‘Goat Lady’ Now Nurtures Produce, Too

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By Robin Pierson, Special to the Independent

Since arriving in Nepal a month ago, Laguna Beach resident Rosalind Russell has been heartened by loving welcomes from villagers grateful that her R Star Foundation has given them “a fighting chance” to recover since the destructive 2015 earthquake.

Rosalind Russel with a days-old kid in Nepal, where since the 2015 earthquake, villagers have replaced brick homes with tin houses that provide little protection against weather and predators.
Rosalind Russel with a days-old kid in Nepal, where since the 2015 earthquake, villagers have replaced brick homes with tin houses that provide little protection against weather and predators.

After visiting more than a dozen of the 50 villages where her nonprofit has gifted income-producing goats and established micro-financing programs, Russell remains aggrieved by the living conditions of the villagers whose homes were leveled by the quake.

Beside rubble piles that once were homes stand shelters made of tin. In a recent flurry of emails, Russell writes that while the houses appear “fine” from the outside, “they leak, rats and snakes access the rooms with ease.” With no insulation or temperature control, she describes the structures as “the barest minimum of protection and so much less than what they had before.”

Not only did the earthquake destroy more than half a million homes in Nepal, it destroyed livelihoods by ravaging terraced farms, hillside water systems and livestock.

R Star Foundation is helping fund building greenhouses to provide villagers with fresh produce and a source of income.
R Star Foundation is helping fund building greenhouses to provide villagers with fresh produce and a source of income.

Over the next month, Russell hopes to continue to push forward a new greenhouse project. The structures built of bamboo will give villagers access to fresh produce and a source of income and have been endorsed by the communities. Asked what aid would be most beneficial, they also request literacy classes, which Russell said is perceived as “a way toward freedom” and vocational training that would help them generate income.

In meetings with government officials and a goat expert from California, Russell was able to secure salt licks for village goats and learned the benefits of giving the animals apple cider vinegar, which she plans on teaching villagers how to make.

Russell and Rabin Situala, R Star’s Nepali coordinator, urged villagers “not to wait for anyone to help them, but to do it on their own,” which Russell said is a new concept for societies accustomed to relying on government help. “I reminded them not to wait for us either and the younger women really heard the message.”

To combat Kathmandu’s pollution, Russell wears a face mask as she travels about the capitol.
To combat Kathmandu’s pollution, Russell wears a face mask as she travels about the capitol.

Meetings with the villagers often end in dancing and “general chattering, with someone usually asking, ‘How old are you?’ I tell them I am 100 and leave it at that.”

Russell’s mode of transportation to the rural villages and around the capitol, Kathmandu, is on the back of a motorcycle driven by Situala. Traffic is so congested, Situala’s mirrors have nicked other motorcycles and her knees have scraped passing vehicles. “We are alive due to his deftness as an expert driver,” she said.

Due to choking pollution in Kathmandu, Russell rarely goes outside without a mask, but she reports that food is more plentiful than in the aftermath of the quake.

Without fluency in the native language, Russell said she and the women she is determined to help have moments of connection, such as when she was invited into a dark, spare home for tea and the host plaited her hair into a French braid. “The interaction made them realize that I am with them, one of them, not a bit different than they…”

For more information or to donate a goat or toward the greenhouse, visit www.RStarFoundation.org. Checks can be mailed to R Star Foundation, PO Box 4183, Laguna Beach, Calif., 92652.

 

Laguna Beach author Robin Pierson writes about topics that interest her.

 

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