Return to Kathmandu

Oh That Red Tape

India has the most difficult visa process I've ever dealt with.  

The online visa application takes forever, asking invasively for visible identification marks, my parents' full names and reference persons on both sides of the border.  India and Bangladesh don't have the best diplomatic relations, meaning I needed to wait for an interview at the India High Commission before I could get my stamp.  The interview could only be scheduled after my Bangladeshi visa had expired, meaning I wasn’t getting into India from Bangladesh. 

This threw a massive wrench in my plans, and a decision needed to be made quick.  Frustrated with the Indian system, I considered skipping the country completely and flying straight to Turkey, my intended destination after India.  But flights were expensive, and at the end of the day I didn’t want to give up so easily.  Nahid and Tanbir both suggested I go through Nepal, and looking at a map it made absolute sense.  They also told me the India-Nepal border is less stringent, that many Nepalese can go across even with no visa.  Flights from Dhaka were available and much cheaper, so I bought a ticket to Kathmandu.

Back to the Beginning 

I hadn’t planned on coming back to Nepal so soon, because I was focused on exploring new countries.  However, the return brought me back full circle.  I had come here with borrowed maps almost two years earlier, to find God and myself by solo traveling for the first time.  I loved Nepal, its people, and my adventures there.  Time slowed down and I could think, away from the noise and stress of Hong Kong.  It was there, walking on the majestic mountains of the Annapurna, that I heard the call.  I also met a rugged man who was traveling the world for 18 months.   Though he had a callous, hardened outlook, he was the most interesting person in the teahouse.  We were regaled with stories about sleeping in Indian train stations and walking through no man's land to cross borders in North Africa.  Up to that point, I didn't even know you could travel for that long. 

Last time I had planned Nepal methodically, but I was also out for adventure, purposefully reckless at times to see how far I could push it.  It's not surprising that I ended up in some sketchy situations, exposing the glaring mistakes and thus some valuable lessons.  One thing I learned was, never enter a new city after sunset.  

This is partly why my first impressions of Kathmandu were stark and unpleasant.  I had arrived in the dark of night, and though I negotiated for a taxi, I was put instead into a minivan with two men.  We drove into a lifeless city with no lights and no people, and for a while it seemed like our vehicle was the only one on the road.  When we turned down a narrow alley, I began nervously clutching my bags, choking back the fear of the unknown. 

Though daylight chased away the shadows, it also revealed Kathmandu to be a dusty and tumultuous beast.  It was something like the second most polluted city in Asia.  So many stimuli assaulted the senses that an hour-long walk through the city streets proved an exhausting effort, forcing me to beat a hasty retreat to my hostel.  I grew to love Nepal mostly during my days in Pokhara.  Kathmandu remained a city of chaos to avoid at all costs.

Perspective is relative, after all.  Coming from Hong Kong, Kathmandu seemed senseless and dysfunctional.  But this time I was coming from Dhaka, and Kathmandu now seemed a familiar, peaceful haven where I could rest and regroup.  By comparison, the streets seemed less dusty and the traffic far less crazy.  It was also quieter because it was low season.  But there was plenty of infrastructure around tourism, and most everything was available for me to resupply.  People spoke English, so getting around was way easier than Dhaka.  There were friendly faces at The Sacred Valley Inn, where I had briefly stayed two years prior.  Finally, Nepal is not a Muslim country, and I could eat all the pork I wanted.

Sabali

It took fully two weeks, multiple trips to the embassy and a lot of patience to get my visa right.  (I heard that historically, the process was intentionally difficult to solicit bribes, but the online format has corrected this practice some.)  In the meantime, I refreshed, reflected and fattened myself up, since I'd lost around 15 pounds in the previous two months.  It didn’t take long to overdose on bacon, pork chops and pepperoni pizza.  

Waking up to the sight of the Himalayas on the horizon fed the spirit, and I tried to think lofty thoughts.  It was time to focus my attention on the Pandora's Box that was India: where to go, what to watch out for, how to get around.  I wanted to do it all, but didn't know where to start. From Bangladesh, it made sense to stop at Kolkata first.  But now entering from Nepal, the closest points of interest were Darjeeling and Varanasi.  I even went as far as writing Darjeeling as my point of entry on the visa form.  But in the end, a landscape of tea plantations paled in comparison to the allure of the holy city.

I was now ready and anxious to go, but was further delayed two days by a series of hartals.  The term is commonly translated to 'general strike', but is more appropriately described as a 'shutdown' of business and transportation, in protest of the government.  I was used to these in Bangladesh, where I witnessed five or six hartals as election year heated up and opposition parties amped up.  There was nothing to do but wait it out. 

Finally the hartal ended, and I booked a ticket for the first bus to the border.  I was well aware of the risks of these buses: the aggressive drivers, the treacherous mountainous roads, the bags and suitcases latched to the roof making turns even worse.  But it was the only way to go, no backing out now.

I got to the bus station as the sun rose, struggling to stay awake while mentally preparing for the bumpy 10-hour ride ahead.  There was one other traveler waiting to board when I arrived, whose name was Diego.  The scruffy beard marked him as a traveler, along with his faded ethnic red paints with the rainbow trim.  Hailing from Italy, he had been traveling India for several months already.  He had come to Nepal to renew his visa, and was headed back to India.  We were both going to Varanasi, and decided to travel together. 

I had no idea that all the delays in Nepal would lead to me visiting Varanasi at the perfect time.  And nothing prepared me for what was to come.

Project Alo: Lighting Up The Slum

The Idea: Bottle Lights

Liter of Light was the first to implement bottle lights on a wide scale.  The idea took root quickly in the Philippines slums, and tipped over to other countries.  It was genius: take a n 2-Liter Coke bottle, fill it with water and a little bleach, install it in a tin or aluminum roof and poof: you have a 50W solar light bulb during daytime, rain or shine.  Homes that previously had no light would now be able to go about their daily activities much easier.  It seemed to make the most sense in densely packed slums, which had less access to open space and daylight.  Rural villages by comparison afforded more space under the sun for people to work and study.

On a mass scale, bottle lights have the added function of recycling and reusing thousands upon thousands of Coke bottles.  There are opportunities in the supply chain, sourcing materials from in-kind donors as well as foundations and corporate partners, in conjunction with recycling programs.  The climate conditions in Bangladesh are better even than the Philippines, due to stronger and more prolonged sunlight.  With the rapid urbanization across Bangladesh, there is a large and growing number of people that would benefit from this simple and cheap technology.  

But all that may (or may not) come in time.  What I was focused on was completing a successful pilot project—to get it right for one small community—before any thoughts of scaling.

Groundwork

I shared my ideas for Dia Bari slum with changemakers I knew to see who might be interested in helping.  Carole found links to two organizations in Bangladesh who were already on the bottle light scene.  One had tried in June during rainy season, and failed miserably on its one and only installation; not only did the bottle not provide enough light, but it had started leaking.  They paid for a new tin roof, dismantled the project, and redirected donor funds elsewhere.  I was duly warned.

The second organization, CHANGE (www.change.org.bd), is a youth based organization that had succeeded in installing bottle lights with good press coverage.  I had been interviewing a young social entrepreneur named Anjali, who called CHANGE to set up a meeting.  The founder and president, named Sajid, is also a student, research assistant, and member of the national fencing team.  He heard about Liter of Light in January of 2012, and started exploring the feasibility of doing the same thing in Bangladesh.  He made a few adjustments to the model used in the Philippines, substituting materials found locally.   After three months, he and his team installed the first bottle.  Sajid did not have the resources to achieve the same scale as elsewhere, but he did produce studies on the feedback of the slum dwellers, and won social entrepreneurship awards that provided funding.  CHANGE championed the cause in the media, and taught students how to build their own bottle lights.  Through these initiatives, CHANGE became a Global Partner of Liter of Light.

As an environmental research student, Sajid saw the bottle lights from an energy perspective.  He installed them in a slum where there was already electricity stolen from the grid.  The intention was for slum dwellers to use less power during the day, saving energy and lightening the load on the rest of the grid.  But slum dwellers pay a lump sum for electricity regardless of how much they use, and there was little incentive to abandon their existing light bulbs for a bottle light.  The only exception was during load shedding times, where the electricity was temporarily turned off for everyone to conserve energy.  

Effectively, they did not see the need for bottle lights.  Moreover having it installed in their roof made them feel poorer.  Thus there was a lot of social resistance from the slum dwellers.  CHANGE conducted awareness campaigns to convince the community of otherwise, with varying degrees of success.  All in all, CHANGE was able to install 30-32 bottles in 2 areas in its one year of existence.  Crucially, the bottles installed were structurally sound, and did not leak in during monsoon season.

My approach was from a different angle.  I wanted to help the people in the slums where there was no stolen electricity and thus little options.  The reasoning was that they'd be quicker to adopt the bottle lights, and not feel poorer. 

We thanked Sajid for his time and arranged to go see CHANGE's existing pilot project in the Mirpur slum of Baunia.  A few weeks passed as we coordinated schedules, and in the meantime I researched how to build a bottle light from scratch, and planned the method of attack with my team.  The problems generally fell into two categories: 

1) Engineering quality lights

2) Gaining acceptance among the people

The first problem was more pressing; in no way were we going to install leaky lights and make the situation worse.  I wasn't about to go playing handyman on someone's roof and ruin it.  Sajid told us of another amateur project that failed, an alumni organization that installed 70 lights in 7 days.  They too had quality issues because they used 1.5L bottles and cheap glue.  Smaller bottles meant less light and cheap glue meant leakage.  

Feroz wanted to buy some materials and start experimenting ourselves, but this seemed too rudimentary, and neither of us were particularly good with our hands.  The other issue was how to test for leakage.  Even if it worked on an experimental shack, I couldn't guarantee that the lights wouldn't leak in 6 months.

I finally settled on the simplest solution, which was to use Sajid's existing team to put in the lights for me.  Sajid's friend Mahmud from the national fencing team is an electrician, and had installed the first bottle lights for CHANGE.  With electrical wiring around the slum roofs, the job had to be done professionally, and CHANGE paid him for his efforts.  He had the equipment and the experience, and knew where to buy the materials.  I could invite him to help me do the same, and also hire an assistant from the slum who could help out and be locally accountable for maintenance.  Anjali called it the Plug and Play. 

Baunia

Feroz came along to meet Sajid and Mahmun, who brought us to Baunia slum to see the lights they'd already installed.  The first house we inspected was quite large by slum standards, with a high ceiling and two rooms.  One room had a bottle light installed that provided decent illumination, enough that no other light was needed.  They still used an electrical bulb in the second room, which had no bottle light.  We checked four houses in total, and all the lights worked fine.  Other than a few collected cobwebs, they were in good order.  In another room, someone was sleeping in the light from the bottle: a reminder that once installed, it couldn't be turned off. 

There was actually demand for 50 more lights in Baunia, as the idea caught on with the community.  This was encouraging for the longer term dissemination of the concept.  Sajid was looking for funding sources from various organizations to help with the financing.  

Back to Dia Bari

The next day I returned to Dia Bari slum with Feroz, exactly five weeks after my first memorable visit with the HK team.  Last time had been winter, but by now the hot weather had set in, reflected in the numerous kids running around sporting freshly shaved heads. 

Nahid convinced Joshim, one of the original drivers that went in with us the first time, to tag along.  He knew exactly where our slum was located, and could also help build rapport with the community by reminding them of our last visit.  At Carole's suggestion, I developed dozens of pictures that the HK group had taken of everyone, and handed them out as a gesture of goodwill.  Grownups and children alike loved seeing themselves in photo form, and I watched the faces light up as they recognized themselves in a picture.  Of course, this also led to chaos as children and mothers fought to see the pictures and claim their own.     

Feroz and Joshim explained our intentions to install bottle lights, and the idea was well-received.  Through Feroz as interpreter, I told Sunni's mother that we were inspired to do this because we saw Sunni studying hard, and wanted to help her achieve her dreams.  We collected over 20 orders from the community, and promised to return the next day to begin work.

First Light

I met Feroz and Mahmun early in the morning, with the latter coming prepared with ladder, toolbox and a bag of ready-filled bottles.  The modified recipe used bleach instead of chlorine, but it achieved the same effect.  After buying some glue, we rickshawed over to Dia Bari.  

There wasn't a crowd when we got there, and more importantly, only a few kids were around.  Though it was a Saturday, many were still at school.  We set up in front of Sunni's house and got to work.  Mahmun needed an assistant, who we hired for the day from the slum.  I helped Mahmun install the first light, because I wanted to get hands on to know how it was done.  Initially it was slow going, because the tin was softer than Mahmun was used to working with.  But we quickly adjusted, slipping in extra wooden beams under the roof for support.  

The light was up and ready by the time Sunni came home.  Feroz interviewed her mother, who wiped tears from her eyes as she spoke about how this light would help her children.  Sunni was less emotional and maintained her calm composure, quietly thanking me with a smile.   

We put in four lights that first day.  The twenty-odd orders we had collected were down to nine because many of the people had misunderstood the first sales pitch.  They thought we were providing lights that could be used at night, not during the daytime.  Other problems arose that we hadn't considered, mainly involving the role of the landlord.  We needed to get permission from the landowners, who potentially could charge the tenants more rent after light installation.  After some discussion, it was clear that this problem was outside the scope of our work, and we continued on.

The third light we installed was in the home of an old lady.  When I went in to check on the setup, she was openly shedding tears of joy.  Her story was melancholy: her only daughter was now married and living with her husband, leaving the poor mother on her own.  Long lines were etched into her face, the expression moulded by long years of worry and hard living.  Living in this slum with no one to care for her, she considered this light the most beautiful thing in the world.  She dried her eyes and placed her hand on my head, brushing my hair back while blessing me in Bengali.  It was an emotional moment and I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.  

Mahmun's assistant had a 12-year old son named Akash.  He'd been feeling sick all morning, but by afternoon had recovered enough to invite me to see his house.  It turns out that young Akash was an inventor, taking the skills he acquired from technical college and applying it to the small workbench in his home.  It was a boon that his house was one of the few in the slum to have electricity.  He showed us a rechargeable battery light that he built from parts found in the garbage.  This amazed us, and I gave his father some money to buy the tools he needed to build more lights—new batteries, an electricity meter and a soldering iron.

Changing Direction

When we went back the next day, we were greeted with bad news.  Of the outstanding orders, we could only put in three more bottle lights.  The other houses had three layers of tin roofing instead of one, which made installation impossible.

There were also no additional orders, the reason time and again being that people wanted lights for the nighttime, not during the day.  We couldn't well force our solution onto them, and so Mahmun went to work on the last three orders while I went to see how Akash was doing.

  

The boy inventor had built two more lights, one using a CD as a backboard.  He'd already sold one for 70 taka.  This was a low price because all the parts were second-hand, but it was encouraging that he built and sold the light proactively.

We made some suggestions on modifying his designs, and gave him money for a prototype.  By the next day, Akash had completed two more prototypes.  He claimed that once he had the materials, it only took 5-10 minutes to construct one light.

We decided to subsidize the cost of the lights instead of donating them outright (like we did with the bottle lights).  If we approached this as a social business, it ensured that only the people who needed the product would pay for it.  The light cost 200 taka to make, excluding Akash's wages.  He marketed the lights for 100 taka each, and we would subsidize 150 taka, thereby earning him a profit of 50 taka for his efforts.  It wasn't a huge sum by any means, but not bad for a 12-year old for 5-10 minutes of work.  If we made the lights any more expensive, then we couldn't compete with the cheap 'Chinese lights' on the market.

I went with Akash around the entire slum to show off his prototype light and collect orders; by the end of the day we had 20 interested households.  Of course, we'd learned by now that minds could change quickly.  There were also some new problems to solve, mainly around how to recharge the lights.  The landlord was already hounding Akash's family for more rent due to higher electricity usage, so it would be difficult to use Akash's home as a universal charging station.

Production

The following day I went to Akash and gave him funds for the first 15 lights.  The money had been provided by Chris and Inga, our German friends who had previously volunteered with the blanket distribution.  They visited Dia Bari the same day Akash showed us his original built-from-trash prototype light, and wanted to contribute to the cause.

It took Akash longer than expected to deliver on the orders, in part because he was constantly experimenting and making improvements to the designs.  The casing for the battery was also made from scratch out of wood, which took time.  His father helped to build the lights, and it looked to be a father-son bonding experience.

After a few days (and with some extra tools) Akash and his father had built and sold 14 lights.  Of the 5 lights already installed, the feedback from our customers was positive and encouraging.

Quality Testing

I skipped a day in the slum due to a rare episode of Dhaka rain, which provided an opportunity to check if our bottle lights passed the crucial leakage test.  None of them had leaked, which was fantastic news.  The ground of the slum was still wet with mud, transforming it into a quagmire.  I couldn't imagine how bad the conditions would be during the monsoon season.

Akash had further improved on the designs, and Sajid brought a light meter to measure the luminance of the various models.  Our battery lights fared well, though not producing as many lux as a normal bulb.  By the naked eye, we could see the dramatic difference the lights made within the complete darkness of the surrounding slum.  

Lessons:

We started out implementing a tried and true solution, in what I thought would be a cut and paste situation.  The bottle lights ended up costing more to install, but were provided free for the people.  Though we were confident in the solution, empirical testing proved otherwise.  We ended up selling lower cost “Akash lights” to four times the number of households.  

People in general tend to be resistant to change, and overcoming that inertia may take years.  There were suggestions of awareness campaigns and educating the locals, who may accept the idea in time.  But this also assumes that the people don't know what they want.  Once we had a solution that met the actual need of the community (Akash’s night lights) the people adopted it immediately.  It was a stark lesson in listening to the market and adjusting accordingly.  

Not to say that bottle lights is a bad idea; perhaps it is a matter of sequencing, and once people's priority of nighttime lighting is taken care of, they can focus on the next problem.  For example, to save battery time on their night light they may choose to install a bottle light.

Once again I dove into this project headfirst, driven by the need to execute and finish before my Bangladeshi visa expired.  As it turned out, there are many things that can't be rushed, and no matter how much discussion we had after each phase, in the end we could only wait to see what the next day brought, and react accordingly.

The bottle light initiative in Dia Bari brought mixed results.  Seven installations is hardly something to brag about, but at least quality-wise, the lights didn't leak.  As the plastic Coke bottles faltered, a homegrown solution arose to address the true needs of the people.  That seed was Akash, who just needed an opportunity and a little water to bear fruit.  Given the proper funding, guidance and technical advice, he and his father built 30 lights with different designs and sold them all in less than a week. 

Empowering Akash was an unforeseen result of Project Alo.  His ingenuity and hard work allowed him to earn extra money for his family, something that he is happy about.  I hope also that the experience will widen his horizons about what is possible if he continues to apply himself.

All in all, we were able to provide light of some form to about half of the households in Dia Bari.  Not bad for a start, but it fell short of my aims to light up the whole community.  I did however overachieve my original goal of helping Sunni, by providing her house with two lights.  This way she can study at any time.

The actual budget of the project is laughingly small in the grand scheme of things.  I could’ve easily paid for the whole thing out of my own pocket, but the surplus donations from Blanket Drop and contributions from Chris and Inga were enough to cover all costs. 

Time was the commodity we didn’t have, and even if given a few more days we would’ve made the solution more elegant and complete.  There were still design adjustments that needed to be made to Akash’s models, specifically in making the lights easier to recharge.  We made the proper recommendations, but I couldn’t personally oversee the project anymore.  My visa was expiring and I needed to leave the country.

With Sunni and Akash

The Slum Kids

Every day I was in Dia Bari I was surrounded by the children.  All the youthful energy that had surrounded the HK study group during our first visit was now directed solely at me.  They pulled at my clothes and jumped on my back, held my hands and smacked me when I wasn't looking.  This often slowed down and hindered my passage through the slum, though when it came time to work, the kids did back up and watched from a respectful distance.  I did make sure to make room for playtime with them each day, and even played cricket with them, next to the pool of garbage.  It remains the only time I ever played cricket.  

There was a steady barrage of children and parents alike asking for their picture to be taken.  Some of the older girls caught on that I was taking only one picture of each person, so they kept finding new toddlers for me to snap, conveniently standing in the frame to get more shots in.  I for my part continued developing the photos to hand out, so that everyone could have their own.  I also brought treats for everyone: one day it would be pears, another it would be cookies.  Distribution of anything remained a gong show, but I got somewhat used to it by the end.

These kids had defined our first visit.  Their energy and enthusiasm were contagious, and had left us welling up with joy.  Through Project Alo I was able to experience this for an extra week, and it made everything worthwhile.  Ultimately it was the kids that I wanted to help, whether they understood it or not.