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May Update

Dear Friends of dZi,

It has been quite the rollercoaster ride, trying to figure out if I would be able to go to Nepal for my upcoming trip to visit our projects. The 18 days of highly publicized, sometimes violent, protests have resulted in King Gyanendra announcing he would reinstate parliament. Nepal’s parliament has been dissolved since 2002 and the King assumed absolute power in 2005, declaring a state of emergency and vowing to crush the Maoist rebellion.

Nepal’s seven political parties have come together, in an unusual spirit of cooperation, and named 84-year-old former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala as the new head of the government. One of his biggest challenges is how to include the Maoist insurgency in of the process, and not leave them on the periphery. The Maoists initially called the King’s recent announcements “a sham” but have now announced a unilateral three-month cease-fire. This news was followed by the US Ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty, stating that the US would now consider a request for military assistance from the Nepalese government.

Obviously the situation is far from being resolved, but there is a reprieve. The politicians must change their ways of the past and not squander this opportunity. Since parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1990, Nepal has had 13 prime ministers hold that office. Due to a mixture of internal bickering, political rivalries and glaring corruption, rivals have unseated every one of them before they completed their term. The hope is that the members of the seven political parties can put Nepal first and get past their personal agendas. All while the Maoists, the wild cards, sit on the sidelines with their guns laid down but not out of reach.

When faced with the recent uncertainty of not being able to travel to Nepal, a country that has given and taught me so much, I have felt agonizingly conflicted. My personal connection with the projects, staff and people that the dZi Foundation serves, runs deep into my soul. With the King’s recent announcement appearing to restore calm, and thus the possibility of a relatively safe trip to Kathmandu, I am looking forward to seeing the girls at The Friendship House and the children at the Nutritional Rehabilitation Home more than ever. When faced with the prospect of losing something we hold dear, we are often forced to realize how much we might take for granted the value of a friend, a loved one or even an avocation. Damn, another lesson. Let us hope that Nepal takes advantage of this opportunity to learn from their past lessons, as the first glimmer of light begins to shine through on the 13,000 bodies left in the wake of the past ten years of violence.

All the best,
Jim Nowak
Executive Director

Ladakh Spring 2006 Projects

My first stop this upcoming trip will be Ladakh. Here are some of the things we have going on. The most exciting one is the new health clinic that will break ground around mid-May in Leh, Ladakh India. I will keep you posted with photos next newsletter.

May 11–31 Telluride Mountain School Students are headed to Ladakh for 3 weeks, where they will be building a Ladakhi dry toilet for their service project. Led by Bill Liske, our former dZi chairman and current dZi treasurer, the students will also participate in home-stays. The students pay their own way, with dZi funds covering only their service project.

May 8–15 A Dental Clinic will be held at the Lions Club Youth Hostel in Leh the capitol of Ladakh. In an afternoon we transform the Youth Hostile library into a dental clinic. This is again a partnership project with the Himalayan Dental Relief Project, Lions Club International of Leh and The dZi Foundation. Five hundred children will receive preventative dental care in this one-week clinic.

May 24–31 A secondary dental clinic will be held with a new group of dentists and non-medical volunteers serving another 500 children. In addition to the dental clinic we will run another of our vision programs as well. We are very fortunate to have Dr Vicki Coulter, an eye surgeon from the Denver area, leading this eye clinic. With Vicki’s help, we feel sure that our Optical Solutions program will take a quantum leap this spring. We are transporting a Phoropter and Slit Lamp for better diagnosis of the children’s eyes.

May 24–31 Dr Neena Jain and her husband Bill Rohs will also be joining us in Ladakh. Neena and Bill have been playing a major humanitarian role for the last year, splitting their time between Nias, Indonesia with Tsunami Relief and Kashmir Pakistan with Earthquake Relief. Neena will use her extensive international health expertise to explore where the dZi Foundation can continue to support and collaborate with the Ladakh medical community. Bill will be working with local groups building a demonstration emergency earthquake shelter, identical to the 65 shelters dZi funded right across the border in Pakistan earlier this year.

Aug 1–Dec 15 Katey Blumentha, who spent 3 months at the Sikkim Happiness Home and also volunteered at a dental clinic in Ladakh in 2005, is back to help the dZi Foundation again. Katey is a Dartmouth student doing her thesis research in Ladakh on Ladakhi Folk Music and Dance during a 360-day song-cycle that corresponds with the Buddhist lunar calendar. Katey will also be leading a study for dZi on the prevalence of cataracts in the Ladakh area. We suspect that the incidence is high but think it is best to put some numbers on the problem before we move forward. Stay tuned.

A Permanent Girls Home

The dZi Foundation will start construction on a brand-new building for the Happiness Home girls in Sikkim in mid-June. Kelsang Phuntsok, our project director in Ladakh and Sikkim, has been diligently working on behalf of the Foundation and the girls, to find and purchase a piece of property. He has located a suitable plot in Syari, near Deorali in Gangtok, the capitol of Sikkim. All the registrations and postings have been completed, and we are excitedly anticipating the ground breaking.

Due to the likelihood of earthquake activity in the Sikkim Region, the foundation slab and walls of the first floor will be getting extra reinforcement to prevent, or at least minimize, potential damage. A donor from Germany has given a substantial gift to sponsor this initial phase of the construction.

Executive Director Jim Nowak, Visionary Member/Sikkim Girl Sponsor Liz Adams and her daughter Katie will be visiting the girls in June. Katie has been working with her classmates and soccer teammates to raise funds for the home and is looking forward to meeting and interacting with the girls, as well as providing educational aids, outdoor gear and indoor games. We plan to have first-hand reports detailing their experiences from both Katie and Liz in our July newsletter.

As soon as construction pictures are available, we will include them in a future newsletter.