Correction

So I said the Maoist strikes are largely peaceful, but even though incidents may be few and scattered, yesterday one of my favorite bars got vandalized in front of me, while i was locked into my other favorite bar with the lights off, across the street, waiting for the Maoists to calm down. I predict things will escalate, yet the world news are largely ignoring the growing civil unrest here.

That's all.

On The Road

I am now back from my second field trip, which ended 5 days early due to the Maoist strikes in the capital. The Maoists are a tricky bunch, they protest a LOT, and when they announce strikes, the city shuts down. Stores are closed, cars are not allowed to run, all the while in the center of town Maoist supporters have something of a celebration with singing, dancing, and cheering. In the past they have been known to get a little violent and burn tires, harass shop owners and beat up people who thought they'd get away with driving. This time however they say this will be a peaceful endeavor and that they'll behave . Either way, they have announced a week-long strike for this week, with an intent to put pressure on the government to make a constitution and to oust the prime minister of whom they are not a fan. To make a long story short due to this activity I had to return and miss 4 days of school visits and interviews, because had I stayed, I would have gotten stuck away from Kathmandu and missed a meeting with my supervisor and possibly my flight to Thailand.

Anyway my second field trip took me to Syangja, a beautiful mountain region near Pokhara, where we visited a number of schools in order to distribute scholarship materials, and for yours truly to conduct a number of interviews. Once the road past Pokhara was over the Syangja roads were mountain paths on which you could travel no faster than 15 km/hour and one day in particular we took 50 kilometers in almost 3 hours. Words can’t describe how much I missed long 4 lane highways and how easy it is to get speeding tickets in Europe and the US. The entire time i felt like i was sitting in a salt shaker and wax anxious for us to arrive. At one point we had to stop our huge SUV and fill a hole in the road with rocks in order to pass, and on numerous occasions we drove through streams and rivers. In the four days we spent driving on these roads we passed around 4 other vehicles total. Surprisingly, one of the mentioned mountain paths took us to Sirubari, a model village which does get tourists on occasion, where we spent the night. I was a little disappointed, because other than the cute stone paths and neat houses, there were no people out, no shops, and only one stupa to look at. Wonder what other tourists do when they go there…

Syangja was very different from Makwanpur (where I was in March), in the fact that trafficking is rare and all children are likely to be enrolled in school. Weather they attend is a different story, but in Makwanpur enrollment was also an issue since a lot of children, especially girls, don't ever get the chance to go to school. One of the schools we visited was right near the model village I mentioned, and was solely for Dalit (untouchable) children. Even though the village itself is a haven, and people have a source of income and pride, Dalit children in that community are barred from the Gurung school of the local people and have to walk further in order to attend the one school available tot them. In that sense the impact of my NGO could truly be seen in the small primary school we visited. For the short material distribution program we did there, the locals had planned a grand welcome, with flowers and presentations, and was the only time anyone expressed a gratitude like this out of all the schools we went to. I was touched.

So now I am in Kathmandu, my field visits are incomplete (which wasn’t the plan), I am 4 days away from my vacation to Thailand, and 3 weeks away from returning back to Europe. Needless to say the stress level has risen to code red.

Happy 2067!!

Wednesday, April 14th marked the first day of Nepali New Year, and now we are living in 2067. It was quite nice to celebrate two new years, because the next chance I get to celebrate 2067, I will either be dead or nearing my 85th birthday. Who knows though, maybe I will be one rocking granny…Surprisingly there wasn’t a huge New Year celebration, like we do in the western world. There were a lot of parties for tourists, expats, and young Nepali men, but most of the locals I know, stayed at home, and maybe went to a temple the next day in order to mark the occasion. The most exciting of the Nepali celebrations was held near Kathmandu in Bakhtapur (Bisket Jatra) where they erect a 30 meter lingum, a sign of Shiva’s you know what. Miniature Shiva Lingums are found all over Nepal and are representative of the convergence of male and female parts. Sexy.

Other than that I have been nothing more than a tourist over the last weeks. I currently have my boyfriend here and we went to Pokhara for five days, where we explored the city and its vicinities. There, we took a short hike to the World Peace Pagoda and visited a bat cave in which I made many new sleeping friends. Turns out they sleep holding on to one leg and every 30 min they switch so they don’t cramp up. So cute! I might want to be a fruit bat in my next life. The rest of the time we ate, drank, and hung by the lake. There might have been a museum visit somewhere in there too...i don't remember.

After Pokhara, we came back to Kathmandu and have been exploring more local temples and stupas. I've also had to go back to the office, where I have been trying to get in touch with local NGOs and iNGOs for interviews and background information. Some of my field trips fell through, since I never heard from the American Himalayan Foundation representative who told me I can join her on a few trips in order to track down graduated students from the program. Bummer….I should have remembered from Azerbaijan, that such promises in developing countries are not always valid. I go on my next field trip in about a week and again will be staying in Pokhara from where I will be making day trips to the surrounding regions and conducting interviews, focus groups, etc. in order to get more feedback for my research.

That’s it, no deep insights this time.

Expat Life in Kathamndu

In the days after my field visit I have had quite the life (excluding the no electricity and water fiasco, but hey at least I can drink beer…). As previously mentioned I moved to a new house which is beautiful and in a nice neighborhood. We do still shower out of buckets and do our dishes on the balcony (its the closest working tap), but regardless i am really happy with the new place. Anyway...I have met a lot of people who live in Nepal for various reasons, and have found out that the social scene is relatively small and you are bound to run into the same people wherever you go. For instance, last week I went to a cheese ‘party’ in a small farm outside of Kathmandu where my colleagues from university also ended up in. To be honest I didn’t even know it was supposed to be a party. I thought I was going to a stinky barn where a Nepali farmer would give me a the tour, let me milk a cow, and then sell me some creamy delicious cheese at a low cost. Turned out that the farm was owned by a French guy, who lives in a beautiful self-built cottage and the ‘tour’ I was imagining ended up being a party celebrating spring, with plenty of drinking, smoking, and food. The crowd included expats from prestigious organizations, local bar owners and rock stars, and people like me, who are clearly neither. It was a nice surprise and I ate and drank my heart out until my body decided to rebel and get a cold. So yes….I again spent 2 days in bed recovering from my ongoing health ailment. This is getting old, seriously!

Thats it for expat life.... I am currently taking a break from the office and enjoying a mini vacation in Pokhara for 5 days. This is the second biggest city which sits on a lake and is the beginning of the Annapurna range and all its trails. Its beautiful, quiet and relaxing in contrast to Kathmandu, and its wonerful to take a little break from the fumes. As far as work, I don’t have a field visit till the end of April, and NGOs in Kathmandu are ignoring me so I hope I have better luck tracking down people to interview after my vacation.

(In the picture you can see Bea, my Spanish roommate, enjoying the festivities)

Field Visit

I had seen tough times in Azerbaijan, especially in some of the IDP camps, but the way of life I saw during my first field visit is in a whole other category of poor, and to think that this is the way the majority of the world lives is truly something to take into account. So I spent 9 days in Makwanpur district which is in the south, near the Indian border and is a hill region. It’s less than a 100 kilometers from Kathmandu, but the road is a non-paved mountain path and the trip took almost 5 hours. Once there I visited 5 school and interviewed around 30 people including parents, teachers, and students. Some of the interviews took place in people’s houses, which gave me the opportunity to see first hand the dwelling and livelihood of the people. From wooden shacks, to mud houses, each having one room for 5+ people was the norm in all communities that I visited. In the villages that were off the main road, the schools were some of the only brick buildings I saw and women were the majority of those working in the fields, carrying large loads of wood on their head, and collecting water at the wells. From the interviews I did, I learned that a lot of girls repeat classes numerous times, due to the fact hey have to do household work before and after school and go in for wage labor on their days off, which would give them from 60-100 RPS (60-70 cents) per day of work. Having all this in mind, no wonder they have no time for schoolwork, and with almost all of them having illiterate parents, and no jobs other than occasional farm work available in their communities, it is easy to understand why education doesn’t always rank high as a priority. Furthermore, Makwanpur is a region heavily hit by traffickers ‘recruiting’ for the circus in India. I interviewed one girl who was a tight rope walker for 6 years since she was 9. Parents get tricked and then compensated to let their daughters go. Some of the girls get released when they grow up and become too heavy, or if they get HIV, so currently there is a high return rate for girls with girls who got either too old or too sick to work. Evidently local NGOs have been active and the trafficking cases are decreasing, but in the communities I visited the majority agreed that trafficking is a fact of life and girls are still leaving to go to India and the gulf countries for ‘work.’

On a more positive note, Makwanpur is a beautiful district, with rolling green hills and rivers running throughout it. There we stayed and ate at a guesthouse, which was quite comfortable, and I had a chance to get to know my assistant/translator, who also became a good friend of mine in the process. Each morning we would have breakfast/lunch at 9 and then return from work around 5 exhausted and sweaty. Traditional Nepali cuisine serves one meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner and its called daal bhat tarkari, meaning lentil soup, rice, and curried vegetables, and even though delicious, eating it twice a day for over a week was intense. The highlight of the trip was the fan clubs I gathered at each school I visited. Kids would stare at me, and tell me how white, tall, and blond I am, and would literally run in front of me and start walking backwards in order to get a better view. On other occasions, I would be interviewing someone in a room with an open window, and every time there would be kids on top of kids, on top of kids lined at the windows as if though they were watching a theater play. At times I felt that I must have two heads and three arms, and on better days like a Bollywood star. I don’t know how famous people do it, since its truly exhausting being started at and trying to function at the same time. Either way I came back to Kathmandu this week and unknowingly had brought some friends with me in my stomach from the dirty water I drank, so I had three miserable days of pain and fever. I went to the doctor finally and was told that my typhus vaccine is only 60% active, and there is a chance I may still have it. I find out for sure on Monday, but I doubt its that, since the antibiotics I was put on made me feel better in less than 5 hours. I also moved into my new apartment with my new roommate Bea, who is from Spain. Through her, and my other friend Roger, I am starting to have somewhat of a social life. Its weird hanging out with ex-pats, and I still have my old defense from Azerbaijan, where I try not to be too culturally inappropriate even when I am with westerners only. Our apartment is big and nice, with the only problem being that we barely have any furniture and I still have to shower out of a bucket because the electricity is too weak for the water heater to work. So that’s it for now! Namaste!

Interesting facts I learned at an ex-pat party:

• Number one cause for death among women in Nepal is now suicide, surpassing maternal health mortality
• Nepal is ranked 4^th in the world in terms of its capacity to produce hydro electric power, yet has 12-14 hour power cuts in the capital every day
• Nepal is the 14^th poorest country in the world

(Source: American dude, working in public health in Kathmandu)

RHEST

Happy Holi

Holi festival is here! As I had mentioned earlier kids have been preparing for this for the past 2 weeks, targeting young girls and tourists with water balloons and buckets. Today however, the game is different and EVERYONE participates, and not only with water but also with tika paints. I have spend all day hiding while local kids and even foreigners downtown have chosen to join into the water war or as I liked to call it ”get the tourists” event. I have been observing carefully the festivities from my supervisor’s house and its insane. Anyone who walks through the street gets soaked from kids prepared with balloons and full on buckets of water which they pour on people and if you are lucky, the water is bright red and leaves a nice sewer like stench. Kids, and teenagers have been storming the streets looking like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, with their faces painted in various colors, and yelling like someone is ripping out their guts. I say “NO THANK YOU,” to that and good luck to my fare faced comrades downtown who are bound to get water ballooned in the face....OH NO, have i turned into a party pooper!?

Other than that I had my first field visit this past week. It was in Nagarkort which is known for having spectacular views of the Himalayas, but I barely got to see any mountain since most of the time haze was covering the peaks. A few of the photos I took ended up ok after some photo shopping and int he end the 2 days of fresh air away from Kathmandu were much appreciated. RHEST was having their annual meeting there to talk about new policy and the successes and failures of the past fiscal year. course it was all in Nepali, and my purpose there was to get a better idea of it all it all and maybe interview some of the volunteers from the regions. relaxing right? Well, it was for about a hot second, until my supervisor sprung a surprise Focus Group Discussion and four 40 min interviews on me. My preparation was close to nil and my translator was no where to be found. Somehow it was all pulled off and I got some answers by rugged men, who were not really sure what this white little lady was doing there in the first place. I think that for the circumstances it all went down ok. During the two days I also got to experience my first Bollywood sing off and it was amazing. After dinner everyone met up in one of the hotel rooms, all the women (around 15) were sitted in a tiny bed, and all the men sat on chairs around. The crowd was split in two teams and they would start a different Bollywood song beginning with the last syllable of the previous song sang. It was confusing, and I heard about 50 Bollywood songs in the span of 15 min. It was an amazing experience, and their knowledge and skill was impressive.

And let me end with the exciting news that I now have a new apartment with a cool roommate from Spain for about half the price of what I pay now. WooHooo! Also my supposed field trip starting on Tuesday might have to be pushed due to the fact I am having translator issues. However if everything stays on track I might not have Internet for the next week and a half and will be able to communicate normally around March 10th.

Week 2

Ah Nepali life…still trying to get the hang of it. So immediately after my last blog, all my exploration plans were ruined due to the fact the stomach gods cursed me with some food poisoning. How I miss the days of constant stomach activity of the negative kind...NOT! So I spent my 3^rd and 4^th day in the country ‘cleansing’ my system from and thinking that I’ll never eat again. Luckily I recovered and now I am on the path of becoming a healthy plump woman. Ever since the forsaken illness I just can’t stop eating. I am still not brave enough to cook my own food, so I buy things from the nearby bakery and eat delicious vegetarian dishes in the nearby ‘trusted’ fast food restaurant. I get fed at my office as well, and curried vegetables, rice, and flat bread will never get old. I hope the Azeri 20 kilos doesn’t catch up to me, because I do not miss the days when I had only 1 pair of pants that fit.

So this past week I started going to the office, where I got to meet everyone and figure out how the next 3 months will go. The rest of the time I spend fighting with internet and hang ing out with my coworkers. My field visit schedule was set this week, and it looks like I’ll be taking two 10 day trips in 2 and half districts. The districts completely changed from what I was originally anticipating, but I wasn’t in anyway expecting that thing’s won’t change. So on March 2^nd I head out to Makawanpur which is a hilly region near the Terai (plains) known for human trafficking. The program has existed there for only 4 years, which is not that much, but they insist I should go there since a lot of girls get sold to Indian circuses from the local villages. Then I will go to Syangja and Kaski which are in the mountains and have had the scholarship program active for 12 years. I’ll go there at the end of April for 2 weeks. In the middle I am on my own, doing background research, teaching myself Nepali, and hopefully not getting fat. The week ended in hanging out with Brian, Giulietta, and Su from my program in Utrecht, and a new friend we met here, who is doing research on the expat community of Nepal. I feel grateful that I can have some sort of social life, because I know how dreary it can be without, and my hat goes off to those friends who are doing their internships alone in non-tourist centers.

In other news, my supervisor keeps hinting that I have to move out of her parents place and since I have started looking I am realizing that where I am at now and what I am paying for it is not actually a good deal at all. I have paid up for a month and looking to move out in the second week of March. Wish me luck!

Current observations on life in Kathmandu: There are dogs everywhere! Some look happy and fat, living next to butcher shops, others are the most miserable sites ever, and break my heart; The pollution leaves black gunk in my nose; Text messaging to the USA works, but not to India; Kids throw bags full of water at you because a 'festival' is coming – I guess water is an improvement over rocks, which is what boys used to throw at us in Azerbaijan; and finally, brushing your teeth with Sprite is better than using the water from the tap.