Letters from Renu and the WFN staff . . .

A diary of social work in Nepal . . . June 28, 2006

The Letters from Renu on these pages detail an ongoing saga of abuse. WARNING: these letters have graphic descriptions which may be disturbing. These are stories of real people in terrible trouble. The good news is that there are many individuals who are working to set the world right in Nepal. WFN is one of the groups seeing to it that something is being done to help.

Children working at subsistence, no hope for school . . . Dear Brian Kopke , I would like to write little about the pictures I sent to you.

There are two pictures where children are trying to find something in the mud. They are the children who have no food in the family. Their parents can earn enough only for three months worth of food in a year. The rest of the time they have to collect some food in the forest or in the river or in any water they find. Those children are trying to find fish in the water.

The are two pictures where girls are carrying some baskets on their heads. They are carrying cow dung. They collect the dung in the fields. They will make teh dung into shapes like pizza and dry it in the sun. When it is dry they will use it as fire wood. They use dung for firewood because they have no money to buy the kerosene or fire wood.

I have also sent one picture of a young girl.. She is living in the eastern part of Nepal. She is form one ethnic group call Musar. In that area all her people are very poor. They are landless, They always work in other people's homes. Several of them are still bonded. All their children go to collect wild food. That girl is trying to find something like wild potatoes.

Renu Sharma