Wintergreen: Pretty--and Stronger--in Pink

Welcome back to Harvesters’ Corner! Today we are talking about a wonderful oil used to ease aches and pains. A unique feature of this oil is that the final product is pink, a delicate, blushing pink color reflected in the bottle’s label. This oil is no pansy, though. Its components give this oil a herbaceous, minty scent, and make it one of the strongest oil in its class, whether it’s being used for massages, to relieve tension, or reduce stress. Come along and learn more about Wintergreen.

In the early morning light, Nepalese women, some dressed in brightly colored skirts, others in dark, baggy pants, leave their homes and climb the winding footpaths into the nearby mountains. The air is chilled by the high altitude, yet the women move slowly, deliberately. One does not risk a sweat and the resulting chill needlessly. Large wicker baskets, now empty, lie across their backs, supported by a wide band of cloth crossing each woman’s forehead. Shadows fill many of the deep valleys. The morning sun takes a while to reach the valley floors, especially when you are surrounded by the highest mountains in the world. The women break apart into small groups, here two, there three, and occasionally a solo gatherer. Care must be taken, as help for an injury is a long distance away. As they walk the mountain trails, they start to gather branches full of ever-green leaves from the wintergreen shrub. In short order they begin to return to the village, the full baskets weighing anywhere between 100-110 pounds (43.4-49.9kg). Once the baskets have been deposited at the distillery, the women are paid and return home to prepare their families for the coming day.

Why Wintergreen?

The country of Nepal, nestled in among the foothills and towering peaks of the Himalaya Mountains, is in a unique position to profit from the harvesting of wintergreen, as the shrub thrives at high elevations, specifically between 4,900 feet up to 8,860 feet (1,500 to 2,700km), in shady, heavily forested areas. However, life is far from easy for these rugged individuals. Despite improvements in Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product during the early 2000s, at least one in four individuals lives below the poverty level, often earning less than $1.90 US a day. (1) In a country with 30 million people, that works out to over 7.5 million individuals struggling to survive. Being able to help their families through gathering wintergreen leaves for processing empowers the Nepalese women to buy food for their children, or to buy medicines, or even give their children an opportunity to attend school.

Gathering the leaves though, isn’t always a pleasant walk in the woods. Steep slopes and muddy terrain require attention to every footstep, especially when balancing a heavy basket full of leaves on one’s back. Once the basket’s contents have been weighed and catalogued at the distillery, the next steps begin. Leaves are stripped from branches and placed in large vats to soak in water overnight prior to being placed in the distillation vats. Then the leaves are processed for nearly fourteen hours with heat and pressure. The end result nets a small amount of oil. Roughly 5.5 pounds (2.4 kg) of leaves are needed to fill one 15ml bottle of oil.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

In April, 2015, the world’s attention focused on Nepal, as the country shook under the force of a Magnitude 7.8 earthquake, the worst in Nepal since 1934. The epicenter for this quake was roughly 48 miles (77 km) west of Kathmandu, the country’s capital. Buildings collapsed and landslides thundered down to block passes and roads. Lives were disrupted and people struggled to return to some semblance of normalcy. Then weeks later, in the early afternoon of May 12, 2015, a Magnitude 7.3 aftershock hit 47 miles (76 km) west of the capital.

“For the first seconds, it was complete silence. By the fifth second, everybody started to scream,” recalled Marc Sarradoa, a documentarian from Spain on hand recording the carnage from the earlier earthquake. “It was really, really intense. Even when the shaking stopped, people were still screaming. They were completely panicked, because they knew exactly what it was.” (2)

Minutes later a Magnitude 6.3 aftershock rocked the country again, this time to the south and east of Kathmandu. The province of Dolakah, roughly 76 miles (123 km) east of Kathmandu, was close to the epicenter of the first of the May quakes and suffered gravely as a result. The province of Ramechhak was the epicenter for the second of the quakes, and also suffered serious losses. These two provinces also share another distinction. Both had recently joined the growing network of suppliers in doTERRA’s Co-Impact Sourcing network for Wintergreen oil.

The day of the devastating earthquake, the Guardian News Network carried a story in which they reported, “The latest disaster comes amid a humanitarian emergency in Nepal, with aid yet to reach many remote parts of the impoverished Himalayan nation after roads were wrecked by landslides…Rows were ongoing over the aid that had been sent, with western officials accusing the Nepalese government of trying to centralize its distribution, hampering efforts to reach those most in need.” (3)

Through the networks established by Co-Impact Sourcing just months earlier, the Healing Hands Foundation reached out with food, shelter, clean water, and medicines to the survivors in Dolakah and Ramechhak, bypassing the quagmire in Kathmandu.

Emily Wright comforting a survivor of the earthquakes

Three Years Later…

Three years after the earthquakes, Healing Hands is still heavily engaged with rebuilding the lives of its harvesters and distillers. By the end of 2018 Healing Hands was able to report the following achievements:

• Built water stations--consisting of well, solar powered pump and storage reservoir-- with the capacity of providing over 41,000 people with clean, potable water in the Dolakah, Ramechhak, and Makwanpur provinces.

• Partnered with CHOICE Humanitarian-Nepal to rebuilding the Health Post at Narayani, in the village of Agara, in Makwanpur. This center served as the primary point of care for nearly 9,000 people prior to the earthquakes. The new building was being built to be quake-resistant and was expected to be open by 2019.

• Helped rebuild the Gokul Ganga Higher Secondary School in Ramechhak. The new school has been expanded to handle up to 700 students.

• Finished building a new hospital in Makwanpur, capable of providing services for over 100,000 people.

• Building a hospital in Ramechhak, capable of serving 34,000 people, with an expected completion date of 2019. (4)

Today the women of Dolakah, Ramechhak, and Makwanpur, along with their sisters elsewhere in Nepal, still leave their homes early in the morning to gather wintergreen. But when they return home, they do so not only with cash in their pockets, but the knowledge that they are a vital element in the production of Wintergreen oil, and there are thousands of people willing to not only purchase the product they produce but are also there to lend assistance when needed.

Have you had experiences with Wintergreen oil? Feel free to leave a comment down below. To support the harvesters in Nepal, click here to purchase Wintergreen essential oil. To donate to Healing Hands, click here. Everyone has the power to change the world in their hands. Subscribe and share this blog with your friends and stay strong. We’ll see you next time, here at Harvesters’ Corner!

Sources:

1. Co-Impact Sourcing.

2. Botelho, Greg, and Jethro Mulen. “Dozens Dead After Another Major Earthquake Centered in Nepal.” CNN News 12 May 2015. <https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12 /asia/nepal-earthquake/> Accessed Oct 18, 2023.

3. The Guardian. “Nepal Rocked by 7.3-Magnitude Earthquake Near Mount Everest.” <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/nepal-hit-by-second-huge-earthquake> Accessed 18 Oct 2023.

4. Healing Hands Foundation