Nepal Owl Festival 2017: As a volunteer
You put your 100% and yet you make blunders. It pinches you. You learn! Small mistakes while giving full dedication looks huge to you.
Owls
Volunteering in Nepal Owl Festival is spontaneous. Friends of Nature (FON), Nepal conducts this festival each year at different venues. We make a checklist, collect all resources, book a vehicle, load everything and travel towards the destination. There are many rooms or a big hall to create an owl museum. All items require a hall as big as a basketball court. Looking at the available space is when a rough picture is created to display. Things happen randomly. It requires 3 complete days to make a museum. There were around 15 volunteers. Main event runs for 2 days. We dismantle everything the next day, load to a vehicle and travel back to Kathmandu.
Volunteers
Owl museum is an important part of the program. People get awestruck going around the museum. There are owls everywhere in forms of paintings, bags, cups, caps, lockets, sculptures, dummy, specimens, robots, sounds, origami, masks, t-shirts, videos, games, publications, face and nail arts, photo booth, research materials and other curios. Most locals had never seen such things before. Volunteers explain to them about each items and let them know importance of owls. This creates a huge impact. There are selfies and photographs going all day in the museum. It is very difficult to manage the crowd.
Temporary Owl Museum
While temporary owl museum is one part of Nepal Owl Festival; local programs, games, cultural shows and award distribution is another. Firstly, selection of a particular site to organize the festival is a big decision. Local participation and support is a must. Without it, the program cannot succeed. Community of Niglihawa VDC, Jagadishpur, Kapilvastu played their part very well this year. Executive director of FON, Mr. Raju Acharya (aka Raju dai) coordinates with local committee and takes care of overall event. There isn’t any benefit to community other than promotion and goodwill. Let me write few lines about Jagadishpur. It is the largest artificial reservoir of Nepal which was constructed for irrigation purpose. It falls under Ramsar site. It is a significant place for birds and other wildlife. Nearby is Tilaurakot (~ 5 kms) – palace of Gautam Buddha and Lumbini (30 kms) – birth place of Lord Buddha. They have recently started homestay and are working diligently towards its progress.
Jagadishpur Lake
Lumbini- The Birth Place of Lord Gautam Buddha
Audiences vary in each owl festival. I was there at Sikles, Kaski (hilly region) last year. They were mostly Gurung people. There were around 4000 participants. Everybody (especially females) had come in cultural uniform. They looked so decent. They went around the hall, looked closely, read displayed write ups. They were shy kind of people and respectful. This year program happened in Terai. There were Tharu, Muslim, Gurung, Brahmin and mixed type of audiences. There were few in cultural dress. There were around 8000 (double of Sikles) participants. Some showed concern about the exhibition while some were careless. It was difficult to manage the crowd not only because they were many in number but I and many of us must have felt that people in Terai has yet to build up good demeanor. I am happy that I got to explore these areas closely.
Bar-headed Goose- Highest flying bird on planet
Most volunteers don’t get to attend to any games and cultural shows. We are busy in the museum. While there is entertainment outside, we stand inside the museum hall from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There are lot of works pre event, during the event and post event. There isn’t any task division. Nobody tells nobody to do this or do that. Everybody analyze by themselves what to do. Even carrying a cello tape or hammer from one place to another comes handy. It is like finding a job without source and force. You will find people climbing ladders, hammering nails, pasting chart papers, hanging banners, sweeping floors, managing water and all sort of things that requires a selfless effort. Everyone is tired at the end of the day. Most of it requires physical effort. Little creativity is also needed to make things easy and look nice. From starting to end, loading and unloading and transferring from one place to another, we carried all those museum materials for 11 times in total. Working in a group brings out a different kind of energy. Owl festival is a unique festival.
Few links on Owl Festival along with news from 2017 that you can find in the internet:
Time Lapse_Owl Festival 2016 by Mr. Jeevan Rai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8F95mcPpyg
News_NTVPlus_Serofero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aijpL8MHuS4&feature=youtu.be
BBC_News: http://www.bbc.com/nepali/news-38965326
Friends of Nature (Facebook page): https://www.facebook.com/fonnepal2005/
Owl Festival by Mr. Prajwol Manandhar: https://wildvocals.blogspot.com/2017/02/owl-festival-and-fishing-cat-encounter.html
Owl Festival_2016: https://aolraj.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/owl-fest/
Raj Prasai 