August 2024
Greetings to everyone! I warmly welcome you all to the fifteenth part of my blog. Today, I am thrilled because I have achieved a significant milestone in my life.
I have shared with you the joys and sorrows of my life that began about 14 months ago. Before joining the WAWCAS program, I lived a life immersed in darkness. The days were as bright as today, but the days I lived until now were nothing but dark. The woman who was too scared to talk to people has now transformed herself, bringing happiness to her family. I have truly understood what it means to live a life covered in darkness. My life was dark because I didn’t know anything, and on top of that, I hadn’t even managed to connect electricity to my house due to living in extremely poor conditions. While everyone’s homes were lit up with the festivities of Tihar, my home was still illuminated by a kerosene lamp. Even though the kerosene lamp burned, my heart was always happy. I never thought, I needed to connect to electricity. Time was slipping away, but I couldn’t bring myself to reevaluate where I stood.
I used to see dreams of lighting up my house like the rest of the world. As time passed and my children became more eager, I bought a charging light. The day I brought the charging light home, it felt like the electricity was truly connected. My children’s joy knew no bounds. When we didn’t have electricity at home, we would take our lights to other houses to charge. At first, it worked fine, but after two or three days, the neighbors started to get annoyed. It hurt me when they were annoyed because I had no other choice. If I didn’t take the light to charge, my children’s faces would look gloomy. After working all day, I wanted to see my children’s faces at night. So, I started offering to do some work for the neighbors in exchange for charging the lights. Even just to charge one light, I faced a lot of hardship. When people mocked me for not being able to connect electricity, their words pierced my heart. I had many limitations, so the neighbors also tried to exploit my labor because I was poor. At first, my husband used to drink a lot and didn’t support me in any activities. Therefore, as a mother, raising my children alone was very difficult. But the good news is that because of the WAWCAS program, the difficulties in my life are slowly easing.
Without electricity, life was very difficult. It was particularly challenging for my children to study in the evenings. They would ask me, ‘When will we have electricity in our home?’ I would assure them that we would get it soon. But those reassurances were hollow, and my heart ached whenever Sima, our trainer, visited and remarked that we still didn’t have electricity. When she visited, she always encouraged me, and following her advice, I started giving more time to my work. I got into the business of raising goats and local chickens, planted corn, and sold cornmeal at the market. With my hard work and the support of my husband, today I have successfully connected a meter box to our home.
People have many desires and needs, and I also had the dream of connecting a meter box and lighting up our home. Electricity had come to our village many years ago, but it was only in 2081 (2024) that I was able to connect it to our home. On the day the electricity was connected, tears of joy rolled down my cheeks. Perhaps because I had struggled so much to get electricity, my emotions were overwhelming. Today, my house is as brightly lit as others, as if it is Tihar. To save money, to live a happy life, one cannot just have a desire; one has to work hard.
Just like a deer doesn’t walk into a sleeping lion’s mouth, sitting around and lamenting about being poor won’t change anything. To become well-off and fulfill dreams, one has to work hard.
In conclusion, I want to say that if I continue to move forward as the WAWCAS program has shown me, I will surely become well-off one day and make a name for myself.
