Help Keep Muna & Her Family Out of Poverty!
Over 176,000 tourists visit Nepal every year to trek through the Himalayas, supported by thousands of guides, porters and Sherpas who earn as little as $10/hour. With no tourism over the past 18 months, this has left them unable to pay rent, utilities and medical bills. While we are stockpiling toilet paper here in Australia, there is little to no food on their supermarket shelves and the number of COVID cases have increased to 8,000 a day with the impact of the Delta variant running rampant through Nepal.
Muna
Muna was my Nepalese guide during a trek to Annapurna base camp in April 2019. Muna let me in on her incredible life and did everything she could to keep me safe during the trek, including avoiding avalanches! I will always be incredibly grateful.
I reached out to Muna recently to check in on her and the family and she shared with me her growing sense of desperation. Not only has she been unemployed for over 12 months due to COVID, she has now also contracted the virus and doesn't know how or if she can continue to support her family. After working so hard to lift herself and her family out of poverty, and gain independence, she's now close to returning back to those circumstances due to COVID.
The Ask
The average cost of living in Nepal is approximately $500/month including medical bills, food, rent, transport and utilities. My goal, with your help, it to raise $1,500 to help Muna and her family get through the next few months.
If you can't afford to donate, please share this page instead so we can broaden our reach to those who can.
As a rough idea of how far your money could go, approx $5 is enough to purchase 5kg of rice and $33 is enough to pay for a month's worth of gas, electricity and water utilities. See link below the story. Donations will be sent to Muna directly via Wise money transfer platform as it has the highest exchange rate (at time of writing). I will personally fund the transfer fee so that Muna gets the full donation amount.
Muna's Life Story
Born into a poor rural family in Nepal, Manu (Muna) Gurung never went to school, instead she was sent to work at the age of 6 at the local quarry transporting heavy rocks in wicker baskets. She was married at 12 and fell pregnant shortly thereafter. Following the birth of her daughter, her husband decided to file for divorce so he could marry another woman that would move him into a higher social caste. He also took full custody of their daughter and moved to India so that Muna could never see her again. It was around this time Muna's father passed away, but despite her deep depression, village life in rural Nepal is such that she had no time to grieve as she was now the primary carer and financially responsible for her mother at the age of 15.
One day while working at the quarry, she saw a billboard advertising a local tour company. The image showed a climber and their Nepalese guide beaming with happiness as they climbed the mountain. Muna was intrigued and asked some of the local villagers if they knew anything about what being a "guide" actually meant. One of the men told her about a trekking company that specialised in female guides based in Pokhara. When she told her mother about her plans to leave the village in the hopes of making more money as a guide and being as happy as the people on the billboard, her mother burst into tears and begged her not to leave. One of the biggest risks in Nepal is human trafficking and her mother was fearful the company in Pokhara was a scam to lure young girls from the villages for trafficking.
But Muna was determined to make a better life, and left behind her mother and the only world she'd ever known. It was 3 full days of walking to the nearest bus stop, and a 12-hour bus ride into Pokhara. She finally arrived and was relieved to find it was a legitimate tour company! They provided her with accommodation for the first 6 months during her guide training and taught her basic English so she could communicate with her travellers.
Muna worked diligently and excelled as a guide, and slowly but surely started to see her fortunes turn. She was earning good money doing something she loved and was able to support her mother and gain financial independence. In 2013 she was one of the first Nepali women to summit the Mera Peak and Island Peak. During this time and against all odds, Muna's daughter left her father and found Muna in Pokhara where they have been living happily together over the past few years.
After fighting all these years to make a better life for herself and her family, Muna, her daughter and her mother are now on the brink of returning back into poverty, due to circumstances beyond their control.
Please either donate or share this page to help make a difference!
Website links below on cost of living, the situation in Nepal and a short article on Muna's achievements.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Nepal&displayCurrency=AUD
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/06/04/993878560/covid-is-crushing-nepal-from-remote-villages-to-kathmandu-to-mt-everest
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/3sistersadventuretrek.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/congratulations-ewn-trainees3-sisters-adventure-staff-ms-shanti-kala-rai-and-ms-manu-gurung/amp/
