#gsbf

What I was doing last week. (More stuff with my fellowship)

Dharan was the final place we visited. We actually made two stops here. We went to a local FM station in the morning first. We learned about how they chose programming, what was most popular (A music program sponsored by a shampoo brand apparently). It was on that leg of the trip we were told Dharan is the second cleanest city in Nepal (after Pokhara). 

Nepal still has a relationship with the British government and people in Nepal can enroll in the British Army. Dharan is the place where such people are based and it shows in the quality of the roads and the cleanliness.

But onto the school for the visually impaired. I think, of all the places we visited this on stuck with me the most. All the places we visited had youth who were active and engaged and doing good work. Visiting this place was a 'Why we do what we do" moment. Because of all the places we went, these people really cared about radio itself. Radio was their primary information source. Radio was a medium more or less perfect for them. 

They were incredibly excited to hear in person the voices they'd listened to on the radio. And one young man, who appeared to have been born without eyes, speaking in some of the clearest English I've heard in Nepal, told one story about how SSMK had impacted him.

SSMK had one episode about people with disabilities. In the drama portion of episode they told a story about a kid who was missing a leg, who was disrespected by his classmates, but then one day won a scholastic competition and people started liking him. The young man said the story had inspired him to try and find his own special talent, and that he had started writing poetry. 

You think you know how much media representation means to people and then you hear a story like that. Someone who really never had heard anyone like themselves being portrayed, and even though the disability portrayed was pretty different from his own it really inspired him to hear anyone like him at all.

We got to linger a while after our more formal sit down. In other places my looks drew a lot of attention to me, but there obviously that didn't apply. In fact because I couldn't really speak Nepali, I ended up taking much more of a backseat.

It was a really good experience, and I'm glad I got to meet them. 

The next morning after our trip to Biratnagar (and my delicious dosa  breakfast for those of you who saw the picture on facebook). We set off for a rural farming village on the outskirts of Itahari. It was a long bumpy ride.

Part of the way Equal Access tries to engage listeners is by encouraging listener groups to form. This particular village is known for having one of the most active clubs in Nepal. They have been listening for the full 13 years SSMK has been on the air.

We met with the current listener club but the original founder of the club, now well out of the youth demographic came to meet us as well and he had some of the most interesting things to say; the changes he had seen in the village which he attributed to the radio program. The most memorable by was when he said child marriages had completely stopped five or six years ago thanks to SSMK. 

I'm sure a lot of that change can be attributed to that listener club. They were clearly very dedicated we saw pictures of some of the events they held, street theater being one of them. They were also rather enterprising they had these plastic chairs with SSMK written on the back which they rented out to big events in the village to get club funds. 

It was also interesting to note that even in this rural village, whose farming goods simply go back into the village and many of whose men have gone to foreign countries to find work, we were told that TV is being favored over radio. That radio is being listened to on mobile phones rather than an actual radio. That SSMK was one of the only radio programs the youth listened to.

The people there were also incredibly welcoming, more facebook friends were made that day. It was a shame we didn't get a chance to talk to them more before we needed to move on to Dharan. In the end we got a brief look into their club hose where we saw their event supplies, got in some quick pictures and moved on.