Tara was comfortable working on a project by herself only in this case she was finishing up for the group of women and attending to details as the other women got ready to do a presentation. Tara was also comfortable working with men. By the way she dressed in comfortable clothing and by her professional demeanor she had found her own "place" in the conference environment and established her authority in her consistent low-key approach to things. Both she, and Renu, were the most undefended people I had ever met

So, in the first two or three days the women stuck together as a group and talked energetically among themselves and occasionally to me. They would test ideas they had on me, fine tune them, and then go back to the group to present them. Their presentations were usually passionate, emotion filled attempts to get their more proactive views of the world heard clearly by the men. It’s risky speculation to say this but I think it is mostly true and that is that I saw the men splitting things apart and I saw the women strategically trying to unify things.

Tara, Renu and Laljahri, at about day three, began to speak more clearly about their definition of sustainability and how they interpreted the forces that constrained it including the accelerating global economy that was ruthlessly expanding to every nook and cranny of Nepal and the world. Again, they were more open than the men. They saw the globalization phenomenon having things to offer Nepali women if only recognition and acknowledgment. What Renu and the Women's Foundation was trying to create for Nepali women was legitimacy, equality under the law, and security, opportunities to improve their health and well being, for themselves and their children. They saw sustainability as a movement towards greater justice for all people. They saw it as a move towards better opportunities for all people including health and security. They did not expect Nepali women to immediately have the same opportunities that Western women have, but they desperately wanted to have nascent opportunities to take the one or two difficult steps out of their debilitating poverty.

Of the material that I presented at the conference the women like the story of Dan the Dairy Farmer from Indiana most. They could see parallels with their stories in feeling like they were in a "box". The particularly liked the idea that the whole effort to change his well being was about trying to improve the soil and the grass on his farm as a way of increasing his profitability so his family would be taken care of and the community, too, would be served. Tara pointed out that what he was doing was essential, that it enhanced and enriched the community and the environment. The process began when he decided to take a huge risk and reduce his material possessions and move towards keeping what was useful and what "mattered", as she put it.

The women pointed out that Dan reduced his own consumption significantly while increasing those products that were necessary to his family and the community. They felt like reducing the role of the bank (banks in general) in his farm was the more sustainable direction to go towards. They drew parallels between the increasing role of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Nepal to the point that the banks are gaining more and more control over the country's agriculture and natural resources. They reiterated information that the WB is telling Nepal to grow more products to sell to industrialized countries, like coffee and sugar, as has already been mentioned here. They also like the point made in Dan's story that in order for his farm, the agriculture he practiced to be sustainable it also had to be profitable. To repeat it, the point is that no one, not Dan's son or anyone else, will want to take over the farm, any farm, if they can't make money and stay out of debt.

Renu broke away from the women's "bloc" and took the initiative to sit and talk to the men.

I told a story at the conference about farming and debt. The story is true even though it sounds like a joke. It involves this farm family that owns a huge farm in the US. They are constantly in debt and struggling but then one day they win a huge amount of money, millions and millions of dollars, in a lottery. It's the largest prize anyone has ever won in their state so the newspaper and TV news teams rush to the farm to interview the family in time for the 6 o'clock news. The TV news trucks pull into the farm family's drive way, set up their lights and satellite dishes, get all their equipment organized and then ask the farm family to come out and stand on the front steps which they do. Then, precisely at 6 p.m., one of the TV reporters, holding his microphone close to the farmer, says: "Well Bob, you won a lot of money today. What are you planning to do with it?" The farmer looks at the TV reporter as if he's crazy and says, "Well, I guess we'll just keep on farming until all the money's gone."

Renu took a leadership position and moved into the men's "camp"and "joining" them, in a sense, by sitting with them and allowing them to use her as a resource since her experiences have been and continue to be even today so much more on the practical level than theirs. Of course, she had a strategy which was to help the men see the women's point of view of sustainability and some of the other issues addressed at the conference. Earlier I talked about the women's perspectives of sustainability and globalization and how they interpreted these two "forces" or issues in their lives. As the conference continued they gently defused the polarity by stressing their two primary issues: health and justice. They were eloquent in saying that sustainability revolves around the health and welfare of children, families and communities.

I'll talk more about Renu's inventiveness and courage in a separate entry below but these pictures, as spontaneous as they were when I took them, say a lot about the conference from the perspective of the women. Renu, at least it seemed, was always on task, always "present" and always committed to her passion for women's rights. She is, to me, an individual who thinks and works at the level of a Nobel Laureats with her combination of courage, commitment (passion) and her brilliance.

I am now going to introduce some of the women I met and worked with and that I got to know a little during my months in Nepal via the following photographs. Some of the photos have appeared before in this blog and in magazines but the idea of this brief detour is to kind of overwhelm you with the beauty and humanity of these people. One of my favorite poems is by Marge Piercy, the American poet, titled "To Be of Use" and I want to slip it in here because I was reminded of it everyday while I was in Nepal and working with the women. The imagery of the poem slides perfectly over my images of Nepal and the women working in the fields and villages.

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.