By David F. Rooney
No stranger to mountains, Revelstoke’s Laura Stovel has spent the last several months treading Himalayan paths in Nepal while helping monitor that country’s post-civil war progress.
Now she’s back home for a Christmas vacation and will speak about her travels through the Nepalese countryside in a special slideshow and talk delivered through the Friends of Mount Revelstoke and Glacier’s Adventure Travel Series. Her presentation will take place at 7:30 pm on Jan. 2 at the Christian City Church (C3) above the Royal Bank on First Street West.
“I hope this talk and slide show will be of interest to young people and to people who have been to, or are planning to travel to, Nepal” she said in an interview.
Stovel has been working in Nepal since early this past summer for the Carter Centre, an Atlanta-based organization.The Centre is best known for its health work in Africa and for monitoring elections abroad. but it also has a network of 15 observers — of whom Stovel is one — in Nepal studying the aftermath of the Nepalese civil war. The war ended when the government signed a negotiated peace treaty with self-described Maoist revolutionaries. They held elections in 2008 for a constituent assembly that is supposed to draw up a new constitution for the former monarchy.
“Our job is to travel — drive or hike — to all the districts and talk to people about violence after the war, whether political parties or journalists are free to speak openly, the progress of the peace initiative and what people want in their new constitution,” she said.
Stovel said that her talk about life in Nepal will focus on stories from her work in the field and will be well-illustrated. Some of the images you’ll see are reproduced below:
