Marion Nelson is the owner of Global View, a retail business which provides marketing opportunities for Asian artisans. For more than 20 years, Marion and Duane Nelson have journeyed to places such as India and Indonesia to carefully select hand-crafted products, and thus help to preserve traditional motifs and excellence of ethnographics and folk art. They recently returned from a buying trip quite saddened at what they saw during their travels.

On this trip, the Nelsons flew into New Delhi, and travelled through much of northern India, visiting Dharamsala near the Tibetan border, Udaipur in Rajasthan, Darjeeling in West Bengal, Varanasi (formerly Benares) in Uttar Pradesh, and Rishikesh in Uttaranchal, before going on to the islands of Bali and Lombok in Indonesia. Everywhere they went, they found empty streets, merchants without business, and people who were hungry, frightened and disillusioned.

The recent political and social disruption has severely impacted many craftspeople, artisans, small shops and guest houses in countries that were not even involved in the conflicts. The Nelsons speak of the desert town of Salwas, in Rajasthan, as an example. Rajasthan does not have much for fertile ground for agriculture, and so its semi-nomadic peoples have focused their efforts on textiles, especially the spinning and weaving of flat rugs called dhurries. Dhurries are made from local wool, cotton, or gray camel wool. The weavers have formed coops and learned about exporting. Some even take credit cards, and they ship their products all over the world. But, human contact is needed for the transactions to happen. Someone must come to set up the shipping and necessary bank accounts. Someone must come and personally choose colors that are pleasing to Western eyes. No sales are being made now because foreigners have been frightened away by the media and US State Department warnings which lump countries and areas together. Although Rajasthan lies along the Pakistan border, the Nelsons did not feel at all unsafe while they were there, nor at any other point in their trip. They have simply learned to be aware when they travel, use common sense and not go where there is political conflict.

All of Indonesia currently falls under the State Department warnings. On previous trips, Marion and Duane had found it difficult to walk down Monkey Forest Road, the main street of shops in the art center of Ubud, Bali. The street had been always crowded with cars, buses and people, but now it is deserted. On the nearby island of Lombok, they went into a shop to find everything covered with dust from the road. No one had cleaned up because no customers were expected. While they were in the shop deciding on what they might purchase, a man came down the street with a cart that had some bags of rice on it. The shop keeper excused himself and rushed out of the door after the cart. He told the man to save a bag of rice for him, as he had customers in the shop and would soon have a sale. He was so happy because now he would be able to buy food for his family. In Bali and Lombok, years ago most families had a rice paddy, but many of them have been sold so that guest houses and restaurants could be built. Now that the tourists have stopped coming, the people cannot go back to the rice paddies.

Marion and Duane are accepting financial donations, grants and loans, and are willing to arrange exchanges of merchandise to support their various personal efforts. They have boxes of donated warm clothing waiting to be shipped to Dharamsala, a refuge for exiled Tibetans in the cold reaches of northern India. Money is needed to ship the clothing, at the rate of about $45 a box. More extensive funding is required to pay for various craft items that were selected during their trip, and to ship large containers of merchandise back to the United States. Because the immediate needs of the people they met were so great, the Nelsons placed deposits on various items, trusting that they would somehow be able to raise the necessary funds for the balances due and the expensive shipping of those items when they returned home.

Marion and Duane Nelson may be contacted at (608) 583-5311 or globalv@mhtc.net. Their mailing address is 6593 Clyde Road, Spring Green, WI 53588. The Nelsons also sponsor the Tibetan Medicine Buddha Healing Center at the same location.