In the years between my first 2 visits to Nepal (2008 to 2013), Mr Sher Bahadur Pariyar (the proprietor of Hotel Parkide, www.hotelparkside.com) had raised funds through his German contacts (Africa Luz and Mr Heinz Kintzl) to build a large two-storey factory for his elephant-dung paper project. This was located at the Bus Park in Sauraha. On my first visit in 2008, Sher had shown me the land he had bought for The Green Society Nepal, his not- for- profit organization he had started in 2007. He explained that he wanted to build a dung-paper factory so that the Tourists could see the paper as they stepped off the bus from Kathmandu. The large area of land was also to include a primary school and a large football pitch or sports ground.
When I returned again as a volunteer in April 2013, Sher explained that the factory was not going as well as he had anticipated and he asked me to spend some time at the factory, to take photographs and to get to know the whole manufacturing process and make some suggestions for improving sales. I went up to the bus park one morning at 9.45am.The bus park is a good 15 minute walk from Hotel Parkside, and it is situated on the edge of the small town of Sauraha. It is remote from the main tourist parts of the town, but the original idea was that tourists arriving by bus from Kathmandu could see the paper being made, and stop and buy some of the products. But this idea was not working. As I was walking up the road towards the factory, I met a very pleasant young woman who was also on her way there. She introduced herself as Sita, who was the senior girl in charge of the operation – she had been working there for about 4 years. Her first job of the day was to open the building at 10.00am and prepare the materials and tools needed for working. She showed me around the factory, which consisted of a ground floor and upper storey, with many doors shuttered with heavy bars, wooden shelves and a large glass-topped working table. The doors were thrown open to the wind, letting in light and air. Outside there was a hand pump for water, a fireplace of bricks supporting two oil drums, and all the machinery needed for the manufacturing of the paper. This machinery consisted of a mixing machine and 2 large steel tanks. There were many wooden frames (about 100) for paper- making stacked against the walls. As this happened to be a paper-making day, Sita prepared for the paper making by filling the 2 oil drums with water from the electric pump, and laying the wood in the fireplace. I was to see the process later in the day.
At 10.00am the other girls arrived, and we introduced ourselves – Som Maya, Himani and Ayesha. They were aged between 18 and 21, bright and cheerful, and had worked there between 1 and 3 years. They showed me around the factory shop and pointed out the products on the shelves. I already could see that there were many box-type products sitting on the shelves unsold. But at this stage I just took photographs and made mental notes of the product range. The girls’ first jobs were to assist Sita in making the paper, help with the boiling process of the dung, adding chemicals, tending the fire and rinsing the boiled dung. Their second jobs were to make the products from the finished paper. But the paper making process lasted a full week, so for this first week I just watched and learned how the paper was made.
I was to see all of this in great detail over the next few weeks and months.
The Bus Park, as I have said, is situated on the edge of the town, with wide views over the flat terai farmland, the river and distant foothills. On a clear day you can see the tops of the high Himalayas in the far distance, on the very northern border of Nepal with China. The site is peaceful, with only the sound of the cheeping birds (mostly sparrows) intruding. The birds found the factory a good place to nest and rear their young. The park is a bumpy, stony area, large enough to accommodate 20-30 tourist buses at maximum. There is a small shop to one side, selling water, sodas and chips, cigarettes and cups of tea. During the time I was there, basic corrugated iron shelters were built for the convenience of waiting passengers, and another shop at the front of a private house was built opposite the first shop. The first shop owners kept an ox-cart with 2 Brahmin oxen to pull it – they used this for tourist trips around Sauraha. One day I witnessed a scene where the 2 young oxen were being trained to get between the cart shafts. They were reluctant and skittish and the owner was having some trouble controlling them. The cart owners’ sister was sitting in the back of the cart, but suddenly one of the oxen broke free and charged across the park, pulling the cart with its startled occupant at high speed towards a tree. The woman decided to jump off the back, but she landed flat on her back and her head met the stony ground with a nasty crack. She was dazed but got up, rubbing her head and wandered grimacing back to the shop. The owner gathered the oxen and left them to graze for the rest of the day.
The Park started to get busy at about 11.00am, when the hotel guides and drivers started to arrive to await the buses from Kathmandu and Pokhara. Some of these young men wandered over to the bus factory to see the girls, chat them up, flirt with them and generally cause a mild distraction, although the girls were good- natured and laughed at the jokes and chatted, while trying to get on with their work. As soon as the first buses appeared, the men left the factory and went across the park to try to get custom for their hotels – sometimes arguing amongst themselves rather violently, so much so that in due course the local police had to come every day to keep law and order, and to reassure the tourists, who were alarmed by being greeted with squabbling men.
Not many tourists ever came to the factory on their arrival. This was because they were loaded with backpacks and luggage, and usually were rushed off to their hotels very quickly. Also they had not been in the area long enough to compare tourist souvenirs. However, selling the products to tourists LEAVING the park was another matter, and more successful. This involved getting up to the park early at about 7.30am, and taking the attractively-arranged products around on purpose-built trays to the departure points of the waiting tourists. This proved successful in the months that I tried it, but I was never able to persuade our girls to take part. I am sure we could have sold a lot more if they had taken part. But that is another story for later in this narrative.
Sita gathered a large quantity of hardwood that had been dumped in a pile outside the factory. I was to learn that this wood had to be bought from a sawmill, they could not just use forest scrap wood as it did not burn at the right temperature. Sita knew by experience how much wood to lay and how long the boiling process lasted.
When the fire was well alight, the water and dung mix started to boil and Sita stirred the mix with a long heavy bar of wood. This had to be done at regular intervals throughout the day. After a short time, caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) was added to the oil drum. I was told that this cleansed and softened the fibers in the dung. The soda was shaken from a tray and the amount judged by eye – about 2 liters soda to 40 liters water.
The girls all worked well together, sharing the duties with a good sense of humour and a sense of purpose. The work was heavy and potentially dangerous as they were working with caustic soda, but they managed everything with practiced ease.
The boiling and stirring process went on all the working day. At 4.00pm the fires were damped down and the 2 drums were allowed to cool.
At 10.00am the next day they had cooled enough to allow the girls to scoop out the boiled dung, which looked dark brown and unpleasant. The mix was carried over to a large wood- framed sieve, and a water hose was played over the mix to thoroughly wash and clean the fibres. The girls shook the mix by hand. After several minutes of washing, the girls then with their hands pressed a handful of dung into a ball, squeezing out the excess water by hand pressure. These balls were then tossed into a large plastic bin. When the whole amount of boiled dung had been cleaned and pressed, there was a large plastic bin filled with what looked like fresh elephant dung droppings. But the boiling process was not finished. The oil drums were cleaned out and filled again with fresh water. Wood was placed and lit, and then different fibres were added, either chopped-up banana stem or loktha fibres. These fibres went through the same process as the dung, boiled for a day and allowed to cool overnight.
On the third day, the banana stem mix was washed and rinsed like the dung, also pressed by hand into balls and put in a second large plastic bin. By this time, the paper- making could commence, with the filling of the mixing machine with water. An electric motor was bolted to the underneath and a continuous belt attached to the axle of the mixing spokes. When the electric current was flowing the motor started to turn the wheel at a rapid rate, spinning the water around the mixing machine so fast it caused a froth, which had to be contained by covering with pieces of plywood weighted down by a brick. While the water was spinning around, the girls started to shred the dung and banana fibres from the 2 large plastic bins into the machine. The 2 fibres were completely integrated with each other, and there appeared a pulp of a light greenish colour. This mixing process went on for the whole of the 3rd day and most of the 4th day, depending on the availability of the electricity supply. If the electricity was cut, there was nothing to do but wait, and chat.
About halfway through the mixing process, bleach was added to the machine. This turned the greenish pulp into a white pulp. Also at this stage, a clear liquid called “Nuuri” was added – this was the equivalent of Size, an agent similar to glue that is added to paper pulp in the West to make it smoother and workable, and bonded the fibres better.
On the 4th and 5th days, the pulp was scooped out of the mixing machine into medium-sized plastic buckets, and these were taken over to the 2 large water-filled iron tanks. These were the paper production tanks. I was shown how the girls took a frame, submerged it into the water a few inches, then poured a plastic scoop-full of pulp into the frame. This was then shaken and agitated by hand to spread the pulp equally over the frame. When the girls judged it right, after about 10 or 15 seconds, they very slowly and carefully raised the frame horizontally from the tank, holding it flat for a few seconds to allow the water to drain off. The pulp had spread evenly across the mesh of the frame, and the paper had literally appeared as if by magic in front of our eyes. I never tired of the fascination of watching this “magic” process.
The girls placed the frame on the ground, leaning it at an angle of 45 degrees against the wall or a nearby pillar. This allowed the excess water to drain off. After 10 minutes, the frames were put out into the open air in the hot sun, leaning against each other in long rows. This open-air drying process took between 4 – 7 hours, depending on the strength of the sun. When dry, the girls went along the rows and peeled off the paper from the mesh. They gathered the paper into great piles and took them inside the factory. When I was there in 2013, there were about 80 frames that could be used. I could see many were beginning to rot and disintegrate, and would have to be repaired or replaced sooner or later. The frames were then stacked against the outside wall of the factory and the paper was put into one big pile inside the factory.
The 6th day was when the paper was taken to the rolling mills for flattening. This was a time consuming process, as 2 girls had to take the paper across the town on a motor scooter to a site at Boudrinah, near the elephant breeding centre. Here was a large rolling machine that had been donated by a western charity for an earlier paper making enterprise in that part of the town. They were joined by a 3rd girl and they started the rolling and flattening process – this involved laying up to 10 sheets of paper at a time sandwiched between 2 aluminium sheets, and these were fed into the electric-powered mill. They were turned around and fed back in the opposite direction, so had 2 rollings, and the result was a satisfactory flat sheet of elephant dung paper. Again, this process was often delayed by power cuts and there was nothing to do but wait for the power to be restored. Sometimes the power went off for a whole day and the paper had to be left half-finished. But by the end of the process, a total of about 150 sheets of paper had been pressed flat.
The paper finally was transported back to the factory, and placed in a pile ready to be worked on the following week.
The following week, I began to observe the manufacture of the paper products.
This was when I met the artist, Sabita, who worked on the first floor of the factory in rather drab and dusty conditions. Sabita was very attractive with dark hair and a beautiful smile, older than the other girls, married with a young daughter. She was always cheerful and smiling, joking with the girls. She was a very good artist, and specialized in the colorful birds of Chitwan, the elephants, tigers and rhinos, all of which were the most popular designs.
At that time, in June 2013, I observed the following products being made – 4 different sizes of Diary, which seemed to be the “best sellers”, and also 2 or 3 different sizes of Photograph Frames. Samples of products made from Loktha paper in Kathmandu were on the shelves, such as a Photo album, Greetings Cards and Envelopes, Lanterns, Pencil boxes, Desk Tidies, shopping bags and large ledgers, but none of these had gone into production at our factory.
I observed that many shelves were stocked with box-type products, such as “CD Boxes”, 3-stage Jewellery Boxes, Pencil Boxes, Small Jewellery boxes. All these products had been made in the previous 3 years since the factory had been built. They had not sold for the following reasons; boxes cannot be easily packed into tightly packed tourist luggage, the CD boxes were out of date as nobody used CD’s anymore; the smaller pencil boxes and jewellery boxes were too small to be of use; and they were not attractively decorated. I realized that shape, volume and decoration were vital in helping to sell our products. My artist’s eye could see the artwork that was more attractive and saleable, and I encouraged Sabita to concentrate on those designs and colours which were very saleable.
The girls made the products seated round the large glass-topped work table. Sita, being the more senior and more experienced, was the leader, and she showed the other girls how to make the products. Originally all the designs and dimensions had been drawn in a ledger, but this was not referred to now as the girls had become well practiced in making the products. The girls chose the best pieces of paper for themselves, and kept their own corners and shelves to store their own tools and materials. Their tools consisted of pencils, erasers, steel rulers, protractors, cotton and needles, scissors and Stanley knives with replaceable blades. Other materials communally used were Fevicol paper glue in great quantities, coloured string, and large flat sheets of cardboard in 2 different thicknesses.
Generally the manufacture consisted of the paper being measured out and cut, the cardboard being measured and cut, then gluing the paper to the cardboard.
The pages of the books were folded and cut with sharp blades, then sewn together, then finally glued between the cardboard covers. The finished products were stacked and weighted down with bricks on wooden boards to flatten them as much as possible. The process was similar for all the products then being made.
The girls kept a record of all their individual manufactures, as they were supposed to be paid “piecework”, ie for every single item, but at that time this was not happening. I made a note for future reference, that it was only right that if the girls made a product that sold, they should be paid a percentage of the retail price. This was what I introduced the following year.
After the manufacture, the pieces were taken up to Sabita for her artwork to be added. She worked with Poster paints and produced colourful and attractive designs, and I had no doubts that her work would help the products to sell. In due course my job was to advise the girls what products were saleable, and try to get the dimensions and manufacturing techniques right. But at that moment in June 2013 I was still observing and making notes and taking photos.
From time to time we were joined in the factory by volunteers who were staying at Hotel Parkside. I remember one, an Italian lady, who was in the fashion industry, and she became very enthusiastic about the idea of making packaging and shopping bags out of dung paper. The idea was that perhaps we could sell Nepali-made clothes and shawls, pashminas and cashmere in strong elephant-dung paper boxes, with added packaging in colorful paper shopping bags. This seemed to me a good idea, and it was always in the back of my mind that this could possibly be a good export for Nepal. But as time would show, exporting products from Nepal is difficult, and really our costs were not competitive. Our market was only local, we could never make, by hand, enough products to be economically viable. To export, one needed many contacts in the overseas markets, and one needed a continuous and guaranteed supply line. These we did not have.
Other volunteers joined us from time to time, and all made contributions of various types. Some worked with the girls and made paper and products – some did artwork, and others made suggestions for new products. There were volunteers from USA, Germany, Spain, Poland, China and Australia, and many more.
Part of my observations and remit from Sher concerned the finances, the sales and profitability of the enterprise. I began to ask questions of the girls. I asked to look at any accounts that were kept. I asked the costs of the materials. I asked how often the girls were paid, and how much they were actually paid compared to what had been verbally agreed. At this stage, I was just taking notes. But my first impression was that Sales were not sufficient to cover the costs, the girls were not being paid as was agreed, and therefore the girls were not motivated to do much. There was no manager, only a very occasional visit by a committee member of the Green Society Nepal. The girls were largely left to their own devices, there was no direction or purpose. I asked Sita when she was paid, and how much. She said, she was only paid NR 2000 every 3 or 4 months, and sometimes had to wait another 2 months to get the money. I thought, for the quality and quantity of her work, she should be paid much more, and more promptly. My fear was that if the girls were dissatisfied they would leave, and that would bring problems. But when I voiced these concerns to Sher, he said they wouldn’t leave as there was no further work available to them in the area.
During June and July 2013 I was at the Bus Park almost every day, observing and taking pictures. A lot of the time I just sat in a chair outside, smoking and gazing over the peaceful terai towards the Himalayas in the far distance. I chatted and joked with the girls and the young men who came over to join us from the hotel pick-up trucks. I learned a lot about the way of life for the local people, the personal lives of the girls and their families, and the gossip and news from the hotels. One of my favourite activities was to go over to the shop and buy bottles of Sprite or Coca Cola for the girls, with sometimes a bag of crisps, and we used to drink and eat these at lunchtime, as otherwise there was nothing else. I sometimes had to ask the young men to move away as they were causing too much of a distraction, but this was on rare occasions – usually we all had a very friendly relationship with the regulars, and they did not bother us too much.
So that was the position when I had to leave Nepal in early August 2013, to return to UK for family reasons. When I returned the following year, the position had changed a lot, and that will be the next part of this narrative.
I returned to Nepal at the end of January 2014. The reason I returned was to marry Kali Chaudhary, whom I had met the previous June while I was staying at Hotel Parkside. She was working at the hotel and she had caught my eye as an attractive young woman. I had not realized that she was attracted to me until this was pointed out by her boss, Mr Mangara, the hotel staff supervisor. At first, she was very shy and quiet, she would not look directly at me but only kept her head down towards the floor. I had to tell her by sign language that if we were to get to know one another, she had to look up at me directly! We got talking and finding out about each other, using several friends as interpreters, and I had an easy relationship with Kali as I was friendly with her fellow colleagues at the hotel – Nirmala, Karki and Ramputia. We chatted and joked, and ate food and drank beer all together in the staff kitchen, and I gradually realized that Kali was in love with me. The difference in our ages did not seem to matter.
Despite being shy at first, I saw she had a lovely sense of humour and smiled and laughed a lot with her friends. Once, when we were talking outside the staff kitchen, a friend asked her how much she loved me. Kali said “more than he loves me“ and also, “I will go wherever he goes”. I thought that that comment really showed the depth of her love and feelings for me, and that she was a courageous and strong woman to express herself to me in those terms.
Our relationship was also helped by the fact that the youngest member of staff at the elephant dung paper factory, Ayesha, was the youngest sister of Kali, a fact that I was unaware of until several weeks after I had met Kali. Towards the end of July 2013, Kali had time to come up to the dung paper factory and sit next to her sister, and this all helped our developing relationship. By the time I had to leave, Kali had introduced me to her parents and family and I had had several meals at her family home. I had to explain to her that I had to return to UK, but that I would return and we would get married and live in Sauraha.
It was a difficult six months in UK, for personal family reasons, but I was always buoyed up by the prospect of marriage to Kali and a new life in Nepal. My relief in arriving back in Kathmandu was huge, and I was looking to the future with great optimism.
Kali and I married, in a traditional Hindu Tharu wedding, on 27 February 2014. It was a day of great joy and happiness, not only for us but for many friends and colleagues associated with Hotel Parkside. We had a big feast in the hotel grounds in the evening. Siri had let us rent a small apartment on the second floor of his big house in Hattisar, just a few hundred yards from Parkside. I was very busy for 3 months getting this flat set up and equipped for living, including installing a kitchenette and a gas geyser in the shower room. But the biggest call on my time was applying for a civil marriage certificate. Until we had got this, I could only live temporarily in Nepal on a 5 month Tourist Visa, which meant that I had to apply for and receive a legal Marriage Certificate before end of June 2014. This proved an extremely frustrating process, due to bad advice and administrative red tape. I just managed to get the correct Certificate in time, which meant that I could get a non-Tourist Visa, valid for a year, renewable every year for a payment of $120.
The time spent on this process meant that I had no time to involve myself with the elephant dung paper project, particularly as Kali and I spent 2 months in July and August in Kathmandu, learning each other’s language.
When I returned to Sauraha in September 2014, I had time to assess the situation. I was now able to use my remit from Sher to suggest improvements – I was , in effect, the manager, although I never called myself “Manager”. I used the term Volunteer Supervisor. I found the EDP project in very poor condition. For about a year, there had been no effective management. The factory was quiet and deserted. The machines were so rusted and damaged they could not be used. The wooden frames had rotted further and only about 50 were still usable. The stock was still the same, and the shelves were still full of unusable and unsaleable box products. The artist, Sabita, had moved to Dubai the previous October to be with her husband, and a new artist had joined, named Susmita.
It all looked very derelict and forlorn. I took pictures of the machines and sent them to Sher, explaining that the cost of repair would come to 60,000 NR.
I had by this time put my notes in writing as a proposal to the Committee of the GSN.
There was no activity at the Factory in September – the machines were unworkable, the girls had not been paid for some time and there was no management. At that point, Siri, the manager of Hotel Parkside, suggested that we move the whole factory to a site opposite Parkside, next to the community library, which comprised a shop and space for our machines, storage and a water pump. I thought this was a good idea, as it brought the factory more into the town and sales would benefit from the guests at Hotel Parkside and passing tourists walking by. But I also realised it would be very difficult to persuade the girls to move here as they had been used to their own “patch” at the Bus Park for 3 or 4 years. I saw the move as an opportunity to increase production and sales of more saleable products, by employing 4 more girls just to make the paper, on a fixed monthly wage, and letting the more experienced girls (Sita, Som Maya, Himani and Ayesha) continue to make the products but being paid piecework for their work. I persuaded the girls that if they trusted me, our sales would increase and they would be paid each month on the basis of how much they had made. They would not be kept waiting for their wages as I would pay them from our takings in the till. A quick calculation of the piecework rate showed that they could immediately earn substantially more than they had ever been paid before. Some people in the Green Society were skeptical of this arrangement, wondering how we could afford it, but I was confident that I could increase sales enough to justify the arrangement. I also arranged a piecework contract with Susmita, the artist, with a scale of fees according to the size and complexity of the design. I could see that this new site and arrangement would enable us to produce different products, with the task of paper- making taken off the experienced girls leaving them free to design and make new products to my specification.
There was a natural break while the machines were repaired and the shop and site were made ready for the move.
The actual move took place towards the end of September, when we loaded a trailer behind a tractor with all the materials, stock and machines and transported them to Parkside. The move went well, but as I suspected the girls were not happy. I gathered them all together and explained the reasons for the move, and said that we were going to employ more girls to make just the paper. In the first few days after the move, some of the girls couldn’t accept the move and tried to take their materials back to the Factory, but I soon put a stop to this. I said if they were not happy, we would employ new girls. Fortunately they trusted me because by that time I had built a good relationship with them.
We were fortunate to find a young man, Dil Pariyar, originally taken on as an artist, but who rapidly proved himself able to manage the whole enterprise. I was happy to let him manage, as the girls showed no sign of wanting to do that themselves, although they were a bit resentful at having to take orders from a new employee. Management for Dil meant selecting new girls for employment, supervision of training, fixing machinery and electrical motors, security of the site, shutting up in the evening and opening the shop in the morning, informing the staff of new ideas, and accounting for staff absences, the daily accounts, banking and administration.
I sat down with Dil one morning, in the sunshine outside the shop, and did some calculations of how much we needed to make to pay for the staff and our costs each month. Dil and I discussed how much was an acceptable wage for the paper-making girls. We decided that NR 5500 per month each would be acceptable to the new unskilled staff. For the skilled workers, we calculated that they could each make about 10,000 NR per month on a piecework basis. Dil as Manager would accept a salary of 7500 NR monthly. Our costs would be in such matters as wood for the fires, chemicals, transport, materials for making the products, and many sundry items. So Wages for one month would be NR 69500, other costs approximately 20,000 NR. Total per month = 89,500 NR. So on a daily basis we would need to sell NR 3442 worth of products. I felt confident that with our new physical position and new methods of working, new products and management, we could sell this amount daily.
All this would be under my supervision and daily attendance, but Dil would be Manager. I was very pleased to see that after a few weeks, everything settled down well. Dil found 3 new girls to make the paper, Nirmala, Suriji and Simran, and my wife Kali also was employed subsequently.
So we ended the month of September with a new factory site in a better area of Sauraha, 10 employees including a Manager, refurbished machines, and a purpose-built shop to display our products.
I was able fairly quickly to make the shop look attractive, arranging new stock on the shelves and the front cabinet, with new bright designs painted by Susmita . We experimented with making new products, like larger photo frames, a large size of diary and a new small jewellery box. Ideas for new products and designs, that came from volunteers and customers, were written on a note posted on the wall, and I made a “to do” list and crossed this off when we had made the product. We could now more easily make different colored paper in our smaller mixing machine, and I spent a lot of time buying new materials (colors, knife blades, paint brushes, pencils etc) from Kathmandu, Tandi and Narayanghat.
To keep the small shop in proper order, and looking as neat and tidy as possible, I asked the girls each to make their own “tool box” out of dung paper, and to paint their name in large letters on the outside. This was to store their tools and materials, such as pens, knives, cotton, needles, scissors and many other small items. These boxes were put on the lowest shelves, at table-top height. If we didn’t do this the shop would quickly look a mess. The paper and cardboard to be worked on was stored in flat sheets under the table, and I built an extra shelf under the table to make it easier for products that were being worked on to be stored safely.
The shop displays in our front counter and shelving looked very attractive and soon we were taking in more money on a daily basis (September was the start of the tourist season). We were making the NR 3400 daily that I expected. I was very pleased to be able to pay all the staff wages at the end of October from the till, as well as paying for all our materials from our takings, and making a small profit. The only thing that we couldn’t pay for was capital expenditure, like the repairs of the machines and the purchase of new machines – these had to be paid for by cash injections from GSN and myself. One of the expenses was building a corrugated iron lean-to roof supported on bamboo poles to provide shelter from the weather for the girls making the paper. This lean-to roof was along the wall of the Library, and it provided shelter as well as a space to make compost from elephant dung (although this was never successful).
I demonstrated to the girls that we could make money from our products if they made to my ideas and designs. I also initiated an idea to sell our products at the Bus Park to departing tourists early in the morning. I made 4 display trays, each one suspended round the neck with a strap, incorporating our GSN logo. I measured the dimensions so as to be able to display our range of products but not so heavy that it couldn’t be used. I placed in the old dung factory a range of our new products, and each morning I cycled up to the Bus Park at 7.15 or 7.30 am and put a range of products on my tray. I then walked around the bus park showing the products, and going up to tourists to ask them to buy. This was quite successful and usually I made sales each day – I thought that even to make 500 Rupees was worth it, and usually I made 2000 or 3000 NR myself. I really wanted to encourage some of our girls to do the same but the idea was alien to them , they were not happy although Himani did come on a few occasions but she hid behind the bus or the toilets, talked to her friends, and made no sales at all! I was more successful in persuading our European or American volunteers to help in this way, and particularly the attractive younger females were most successful in selling to the tourists!
From October onwards we commenced making a wider and more attractive range of products, experimenting and working to make different grades and colors of paper.
Our range of products included:
5 sizes of Diary (Very Small, Small, Medium, Large, Very Large)
Photo Frames (Small Single, Large Single, Small Double, Large Double, and Temple)
Greetings Cards and Envelopes
Honey Boxes (including the Jars of locally-made honey)
Jewellery Boxes (small with attractive pointed lid)
Notebooks
Photo Albums
Tea Boxes (including the Nepali-produced black tea)
Lanterns
Shopping Bags
Wine Bottle Carriers
Spice Boxes (including local spices in plastic packets)
Table Centrepieces.
We always emphasized to customers that we could make to their order and specifications, and we could usually make their requests within 3 days.
The retail prices ranged from NR 100 for the smallest products up to NR 500 for the extra large Diaries and Photo Frames. Special orders had to be quoted for but I do not recall any individual product costing the customer more than NR 600. We had orders for photo frames, single sheets of paper to be used for artwork, special Tharu-culture Mithila paintings and Diaries with customers’ own choice of front decoration. We did a pack of specially graded paper which would be used for wedding invites, and our biggest special order was for 150 Tea boxes each with their own little carrying bag, for a Chinese company. The boxes were hand-painted with the name of the company in Chinese characters. This order was packed up in 2 large specially-built wooden crates and transported to Kathmandu, where they were air-freighted to China. The company paid the cost of the freight themselves.
We tried to make the old stock more saleable by re-painting, and adapting, for instance by turning the 3-stage Jewellery Box into a Honey Box, painted brightly with bee, insect and flower motifs. We also made up some square-shaped Lanterns and sold a few, to our delight. I wanted to make the spherical Chinese-style lanterns, but these needed expensive metal frames and we never had the money to buy the frames. We also made 15 cylindrical napkin-holders for the tables in Hotel Parkside’s restaurant, with their logo hand-painted on the side. We also made some candle holders for Parkside’s tables by covering some beer bottles with our paper and painting bright designs, but this never caught on as an idea for other hotels. But Parkside were delighted.
I tried to stimulate new designs by showing Susmita animals, birds, butterflies and insects from books about Nepali wildlife. Many of these designs Susmita made beautifully, particularly the elephants, rhinos and tigers, but for some reason she could never manage the butterflies!
On days when we were making paper, the elephant-dung was transported from the hattisar with permission from the Park authorities. It was collected by a bicycle rickshaw man, loaded into his cart and brought to our shop by 6.30am. Dil was ready to receive the dung, which was piled up near the boiling drums, and he paid the rickshaw man 300 Nepali rupees for this service. I usually came to the shop about 9.00am, and Dil and I discussed what we would do that day, and any staff problems. Volunteers from Parkside would arrive at about 9.45am as they had been told that the day began at 10.00am with the arrival of the girls for work. The manufacturing girls and Susmita sat around the large square glass-topped table that had come from the Bus Park, and commenced their work making the products. The paper-making girls started the fire under the oil drums and prepared for the week-long process of making the paper.
Tourists came by, and many came in to the shop and browsed, and often bought something. I soon had the idea of asking them to write their comments in a Visitor’s Book, together with their e-mail addresses. This was also a record for the many volunteers that came specifically to work with the dung-paper project, many were young students from Germany, either at university or on a “gap year”. They provided a lot of help with re-painting the old stock, painting the covers of the new diaries and frames, helping to make the dung-paper, tidy up the shop and making their own products.
The money from the sales went into our ‘till’, a cardboard box, decorated with seven little ladybirds, that was placed on a high shelf – not exactly secure but we never had any problems with stealing. This till-box was used to pay for daily expenses, although we soon started to put the money for safe keeping into a savings account opened from the next-door community library. It gave me a lot of satisfaction to be able to pay the staff straight from the till in ready cash, at the end of each month – 5500 for the paper making girls and the others’ based on their piecework. Sita and Som Maya were the leading producers and in their first months each earned 11,000 or 12,000 rupees, the most they had ever earned from the factory. Himani and Ayesha each earned about 8000 or 9000 NR.To see their eyes open wide on receiving the money was very rewarding. The next day, they were absent from the shop as they had gone shopping (!), and the day after that they showed me what they had bought – a very nice piece of gold jewellery, a necklace or ring. I was so pleased for them.
Many customers offered us their ideas for products and trying to increase sales. We listened politely, and I wrote these ideas on a post-it note on the wall, and when we had time we tried to make some of these ideas. Mostly they were concerned with colored paper, note books and different-sized sketch books for artists. Often a customer asked for a tour of the factory so they could see for themselves the process, and I enjoyed showing them around. I particularly enjoyed seeing the customers talking to the girls and asking questions.
We had some characters passing by. One afternoon 2 men on bicycles stopped outside the shop. One was French, the other it turned out was Vietnamese. After talking pleasantly to them for a few minutes, the Vietnamese man turned to me and asked why his name was on the on the shop front?! His name? – it transpired that he was called “Dung” and he was surprised to see his name above the shop!
Another character was a wandering Sadhu, or beggar, who wandered into the village with his young wife who was obviously from a different culture and country (Bangladesh). The Sadhu was drunk and shouting at his wife, threatening to beat her with a heavy stick (which he had used before). The wife was crying and in distress. We tried to talk to him but he was quite obviously stoned out of his mind. He staggered about, asking for photos to be taken, and then lay down under the pipal tree and went to sleep. This happened for several days, and he was a nuisance. One time I confronted him and he bent down to the road and scooped up some fresh buffalo dung. He popped a small piece in his mouth and started to eat it! I was flabbergasted. One day while he was sleeping I stole his stick and hid it in our shop. I don’t know if he noticed it missing. I was told that he had once been a mahoot or elephant driver, but had become drunk and incapable.
It was a sad sight.
The months of October to December passed by and things were going smoothly. In early January 2015 we had a large group of Volunteers from Germany working with us. I thought we would have trouble finding enough things for them to do, but as it happened they fitted in extremely well, were polite, quiet and hard working, willing to do anything we asked of them. The shop was small and crowded even with 4 girls making products and Susmita the artist, but somehow as many as 6 or 7 extra volunteers were able to sit around the table making products or painting. One young man, David, was extremely tall at 6ft 6”, and he had no trouble putting products on the very top of our shelves! Susmita had painted some colorful birds of Chitwan on one of the wall panels , and 2 volunteers , Sarah Klump and Valeria Castano Moreno, painted their own designs on another 2 panels, and they made the shop look even more attractive. Other young men painted white 40 newly-made wooden frames for paper making, these were replacing the old rotten ones.
In early April we prepared to receive a large party of High School students from Alberta in Canada that had been arranged the previous year. They were on a school study programme with the major topic of Water Resources, so I had prepared an Itinerary with Sher to include working with the dung paper factory, visits to the Rapti River for canoe trips and fishing, a visit to the local drinking-water purifying factory, and a session of planting rice in a farmer’s field as well as the usual tourist trips into the jungle. As part of this programme, I had made up 20 small frames for making paper, and gave one each to the students. They were therefore able to make their own sheets of paper and take this home, which was a most satisfactory outcome.
Then on Saturday 25th April a huge natural disaster struck Nepal. It was a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that killed about 9000 people and devastated Kathmandu and the Gorkha area of mid Nepal (its epicenter). It was my first experience of an earthquake and I would not want to go through that again. The terai was not so badly affected with casualties or property damage but I knew that the major damage to our paper-making business would be the loss of the tourist trade to Nepal. This proved to be the case. We had only been going 6 months when this disaster struck. We were doing well up to that point, our sales were increasing and we were breaking even with costs and wages. But things would never be the same again after the earthquake. We struggled on for the rest of the year, but by end of December 2015, when on top of the earthquake the people of Nepal had to withstand a Banda or shut-down of trade across the border with India, we had so little business that we had to close the shop. It was with a very heavy heart that I pulled down the shutters at the end of December. I knew all my efforts to keep the business sustainable were not enough against the natural and man-made disasters that Nepal has to endure.
I was no longer able to commit to this project. I told Sher that in my opinion the shop was losing money for the GSN. I drew up the Accounts for the period September 2014 to July 2015. This showed that we were doing well and breaking even up to the end of April, but that from that point onwards Sales declined sharply. In December 2015 we learnt that Kali was pregnant, and I was building our family house in Bachhauli, which required my full attention every day throughout 2016. I could no longer spend any time with the Elephant Dung Paper project. Sher understood this, but he asked Susmita to keep the shop going as best she could, virtually single-handed. I felt sad for the girls and all the people who had supported us and wished us well, I knew we had all worked hard and given it our best shot, but in the end we could do nothing about the consequences of a natural disaster, and a man-made political disaster, which proved too much for our little local business. It was, for me, a ”One Hit Wonder”, in that for a very brief period of 6 months I had proved we could make a successful business for the local community, but that it was unfortunately not sustainable for reasons entirely beyond my control.
C. Tim Taylor 2018