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Lemon Grass Oil Rebuilds Forests After Conflict Ends

FrontLines - February 2010

A large Buddha statue at the Monkey Temple just outside Kathmandu displays Tibetan cultural influence seen in the northern Nepalese tribes of the Himalayan foothills.

CHISAPANI, Nepal—In this community of 1,000 people on the flat Terai plains of Nepal near the Indian border, Kokila Chaudhary, 29, swings her sickle at the tough stems of lemon grass, planted through a USAIDfunded project to boost income and prevent erosion.

“USAID [offered to] trained me. I thought, ‘Why should I come?’ and then decided that this was barren land and if I cultivate it I will make some money,” she said.

The spicy-smelling grass is bundled into sheaves and trucked to a small factory where the essential oils in the grass are extracted and distilled for use in cosmetics.

The land had been logged over the years. Now the lemon grass allows new Sal trees to grow up and restore the forest.

Chaudhary and a half-dozen other women harvesting the grass on a recent visit said they knew that U.S. funds had helped build the new crop and set up the extraction factory. Today, in fact, USAID signs are posted on projects— after many years of conflict when it was safer not to mention the U.S. connection.

Chaudhary, who finished the 10th grade in school and has two sons, said she used to do housework and sell vegetables, but last year earned 12,000 rupees in the lemon grass project—about $160 U.S.—and she expects to earn the same or more this year.

Asked if cutting the tough grass was as hard as it appeared, she laughed and said, “You have to be strong. I am.” ★

FrontLines Editorial Director Ben Barber wrote this series of articles following a trip to Nepal in October. All photos by Ben Barber unless otherwise noted.

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