05 Jul First hand experience in Dhanusadham
Before going to Janakpur our co-workers had tried to prepare us, as best as possible for what we could expect from the visit. And that was really good because then we had a perception of what we would experience.
The first thing we noticed was the heat, it was much warmer there than in Katmandu where we have been for the last couple of months. And due to respect for the community, we wore kurtas and long pants, and we could feel the sweat drip. All the women in the community were fully dressed, even some of the women covered their faces. While we walked through the community and visit the training center and by talking to, the women, we saw how strong independent, and determined women who both worked in the training center and took care of their family and the household, even if the perspective of women in the Dhanushadham community is dominated by men and woman’s worth is not that high.
The houses they lived in were clay huts, with thatched roofs. After our preconception the hygiene standards were low. We saw many of the children were not wearing any or minimal clothes and were dirty and untidy. When we came to the learning center, there were two small rooms, filled with around 100 children each room, they had no tables or chairs and sat on top of each other. But we experienced that all the children were so smiling, energetic and full of love and curiosity towards us. They wanted to touch and interact with us, some of them even showed us their house, and where they sleep. Everybody we met wanted to take photos with us, and that was nice because now we have many photos of our visit to the Dhanushadham community to take with us home to Denmark.
We believe that it is so important that NGOs are working in that area to make awareness-raising of the problems in communities like these who are so excluded from the civilization because they really need help to go to a more modern civilized way of living, and for creating work and equal opportunities for both men and woman as well as the safety of the children.
SAATH is doing amazing and important work, and we could see how happy the women and children were with their opportunities in both the training and learning center created by SAATH.
by SAATH interns
Katla and Freja