This article by Jim Donovan was previously published in Network News, Issue 7, April 1996.

Building the Humla Health Post

Facing me with a terrible grimace was not one of nature’s more benign spirits. I shuffled my feet clumsily, moving in a circle that grew smaller as my other-worldly and colourfully adorned opponent closed in. Bellowing war cries and beating its chest, the spectre then began gyrating its mid-section which had attached to it several large cow bells whose discordant peal added to the general clamour of beating drums and whoops and yells of dozens of expectant onlookers. I feigned quickly left then right to test my tormentor, hoping for a reaction of human caution or trepidation on its part. instead, I got a mocking clangour of cowbells as the spirit coolly turned about, bent over and shook its derriere at me.

In the last two years I have travelled several times to Humla, Nepal’s remotest and most impoverished district located on the Tibetan border. This, though, was the first time I had been shoved into a large circle of people to wrestle a local Humli farmer wearing a demon mask and representing the dark spirits of the forest. It was all part of the Mani celebration – a ritual of dance and wrestling symbolising the eternal struggle and eventual triumph of good over evil.

I would like to think that I was pushed forward into that circle as the official representative of the Nepal Trust and the group of individuals who had trekked for twelve days to Humla to join the local people to wage a real battle against the eternal evils of disease, poverty and lack of opportunity and education.

It’s good to have the opportunity to include an update in this issue of Network News on the Nepal Trust’s activities so that I can report that the first “Trek to Build Health and Community” was a great success. The people who joined the trek were a nurse, engineer, marketing person, mountaineer, store manager, graduate student, school teacher, artist in wood and social worker. We met in Humla in October to help build the Dozom River Valley’s first health post, which will serve over 1500 people there.

The 160km quest to Humla was for the trekkers a challenging and gratifying experience. The path wound through terraced hillsides, dense forest, hidden river valleys, over mountain passes of 15,000 ft, and encountered friendly, yet often shockingly poor villages of Hindu Chetris, Thakuris, Untouchables, and Tibetan Bhotias and Nyimba.

The carved doorway brought from Scotland photo Jim Donovan

The carved doorway brought from Scotland photo Jim Donovan

All the building supplies had been transported by twelve horses and more than twenty porters from the district headquarters, where the equipment had been dropped off by helicopter. Included with the cement, corrugated tin, kilos of nails, a homemade solar panel, picks, shovels and assorted tools, was also the precious “Doorway to Health”. With the initials of hundreds of sponsors from Scotland carved on one side, and Buddhist and Celtic motifs on the other, this practical gift and symbol of peace – designed by Janet Banks and carved by Richard Brockbank – opened all our hearts as it was blessed by the head Lama and set in its position at the entrance to the health post.

Every day, men, women and children from the surrounding villages would come and work on the emerging health clinic. Collecting and breaking stone, making the 50 gallon drum solar heater, digging 250 metres of trench, laying the water pipe, were all part of this Himalayan rhapsody. Our nurse, Janet Griffin, 63 years young, had other duties and treated more than a hundred patients in four days, some of whom had walked for three days to her makeshift clinic.

We ended by having a festival in which the Buddhist highlanders honoured us by slaughtering a goat for the Mani celebration. There was dancing, singing, drinking local beer, chanting, wearing ornate and age-old costumes – and yes – the wrestling, where this time the collective good will won the day. We were very small in the vast grandeur and silence of those time-worn valleys and jagged mountains. But we two cultures, East and West, made a positive impact and were happy working and celebrating together in a space of time that now seems to have passed like the clapping of two lightning bolts.

The Nepal Trust is supplying medicines and training for local women while building a network of interlinking and sustainable primary health care clinics in Humla. The Trust is seeking volunteer health professionals to live and work in the clinics for periods of one to three months. This year the Trust is running two more “Treks to Build Health and Community”. One will take place in May/June and the other Sept/Oct. These treks will visit Mt Kailash in Tibet, and Raling Gompa – the most sacred monastery in Humla – while also participating in a ten-day building programme. The Trust also runs other treks to support its health projects in Humla and the Durbar High School Computer Education Project in Kathmandu, which include white-water rafting journeys and treks in the Annapurna range and Tibet.

Thanks to David Scobbie, a social worker and ex-film editor from Scotland, we now have an incredible 42-minute educational travelogue video of the “Trek to Build Health and Community” in Humla. We are asking for a £15 / $24 US donation for each copy which includes packaging and mailing costs. If you would like a copy of the video, our new brochure or other information about The Nepal Trust, or would like to support the work being done in Nepal with a donation, please contact us.
Jim Donovan