KWOK YAN TANG Flora

I only stayed 4 weeks in Nepal, however in these 4 weeks, I have already experienced many things that out of my expectations before I came. The first thing is the “Argo Farm” project I worked for. I learnt a lot of farming techniques that I dreamed to experience, e.g. digging fields, sowing seeds, planting young sprout, making composed fertilizers, harvesting rice, picking useful vegetables and weed cleaning.

They are not easy tasks which I needed to work under the sun from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and only had half hour lunch break. It demanded a lot on my physical strength. My host family has 8 layers of terraces. Added up the length of each layer is bigger than a football court. Every time I thought I nearly finished my task, they brought me to another layer of field to continue. And I needed to climb from layer to layer; especially the period of rice harvesting, my family didn’t hire any workers from outside and only depended on the manpower of the family members which we continued to work for whole 3 days to finish the harvesting. Of cause, I felt tired during my stay but when I thought that I only need to handle these for few weeks but they are so hard-working on it for their whole life. I respect a lot of all the farmers and I appreciate that I had the chance to experience all of these.

On the other hand, the Nepali are all very nice, until now, luckily to say, I haven’t been cheated and gotten any injured or sickness during my stay. People are always smiling and say “Namaste” to me when I walk on the street and walk around in the village. I was afraid to take local bus at the first week but later I used to take local bus with other volunteers and I always hang around with them in town in the weekend. Meeting new friends from around the world is always one of the best things to be a volunteer. Luckily I met some really good friends here and I’m sure we would visit each other’s country in the future.