Trip to Temal village

On monday we went to the remote village of Temal to examine progress of a matching grant project (no.74308)  run by the Rotary Club of Kavre Banepa with the Rotary Club of Voralberg, Austria. The project aims to improve drinking water supplies for the village by drilling up to 200 metres down to pump groundwater. Currenty water is a major issue for the hilltop village with many women making a four hour return trip to bring drinking water home. We were fortunate enough to be invited to visit along with the Rotary district governer Basu Dev Golyan and assistant governer Kirti Nath Maskey along with the president of the Kavre, Banepa Rotary Club Mankaji Pradhan and Dhulikhel Rotary Club president Ashok Shrestha.

Very dry countryside

Women carrying loads of water

The village is located around 60km from Banepa but the road isn't much more than a track so the trip was almost 3 hours each way. When we saw the size of the drilling rigs we were amazed that they managed to even get to the site as the road is very precarious with steep drop offs. We learned that a dozer was used to improve the road and re-cut areas to allow the big rigs passage.

One of the drilling rigs

 The sites were selected by a swiss expert water diviner. The first site has already struck water at a depth of 200 metres and work is in progress for the second. There will be four bores drilled overall. The villagers are very happy with the project and greeted us with kata (white silk scarves) and by placing tikka on our foreheads.  We were invited to return and spend more time in the village by the women, and once again were fustrated by our lack of Nepali - we'll definately need to improve our Nepali before a return trip as there is no english in Temal.  This is definately good encouragement for us to learn the language.

The second rig - check out the cracked windshield!

This entire project has a budget of $US125,000 - amazing when you look at the labour and materials involved. 50% of this came from the rotary clubs and districts involved and 50% from the rotary foundation. Its clear to see the difference this project will make to the lives of the people living in Temal, where so much time is currently spent simply collecting water each day.

The party showing our beautiful tikka and kata scarves are bore hole no. 2

At the completed bore hole where water was struck at 200m depth.
The pump is to be put in place shortly.