Chanson for Tomorrow

We know not what tomorrow brings.
We are not clever people.
Spades clang and the scythes swish,
We know not what tomorrow brings.
We work and plough today.

We know what happened yesterday,
And we hope we will never forget it.
We know what happened yesterday,
And we sow the bread and bread is rare,
And we hope we can still eat it.

We know not what tomorrow brings,
Whether fight or peace awaits us,
Whether scythes swish or sabres clash here
We only know that it will be tomorrow
If we convert swords to ploughs.

Mascha Kaléko

The world cries tears
As if God himself had died,
And the leaden shadow which falls,
Bears down on us like a grave.

Dear friends of the Shanti family,

This poem by Else Lasker-Schüler went around my head in the last few days when I followed the battle of the Nepalese people for democracy on the Internet and in the media, and when I listened to the reports on the phone from our team members.

I had planned to come to Kathmandu at this time of the year, but the situation in the city did not allow it: bloody riots went on very close to our station and to my home. The Foreign Department had urgently warned me not to go to Nepal.

In these days, I learned how to appreciate our team once again. Dr. Singh and Nama, our male nurse, provided medical care for the people injured in the demonstrations like a duck takes to the water, even though they would risk their lives.

Krishna and Mono Hari organised food supplies for the patients. In the mornings around 6 o'clock, when night curfews were suspended for a short time, they rode on their motorbikes to our fields and picked huge amounts of vegetables, accompanied by Kul who is another team member. Within a few days, the prices for vegetables had risen to the threefold – without the vegetables we picked on our fields, we would not have been able to feed our Shanti family and the poor who visited our soup kitchen twice a day.

The experience of these weeks confirmed once more: we urgently need more land for basic food supplies for the people we care for, because we cannot rely on the situation to become peaceful again in the months to come and until food prices will get payable. One square metre is 18 euros – what a horrible amount! The flight of the rural inhabitants from the Maos into the city, however, has made the land very sought after, and the prices accordingly high. To own our land, and therefore have the chance to grow vegetables and fruit would make us largely independent of the prices rising ever and ever again.