Women of The World.

While each place I have been is extremely different, the one thing that remains the same are the amazing woman. No matter where I am, be it America, Grenada, or Nepal it is clear that women are the backbone of any society. WOMEN ARE EVERYWHERE! They are in the house, they are in the schools, and they are in the work place.

Nepal has made this fact even more apparent to me. The women here are truly incredible.  On an average day they wake up at 4:30am to go to the fields, they return at 10:00am to cook Dal Baht for their families after which they go back to work. They return from this long day to only cook again and take care of their children. Only when it is time to go to sleep is their day complete, which then leads to restarting the cycle in the morning. There are no days off, there are no sick days, and there is no one else to share the burden.

It has truly put into perspective what the definition of the term “hard work is”. In my experience I have used this phrase after a long day studying for an exam, or when I would depart my nanny job after a day of chasing children, or even following long days in an office filled with meetings. However now it is hard to compare this use of the term with the hard work I see these woman doing every day. I see them carrying 70 pounds of grass on their back up the mountain. I see them beating the beans in the fields for hours without water and without a break. It will never cease to amaze me what these woman can do, and again makes me rethink the “hard work” I do at home.

This week I had a day where I had no planned activities with the youth so I decided to spend the day in our kitchen garden. We needed to dig small holes on a plot of our land so we could transplant seedlings from our nursery. I thought seeing that these woman do this type of work all day everyday that I could handle a few hours. However once I began to dig I quickly realized that this was no easy task I had set for myself. For hours I dug small holes until my hands were so raw they had begun to bleed.  That evening I walked around the house as zombie out of pure exhaustion and when I finally allowed myself to go sleep I slept more soundly then I had since I got here. Never again will I be able to use the term “hard work” casually and never again will I be able to look at these woman than less then the super heroes they are. They may not be the super hero’s we are use to seeing in comic books, but they can lift the weight of a thousand men, feed the world, and still make time to tuck their children in at night. These are the women I have see and come to know. These are the women of the world.