Going to the Camps....

Going to the camps has been one of the most invigerating experiences of our lives. We have spent the last few days meeting with the leaders of the Bhutanese Refugee Woman's Forum, for whom we are creating the Website for. They have been extremely generous to take time out of their days to meet and help us to better understand the plethora of information on the programs, events, income generating activities, loans, and educational trainings that they conduct throughout the years since their inception in 1995. Amber Singh, the organizations "general director" is working with us hand in hand to diseminate all of this info into a comprehesnsible outline so that we can generate readible and interesting content on the site. Today we purchased brwf.org; their first website in their 13 year history. Every day at the main camp that we work within (Sanishere) we eat in the canteen next to the BRWF office. Oddly enough we have had just about the same meal daily produced by the shop owner, who is a product of the micro-loan project that BRWF organizes, yet it seems to just keep getting better all the time!! After lunch we went to their store of products to take photos of the items available so that we could detail them out in the website. Using the two girls that ran the store as our models, we shot pictures of them wearing the shawls and beaded necklaces that are produced within the camp. At least 50 other members of the camp stood by to watch, as you could imagine, (seeing what is potentially the closest they have ever gotten to a "photo shoot"--word gets around very very quickly).

After the long day at the camp we went back to the office to finish work and then ventured to a party hosted by the WFP director (for her own going away party, as she was heading to Nigeria to visit her family for the next 3 weeks). A few of the other members of the organization cooked everything from Pakora to BBQ Chicken to a Nepali meat stew (as good as any grandmother's 'famous' chicken noodle) and many more Nepali delights including two acholic bev's: Thongba--femented millet grain for a minimum of 1 week and steaming hot water; it might sound strange but this is the new beer for cold days!! and Raksi--the closest thing Nepal has to Tequila, but 100% smoother; truly a nice change from the south of the boarder classic!! We danced to Nepali and Hindi music and really enjoyed the night on the rooftop of their home, while lightning struck for hours in the background, fortunately never producing rain here in Damak--