Applied Learning in Nepal

The last two days have been my favorite yet in Nepal.  On Thursday we started our day by doing yoga, which always makes me feel like a million bucks.  Then we had a chance to go to a free clinic in Kathmandu.  The most interesting part of this trip has been going into these social institutions, like schools, orphanages, hospitals non-profits, and seeing how they work with the problems facing Nepal.  Its applied sociology.  For example at the free clinic we heard about the major health problems facing Nepal right now.  The president of the clinic said that diabetes and hypertension are on the rise.  He said it was from the newly intensified urbanization facing Nepal, and the Kathmandu valley in particular.  We also talked about how Nepal is one of the only countries in the world where women’s life expectancy is shorter than that of men.  He said this was because in Nepalese culture women do a lot of the work while “the men play cards”.  We then went to an orphanage called Ama Ghar.  It was a home that focused on raising orphaned children to become complete Nepalese citizens.  So they focused on a tradition life style, and educated the children though primary school, and into either vocational training or undergrad studies.  They had created a family type environment with kids ranging from age 4 all the way to 21.  This was nice because I have seen many programs in the US that disregard some of the people in program once they “age-out”.  They are then kicked out and often times put into a worse situation that they where before.  But Ama Ghar focuses on making sure that the people coming out of the orphanage are in a better place than when they found them.