust and later, along with her friends, set up Nepal Welfare Society. But nothing satisfied her more than the work she does now: healing people with alternative medicine.
Lama belongs to a family of alternative healers and the lineage is usually passed on to one male member of the family. But since her brother was not interested or any of her two sisters, it was she who learned the skills. “I always used to sit by my father and see how he mixed herbs for medication and treated patients,” she said. “I think I was already interested.”
At her house in Chuchhepati, the ground floor is set up for her medical practice and on a busy day she has some 50 patients. And with an MD in alternative healing, she said she has been able to give the practice “continuity, credibility and legality.” As a woman, she believes that it is utmost important to become a good mother. While working at other projects, she said she had that guilt of leaving her now 5-year-old daughter in the care of a babysitter. This was also one of the reasons that made her decide to stick to what she is doing now.
“Overall, a mother should be developed,” she said. Talking further about what she did while with women-oriented programs, she added, “Motherhood should make a central point and then we should venture into peripheral problems.” Despite her busy schedule seeing patients, she still wants to venture into programs that would create employment generation for women in rural areas. She said about 90% of the herbs that she uses for the treatment are found in Nepal and thus would want to bank on this for creating employment for people.
Born in Diktel in Khotang and educated in Darjeeling, the 35 year old said she did not have any challenges or struggles growing up. But that should not deter women from looking for opportunities and working for the people, she stated. “Women can do it all,” she said. “First of all, they should discard the thought that they are woman and thus weak. They should accept challenges and move forward.”
Changing education: Madhu Rai
When Madhu Rai’s 3-year-old son flunked in kindergarten, she vigorously yearned for a change in the educational system. That was when she opened a pre-primary school in Biratnagar in 1996.
“I didn’t see a child-focused education in Nepal,” the mother of two said. “I wanted to change the situation. Studying for children should be fun and just not rhetoric”
Today, the 49 year old has moved on with her first establishment and now runs another school that she established four years ago. At Sarita Indra Pre-Primary Teaching School in Biratnagar, she believes in imparting social, psychological and environmental values to children. Rai said her education focuses on cores in gradual steps like nationality, environment, creativity, vocational training, and human rights.
At a time when global warming and environmental degradation are burning topics, she said children should be made aware of these issues from an earlier stage. That is why her school focuses on the reuse and recycle of paper and plastic products.
But being a woman, in a male-dominated society, the journey was not easy for Rai.
“It’s my commitment that has brought me thus far,” she said. “One of the biggest challenges for woman is to convince her family and the society that she can do something. It really takes a great effort to make them believe in you.”
However, according to Rai, women should believe in themselves, which will empower them, thus opening up opportunities. She also deems that women and men should not only be educated but made well aware too. And there was a time when she personally went from door to door requesting people to subscribe to different publications.
Fourteen years later, the educationist and environmentalist sees the changes. But there needs to be a collective effort, she said. Her trainings and projects exemplify that.
“I need to transfer the skills and knowledge I have,” she said. “In 10 to15 years, I believe there will be many more women like me in this field working to bring changes.”
Cradling conservation: Doma Paudel
Doma (Manamaya) Paudel’s mother was killed by a rhinoceros in 2004. Unlike people who would resent the cause of such personal sadness, she instead had a realization that she should work toward conserving the almost extinct species. Six years later, Paudel today is a conservationist and Chitwan’s first female nature guide.
“I wanted to take a path that was different,” Paudel said over her preference of profession where no women in her locality had ventured. But more than that, for the 26 year old, it was also her obligation to support her family financially. She said her home in Bachauli, Chitwan, had been attacked by wild elephants and affected by flood, and the family was “not economically good.” And since she was used to chasing animals that came to her house and farm and her interest in conservation, she decided to join the field.
Paudel’s background in social work and her experience in the Green Club at school helped her garner support from the community when she opted to become a nature guide.
Currently, she also works with Wildlife Conservation for Nepal in Chitwan, a non-profit organization, while she is not working as a guide.
Since she started guiding in 2007, Paudel has inspired other women to take up the profession. There are five female nature guides in Chitwan and Nawalparasi now.
“Because of the risks associated with it, I think many women hesitate to join,” she said. But Paudel is happy that she took the risk and is giving it continuity. “Women are capable of joining any workforce,” she said. “And it’s the family and the community that should support and encourage them so that they become partners in development.”
Nothing is impossible: Maya Thakuri
Growing up, Maya Thakuri did not dream of becoming a writer or a littérateur. Her dream was to own georgette sarees in every color. For a 15-year-old living in abject poverty, the green saree she saw at an affluent friend’s house in Shillong, India, was something she thought she would get when she would have money.
“I didn’t think of anything at that stage of time,” recalled Thakuri, a prominent name in Nepali literature today. “I had never thought I would come this far.”
Flipping the pages of Thakuri’s life, the journey is a story in itself. For someone who never went to school to become a teacher and later a writer were feats. And it was her determination and dedication to something she loved that helped her to realize her dream.
“I’ve never forgotten my past, my struggles,” said the 65 year old. “Whatever I am today is the result of my struggles.”
Thakuri never went to school but was accustomed to basic alphabets by her mother who took literacy classes at the Indian Army’s family welfare society. Later, when a teacher at a local high school realized her passion for studying, he offered her to give tuition classes. Thakuri instantly accepted the offer in return for which she did household chores at the teacher’s house. After a year of classes, she appeared for the School Leaving Certificate examinations.
“I scored 34 in English and 32 in all other subjects,” she laughed. “But for me and my mother, that was distinction.”
It was through failures and hardships that Thakuri better understood life. Her first story, “Pagal”, was rejected by an Indian publication house. But she said the editor told her to write in her native language and saw potential in her.
“That was some encouragement; I didn’t care about the rejection,” she said.
And there has been no looking back. Thakuri has published a stack of stories and poems that have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, English, Tamil and Japanese; they are taught in schools and universities in and outside Nepal.
“My stories revolved around the society’s lower strata,” she said. “And I try to make people aware of it through the stories, through my personal experience.”
When she is not writing, Thakuri enjoys reading other women writers like Parijat and Prema Shah, and also contemporaries like Manjushree Thapa, Trishna Kunwar, Tara Rai and Greta Rana to “keep her updated.” However, her favorite, she claims in Rana’s “Beneath the Pipal Tree.”
Recollecting her life experiences and conversation with other women, Thakuri deems that education is the most important element to empower a woman and take the country forward.
“I’m an example in its self,” she said. “Education helped me understand the world, become self dependant and supported my writing skill. And because of that education I stand here.”
Empowering women: Menuka Thapa
Menuka Thapa’s dream of becoming a singer might have actually helped her to be the woman she is today.
At 29, Thapa has come a long way: Established a non-profit organization, Raksha Nepal, for the protection of women, two women’s school with 300 students, a woman’s shelter, an orphanage, a cooperative, and a polyclinic. And though her struggles have been masked by her success today, she said it would not have had been possible if it were not for those hardships.
The only literate one among her other seven siblings, Thapa was believed to be cursed after her father died while she was in the womb. Coming from an economically challenged family, her only source of stationery was winning the extracurricular activities in school. After grade 10, she made it to Kathmandu for further studies and to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. But it was not easy.
After her relatives abandoned her, Thapa, now 29, sought help from different women’s organizations. However, she said she was denied assistance because she did not fulfill their criteria. Most of them required women to have been victims of sexual violence, trafficking or an orphan.
“But there needs to be an organization that should help women before they reach those stages,” she said, elaborating that it was one of the reasons for establishing Raksha Nepal.
More than that, she wanted to address the issues of women’s exploitation—physical, emotional, financial—at work. She realized the situation of other women, especially at cabin restaurants and massage parlors while she was working as a dohori singer at a restaurant in Gaushala to pay her tuition and make a living.
She cites there are about 200,000 women working in the profession, 90% of them due to financial obligations, and she wanted to help them, more importantly, provide them education. So what started as a five-member class in her room later expanded to the grounds of Padma Kanya Campus where she used to take classes. And that platform was a pedestal to start up Raksha Nepal. Since its establishment in 2004, the non-profit organization has helped some 1,500 women, assisted them in vocational and income-generating programs.
“If I were a boy, I wouldn’t have had to face the struggle in the family,” said Thapa who holds a Bachelor’s in music and Master’s degree in sociology. “But I’m proud that I’m a woman because through my struggle I found a path to help other women.”
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