Stichting Veldwerk at Nepal

Secretariaat: Stichting Veldwerk Postbus 163 1850 AD Heiloo The Netherlands

Tel:+31 (0)72-5339585 veldwerk@wlink.com.np IBAN nr. NL51ABNA0543703266 Attn. Stichting Veldwerk, p/a Egmond Binnen Bank: ABN-Amro 543703266

Lalimaya Tamang, the handicapped girl from the mountains.

The story starts on my trek with the members of the board in the Helambu area. There I saw a four-year-old girl named Lalimaya crawling on hands and feet through the fields, very dirty and covered with shit. But she turned out to be able to stand up all though she needed a wall or the legs of her mother to pull herself up. I asked her mother if her daughter maybe had some sort of balloon hanging on her back. This turned out to be true. This girl was born with an open back, officially called Spina Bifida.

I promised the mother to come back and see what we could do for her daughter. We are in contact with the liliane fund, which helps kids with physical handicaps in undeveloped countries.

So I went back to the high mountain together with a Nepali facilitator because the Tamang language is not understandable for outsiders. Again it was a hard bus ride on the roof and holding on very tide! And again a tough climb up but I like that so it was no problem.
We held an interview with the parents and they gave us full cooperation to get their daughter back on her feet. We examined the home situation in specific the toilet, water supply and the school. It turned out that there was no toilet, people just shit in the fields around the house. Water supply was available through a pump system 500 meter further. And the school was a 10-minute walk away.


The next morning we went back down the hill with her father and the girl on his shoulders. But a 6 hour drive in a shacking smelling bus on a very bumpy road, actually that road cannot even be called a road, and the bus can better be named a cross car. On top of that Lalimaya is still incontinent because of her handicap and without dipper it made it all together a pretty horrible and dirty ride.

A first examination pointed out that she had a reasonable amount of strength in her onderlegs what will make it possible for her to move with crutches but to make sure they also made an MRI scan.
The MRI scan showed that a part of her brains were growing out of her scalp into her neck this situation would definitely give complications in the future.

She also needed an operation on the lower part of her back to remove the balloon and to untie the nerves and muscles. The result of a quick estimation of the costs was about € 1800 what included a hospital admission of at least a month.

I suggested the Neurologist to skip the two tough and expensive operations and just teach her to walk with crutches and bring her back to her mother.
But the doctor did not agree and explained that within two years she would get in serious problems. She would start growing fast and her nerves and muscles, which are now tied up in her back will not be able to grow as well. This will result in a lot of pain and she will grow crooked and will soon not be able anymore to stand up and walk.

So end of story, € 1800 is a lot of money but I could not send her back home without any help! And imagine what one-day hospital admission in the Netherlands costs!
So, we just did it.


We picked a date and started preparing one and another.

But in Nepal nothing goes like we are used to in the Netherlands. The admission costs were about 100.000 rupee but it did not include any medication or extra blood. We had to arrange the blood ourselves for instance with the blood bank on the other side of the city. But in first instance the blood bank did not want to give us any blood because of a shortage on the market. The medication, anaesthetist and runtgenphoto's all came extra and we had to arrange everything ourselves. So with a big list we went to the pharmacy store.

Fortunately we were able to get the blood but we still had to transport it ourselves. The doctor could not stop laughing when I asked him whether it was possible to arrange the transport in some sort of way. He asked how long I was already in Nepal. But just imagine, with a bag of blood on the street that they not even wanted to sell because there is such a big shortage. Also the nursing and food in the hospital is not included in the admission fee. So her father was there to take care of his daughter and we provided them food because the family does not have the money for all these expensive costs. Our facilitator went to the hospital every day to keep in contact with the doctors and the patient and take care of all the costs.


Meanwhile she has had the two tough operations, eight doctors around the poor girl for a period of seven hours. There is still a chance that Lalimaya has to go through another abdomen/bladder surgery because she still is incontinent what can cause dangerous situations. This is because of an enormous scarf on her bottom. This can cause dead leading infections by the koli bacteria, so the doctors want to avoided that by giving her a stoma or something like that. She got the scarf when she was even smaller. She had rolled into the open fire in the kitchen when her mother was searching for wood. Some people are always unlucky.

Lalimaya is now back in the orthopaedic children hospital where she will start this week with physical therapy and learn how to walk with crutches. This will take about 3 weeks and then she can go home. But the extra surgery can change that. At home we have to build a suitable toilet and a shower. A long water pipe, a storage barrel, and a good closet are the ingredients and some bamboo and roof material will give the finishing touch.
We also examine the possibilities to install a biogas installation. With this installation the mother of Lalimaya does not have to go out for four hours a day to cut wood for the fire. Because the area has a big erosion problem what caused a lot of landslides by cutting too much wood this will be good for the environment as well. This installation can be delivered by SNV the Netherlands and includes a toilet and a shower what is perfect for this situation.
When Lalimaya is used to walk on crutches she can go to school in the neighbourhood. That is part of the follow up as well as a regular visit of our facilitator to see whether everything is going as planned and whether there are other needs were we have to help them with.

Lilianefund is until now willing to help with thinking about everything the girl needs for her recovering but are still searching for extra sponsors to be able to help her. A good friend of mine has arranged € 160 with her study group in Amsterdam for this project. We are the study group grateful for this amount. But we still have a gap of about € 1850 because the total amount was slightly above € 2000

So readers, Who wants to help Lalimaya, by a financial contribution, back on the mountain?
Let us know,

René Veldt, Stichting Veldwerk
email: veldwerk@wlink.com.np

or

Stichting Liliane Fonds,
Havensingel 26, 5211 TX 's-Hertogenbosch,
The Netherlands
tel. 073 5189420 fax 073 5189422
email: info@lilianefonds.nl