Books on the Menu

A friend in a throusand, Pratibha S. Manaen. Nepal.

@brittarnhild

A couple of years ago I spent a couple of weeks in Nepal. During my stay I met Pratibha S. Manaen, a young woman struggling for justice for girls. One of her ways of working is through writing books, her first novel "A friend in a thousand" which came in 2013, is my choice for Nepal.

The book tells the tale of Manushi, a girl growing up in a little mountain village near the Himalayas, trying to find her name and her voice in a land where men domains. The author worked for many years for the International Nepal Fellowship. Through her job she travelled to remote parts of Nepal, and girls and young woman she met on her travels, inspired her to write this book. She has a beed knowledge about her land and its people, and the book doesn´t only tell the tale of Manushi, but also of a whole country.

I met many girl´s tales during my visit, and after I came home I have, though the organisation HimalPartner, tried to help the best I can from my corner of the world, to give girls in Nepal a better future. Pratibha S. Manaen is fighting her struggle from inside and has set up the Manushi Fundation to bring hope and light into the dark world and ignorance that many girls and women in rural Nepal still face today. The name Manushi in Sanskrit means woman. All proceeds from A friend in a thousand will go to the Manushi Foundation.

The last photo shows Pratibha and Mirjam Bergh in their home in Pokhara in Nepal.

If you are interested in the book, you can contact the writer at:
[email protected]

 

 

Biographies

@brittarnhild

Do you read biographies?
I must confess that I love them. They are often among my favorite books. Especially if they are about women, traveling women, who challenge themselves and the world.

Before visiting Nepal in April this year I had read a remarkable book, in Norwegian, about the late midwife Ingeborg Skjervheim who left Norway and traveled all the way to the other side of the world, to Nepal and a tiny mountain town there. Because God had called her.

The book made a deep impression on me, and when I knew that I was going to Nepal, my dream was to go to Tansen, where sister Ingeborg had lived and worked for so many years. To do that I had to leave the group I was traveling with, and go on my own. But I was in no doubt. This was something I had to do.

I made it to Tansen. I made it to the hospital where Ingeborg worked, and best of all, I met the man who turned out to be the first baby Ingeborg delivered when she came to the town in 1955, and he showed me around for hours, in what he called "walking in the footsteps of Ingeborg"

Then this "first born" took me to his home where his wife had prepared a feast dinner for us.

 

 

After Tansen I continued to Pokhara. There I met the authors of the book about Ingeborg, the Swedish/Norwegian missinary Mirjam Bergh, and I was invited to stay in her home.

 

After I came back home I had to reread the book, and then I discovered that while working on it, Mirjam had, among several other books, also read Can it be me? by Marjory Foyle, a British doctor and psychiatrist who has spent over 30 years as a medical missionary in India and Nepal.

According to Mirjam, Marjory Foyle worked together with Ingeborg.

I have Marjory Foyle´s book on my desk now, found it through amazon, and I am so much looking forward to read it.

Will start it tonight :-)

 

 

 

You can read more about my days in Nepal here

 

A Friend in a Thousand

@brittarnhild

Back in April I spent a couple of weeks in Nepal. I travelled around, and at some place I spent the night with two ladies, a Norwegian/Swedish senior missionary and a Nepalese young writer. As we had dinner together, the young writer, Pratibha S. Manaen, told me about her writing and about the book she had written. A Friend in a Thousand, about the almost impossible life of girls and women in the Nepalese countryside.

"Is your book in English?" I asked. "Can I buy it?" To my disappointment Prathiba told me the first edition was sold out. But she continued "a second edition will be coming, and it might be available at the annual missionary meeting in Norway in a few months"

I was unable to go to the missionary meeting here in Norway in July, but some time later I came over the book, almost by chance. When I bought it I was too busy reading about Ethiopia, so it had to wait. But tonight, a dark autumn night, a night perfect for a glass of red wine, some crackers, cheese......and of course a book, I am transported, not to Ethiopia, as I have been for some time now. But back to the amazing little country in the Himalayas, to Nepal.

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A Friend in a Thousand is not available on amazon. Even though amazon is my main resource to search for and buy books, again and again I have to tell myself - the world is so much more!