On 22 August 2002, 19 people died when a Twin Otter flight from Jomsom with 16 German tourists on board crashed just before landing near Pokhara airport.

Among the dead were Renate Rockstroh and her husband Rainer, both teachers and on their first trip to Nepal. Renate's brother Marcos travelled here to take home the bodies and met Pokhara tourism entrepreneur Laxman Subedi. The two discussed ways to commemorate the deaths and lives, of the Rockstrohs and thought of helping the local community in the village of Kristi where the crash took place.

Marcos went back to Germany and threw around some ideas with friends, including Rolf Schmelzer, a German journalist who has been visiting Nepal for the past 15 years. They decided to combine a memorial for the victims with a long-term project to help the village. Subedi contacted the villagers of Kristi to find out what they needed the most.

Although it is five km outside Pokhara with stunning views of the city below and the Annapurnas beyond, the road to Kristi is rough and it's common to see locals pushing and pulling stuck vehicles out of giant potholes or from the river bed.

Kristi's 5,000 inhabitants are a self-sufficient lot with a relatively high standard of living because of cash crops like oranges. They willingly embrace new ideas
and many have biogas to fuel their kitchens.

In the end, the villagers decided what they needed was a primary school so their children would no longer have to make a two hour roundtrip every day. The Social English School opened in 2002 with 15 students and now counts 111 pupils up to Class 3.

One of its buildings is the Gunter Hauser Memorial School Building, supported by Dentists Without Limits and German journalists led by Schmelzer who visit Kristi every year.

"The people are very happy with the school and with the help they get from the Germans every year," says Subedi, "they never expected that sometimes such a good thing come out of such a horrible tragedy."

Min Bajracharya