As i am home for celebrating tihar one of the greatest festivals of hindus and my favourite,
i come with more awakening.I am back home with more sense of responsibility. My
responsibility towards the community that i’m starting to work with, “Community in BETHAN!”
Before coming home for celebrating tihar, we had a session regarding community feeling.
During that session only, i happened to think about how we have so much responsbility
towards the community and its development.
The session in our LTS(Long Term Service ) residential training house was for us to think
and discuss about the three main aspects of how-
- we feel being Responsible
- we felt as a Part of community and
- we find Meaning in our work in community
Flashback started in my mind and all actions started coming reversed.
The arrival at “Dahu”
was a warm welcome by the community people with garlands tikas and flowers and in their
traditional greeting “LHASO; Phyafulla”. They expressed us how happy they were to see all of
the international and national fellows and thanked us for being there, despite the face that
the village is a rural place to be in. All of the people were hopeful that we would do
something great for them. And with that hope sense of was born .That was the
first time when i perceived the sense of responsibility. It then started intensifying when
we talked to the people on the way, in the house we stayed and in the community meeting at
Dahu, Bhawasa and Majhi village.
Similarly, while we were visiting and observing the village areas the next day, people from
community gave us Pomello, almonds and lots of other fruits for free. We were completely
strangers to them and they gave us those fruits. I paused and thougt for a second – if it
was my neighbourhood in Kathmandu- not even a single leaf from the plants would be given to
strangers let alone the fruits! At that moment i felt as i was also the part of community,
so that was why they offered us fruits.
And finding a meaning to our community development work in Bethan is something that’s
connected with both of the above things- being responsible and feeling as a part of
community. One of our international fellows said- it is P(part of community) R
(Responsbility) = Meaning , which i see as a very good reflection. Both of these aspects (P
and R) combine together and will give a meaning to our work in Bethan. we have expectations
of what we can give to the community people there and they have expectations from us of what
we will be giving them. And if these expectations match up then of course we will find a
meaning to our work there. For this to happen, we, the national and internationals along
with the staffs will work hard and achieve it!
we go to work in Bethan next week and we internalised all of these aspects which was
meaningful and helpful. warmly and heartly thanx to Esther and Gilli for having this
wonderful session of community feeling 🙂
Lastly, but not the least- HAPPY TIHAR everyone!! 🙂
Photos by – Hava
my VIEWS - SUMAN 