Made it to Thailand

Our week in Nepal is up & now we’re on to Thailand!

We rounded out our site visits with trips to the Nepal Association for the Blind, the Disability Human Rights Centre, and the National Federation of the Disabled.

On Wednesday afternoon, we visited the Nepal Association for the Blind (NAB). This was a great follow-up to the visit to the Technical & Skill Development Centre for Blind & Disabled on Tuesday. It is estimated that there are around 450,000 people who are blind or partially sighted in Nepal. NAB has around 2,500 active members in 36 out of 75 districts. They provide medical care, eye care, orientation/mobility training, education support, and vocational rehabilitation to those who are blind and partially sighted. The most interesting thing about their organization was their Braille printing press. They have the largest Braille press in Nepal and contract with the government to provide Braille materials to schools. They are also working on developing talking books, which they have found are much more effective for college students than Braille. It takes them about one month to convert a book to Braille because they first must type the book into the computer, print it in Braille, proofread/edit it three times, and then distribute the final copy. Although the final result takes longer and is bigger than an average book, it makes a great difference for those who need it. However, in Nepal electricity is not consistent (as we experienced many times in our hotel!), so it hinders their ability to use the printing press at times.

Thursday morning, we visited with the president and secretary general of the Disability Human Rights Centre (DHRC). DHRC is a group of self advocates established in 2000. They work solely in disability rights and issues throughout Nepal. To promote disability awareness, they publish a monthly journal about disability and have a weekly 15 minute radio program (to reach those who cannot read due to the high illiteracy rate in Nepal). It was very interesting to hear their impacts on the law in Nepal as well as their input into the new constitution. Nepal is currently undergoing a government “makeover” and they are writing a new constitution. DHRC has been actively involved in writing the constitution and has even written a book of suggestions for the government. This was a very informative site visit for me as this was very related to what I want to do in the future – impact the laws for people with disabilities in America (or perhaps internationally!).

Our last site visit was to the National Federation of the Disabled – Nepal (NFDN). This group was somewhat similar to DHRC in their focus on advocacy, but one big contrast is that they were started in 1993 in response to a movement by people without disabilities to provide services. NFDN acts as an umbrella organization for all of the other organizations we visited throughout the week. They have established 25 committees throughout the 75 districts to achieve their goals.

We concluded our week with a group excursion. First, we went to Changunarayan, a local temple, and then hiked to Nagarkot. The altitude and congestion from the pollution really got to me and a few others on the group, so halfway through the hike we ended up taking the bus to the top while the rest of the group completed the hike. Regardless, the mountain views were beautiful and we were able to watch the sunset from the top.

We had some rough travels from Nepal to Thailand, but we’ve made here safe & sound. Upon leaving Nepal, we had to go through three security checkpoints (we were frisked at each one) and had our bags torn apart at two of the checkpoints. We then had an 8 hour layover in Delhi before our 5 hour flight to Bangkok. While in Delhi, we were able to meet up with another group from University of Delaware! They are also on an around the world trip and they are also spending this week in Thailand so we were on the same flight.

We’re all settled in Thailand now & after sleeping all day, I’m ready to go explore tonight!