Bard students to fight leprosy, build library in Nepal
By J.p. Lawrence
A tourist – that’s all Daniela Anderson was as she walked up and down Nepal’s streets – just another teenager in a strange land.
That was four years ago, when Anderson, a Bard student, visited Nepal with no expectations other than seeing a world different than her own. As she saw more and more of this world, however, she saw the poor and the hungry and sick, and she was unable to stand idle any longer. “I needed to find something more fulfilling than being a tourist,” she said.
After contacting the American embassy in Kathmandu, she was given the name of a man who works to create communities for victims of leprosy, a disease of the skin and nerves. After visiting one of Shanti Sewa Griha’s leprosy villages, she was struck by how happy and fulfilling lives the lepers had there, especially compared to the lepers out on the street, who were often ostracized and reduced to begging.
“This is something that needs to happen for all of these lepers on the streets,” Anderson said. “I was angry. Because I knew it was possible to give these people better lives and reduce the risks for other people."
Taking this experience as call to action, Anderson founded the Bard Leprosy Relief Project when she came back to America. Today, the BLRP raises funds to support leprosy villages in Nepal, and it has branched out to help the communities affected by leprosy. The group has approximately 13 to 14 regular members, and has in the past supported such awareness programs as biking across America, screening the Patrick Swayze leprosy movie “City of Joy,” and serving traditional Nepali food.
The most recent fundraiser brought more than 100 students, faculty and members of the community into Bard’s campus center April 29 to share in a dinner of rice, aalu-gobi, and kheer, with the chyau, or mushroom curry, disappearing quickest. “The food was amazing,” Alex Meyer ’14 said of the chyau, “especially since I helped cook it.”
The vegetarian curries were good for both body and soul, as the dinner raised more than $500, in addition to the $2200 already raised – money that will go toward a new library and new books in a new Shanti Sewa Griha leprosy village near Kathmandu.
In addition to the new books and new library, the BLRP plans to send five Bard students there to help get the library built. The students, each of whom will pay their own way, will be employed as laborers, swinging hammers and pouring concrete under the supervision of a carpenter there.
The five students – Siddhartha Baral, Stephanie Lamont, Wolf Elardo, Vitor Carvalho and Louis Bonhoure – all expressed a desire to help people in far off lands, as Baral, Elardo, and Carvalho have spent time in that region of the world.
“It’s a good experience. It’s a totally different experience than America for them,” Baral said, who added that the benefits do not stem solely from altruism. “For me, it’s getting back home; it’s getting away from the usual boredom of life. It’s not just going there with the basic intention of helping other people’s lives. I want to have fun.”
This phrasing was echoed by other members of the five students flying to Nepal, who decided to travel there before hearing of the project.
“I saw a chance to help people in a small way. I was struck visually by what I saw, and when I saw that it was a place I was interested, I knew I had to do it,” Elardo told the crowd during an after-meal presentation, but later he confessed punching up his motives to “make it sound better,” saying he was really in it “for the experience."
On some level, this sentiment worries Anderson, who could be seen flitting from table to table during the meal. “Two of the members are very new to the project,” she says, adding that she plans to take a couple weeks to prepare the five students, to make them more than tourists with a hammer.
But regardless of motive, the library will be built, and the books will be stocked, and communities of Nepal will benefit, and overall, Anderson says she is excited. After all, she too had visited Nepal for the simple reason of experience. Perhaps the five students, too, will experience such an awakening.