ラリグランス通信　43号

Dear Mrs. Igarashi,
Greetings from Kathmandu, Nepal!!
We, Chetana Women School family, would like to extend our gratitudes for your kind consideration in supporting us financially to hire one teacher. We are very grateful for your kind help and support. We are sure that this help would help our school to flourish more and help in educating more number of women and empowering them.
We would never forget your help and would look forward your continuous understanding and support in the coming years as well.Please convey our thanks to all the members of Laligurans Club.
We would like to thank Mr. Moti Ghimire and Sumana Shrestha for their kind help. We would like to see you in Nepal in your next visit.
Thank you very much.
With thanks, 
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Krishna Devi Shrestha, Principal

親愛なる五十嵐様、　　[翻訳･･五十嵐]
私たちセタナ婦人学校の家族全員は、一人の教師をここに雇用できるよう手助けしてくださったことに心より感謝いたします。
私たちはこの支援が学校の発展と婦人たちの教育と自立を促す力になることを信じています。
私たちはあなた方の厚意を決して忘れません。貴女方がこれからもずっと活動を理解し支えてくださることを願っています。どうぞクラブの皆様に私たちの感謝の気持ちをお伝えください。
モテイ・ギミレ氏とスマナ・シュレスタにもお礼を言いたいです。
この次ネパールに来られる時には是非お目にかかりたいと存じます。
本当に有難うございました。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　クリシュナ･デヴィ･シュレスタ校長　

A married woman, in a Newari culture, wakes up early in the morning, the one who wakes up first among the family members. She then cleans the house and then prepares to worship in the temple (like kamidana in Japan) inside the house. After worshipping, we call it pooja, she prepares tea for the family members. Tea is served to all the members and she has to do dhog (put one's forehead at the feet) to her husband and mother in law. She has to bow her father in law and other elder members in the family as well. These dhog and doing bow are the culture showing respect to her husband and parents in law and other elder members in the family. After that she also takes tea and having finished that she prepares a meal. This meal includes, dal (soup), bhat (cooked rice), tarkari (vegetable curry), achar (pickle), etc. (menu depends upon the family). She serves the meal to everyone in the family first and eats at the last. After that she is the one to wash all the dishes and clean the kitchen. Then if she has children, she makes them ready to send to the school and goes to her office if she is working outside. If she is just a housewife, then she will be inside the house busy in doing other household works. However she gets some free time after that and can pass her time freely. But in the afternoon, she again has to prepare lunch (khaja) for all . Khaja includes tea, beaten rice (chiura), noodles, bread (roti), etc. with pickles and/or vegetable curry. In the evening she prepares dinner and this includes again dal, bhat tarkari ,achar, etc. like in the morning meal. After finishing dinner, she again cleans the dishes and the kitchen. After finishing all the activities, she then goes to sleep most probably she is the last one, among the family members, to go to bed.

In this way, a married woman in Nepal is a very busy person. Before getting married, as a daughter, she has more free time compared to the married woman. After being a daughter in law, her free time decreases as she has to give more time in her family. After being a mother, she has lesser free time as a burden of child rearing increases. This is the natural change in a girl from her teen age to motherhood, and I think this is true in every Asian countries, although the status of woman is different according to the countries. In a developing country like Nepal, woman still has to spend more time in the family whether she is more educated. However, the educated woman has lesser burden of household activities if she works outside. The number of families where wives and husbands share their house works and burden of child rearing are also increasing slowly especially in nuclear families. However, this is practiced less in joint families.

Like other married women, I am also passing my days according to our culture and society. It has been almost one month since I came back to Nepal. It was a bit difficult to get used to the changed life style here at first, but I am slowly getting used to it. In fact, I am a Nepali and I have lived here more than 20 years before. So it just takes me some time to be acquainted to its environment.

However, as a married woman, I don’t have many experiences here in Nepal. Therefore, now I am experiencing a life of a married woman which is different from my previous experiences. I am naturally dragged to be more responsible towards the family and all the family members. This might be the effect of our culture and society where we were brought up. There are some practices which we have to change slowly and there are some which should be continued in the coming years as well.