‘KUNG FU NUNS’ DELIVER AID IN PANDEMIC-HIT HIMALAYAS
Trekking for hours in the thin air of the Himalayas, hundreds of maroon-robed Buddhist nuns are carrying vital aid — and health advice — to villagers left destitute and sick by Covid-19.
Nicknamed the “Kung Fu nuns” because they train in martial arts, the women come from the Drukpa lineage — the only female order in the Buddhist monastic system where nuns have equal status to monks.
Besides hauling sacks of staples from rice and lentils to toiletries and face masks on their backs in the harsh mountain conditions, the nuns have been urging villagers to heed the threat posed by the coronavirus.
“The biggest challenge has been explaining to people how dangerous this virus is,” Jigme Konchok Lhamo, 28, said about Covid-19.
“People do not take it seriously nor the precautions seriously,” she said via video call from Kathmandu.
The villages receiving aid from the nuns lie on both sides of the India-Nepal border, with about 2,000 poor families supported so far.
Without regular access to television or the internet for information, local people often dismiss the virus as “just a cold”, and shrug off training sessions on social distancing, hand washing and how to wear masks, say the nuns.
Recently the nuns found themselves working around the clock to get food and hygiene items to a Covid-hit village in the mountainous Indian district of Lahaul, home to half of the global network of about 700 Drukpa nuns, in Himachal Pradesh state.
All of the inhabitants have caught the virus, including some of the nuns’ own relatives.
“We are scared … but fear can’t stop us,” said Jigme Yeshe Lhamo, 30.
“We can’t change the whole world by ourselves but even if we manage to help one life, that’s a big success. We feel happy about it. We feel encouraged.”
Traditionally, nuns are expected to cook and clean and are not permitted to exercise. But this changed a decade ago when the leader of the 1,000-year-old sect, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa, encouraged the nuns to learn Kung Fu.
“They are a new generation of women who are not afraid to break century old taboos and stereotypes,” said Carrie Lee, a volunteer and former president of Live to Love International, a charity that supports the Drukpa nuns.
When the pandemic took hold, the nuns started working with their families in Ladakh — a remote Buddhist enclave in the Indian Himalayas — to sew masks for villagers.
Many of the local residents work in road-building and construction, which came to a standstill due to lockdown curbs. And with schools closed, many children are missing a year of education as they have no internet access.
For women, the pandemic has brought additional challenges.
“When I spoke to my cousin, she said maintaining menstrual hygiene was very difficult because sanitary pads are not available and even if they are, they don’t have enough money to purchase them,” said Nima Sherpa, a 28-year-old woman from northern Nepal who has been helping the nuns.
The nuns said their next campaigns would focus on women’s health, including menstrual hygiene and teaching villagers how to do breast self-examinations to help detect signs of cancer.
“We will not only teach about coronavirus precautions but also provide sanitary pads,” Yeshe said.
“It’s a very big issue for women.”