If I go back to 14 years ago, I remember when it all happened. The night, the cliff and the incident are a strong memory. Today, the strength in me has grown so I can contribute myself to social welfare, work for people with disability and be a good social worker. The pain I have gone through, my experiences and the circumstances have made me stronger.

I am Nanda Sunar and this is my story. I am a thirty-year-old Dalit woman and am studying as a high school student in Chamunda Madhyamik Bidyalaya. I stay here at Khagendra Navajeevan Kendra, which is a home for people with disabilities. It has been a year now. As a part time trainee, I also paint thangka. They give 100 rupees per day for it. Laxmi Kaur didi told me about this place and helped me get admission in college. She helped me a lot.

About fourteen years ago I was walking through the jungle late at night during the days of the People’s War and I fell off a cliff. Ever since then I have been disabled.

“I will be a social worker, a social activist. Disability is not a boundary for me.”

I come from a big family of three sons and six daughters. All of my brothers and sisters are married now and live in my hometown Surkhet. We depend on seasonal agriculture for our daily needs. This gave us enough food but most of our other needs were unfulfilled. We were very poor but mostly everything was ok before ‘the incident’.

Due to the fall I had a spinal cord injury, and my lower part of the body stopped functioning. I am now bound in a wheel chair. I have a lot of issues to deal with; from something as simple as travelling around, to getting a job or an education. Not just me but most of us with disabilities face these issues. The local buses don’t want to give us a lift. Every time we need to travel long distance we have to take a taxi. By long distance I mean even going to the center of town. And whenever we need to use the restroom we have to search for something that is wheelchair accessible and has a commode for us to use. Unfortunately this is not available in most places.

I felt different in the crowd of physically well people. The way they perceive me and treat me has changed since I lost use of my lower body. Most people in society think; what can she do as a disabled person? She is useless. Why do disabled people need an education? Who can possibly benefit if they learn how to read and write? Why should we give an opportunity to people with disabilities?

Even my own family is hesitant to invest in me. I am sure this doesn’t only apply for me. Many other persons with disabilities are treated the same. If we were not disabled during birth but got disabled later in life, we notice a stark discrimination in the way we were treated and now.

However, there are some people who treat us well and believe in us. They think of providing an opportunity to us. I believe in the intellectual power we physically disabled have. We might be physically injured but we have the power to think. To bring change I believe I have to make people aware, make society acknowledge persons with disability and teach them how to deal with us.

I’ve found my role in life and I know what I want to do. I am on a path to make people aware about disabilities.

My aim is to help people with disability, work for common goals, make people aware of the discriminations we face everyday and learn how to fight it. There are so many of us who have it much worse than me but are so much stronger than me. They fight, not only for themselves but also for others. The state hasn’t secured us any rights. If the state doesn’t take care of us then how can we expect society to? I’ll give you an example: in Nepal if a “normal” son or daughter want to study or go abroad for work then parents will do anything to send them abroad. But they will never go out of their way for their children with disability.

Like I said before, they see no reason to invest in us.

Right now I am starting to help and work together with one of my friends. She used to live with her brother and sister in law. They treated her extremely badly. She suffered a lot of abuse and discrimination. So I told her about this place where we all live together and have been supporting her through it.

I now want to finish my education and get a job. I can then show everyone else that it is possible.