MG | Lepers are ejected from their village even though they may be healed; this is why so many of them hide their illness for as long as possible; disability is considered to be a punishment of the Gods. We have an ever-increasing number of patients of the most serious nursing levels needing permanent care, who had been carried to our station on their mother’s backs with a lot of effort after they had been hidden more or less successfully for many years – paraplegic people; children with serious trisomy, the so-called Down Syndrome, who are unable to walk; a lot of children with lip, jaw, and palate clefts, and muscle dystrophy – not least because there is no knowledge of hereditary health. In Nepal, there is moreover the experience that 5 out of 10 children will only survive, and they will be the ones securing their parents’ existence, because no one will get any pension or any other help here. When I celebrated my 40th high school graduation anniversary with a few of my school friends, we talked a lot about pensions and the amount of pension you are going to get. You have all the security you want – and nevertheless you worry about your future.

DKM | How do you experience life and people in Nepal?

MG | I see us (she is laughing about counting herself among them) as more balanced because many people I encounter there can rejoice in small things – again and again. When our seamstresses see a bush in full bloom, they will pick a flower and put it in their hair, just like that. And many are able to express themselves in a distinct way: “Oh, I have a warm and full belly today, isn’t that nice?” It is a pleasure for our children to receive a carrot or an apple. The women are marvellously skilled in dealing with their babies; they learn it from each other because there will always be some baby or other in the surroundings: they give them an oil massage every morning, and the babies are wonderfully relaxed. There is no end in the happiness I experience there” – Okay, there is also the other side of Nepal: poverty, corruption, insufficient public health care, state schools in which children will only learn by heart and how to repeat, and then some cases of abuse – when a girl is unwanted in the family, for instance – and the disabled expelled. But again and again I am thankful for our native team which accurately knows about life and copes with current business in an exceptional way.

DKM | What is most important to you when you think of Shanti’s work in Nepal?

MG | My goal, on the one hand, is to be able to feed those 1,500 people who live and work with us – everybody who is able to work will work; even those who have crippled hands are able to stamp motifs on paper in our paper workshop with the help of special contrivances. On the other, I wish that the people coming there can experience a special soul feeling: This is where I am accepted like I am; where I have a home. In spite of the narrow situation which some of the seriously disabled experience, everyone will be able to extend themselves, by drumming, singing, painting, being swung on the swing, being oiled – something that makes their short life worth living. I especially count on design, on aesthetics, because I am convinced that this has a major influence on people and their souls can grow when they live in beautiful surroundings. All residents, the former lepers, paint their huts in the tradition of their own home ethnicities. We never needed to tell them to repair things in our two settlements, because the residents maintain their home to a good condition. Our workshops, on the other hand, produce beautiful things, silverware, tissues, shawls, carpets and toys…