Life in Nepal is different of what most of us have ever experienced thus far in their own cultural setting. Not so much in Kathmandu, the capital on Nepal, or any other big cities in Nepal, or one of the beautiful, more developed, tourist spots but the "real" Nepal, which is still the experience of almost 80% of Nepal's 28.5 million people.

With the following "Stories" and "My Songs" chapters, we would like to bring the life of our Humla neighbors a bit closer to you. The human interest stories tell you some real stories of people with whom we live and work and whose life has changed in one way or the other through an implemented project.

The songs you can hear in "My Songs" are songs our staff wrote as part of our NFE (Non-Formal-Education) program, as singing about the prevailing life circumstances during the women field work is a common tradition, though unfortunately too often the songs have not a very encouraging content, as life is just too hard to bear. Thus our staff have written various songs about the smokeless metal stove, how to use it and what benefits it provides, the need for clean water to wash and drink as important part for improved hygiene for the whole family, etc., as this individual project parameters are not just all implemented in the villages we work with in Humla, but are a crucial part of the new, long-term RIDS-Nepal Holistic Community Development (HCD) project approach. We want you to listen to some of these songs and read the translated text along with it. We hope and intend that these songs become more and more a part of the improved daily living conditions of the local Humla people, in particular the women and the small children, and that the implemented projects are gradually becoming a "normal;" integrated new part of their local culture.