We’re back in Kathmandu, in the comfort of Swagat Homestay and the good company of Sugat, Roshani, and the children. It will be a while, though, before Pa and I will have truly left Green Chwadi.
How will we ever forget the wise man of the Bote?
So few words but with a gentle spirit that says much.
I asked Pa if he remembers when I was 10 and he was nearly 90. I’d sit next to him, neither one of us saying a word. It’s that same feeling. One need not be canonized to be a saint. But you must have let go of nearly everything. I believe it’s that way with the wise man of the Bote.
We had dinner last night at the Jacaranda, the restaurant Sugat owns with his good friend Raghav from Green Chwadi. Raghav’s father met us there. The Honorable Mihir Thakur is a lawyer, former law school professor, judge, consultant, author, and now one of five members of Nepal’s Human Rights Commission.
Not nearly as old as the man from Bote, but the day will come when children, grandchildren and others will just want to sit by him.
We talked about Nepal’s troubled history, the end of the monarchy, the insurrectionists, kidnappings, murders, the ongoing struggle to create a fair and just society, the need for healing.
As the evening moved on, we talked about family. His wife, a lawyer and long standing member of Parliament, and his son the scientist, now teaching in Germany.
We talked about Raghav, the second son of whom he is equally proud, who stayed home because Nepal desperately needs him and others like him.
Also trained as a lawyer with additional degrees in conflict studies and business, Raghav worked in the larger world for awhile, with UNICEF and other organizations. But he had a vision, to take the best of what he’d learned to a village area of Nepal.
Disdaining profit for profit’s sake, his vision was informed by others around the world engaged in social entrepreneurship - the application of business principles to social causes.
In 2019, after years of discernment, he partnered with his best friend, Susan Shrestha,
to embark on the “Green Chwadi Experiment.”
The two wanted to create a model where guests could come to rejuvenate body and soul, and at the same time support the ongoing protection and conservation of the local indigenous peoples and the nearby jungle.
Our third morning Pa and I, already under the spell of the vision, did a walk about of the center of the experiment.
The women’s center, under construction but nearly completed, where Tharu and Bote will engage in and teach crafts, provide hospitality to guests on the floor above, and earn much needed income.
The new kitchen, in operation by May, where Tharu and Bote meals will be prepared and guests will have the opportunity to enhance their cooking skills and add to their collections of favorite recipes.
The meeting house where meals are taken,
music is played and dances performed.
The grounds where present and future guests walk in silence or in quiet conversation.
The cottages, paintings on the inside walls, with white sheets and hot showers.
The nearby fields where new ground is broken,
and crops are grown.
The natural spring providing drinking water for everyone, guests and villagers alike,
and laundry is done down stream.
The Montessori school, opening in April,
with a capacity of 100,
and 42 are already enrolled.
There’s much more that could be written about the Green Chwadi Experiment, but for now I’ll share a few of the faces Pa and I have grown fond of.
If you have a few minutes, you might sit in on the conversation Pa and I had with Raghav and Susjan our last morning:
“Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.“
Robert F. Kennedy
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