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News Post Leader, Thursday, March 31, 2011
a chance encounter with a cook at a seaside restaurant has
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BLYTH’S Vera Russell has made it her mission in life to do what she can to help villagers in Nepal. TEGAN CHAPMAN accompanied her on her latest visit to Thokarpa to do voluntary work at an eye camp and to see how money raised here in the north east is making a difference over there. AFTER Vera Russell’s husband Ken died 13 years ago, she decided to look for a new purpose in life. And the former teacher found it where she least expected it – in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. While in Goa with friends in 1999, Vera, from South Beach, Blyth, met Sitaram Timalsina, known as Jack, a cook at a beach restaurant. Jack invited her to his home country of Nepal, where she found a community of caring people in need of a helping hand. While some great-grandmothers would be content to potter around at home, since discovering the remote village of Thokarpa, Vera has From left, Vera Russell, our reporter Tegan Chapman, Barbara ConnorsFowler and Mary Rathbone at the Thokarpa eye camp organised by Javea in Nepal.
Vera’s new aim in life is to help village she regards as second home
devoted her time to improving the villagers’ lives in any way she can. In 2001, she and Jack joined forces to create the charity Javea in Nepal. Vera is secretary of the Rotary Club of Monkseaton Centenary in
Whitley Bay, and the club stepped in to offer financial support in 2007, and has been raising funds to help the charity ever since. Thanks to the help of the club, and donations from people in the north east, the charity has been able to provide a clean water supply, a block of three toilets for its school, a health post manned by a full-time trainee doctor and also an eye camp to offer treatment for optical conditions. Vera said: “I felt such humility on my first visit to the country. “The people out there are just amazing – always smiling and working so hard. “The first thing we did was raise as much money as we could for a water supply for the village, as the villagers were having to walk for hours several times a day to get wa-
News Post Leader, Thursday,
www.newspostleader.co.uk
given former teacher a new sense of purpose Vera Russell in Nepal.
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ter for their families. “I fell in love with Nepal and the people there, and it was like I had found what I was meant to be doing. “Now Thokarpa is like my second home.” On her latest club-sponsored visit to Thokarpa, to help out at the eye camp, she was accompanied by immediate past president Barbara Connors-Fowler, a retired nurse, and Sister Mary Rathbone, from Whitley Bay Health Centre. Thokarpa is a small but spreadout village, where life seems almost medieval compared to the UK.
Villagers live in homes made of mud and wood, and they survive on a diet of rice and whatever vegetables they can grow on the terraced slopes. Malnutrition rates are more than 50 per cent, life expectancy is under 60, and the mortality rate for children under the age of five is a heartbreaking ten per cent. There is limited or no electricity, so villagers cook by fire and are dependent on candlelight. Many homes do not have a toilet and share water between several families, washing using a bucket outside.
Here there are no mod cons. There is no internet or e-mail and no mobile phone coverage. They are effectively cut off from the world. Thokarpa is 6,000ft up, and cataracts are a common problem due to the thinness of the air at higher altitudes, so simple surgery, like that offered by the eye camp, can make a big difference to the lives of hundreds of people. For further details, visit the charity’s website www.javea-in-nepal. org.uk tegan.chapman@northeast-press.co.uk
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