My friend Jim is rolling out an interview series for March which is Women's History Month. He was looking for women in the Peace Corps to interview about their experience and influence as women volunteers. I was happy to contribute to his website, which is full of resources and stories about his four services in the Peace Corps. You can find my thoughts and the full interview at the link below.
Building Bridges: Women in the Peace Corps with Tomoe Matsumoto-Hervol (wanderingtheworld.com)
This post discusses suicide.
On February 3rd we lost Swostika Adhikari, a host family cousin, to suicide. She was 16 years old.
***
"How is your pen pal program going?"
A high school student sat on a stool and looked at me with curiosity from her porch. The book she had been studying balanced placidly on her knees. I had come to her house to update her grandfather about a beekeeping project he was interested in.
It had been some time since I visited her school to announce a pen pal exchange I was setting up with a friend of mine in the United States. I explained that we had made our selection of Nepali pen pal participants and that I had been planning to get the students together for a meeting when Swostika died.
"It wasn't a good time," I said. "So I'll probably come back to school in a week or so." I wondered what the mood was like at school now. What the students were going through. What they were thinking. Were they talking about it?
I hesitated.
"How are the students feeling?" I asked.
The girl's face fell. I watched her struggle to find the right words.
"Too much sad," she said, finally, in English.
I nodded. We were quiet. Sitting together with the weight. I wanted to offer something more to support her -- something, anything. But then a passing neighbor interrupted us and swept the moment away.
***
Nepal is known for its abundant biodiversity*. For being a small country the size of 6 Rhode Islands it spans an elevation range of almost z...
