Kiwi trekkers help light Sherpa village
23 Jul 2010
A party of mountain-loving New Zealanders is carrying on Sir Edmund Hillary’s torch - an ongoing friendship between Kiwis and the Sherpas of Nepal - by helping foster a quiet revolution on the side of Mount Everest.
Nine members of the Geraldine Tramping Club have returned from an expedition to the small Nepalese village of Damar, near Mount Everest, where they helped install solar lighting. The group also took resources for the local school, health supplies, and two spinning wheels and a loom.
Geraldine, in the central South Island of New Zealand, is a picturesque small town beside the Waihi River. The little town is known for its resident artists and studios, and is New Zealand-famous for its gourmet fruit products.
Humble beginnings
The idea for the village project came after several club members had been trekking 10 years ago with Nepalese guide Ngima Sherpa. Geraldine Tramping Club member George Hunter told the local newspaper that the trip had spurred them into action.
"We didn’t want to just go in and trek in Nepal, we wanted to help in the village, so we said ‘what do you want?’ And Ngima came back with the idea of solar lighting."
Up until then, the Damar villagers had been using kerosene lamps, but progress made with solar energy now meant that they could switch to solar panels as "there’s no way they’d get electric power in the foreseeable future", said Hunter.
Solar rescue
Geraldine Tramping Club needed to raise about NZ$10,000 to install four lights in each house. The members, joined by Hunter’s daughter, an Australian doctor and a Slovakian photographer, also donated a telephone that villagers could use to contact people in Kathmandu.
They installed all the solar equipment needed to provide energy - which also stretched to powering a transistor radio.
A Kiwi business donated a brand-new spinning wheel, which was taken to Nepal along with a second-hand wheel and loom.
The villagers have yak and sheep that supply wool which they will now be able to spin and weave into textiles to earn extra income.
Clean water was next on the agenda. The Kiwis helped rebuild the existing water supply - and would like to return in future with a solar water purifier.
Hunter said school resources were also welcomed, and team members were now looking to donate sports equipment, art and musical supplies next time.
"Ngima’s ambition is to give their children a future in their own country. The young people tend to leave to look for work in Kathmandu and all around the world."
Kiwi - Sherpa friendship
Sherpas and Kiwis have enjoyed a long friendship that began with New Zealand’s famed mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary.
Hillary is listed in Time magazine’s ‘100 most influential people of the 20th century’.
Sir Ed made his name internationally in 1953 when he - and his guide Sherpa Tenzing Norgay - became the first people to successfully ascend Mount Everest. The two became lifelong friends and though both have now passed on, their families still stay in touch with each other.
The Sherpa are a small ethnic group living in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal. They are mainly employed as mountain guides and porters, especially for Mount Everest expeditions, and are considered elite mountaineers and terrain experts.
Tenzing Norgay - thanks to his Everest ascent with Hillary - became an international name. Apa Sherpa also made his name on the mountain when he broke the world record for the most successful Everest summits - 20 in total - in May 2010.
Background: Geraldine
Geraldine is a small rural town in the southern Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island.
The town was first settled by Europeans in the 1840s when it was known as Talbot Forest. It was renamed FitzGerald in 1857 after the first Irish superintendant of Canterbury, but the name was later changed to Geraldine - the FitzGeralds’ family name in Ireland.
Some of the alpine and high country scenes in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy were filmed in Peel Forest, near Geraldine. Today, it is the heart of farming in the region - surrounded by dairy farms, sheep, cattle, deer and crops.
Travellers’ guide Lonely Planet rated Geraldine as ‘New Zealand’s most beautiful town’, and quirky local tourist attractions include the curious medieval mosaic - a recreation of the Bayeux tapestry in spring steel - and 1066 puzzle shop, the world’s biggest jersey at The Giant Jersey, a vintage machinery museum and an alpaca shop.
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