Kathy Cooks

Kathy Cooks

One morning, I offered to cook dinner.  In Nepali homes, the guests do not enter the kitchen, so I really didn’t know how this was all going to work out. Our friend, Shree, has a chicken farm and had been telling us that he was going to bring a chicken for...
Bright busses and personal space

Bright busses and personal space

I take back everything I said about the drive out to the valley.  On Tuesday we took the local bus to a nearby city called Besisahar.  Besisahar is about a 1½ hour bus ride from Rupakot, and it has an impressive hospital to which the patients in the rural villages...

Fireflies and Night Skies

When the sun sets in the Lamjung Valley, the air becomes still and quiet.  When the power is out, as it often is, the stars litter the sky.  It takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the deep darkness that we so rarely see in the States, but once they do, they...
Little Stars

Little Stars

Over the course of our week in Rupakot, we visited many families to gather information for both the school part and the hospital part of Avasar.  Seeing the homes that many people live in, the lengths they have to go through to get water, to get to school, to carry...
The Real Housewives of the Lamjung Valley

The Real Housewives of the Lamjung Valley

All of the housewives in the village know everyone else’s business and they gossip constantly. When one of them becomes pregnant, they all try to help figure out whether or not it will be a boy or girl; hopefully it will be a boy. When we walked down to wash at...

Finally There!

After a long car ride through the mountains, we finally arrived in Rupakot, the village in which we were staying in the Lamjung Valley, and were met by Nabaraj’s beautiful wife Shailee, who reminds me of my cousin Sterling.  She put bright red “tikas” on our...