Building Irrigation Canals in Nepal With the Help of Virginia Tech Engineers

So we are working on building an irrigation canal for one of the villages here. The area where we are is kind of in a rain shadow and has very sandy gravelly soil. What little water they have is pretty precious, and it'll seek right into the ground. We're building impermeable surfaces to bring water to their ablerchars. We're up at 9,000 feet in one of the most rugged and deep river valleys in the world. We take this small 15 feter plan. It took four days for us to even travel to get here. You can notice up high in the mountains where there isn't water. It's all brown. There's not really any vegetation, so you can really tell the difference. This is this area's main sort of economic driver, and it also is how they get the majority of their food. Doing the work is very challenging. Spending an entire school year, exercising nothing but my brain and then coming out here and trying to keep up with the Napoli people. Getting out of bed every day, is pretty difficult. Getting materials out here can be a challenge, too. The walk here and the walk back. It's 3 miles. You got here, and you're like, now I go to work for, you know, 8 hours, 9 hours. The way that we're building these irrigation canals is definitely different than, you know, anything I've seen back home the states. That's just something that, you know, I can take home and be like, Hey, you know, we were working on this this way. Maybe we should try working on this a little different at home. It's just interesting to see the different perspectives and the different way that these people live and really just absorb that and learn from it. Hello. About ten years ago, these three students asked me if I had any ideas about doing projects in Nepal. I've learned that I worked in Nepal quite a bit. And at first, I thought it would be just filling a gap that maybe engineers without borders would have more projects later. As this whole process evolved, what we found was this is going to be a group that would continue year after year. Ten years, I would like to see definitely this irrigation canal, this particular one being finished. I want to see the local culture preserved, and I want to see the people here really leading that effort to change the problems that they have and to fix the problems that they have. I want to see that the people here enjoy it more in ten years. I mean, it's rewarding to realize that you're able to help people in distant areas. This is something that I'd love to be doing stuff like this. This kind of travel, this kind of adventure. I've just been wanting to explore and everywhere. So this felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity that I just didn't want to miss. I hope that we continue to leave behind this legacy of Virginia Tech. Just because we're on the other side of the world, doesn't mean that we don't have a heart for them and that we don't care about the problems that they face. I would really love to leave behind just that idea that we're all one global community, and we can all help each other, no matter how far across the world we are.