We also visited a Mushar village close to the conference site where I was introduced to an elderly man who what a healer or shaman, and who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the medicinal plants of the region and of Nepal generally. There was a controversy in the village regarding this man because he was getting old, developing cataracts and the village feared that if he died the knowledge he had would die with him. There were no young members of the village who wanted to carry on the tradition this man represented.

I spent an hour, or so, talking to him through a young interpreter and told him stories from indigenous groups that I have worked with in South and North America and their profound fears that they, too, have lost or are in the process of losing this knowledge and are struggling to preserve it. I told him about my friend, Iona, an Iroquois woman living in Canada who has the same fears he has about the impending loss of the “Old Ways” and specifically the knowledge of wild plants as medicines, food, fibers, and dyes.

Before I left Nepal I went back to the village several times to talk to the medicine man. I was able to borrowed a small motorbike and I steered my way drove across the broad valley following myriad rutted tracks between the corn fields and rice paddies constantly looking to the north and the hoped-for break in the clouds that would give me my glimpse of Annapurna. The heat in the unbelievable under a searing sun. It was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. When I arrived at the village I would sit in the cool Bokino grove with the medicine man. Women brought plates of fresh fruit, pineapple, mangos, chuiri and jack fruit. We sipped water from cool, stainless steel tumblers and talked about plants and medicine and fate of Nepal’s indigenous people and the indigenous people around the globe. Before I left Nepal I was happy to hear that a young man in the village, someone in their early 20s, was going to apprentice to the medicine man to sustain the medicinal plant tradition and knowledge.