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Mill Valley man dreams of educated Nepal
  
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By Ryan White
Mill Valley resident Jay Tamang, a Nepalese immigrant who first arrived in the United States in 2004, has overcome tremendous odds to attain the modest life he now shares with his wife and two young sons. But it’s the memory of those he left behind that motivates his life’s work today: using education to improve the hardscrabble lives of rural Nepalese, who still face the same challenges — grinding poverty, lack of education, few resources — Tamang was fortunate enough to escape.
Tamang, 37, is the founder of the budding nonprofit Nepal FREED, or the Nepal Foundation for Rural Economic and Educational Development. The organization, which has already overhauled one remote village school and is now raising funds to expand a second, aims to provide the basic educational infrastructure and supplies lacking in many rural communities across Nepal.
On June 4, Tamang and his supporters will hold a fundraiser and slideshow at Park School to raise some of the $10,000-$15,000 he estimates he’ll need to renovate and expand a rundown, overcrowded rural high school.
If his young organization is able to make it happen, it will bring Tamang a step closer to realizing a dream he’s harbored since he was a young schoolboy ascending the mountain behind his village to get to school every day.
“How can I educate all these people?” he said. “I was able to think about my life and what I wanted to do. I always wanted to think about other people and how I could give them the knowledge to make their own decisions.”
Getting there half the battle
Tamang grew up in the village of Bhalche in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, a long day’s drive northwest of Kathmandu. When he was growing up there, the village was without electricity, clean running water and phones, the homes themselves usually little more than mud walls, hay roofs and earthen floors.
Beginning at the age of 6, Tamang would set off in the morning on an hour and a half climb up the mountain to get to his school, a small, dirt-floor building shared by 10 to 20 other students. The daily trek to and from school required him to twice ford a small river, a harrowing feat for a young boy during monsoon season. Some young students were less fortunate in their crossing, he said.
When Tamang entered the fifth grade, his new school was even farther from home, extending his daily trek to two hours each way. The experience understandably impressed upon him the importance of having more schools in small villages. “Walking four hours a day is impossible for kids going to school,” he said.
Life at home wasn’t much easier. Tamang’s mother, who still lives in Nepal with his father, gave birth to eight kids, Tamang said, of which four survived, all boys. According to Tamang, his deceased siblings died either from easily preventable illnesses, such as dehydration from diarrhea, or during childbirth. His sister was about 22 years old when she died from a loss of blood after a botched procedure during childbirth, he said.
Tamang blames the loss of lives on the area’s lack of education. His own parents, who never received an education, are typical in their reliance on shamans and traditional remedies, he said, not knowing that a simple medication, or ample water, for example, could have saved some of the lives lost.
Despite the difficulty, Tamang soldiered on in his quest for an education as a teen. In the eighth grade, he again had to cross a river to get to school, but this time in a pulley-and-basket system strung across a gorge. At the age of 15, he left home with what amounted to less than 50 cents in his pocket for the capital, Kathmandu, where an older brother was living at the time.
He eventually fell in with an outfit organizing treks for foreign tourists and was hired on as a porter, earning $2 a day for carrying 100-pound loads up to 15,000-foot elevations wearing little more than a shirt, pants and flip-flops. “I don’t even know myself how I did it,” Tamang said.
He said his positive demeanor never flagged, though, and he took to carrying an English-language textbook around with him wherever he went in a self-directed effort to teach himself English, practicing the new tongue with visiting trekkers.
For 10 years, he worked as a porter, then as a trekking guide and, eventually, as the manager of a trekking company. Thoughts of his home village and his dream of dotting the countryside with schools never left him, though. It wasn’t until 1999, however, that he found a visiting tourist who was sympathetic enough to donate $600 to Tamang’s vision. He used the money to build a community building in his village.
In the late 1990s, however, Nepal’s Maoist movement was fighting to overthrow the country’s parliamentary system and found a socialist republic, and for the rest of the decade, kidnappings, explosions and violence dramatically altered Nepalese life.
Tamang’s trekking business collapsed as visitors stayed away and extortion demands became commonplace, and in 2004, Tamang concluded that he needed to leave the country.
Leaving Nepal
It was in Kathmandu in 1997 that Tamang first met Biba Tamang, the woman who would eventually become his wife. In 1999 the two met up again, at which time they dated for two weeks, decided they loved each other, and promptly got married. In 2000, Nyima, their first son, was born, followed by Sonam in 2004.
With his wife, 4-year-old son and one-month-old baby remaining in Nepal, Tamang left for the United States in 2004, arriving first in Wisconsin, where his sponsors were at the time, and then shortly after, in Mill Valley, where a friend he had met in his trekking days lived.
“Coming to America for me was coming to a different world,” he said, trying to communicate his initial shock at daily life.
With no money for lodgings, he stayed in the garage of a family who had taken it upon themselves to get Tamang established locally. He eventually got a job at Whole Foods, first in San Rafael and then in Mill Valley, where he’s worked as bagger, cashier and supervisor for the past several years.
It took over a year and a half to bring over his family (they finally arrived in September 2006), and he underwent a lengthy ordeal to get his green card, which he finally obtained in July 2008 after filing a lawsuit against Immigration Services for ongoing unexplained delays.
With no credit and a modest job, finding an apartment in Mill Valley proved tremendously challenging, but the family was finally able to secure a ground-floor unit on East Blithedale after a friend agreed to co-sign the lease.
He can now walk to work and his two boys attend nearby Park School.
“I now feel like Mill Valley is home for me,” he said. “I struggled here to establish my life, and now it’s home.”
Lifelong dream begins to take shape
While you could say Tamang had been planning Nepal FREED since his daily expeditions to and from school as a young boy, the nonprofit organization became official in February 2009. Founded with help from his brother and wife, FREED’s first project was the funding and construction of three new rooms at the school in his home village of Bhalche.
A group of German doctors and a Mill Valley family were the project’s main sponsors, raising some $8,000 for a project that not only enlarged the then-crumbling school’s capacity but created a number of local construction jobs in an otherwise destitute area.
Now that the Bhalche project is completed, Tamang is setting his sights on a neighboring village, where the principal of an overcrowded high school wrote FREED a letter requesting assistance building additional rooms to handle the surplus of students.
Tamang said the new rooms, which would greatly relieve the currently cramped classrooms, will cost more than $10,000 to construct and will use local stone that needs to be hauled, shaped and stacked into walls. He’s hoping the June 4 event at Park School will be the first step in raising the money needed.
If he can successfully complete this expansion, he’ll have a history of successful projects to show future donors, something Tamang will surely need if he’s going to further his dream of bringing better schools and more supplies to rural villages across the country.
Describing his abiding philosophy, Tamang said, “There’s nothing I can’t do if I want to do this.”
A benefit for Nepal FREED will take place on June 4, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at 360 East Blithedale Ave. The event will offer Nepalese tea, ice cream for kids, and a slideshow presentation. A $20 donation is requested upon admission. For more information about Nepal FREED and to view a slideshow of the organization’s work there, visit nepalfreed.org. A link to the slideshow is under the “About Us” tab.
Contact Ryan White at rwhite@marinscope.com.
Tamang, 37, is the founder of the budding nonprofit Nepal FREED, or the Nepal Foundation for Rural Economic and Educational Development. The organization, which has already overhauled one remote village school and is now raising funds to expand a second, aims to provide the basic educational infrastructure and supplies lacking in many rural communities across Nepal.
On June 4, Tamang and his supporters will hold a fundraiser and slideshow at Park School to raise some of the $10,000-$15,000 he estimates he’ll need to renovate and expand a rundown, overcrowded rural high school.
If his young organization is able to make it happen, it will bring Tamang a step closer to realizing a dream he’s harbored since he was a young schoolboy ascending the mountain behind his village to get to school every day.
“How can I educate all these people?” he said. “I was able to think about my life and what I wanted to do. I always wanted to think about other people and how I could give them the knowledge to make their own decisions.”
Getting there half the battle
Tamang grew up in the village of Bhalche in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, a long day’s drive northwest of Kathmandu. When he was growing up there, the village was without electricity, clean running water and phones, the homes themselves usually little more than mud walls, hay roofs and earthen floors.
Beginning at the age of 6, Tamang would set off in the morning on an hour and a half climb up the mountain to get to his school, a small, dirt-floor building shared by 10 to 20 other students. The daily trek to and from school required him to twice ford a small river, a harrowing feat for a young boy during monsoon season. Some young students were less fortunate in their crossing, he said.
When Tamang entered the fifth grade, his new school was even farther from home, extending his daily trek to two hours each way. The experience understandably impressed upon him the importance of having more schools in small villages. “Walking four hours a day is impossible for kids going to school,” he said.
Life at home wasn’t much easier. Tamang’s mother, who still lives in Nepal with his father, gave birth to eight kids, Tamang said, of which four survived, all boys. According to Tamang, his deceased siblings died either from easily preventable illnesses, such as dehydration from diarrhea, or during childbirth. His sister was about 22 years old when she died from a loss of blood after a botched procedure during childbirth, he said.
Tamang blames the loss of lives on the area’s lack of education. His own parents, who never received an education, are typical in their reliance on shamans and traditional remedies, he said, not knowing that a simple medication, or ample water, for example, could have saved some of the lives lost.
Despite the difficulty, Tamang soldiered on in his quest for an education as a teen. In the eighth grade, he again had to cross a river to get to school, but this time in a pulley-and-basket system strung across a gorge. At the age of 15, he left home with what amounted to less than 50 cents in his pocket for the capital, Kathmandu, where an older brother was living at the time.
He eventually fell in with an outfit organizing treks for foreign tourists and was hired on as a porter, earning $2 a day for carrying 100-pound loads up to 15,000-foot elevations wearing little more than a shirt, pants and flip-flops. “I don’t even know myself how I did it,” Tamang said.
He said his positive demeanor never flagged, though, and he took to carrying an English-language textbook around with him wherever he went in a self-directed effort to teach himself English, practicing the new tongue with visiting trekkers.
For 10 years, he worked as a porter, then as a trekking guide and, eventually, as the manager of a trekking company. Thoughts of his home village and his dream of dotting the countryside with schools never left him, though. It wasn’t until 1999, however, that he found a visiting tourist who was sympathetic enough to donate $600 to Tamang’s vision. He used the money to build a community building in his village.
In the late 1990s, however, Nepal’s Maoist movement was fighting to overthrow the country’s parliamentary system and found a socialist republic, and for the rest of the decade, kidnappings, explosions and violence dramatically altered Nepalese life.
Tamang’s trekking business collapsed as visitors stayed away and extortion demands became commonplace, and in 2004, Tamang concluded that he needed to leave the country.
Leaving Nepal
It was in Kathmandu in 1997 that Tamang first met Biba Tamang, the woman who would eventually become his wife. In 1999 the two met up again, at which time they dated for two weeks, decided they loved each other, and promptly got married. In 2000, Nyima, their first son, was born, followed by Sonam in 2004.
With his wife, 4-year-old son and one-month-old baby remaining in Nepal, Tamang left for the United States in 2004, arriving first in Wisconsin, where his sponsors were at the time, and then shortly after, in Mill Valley, where a friend he had met in his trekking days lived.
“Coming to America for me was coming to a different world,” he said, trying to communicate his initial shock at daily life.
With no money for lodgings, he stayed in the garage of a family who had taken it upon themselves to get Tamang established locally. He eventually got a job at Whole Foods, first in San Rafael and then in Mill Valley, where he’s worked as bagger, cashier and supervisor for the past several years.
It took over a year and a half to bring over his family (they finally arrived in September 2006), and he underwent a lengthy ordeal to get his green card, which he finally obtained in July 2008 after filing a lawsuit against Immigration Services for ongoing unexplained delays.
With no credit and a modest job, finding an apartment in Mill Valley proved tremendously challenging, but the family was finally able to secure a ground-floor unit on East Blithedale after a friend agreed to co-sign the lease.
He can now walk to work and his two boys attend nearby Park School.
“I now feel like Mill Valley is home for me,” he said. “I struggled here to establish my life, and now it’s home.”
Lifelong dream begins to take shape
While you could say Tamang had been planning Nepal FREED since his daily expeditions to and from school as a young boy, the nonprofit organization became official in February 2009. Founded with help from his brother and wife, FREED’s first project was the funding and construction of three new rooms at the school in his home village of Bhalche.
A group of German doctors and a Mill Valley family were the project’s main sponsors, raising some $8,000 for a project that not only enlarged the then-crumbling school’s capacity but created a number of local construction jobs in an otherwise destitute area.
Now that the Bhalche project is completed, Tamang is setting his sights on a neighboring village, where the principal of an overcrowded high school wrote FREED a letter requesting assistance building additional rooms to handle the surplus of students.
Tamang said the new rooms, which would greatly relieve the currently cramped classrooms, will cost more than $10,000 to construct and will use local stone that needs to be hauled, shaped and stacked into walls. He’s hoping the June 4 event at Park School will be the first step in raising the money needed.
If he can successfully complete this expansion, he’ll have a history of successful projects to show future donors, something Tamang will surely need if he’s going to further his dream of bringing better schools and more supplies to rural villages across the country.
Describing his abiding philosophy, Tamang said, “There’s nothing I can’t do if I want to do this.”
A benefit for Nepal FREED will take place on June 4, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at 360 East Blithedale Ave. The event will offer Nepalese tea, ice cream for kids, and a slideshow presentation. A $20 donation is requested upon admission. For more information about Nepal FREED and to view a slideshow of the organization’s work there, visit nepalfreed.org. A link to the slideshow is under the “About Us” tab.
Contact Ryan White at rwhite@marinscope.com.
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bibatamang wrote on Jul 24, 2010 11:00 PM: