Gem's Quilt

After 'E' day

2008-04-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

So I was wrong. Usually, I'm a natural optimist, but in this case, in the case of the Nepali elections I chose pessimism. I chose to believe the dooms day predictions and the head shakers and the "it will never go peacefully" camp. But I was wrong. The elections were a success and men, women and youths came out in droves to exercise their democratic right. It is funny, in a way, as a successful election was not what anyone had prepared for, including me. A few days before "E" day, in response to the overwhelming election pessimism in the air, my housemate and I had registered with the embassy, stockpiled cans of tinned tomatoes and pasta and all but packed our bags ready for the evacuation. On Election Day vehicles were banned from the roads, the army and the various election observers were out in force, and everyone was ready for the mass burning and looting of polling booths, violence and intimidation from the YCL (youth arm of the Maoists) and maybe even the outbreak of civil war. But the morning came and I woke up to the sound of bird song rather than gunfire. Still convinced mayhem was being unleashed just beyond my gate; I rolled over and turned on the BBC to be greeted by the cheerful voice of BBC correspondent Charles Haviland reporting an almost 'festive' atmosphere at polling booths. And that is how the day progressed, peaceful beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Although there were cases of polling booths being burnt or thrown into the river and candidates being killed (7 in total, I think) news was also of people who made sure they voted before being rushed to hospital to give birth, old people who voted and then died minutes later (the press insinuated excitement related heart attacks), people in the Terai who came out despite threats of violence to finally have their say about how they wanted their New Nepal to look.

In the end an estimated 60% of Nepalis came out to vote. As the Kathmandu post pointed out the next day, this is nothing short of a miracle considering the pre-election tension, the numerous armed groups vocal against the elections, and the fact that a huge % of Nepal's population has been displaced, killed or moved abroad due to the 10 year armed conflict that has waged since the last elections in 1999.

I really shouldn't be so surprised. Nepal is amazingly resilient country, which always seems to come through despite 'everyone' saying it could never happen. Take the people's movement in April 2006 or the fact that the elections were held at all, let alone peacefully. Every time, it seems, the Nepali people proved 'everyone' wrong. Of course the biggest surprise of all was the landslide victory of the Maoist Party and still the pessimists and the hand ringers are predicting the worse, how can such a rebel party come out of the jungle and lead the New Nepal, it will never work! But the people of Nepal have chosen the Maoists and with them comes a feeling of change and maybe even optimism, who knows…the Maoists and the country have a long up hill struggle in front of them, but this time I will take my lead from the people and I will choose optimism and hope for change and a New Nepal (albeit a red one!)

Waiting for a New Nepal

2008-04-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

For the last few days there has been a noticeable increase in huddling among men here. Huddling is something that Nepali men do, they sit in huddles and drink chiya and talk…but recently the huddles have got tighter, the talk more urgent and they are everywhere, on street corners, outside shops, in the usual chiya pasals (tea shops). I know what they are talking about, its what everyone's talking about, wondering about…even the street dogs have an unsure look on their face "what will happen after Thursday? Will everything change?"

Thursday (tomorrow) is the Nepali CA (Constituent Assembly) Elections. Nepal has been waiting for these elections for almost 2 years now, since the Jana Andolan (or people's uprising) in April 2006, when the king stepped down and democracy came (for the second time) to Nepal. The elections have already been postponed twice, and right up to this week, people were still not sure if they would actually happen…the ballot papers weren't going to be printed in time, the parties were fighting, the Madeshi's were bringing the country to a halt. But in the end the ballot papers got printed, the parties continued fighting but no one pulled the plug on the elections and the Madeshi's were appeased. So here we are, on the eve of the elections, wondering if the much promised Naya Nepal (new Nepal) will materialize.

Naya Nepal, is a term that everyone has been using to describe the Nepal that will materialize after the elections (Equal Access even have a radio programme by that name), it is a term loaded with hope and the promise of change for the better. It makes me think of shiny new things, of glowing lights and angelic voices in chorus. The reality is a little less shiny. The reality is news of bombs and shootings, of the killing of party candidates by other parties cadres or women candidates being beaten up so badly they loose an eye, of petty name calling between politicians and party members, of curfews and voter intimidation, of rallies that turn violent and campaigns that have no agenda for how a New Nepal will rise, no party line bar the slogan "vote for trees" or "don't vote for them". The party leaders have signed two agreements promising a peaceful and fair election yet not a day has passed in the last two weeks without the papers reporting one lot of party cadres beating up or intimidating another. Prachanda (the Maoist leader) has said that if the Maoists don't win, the elections must be unjust and he will not accept them. In reality if the Maoists DO win it will be because of fear and intimidation, as I'm pretty sure they do not have any popular support. But ke garne, if they don't win they may well pick up arms again, 'head back to the forests' and start another civil war...so perhaps, in the name of a quiet life, they will win. Whatever happens tomorrow I'm pretty sure in the end the people of Nepal will not win. But may be I'm being too pessimistic, maybe the gains that have been made in ensuring better equality and representation in Nepal will continue and this election will go smoothly and will truly mark the start of the road to a New Nepal…that's the beauty of the day before, waiting, huddling, its all rumour at the moment and from this distance we can still hope!

Losar Love

2008-02-16T02:59:00.000-08:00

I feel like my blog is becoming a little depressing. So this entry is a positive celebration! Last Saturday I braved the crowds and went to Boudha – the largely Tibetan area of Kathmandu to watch and take part in the celebrations for Tibetan New year or Losar. It was confusing – but then what new year's celebrations aren't confusing for the outsider? Lots of seemingly random (but obviously well timed) shoouts of "lah", throwing of white powder into the air, milling around, smiling, laughter, amazing costumes and cookies. They also have a tradition where you write people's names on prayer flags, and then these are hoisted up and hung on the Boudha Stupa (see photo of man carrying flags to the top) where they remain all year. So I bought my flags and wrote all your names on them – it was lovely, sitting their in the sun on the steps of the stupa, thinking of all my friends and family and writing you all down one by one on multi coloured flags. Whether you believe in the power of prayer or not, it's still kind of cool to know that your names are flapping in the wind, high above a huge Buddhist stupa, somewhere in Nepal.

Ps I don’t think I forgot anyone, but if I did….I will go back next year!

Fifth Worst

2008-02-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

A letter to the Kathmandu Post (or maybe it was the Himalayan Times) that I read on Sunday said that Nepal had been voted amongst the top five worst countries in the world. Unfortunately, the letter writer did not expand on which poll he was quoting from, how 'worst' was defined or what the other 4 countries were (but that is the start of a whole different rant on journalism here which never seems to require story background, context or follow up!). At first I was a little surprised. This is a country where when the smog lifts you can see nothing but snow capped mountains in the distance, this is the country that is home to Everest, that is the birth place of Buddha and a travel destination for droves of tourists, climbers, hippies, trekkers, adventure sport fanatics and generally anyone who loves beauty. There are a lot of stinking, war torn, corrupt and generally undemocratic countries in the world. And Nepal was ranking in the top 5. Then I thought about all the possible indicators for 'worst'…lack of amenities, lack of clean water, lack of security, lack of good governance, lack of a functioning civil society, corruption, pollution, low life expectancy, lack of health services, poverty, discrimination, displaced populations and I realized Nepal has all of those, some in abundance. Everyday there are less vehicles on the road and longer queues outside petrol stations because of a diesel crisis (meaning the country has no diesel), we have to wait days, sometimes weeks for a new gas cylinder to use for heating or cooking, today I heard that the water truck can't deliver any more water because they have no fuel for driving (and my house has become the shower-place as all of my friends ran out of water weeks ago), electricity cuts are now 8 hours a day (more outside Kathmandu) with no real reason (Nepal is hydropowered and should have enough power to power herself and parts of India and China!) except for "in order to repair damaged machine No.1 Julekhani Hydropower Project needs to be closed tentatively for about two weeks…." that was 2 months ago. In terms of security the Maoists have quietened down since joining the Government but a new group (I use the term group loosely as there are many different groups and factions) called the Madheshi's are now agitating across the Terai region of Nepal, calling strikes, burning buses, letting off bombs, killing and terrorizing in the name of equal rights, representation and in extreme cases an independent state. The Terai is a pretty much no go area and hordes of people are leaving, adding to the hordes who left or were displaced under the 10years of Maoists insurgency. Stikes (or bandhs as they are called here) in Kathmandu are less frequent but at least once or twice a month the city will grind to a halt, tyres will be burnt, rocks will be thrown and another group will call for another set of demands to be met. I went to a BBC presentation last week where they shared that when asked 'what is the most effective form of collective action' the highest number of survey respondents said bandh, the next highest was violent uprisings. The Constituent Assembly elections (the first crucial step towards developing a functioning democracy and Government in Nepal) have already been postponed twice…this time they are planned for April but no one can say if they will happen. And all this comes on top of the poverty, the low literacy rates, the high infant mortality rates. Nepal is amongst only a few countries in the world where the life expectancy for women is lower than men (although this differs on whose statistics you look at, Action Aid has women slightly higher than men). So I guess it is understandable that Nepal would rank so high…but still disappointing and distressing, this is a country with such potential, with so many natural resources, with a vibrant tourist industry, with beautiful people and yet it seems to be slipping away largely unnoticed by the wider world.

Trying to be better

2008-02-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

Again apologies for the lack of bloggyness recently. I am trying to be better! It is just harder when you don't see things through new eyes anymore, when getting up going to work, coming home, going to bed is the extent of your daily routine, when power is often cut, internet is shabby and it is too cold to type....but these are all tired excuses, so I will try to write more and thanks for still reading.

When you know your language lessons are useless...

2007-08-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

...when your didi* who speaks no english turns up at your door and bursts into tears and you don't know how to say "what's wrong, don't cry"....when you only finally realise after a painful session of your limited understanding of Nepali and her acting skills that the reason she is crying is that her nephew is dead and her husband is in hospital in Malasia after they were both attacked and you can't even say "I am so sorry for your loss, are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help"... when all you can do is stand there dumbly or offer a hug to this tiny lady who has nothing and yet has lost more than you can even imagine...when you want to tell her that you are so angry that immigrant workers like her husband and nephew, who are so often the poorest and most desperate, are also the most vulnerable, that it shouldn't be this way, that it is unfair that she only saw her husband for the first 5 months of their marriage before he left to work abroad 3 years ago ... but instead all you can say is "naramro" = "not good/not lovely"... when you spent the last 2 hours learnng how to say what you did this morning and all you now need to say is "im sorry that this happened to you, it is ok to cry"

*didi - literally means older sister, but is the name given to the lady that comes to your house to clean etc (most nepalis have a didi, who come and help out)

Zakiya Zaki

2007-06-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

“But ordinary people don’t just get assassinated”, I said. All wide eyed western naivete. But the truth is they do. Everyday in Afghanistan. The difference is this time it was someone I knew, had met, talked to, was inspired by, so when my colleage came in to my office this morning to tell me Zakiya Zaki had been killed last night, in her bed, that was my initial stunned response.

Zakiya Zaki was the station manager of a Radio Solh or Peace
Radio, (this is her picture that I took last week at her studio as she proudly showed me all the letters the station recieved) a community radio station in a Jabel Seraj an area in Parwan province about 1 hour outside of Kabul. I had been to visit Zakiya and her radio station just a week earlier as it is one of Equal Access’ partner stations and also because she has been very supportive of our human rights trainings in the area. And it turns out that it was just this kind of supportiveness for initiatives in her area that led to her being murdered. I have since heard that local power structures had verbalised criticism of her openness in working and dealing with NGOs and foreigners. To talk to her you would not have realized that she was under any threat. She seemed carefree, in control, proud of what she had achieved with her station. She was one of those lady’s that even if you’d only met her once, you’d remember her. I first met her at a training we gave to cultural centre and FM centre heads in the area, one proud smiling female in a woolly hat in an otherwise male dominated room. “Whose that?” I’d asked my female colleague sitting next to me “that is Zakia, she is a great woman”

And now she is dead. How can that happen? How can you be killed for being respected and admired in your community? How can loving your country be a threat to your life? I’ve never known anyone who has been murdered before. And there is no doubt that she was murdered, in the most brutal way. According to reports from my colleague, armed assailants broke into her house in the middle of the night and killed her. She had 7 children. My brain can’t comprehend it and my body is not used to the emotions that this news brought. When you hear that someone has died, you feel sadness. When you hear that someone has been murdered, assassinated, for doing good things, for helping people and for standing up for their beliefs in their own way then yes, sadness is there but there is also anger and frustration and disbelief and I just wanted to scream “No!” this can’t happen, this can’t be what happens in Afghanistan. I was in the room with my two scriptwriters when I was told. They knew her better than I did. I looked at their faces as the news sunk in and saw sadness but also more than that, I saw…not acceptance as such, but resignation I guess. This is not new to them. I also work with an Afghan American lady, she was devastated by the news and called the local Wali (important person in the village) when he heard that she was crying he said “don’t cry, we have been experiencing this for 30 years”. Pointless deaths of good people are not new to Afghans.

Although she was not killed because of the support she gave to Equal Access, her work with internationals and ngos did contribute to her being murdered. I think we as internationals here, with our big cars and our armed guards and our secure houses, sometimes forget that by and large it is Afghans who are being targeted. When the Italian journalist was kidnapped recently it was his Afghan fixer who was killed, while he was freed. Many internationals here get danger money and hardship allowance (I don’t) but it is ordinary Afghans like Zakiya who put their life on the line for the country, not the money or the kudos or the CV.

I don’t know what to do. I heard this news and there is nothing I can do except tell you all about her. I doubt you will read about her death in the international press, by our International standards she wasn’t that important but to me she was a symbol that women (and men) in this country can make a difference and her death is a symbol that Afghanistan still has a long way to go. I hope that her death does not make other women (or men) shy away from standing up for their rights, but who am I to demand that they do? How many of us would actually stand up and do something if we knew that it could end up with us being murdered in our beds. Zakiya did and it amazes me every time I meet a woman, or a man in this country who is willing to do the same.

http://www.mediumlight.com/Radio/radio.htm

The end of the Kabul social scene as we know it...

2007-06-06T04:02:00.000-07:00

For those of us lucky enough to only have to work a 5 day (although this almost always becomes closer to a 6-day) week here in Kabul, Saturday is generally known as L’atmo day. You turn up all scarfed and culturally appropriate, walk in, de-scarf, order the BEST apricot pie I've ever tasted, a pot of tea perhaps and … relax, knowing that at some point some, if not all, of the people you know in Kabul will drop by. And everyone who has spent any time here can recall a Thursday night getting a little too drunk on L’atmo’s generous spirit portions and dancing into the wee small hours to the likes of Shakira ('hips dont lie').

Actually called L’atmosphere, L’atmo it is a bar, a restaurant, a wi-fi zone, a garden, a pool…an institution among expats here. So imagine our despair when this Saturday, towel and bikini (yes Kabul is one of the only bikini-friendly places in Afghanistan) in hand my friend and I rock up to L’atmo to find that it has closed. “Closed for an hour?” we asked the guards hopefully, “ah closed for the day” piped up another group who had just turned up for a Saturday swim…."no, what? closed? closed as in closed down…but, but, this is L’atmo??!!” And this is Afghanistan where the Ministry of Finance can do a 1 day audit and decide on rather sketchy evidence that they will close down the place unless the owner pays $500,000 in taxes. This is despite the fact the owner (a French guy) is one of the few people here that actually do pay their taxes! The word on the Kabul rumour mill (which is not that accurate at the best of times…I heard a rumour about myself and a Fijian boyfriend who was coming to Kabul to reclaim me! I have never dated a Fijian!!) is that the Adam Smith Institute who are capacity building within the Ministry, told the MoF (min of Finance) that they should make an example of a non tax paying organisation. They chose Latmosphere, an Afghan staffed, tax paying, successful business. This is the short sightedness of the Government here. Instead of realizing that L’atmo was a good money earner for the Government, they saw it as a cash cow to squeeze dry. My housemate runs another restaurant here and she has spent weeks and months jumping through various government hoops and corrupt, bureaucratic systems. Roshan, which is the Agha Khan set up mobile phone supplier and which is the biggest payer of Government taxes in Afghanistan has 5 full time lawyers, on staff, simply to deal with whatever the Government keeps throwing at them to squeeze out more money. There is no forethought, no understanding that without encouraging a successful private business sector, the Afghan economy will never get up from its knees and the Government will never be able to survive without donor money. Mark, the guy who owns L’atmo, wrote an open letter explaining what had happened…he sounded tired of fighting…his last line was “good luck to whoever tries to start a business in this country”.

Another rumour circulating on the Kabul rumour tree is that Mark, the owner, is now on a hunger strike until the MoF open L’atmo again…that sounds to me like another Fijian boyfriend of a rumour!!

I'm back

2007-06-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the silence. I'm back on the blog...promise!

Getting Engaged

2007-02-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

My first month in Kabul, I was driving to my colleague’s house for a taste of homecooked Afghan food when we passed what can only be described as Las Vegas on a roundabout. In a city of mostly mud houses (apart from the occasional war lord mansion) this massive building, surrounded my flashing neon palm trees, fairy lights dripping and a huge bold sign reading “KABUL PARIS WEDDING HALL”, took my breath away. Since I saw it, it has been my dream to enter this flashing neon world and experience it for myself….and last week it happened! It was my colleague Safi’s brother’s engagement party and it was at the Kabul Paris Wedding Hall. All my male colleagues were invited along with me and Meghann (our new program manager). Meghann and I were of course going to be in the women’s side, so we would not actually see any of the other guys from the office (Safi as a family member is allowed to join both sides). I’d heard tales from friends of hours stuck alone with a room full of women they didn’t know, but I had Meghann and I was also excited to spend time with more Afghan women – a rare opportunity in this city! I was a little unsure what to wear, I had heard that the women dress up to the nines, so I put a little make up on and borrowed my housemates silk shalwa-style top, I felt pretty fancy (I’d even showered at the neighbour’s house for the occasion) but nothing would prepare me for the full make up and heels, taffeta and sequins all the way appearance of the Afghan ladies. Not a head scarf in sight, instead the young girls were dressed like something straight off the pages of just 17, all side pony tails, miniskirts and boots, the girls in their teens wore full stage make up, beautiful (and some horrendous) strappy dresses (sometimes with t-shirts underneath), sequin jackets, stilettos and huge smiles. Some of them were truly breath taking and sassy too, chatting and laughing, strong, beautiful women of Afghanistan. There was one particularly stunning group of ladies, who I soon realized were all related – 3 wives and about 20 daughters of the one of the richest men in Kabul. The wives all seemed to get on great, dancing and gossiping together, the newest wife was 16, which turned my stomach a little, but she seemed happy, who can tell. I’ve learnt to not judge in certain cases anymore, it’s not my place, it is more interesting to hear what people on the inside think of it. I was chatting to one of the daughters who said that she wanted to marry a poor man, when her father asked why and she said “because then he can only afford one wife”, “but you are beautiful, no man would need a second wife if he had you” the dad had replied…to which the daughter quickly (and brilliantly) retorted “my mother is beautiful and you still have 3 wives”. The evening was a complete eye opener to the closed, inside world of Afghan women. It was also an eye opener to the downsides of being in the ladies’ room. After 3 hours of dancing and being videod* the food finally arrived. I was so excited, at parties with my male colleagues before I have loved the steaming plates of Kabuli Pilau, fresh hot bread, kebob, kofta and mantou…but as the cold half eaten plates were put down on the table, I realized these were the men’s leftovers. I knew this happened in Afghanistan, that the women ate only after the men had been served, but surely not in Kabul, not at an engagement party. But sure enough, there were teeth marks and fork marks all over the cold food. None of the women seemed to notice, and tucked in eagerly, to the half full plates. I looked apologetically at Meghan, I’d persuaded her to stay an extra hour on the promise of a feast of a lifetime and as I picked up a piece of cold already bitten into bread, I realized again how lucky I was as a western woman to be able to experience both sides of the coin here. As sassy as these women were, they were still in the room that got the cold food and few of them would ever experience what I’d taken for granted, sitting in the boys room, watching them dance, being treated as an equal and eating hot food first!

*(there was a professional camera crew, and for most of the night, the bride stood on a stage being filmed with her fiancée, friends and family. Hats off to the girl, I only stood up there for about 2 mins and when I stepped down I found I was blinded by the spotlight, my jaw ached from smiling and I felt dizzy from standing!)

Kabul in Winter

2007-02-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

When you live here for a while, the way of life in Afghanistan becomes a reality. I remember being at a dinner party my first couple of weeks here, when suddenly all the electricity went out and we were plunged into darkness. No one shrieke, no one made a fuss, in fact whoever was telling their story kept speaking and everyone else kept listening and I sat there wondering if I was the only one who had noticed the blackout. But now I understand, it is only when you leave here that you actually remember it is not normal to have one hour of electricity a day or to have no real roads or addresses or postal system. When I got back to my parents’ at Christmas and opened my bag, I was struck with this overwhelming smell of 16th Century peasant life, I and everything I owed smelt (as my dad kindly pointed out) like the Yorvic Viking centre. It is not surprising, heating over winter consists of bukaris – small wood or diesel burning stoves that provide heat just while they are lit and then seconds after the fire goes out, the room is freezing again and you have to start messing around with wood and splint and matches and diesel to get it all going again. December was harsh, it was cold, but January was a whole new ball game and I think half the problem was that I’d forgotten the standards of life you have to live by here. I’d got cosy with my parents in America, I’d got lazy with central heating and fridges and ovens that just turn on, I expected that turning a tap would result in water…and I wasn’t prepared in anyway for the coldest January in Kabul in 40 years. I have not experienced cold like it. You see your breath when you wake up, when you are cooking in the kitchen, when you are working. Pipes freeze so there is no running water (the pipes in our house froze for the whole month) ice actually formed around the flush in the bathroom. I had a recurring dream where I’d turn a tap and water came out. After the pipes freeze, they generally crack and so if you do manage to defrost them, then water comes gushing down, through the mud roofs and muddy, cold water pours down the walls in your house and you are left with a damp stench that you know will be around til spring (this happened to my boss, not me). For 4 weeks I washed from a bucket of water collected from the well in the garden and heated on a bukari, I got dressed to go to bed then got in my sleeping bag, under by duvet, I never wore less than 2 pairs of thermals and 103 layers. But I survived and somehow the harshness of it all adds yet another dimension to the camaraderie that you share with people around you. People take one look at you and know whether you are a have or a have not (got running water). The haves are usually generous and offers of showers at random people’s houses are not uncommon. A meeting I had at the British Embassy ended with a contract and the offer of a bath! Where else would that happen! I took them up on it of course, and turned up 3 nights later, my towel packed in my bag and spent 2 blissful hours in a bathroom that felt like home, being naked and happy for the first time in ages…I think for a moment there as I lay in this pristine bathroom, as much hot water as a girl could dream of, not a chill in the air…I actually forgot where I was, just for a little while, but these are the moments that get us through a winter in Kabul!

A Crazy Game

2007-01-10T05:29:00.000-08:00

Take rugby, but the players on horses, add a dead water logged goat instead of a ball and place it in Afghanistan, where tribal loyalties reign and safety is secondary to the thrill of the game. This is Buscashy. The national game of Afghanistan. People say that it is a microcosm of Afghan politics…people breaking away from their teams and forming rival sub groups, a lot of in fighting, a lot of confusion for the outsider, no real rules and the winner gets a water logged, beaten up, headless goat to cook up for dinner! Well maybe the last one is not exactly like Afghan politics, but you get the picture. Karzai recently bought a really big and muscular and impressive buscashy horse, not to ride, but to put in key games to show people he is big and muscular and impressive I guess! I’m not one for team sports, but this is definitely a sight to behold!

Ps prizes for spotting the goat, the goal (where you have to put the goat to score a point) and the infamous Louis the Buscashy playing frenchman!

An Armed Guide

2006-11-19T22:52:00.000-08:00

I am always complaining that I live in Kabul but I don’t ever know or see or experience Kabul. When people ask: ‘how is Kabul?’ I get flashes of my house, my office or the local restaurants but I am acutely aware that all of these exist within a bubble that is not the Kabul i see out of my car window. So last Saturday some friends and I booked my driver for a day and went on an adventure around the sites and sounds of real Kabul (I admit that the start of that sentence ‘I booked my driver’ is not exactly the best start to convince people that I was experiencing the real Kabul, but I am not ready to don a burka and jump in a cab quite yet). It was a great day. We went to the bazaar and bought cheap out of date food that somehow never made it to the troops here. All these teeny stalls selling oat-so-simple, and fritos and custard and uncle bens rice and boil in the bag dinners for one and salami and venison in a jar and huge tins of peaches or sausages in lard and all the pump me up protein juice you could hope for! Often the stall owners will pull something out of the back, all covered in dust (like a tray of ready to cook potato gratin) and ask us ‘what is this?’ In a land where food is meat, rice, oil and bread, potato gratin is a little difficult to translate! My favourite are pots of chocolate mousse that have as there advertising tag line ‘tastes like somebody loves you’…and seriously it really does!

The bazaar was followed by the famous tombs of the old kings of Afghanistan. The area is mainly dusty, blown up tombs on a dusty, blown up hill above Kabul where dirty kids run in packs playing with beaten up kites. When you ask the kids where they live (surely not on this dusty hillside by a tomb) they point vaguely in the direction of the surrounding area where mud houses are built on top of each other down the slope in to Kabul main city. The kids are great though, I’d much rather meet a pack of these kids than the gangs of boys that used to hang around my street in London. We used my driver as a translator and they demanded we take photos of them saluting proudly with the sprawl of Kabul disappearing into a fog of dust behind them.

Next stop was the old palace. I use palace in the loosest sense of the term because after so many years of war, the building was more holes than wall. We walked in to the grounds and were immediately approached by armed guards, who pointed sternly at the no photos signs and our multitude of conspicuous cameras. 10mins and all the Dari we could muster later and we had won them over (helped having a 3 girls to one boy ratio) and rather than getting thrown off the compound, we got our very own armed guard tour and personal photo sessions, with all the guards posing with their guns. I’ve never seen such photo happy security before. Last stop were the gardens of Baboor, the Moghal King who designed the Taj Mahal and traveled across Asia, but who never forgot Kabul and demanded to buried here, back in his gardens.

And so the day ended in a quiet garden, with roses in bloom, Afghan families picnicking under the trees, water features slowly bubbling and not a speck of dust to be had. And this is why although I loathe, I also love this place. I love how Afghanistan and Afghans can still constantly bemuse and amaze me, I love that the sternest face can crumble into a smile and pose for the camera, I love how the seemingly most deprived children can laugh so easily and it was so good to have a day actually IN Afghanistan and walk away feeling positive about a country and people that so much time is spent bemoaning.

Getting out of the office

2006-10-17T05:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent the morning at a school in Kabul recording audio for a special set of programs celebrating Eid (the religious festival that comes after Ramadan). It was SO good to be out of the office, sometimes just driving to work, spending the day in an office, driving home...my job can feel like just another desk job and it is so easy to forget why I am here (or even that I am in Kabul at all). But today as I was walking around the school and talking to girls about their favourite classes and their hopes for the future (so many wanted to be doctors) I suddenly thought wow, I'm in a school in Kabul talking to girls and I get to do this as part of my job! And more than that I get to have the realisation first hand that yes there is a lot of negetive things happening here but there are also girls like these girls who come to school every day and learn and laugh and dream of being doctors or teachers or business women. And I know that 6 years ago this wouldn't have been possible and I only hope that in another 6 years this will be the norm across Afghanistan.

Coming Back to Kabul

2006-10-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

i have been back in Kabul for 2 weeks now. If you told me it had been 2 months, or even 2 years, I'd be inclined to agree. There is something about this place that stretches time and twists it round until you have no idea what day it is, what year it is, when you came, when you're leaving. Sometimes I wonder if I left at all. Maybe it is the sameness of it. From the car every street looks the same, dusty, yellowy...sometimes the road is good, sometimes its hardly recognisable as a road at all, work is in a new building, but the view is the same (a wall), in the evenings the restaurants we go to are the same and after a while all the faces are the same too. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's not boring, it's just...the same.

So what's changed?

There are more bombs. In the last 2 weeks alone there have been 5 suicide bombs in Kabul. At the moment the AGE's (Anti Government Elements) are targetting Ministries and police in an attempt to undermine Karzai's Government, so the International Community are not directly under threat but people are definately jumpy. Although, having said that, the 'jumpiness' really only lasted a couple of days...and then Thursday rolled round and on a Thursday there are parties to attend and a new Mexican place to checkout and things are back to normal and the veil of war zone? what war zone? descends again.

I have spent more time with journalists. In some ways this is a really good thing. Journalists have seen a lot and know a lot and do things like spend 6 days under seige, embedded with the British military in the South. In other ways, this is a really bad thing. Jouranlists have seen a lot and know a lot and sometimes you don't want to be party to this. If you do spend 6 days under siege in the South and come back with shrapnel wounds in your finger, having had bullets rebound off your helmet, you will have some scary stories to share. If you have seen the South, first hand, you know how intense the situation really is, you will know that the Taleban attack in waves and that this is not a situation easily won. I know it is important not to bury my head in the sand. I do want to know more about the politics and the conflict and the problems and the fears. And I enjoy walking away from conversations with a little more understanding of this incredibly complex country. But I also need a little of the Kabul denile. I need to dance at parties to cheesy music and imagine that this coffee shop I am sitting in, drinking a latte, surfing on wireless internet, listening to jazz is not in imminent danger of attack. It's not, don't worry...but some of the talk may lead you to believe that it might just be!

Back in Nepal

2006-07-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

So I am back in Nepal

The first thing I noticed? The colour and the smiles and the freedom...

I also noticed that Kabul is still in my system, I was shocked by some of the outfits the women were wearing, I felt nervous the first time I walked alone down the street, and when getting in a car i still immediately lock the doors.`

Truthfully, I miss the rent a crowd of friendship that exists in Kabul but it still feels good to be 'home'...even though the monsoon is playing havoc with my hair!

14 and an arf words to sum up Afghanistan

2006-07-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

1:Eyes. So many beautiful eyes in this country, the greenest green, set in dark, angular, beautiful faces...Also as a women, especially a western woman, you pretty much always have eyes following you.

2:Inshallah: God willing, used in response to almost every request, invitiation, suggestion...can you do this? Enshallah. Shall we meet again next week? Enshallah. I guess in a country which has seen so much war and death, people did put their faith in God that they would still be alive the next day.

3:Stories: Everyone here has a story, which surfaces nonchalantly in conversation and stops you in your track.

4:Dust: I'm not the tidiest person, I've seen dust in my life time, but nothing like this. It gets everywhere and in to everything, coating you and everything near you.

5:Innocence: Questions I was asked by my young, male Afghan colleagues..."So have you ever drunk alcohol Gemma Jaan?" (my response...ummmmm yes, once or twice I guess). In wonder..."Is it true that in Britain you can marry whomever you want Gemma Jaan" Asked by one of my colleagues who has had a secret girlfriend (they've never been alone together but speak on the phone lots) for 3 years, but he knows his parents won't ever accept her, they have already decided he will marry his cousin...even though she doesn't want to marry him either.

6:Family: Just like in Nepal, family and religion come first.

7:Traffic jams: I have been on a single carriageway into Kabul and at one point counted 6 extra lanes that people had made, most of which involved bumping across the central reservation and trying your luck on the other side of the road.

8:Unexpected beauty: Bamyan...

9:Parties: In houses with bars, in houses with swimming pools, on rooftops, in gardens, worlds of wonder and throbbing music and flirtation all hidden behind high walls in Kabul.

10:Beards: So many beards of different sizes, descriptions, lengths and textures. The head honcho of beards is one that you can grab in your fist and it pokes out the other end.

11:Headscarves: Turns out there are two kinds of women, those who can look effortlessly chic in headscarves and those who like a crazy, old, flustered peasant. I fall firmly into the latter...

12: Meat: There is only 2 choices here, embrace meat or go home. I embraced meat on sticks, on bones, in bread, with rice.

13:Laughter: Afghans love to laugh and although sometimes the humour is lost in translation...sometimes they have you in stitches.

14:Cynicism: So much cynicism amongst the ex-pat crowd here...

141/2 : Goodness...but luckily so much goodness too

Bamyan

2006-07-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

Who knew. Somewhere this beautiful could exist in a country renowned for war, terror and dust. It takes your breath away...

and you can hire pedalo swans! He was the happiest man!

The Foreigner and the Human

2006-07-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

(I started to write this a while ago but only just completed...I am acutally back in Nepal now, not in Bamyan)

Can I tell you a story? The past week I have been in Bamyan, a province just to the West of Kabul, that in ....ooo about 50 years or so, when people flock back to Afghanistan to relive the Hippy Trail days, will be a veritable tourist haven. It is stunning. I was there for an event I organised (with UNDP) to bring together local media, civil society organisations and the Bamyan parliamentarian representatives who were back from Kabul on their first recess. Because Bamyan is pretty remote and very few organisations have telephones, one morning my Afghan colleague (Abdullah Fahim) and Heidi (who is working with Equal Access here for a couple of months) set out to invite all the different CSOs (civil society organisations) to our event. They knocked at one door, which creaked open and an old woman peered out, looked at them both sharply, closed the door again and yelled out in Dari to her fellow workmates "there is a foreigner and a human at the gate, should I let them in?"

This, I think, perfectly sums up how Afghans see the international community here. We don't speak the same language, have the same culture, Afghans it seems, don't even think we are from the same human race! It's no wonder there seems to be a constant 'them and us' battle. The other week I went to a workgroup meeting, chaired by UNAMA and UNIFEM and attended by a mix of International Legal Aid lawyers and INGO workers alongside Afghan judges and members of the Afghan Ministry of Justice. It was a total farce. The UN people had come armed with a heavily laden agenda, carefully planned out matrixes and workplans and tables and strategies for this work group to fill out in the hope of doing a needs analysis, which might lead to a strategy, which one day may become a recommendation, which will then need some other analysis, before one day something is 'actioned' to provide a 'workable solution' to Legal Aid in Afghanistan (see how I have all the blurb!!!) . The Afghans around the table couldn't give two monkeys about any of this, they just wanted to gripe about the international Legal Aid lawyers and ask for money. And so it began. A beautifully constructed presentation by the UNIFEM lady, at the end of which she eagerly opened the floor for questions, which led to about 1hour of what can only be described as gridlock conversation. And gridlock in the most perfectly Afgan way, where a one lane road quickly becomes a 5 lane road as people just keep making their own lane, ignoring the fact that all lanes will have to merge into one again and with no idea that it is the 'lets just make our own lane' theory that is causing the roadblock in the first place. As this debacle progressed, I looked around the 'roundtable' and saw the UNIFEM lady literally banging her head on the table, the UNAMA chair biting his hand, the lawyers getting all antsy and trying hard to say the same point again without yelling, and the UNDP guy next to me lent over and said "their all f***ing a***holes"...I didn't know whether he meant the humans or the foreigners, but it didn't really matter. In they're own way, they're all crazy

Just to prove I really am in Afghanistan

2006-06-03T05:10:00.000-07:00

Hey, I've been a bit wordy recently so here a couple of photos instead (the plane is really in the air and everything!)...also following Ross' comment, I want to keep the mob from the door! I promise to post more up on my flickr site soon...x

48 Hours out of Kabul

2006-06-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

I realised my posts have all been negative, negative, negative since I arrived here...and always the fan of the positive outlook, I want to share my biggest Afghan smile with you...

I'll be brutally honest, I've been in Afghanistan a month and I so far I haven't been that fond of it. Apart from the last couple of days of unrest, my life here has got in to a very nice rhythm, I have friends, work is hard but interesting, I get invited to parties, I go out for dinner in a pick of international restaurants, I'm not in any way unhappy, but it doesn't resonate or gel or fit with me in anyway.

And then on Sunday (pre-riots) I left Kabul.

And I suddenly realised that I haven't been in Afghanistan a month at all. I've been in Kabul a month, and Kabul is dusty and restrictive and cynical and walled and not walkable and ridiculously segregated (ex pats and Afghans) and there are riots!

It started at 5am and a drive to the airport through a Kabul before the cars and the noise wakes up. Chiselled road sweepers (again I am blown away by the sheer beauty of average Joe – or Abdullah – here) and women and half skinned, headless cows...cart and donkey contraptions and a sense that maybe this was what Kabul was like before we all turned up.

When my colleague and travelling companion Mustafa and I arrived at the airport, we were ushered through an empty departure area and out on to the tarmac, where I was weighed with my luggage and Mustafa and his luggage. Having successfully passed the weight test (weight gain and kabul food do not exactly go hand in hand) it was just a matter of waiting around for the pilot aka Tin Can Bob and our 2-seater plane to be literally pushed out of the hanger and faced in the direction of the runway.

If i thought the planes in Nepal were small, they were nothing compared to this teeny contraption. Now that I am safely on ground again, I'd like to say that I was cool and unconcerned by the fact I was taller than the plane...but the truth is I was a silent 'I'm ok' bag of nerves. Nerves were not helped by a) the fact I knew the pilot's nick name was tin can Bob b) that the seats came with full on shoulder straps and lots of clicking and tightening of various seatbelt mechanisms were required c) that T-C-B (pilot) proceeded to put a helmet on d) that on the taxi up to the runway he kept muttering quietly in to his headphones, then touching dials, then muttering again (in hindsight he was just checking with airport control that the runway was clear but in my increasingly paranoid state, I was convinced he was saying "I keep flicking these dials but nothing is working, I think we're leaking fuel, guess we should just take off and see what happens, what d'ya reckon? Give it a shot?"

And then we were in the air flying, eye level to the mountains, over Afghanistan. All I can say is this is a beautiful, vast mountainous country. It's not particularly green, but there are valleys and brown rolling mountains that look like they are made of sand and black craggy mountains covered in snow and red rock formations that look like they come from another world. But if I thought the flight out with T-C-Bob was cool, imagine my huge Afghan grin when on the way back (with tin-can-Jim) I got to ride shot gun (as in NEXT to the pilot) and I got to wear the headphones and touch the buttons and listen to air traffic control conversations AND we flew over a collection of brilliant blue lakes at the end of a vast, deep valley. Having not seen much colour for the last month, the green of the valley and the crystal blue of the lakes took my breath away and made my stomach flip (that and the fact that the plane was bobbing about in the wind...but I was cool co-pilot lady by then!).

So that was the bread to my eye-opening afghan sandwich. The filling was Lal Sarjangal. A rural town / village / collection of compounds, mud huts and wooden shacks nestled in the mountains in Gor province. We were there to conduct a field assessment for a human rights radio project we are launching soon. Conducting a field assessment basically means talking to everyone from the provincial governor, to the local Oxfam head, to women's groups to find out what the issues are with regards to human rights and women's rights and how a radio and training project can have the best impact. While doing this I realised 3 key things...1- that I miss the 'talking to the people' element of my work so far here, in Nepal we were always in the field or talking to various Nepalis but here in Afghanistan I have felt like I only talk to other NGOs or the UN in a big self congratulatory, lets all pat each other on the back kind of way. 2 – That sometimes water, fuel, education are more important than human rights, and perhaps human rights and empowering Islamic women, is a cooler, sexier concept in the West...I'm not saying this project is worthless, because I think in lots of ways it is very worthwhile but when you have a room full of angry women gathered and one of them comes up to you, shows you her grazed knuckles and says "I wasted 7 years of my life under the Taliban, my life is still pointless now, look at my hands, I spend all my days searching for bits of wood, you want to empower me, give me fuel so I can cook and keep my family warm, give me water so I can tend my land"...you've got to wonder why more projects aren't putting money in to these basic needs.

3 - is I need space around me and fresh air to breathe and Kabul is giving me cabin fever. Oh and 4 is Afghan food in the field is bad. I hate to be the picky foreigner, but it is just nasty, oily, tasteless and based around mounds of greasy rice and stale bread.

So that was my 48 hours outside of Kabul. I returned with colour in my cheeks, a smile on my face and a new positive outlook and faith in why I came...and then 3 hours after landing in Kabul, the rioting started!

What would you do with an angry mob on your doorstep?

2006-05-31T01:16:00.000-07:00

That is one of those questions that no one can answer until they find themselves in that exact situation. Turns out I would go through denile, then start pacing, then grab the kitten and the shortwave radio and lock myself in my bedroom. After checking my room for possible hiding places / escape routes and finding none, I would strap my passport and money to me, crawl into bed, assume small ball form position and try to fall asleep. I am not sure sleeping is the recommended approach, but turns out it is my extreme stress coping mechanism and when you are not sure what to do, then sleeping at least passes the time better than being awake and imagining the worst.

So Kabul erupted into riots on Monday. I had got back from a trip to a province called Ghor that morning (amazing experience, which I will write about) and was at home working before my 2pm meeting when my colleague called and said "there has been an incident, involving the US army and Afghans, probably best you don't come to the office today". Now my colleagues are lovely, but they like to take time off whenever possible, so my first reaction was that they were making this all sound more serious so I wouldn't come to the office and they could have another boss-free day. But then my 2pm meeting was cancelled 'because of security issues' and then I started to hear what sounded like gun shots. Gun shot sounds are not something that my ears are familiar with. At first they sounded like people nailing metal objects in to stone (Kabul has an insane rate of construction, so this is a feasible alternative option for the banging sound) then I figured it must be noises from a stone quarry, then I looked out of my back window and saw men dressed in black waving guns in the air and runnning about the fort on the hill behind where I live and I realised that the sound was gun shots.

Still though my brain was not registering panic, but was justifying and thinking through and making everything ok.

Then the gun shots got louder and the sounds of angry crowds got closer, until I knew they were outside my high walls and could smell smoke in the air. What do you do? What can you do? I was home alone (except for the guard and his wife) and I didn't have a clue. The phones were down, Brian my housemate was stuck at work, the guys in the office had called me earlier to say they were trapped in the office as a mob looted the oxfam offices opposite (luckily we don't have a sign outside our office, or we would have been attacked too). So I just sort of paced. Meanwhile, the guard was standing in the driveway, poised for action but he was one small, mild mannered man and by the sounds of the baying crowds, there was at least 50 armed people outside. The guard's wife was looking scared and trying to get me to hide in her house. The guard was not so sure about this option and kept repeating sentences in Dari, which I told myself were "it's ok, they won't try to come in here, go back inside, it's ok"...but my Dari has still not progressed past thank you.

So I grabbed the cat and the BBC and locked myself in my room until they passed. It took about an hour for the constant gunfire to reduce to occassional shots and then after about 2 hours I could hear the birds chirping in the garden again.

It's moments like these when you wonder why you're here, why I'm here. The international community is not liked or welcomed, not by the Afghan on the street and certainly not by the dissident factions. The international community themselves are cynical and tired and many of the people I speak to have forgotten why they are here and don't know what they are changing, if anything. This is not Nepal, it is a whole different, much scarier ball game, where the slightest scratch on the surface leads to an eruption of hatred and violence. They say now that these riots were planned a while back, that the organisors were just waiting for the spark, any spark. What you also realise is that the police can't help really. They have had crowd control training, but they don't have tear gas or water canons, the choice is shoot or run and realistically, there loyalties don't lie with the internationals. They are Afghans after all and the faces in the crowds are often family members. They won't shoot, they can't always run, I heard some were taking off their uniforms and joining the mob. And where were ISAF? There are so many rules and regulations about when the security forces can and can't use force, when they can and can't leave their safe compound...so much ridulous talk of protocol and presidence and procedure. But it's calm now and I am fine. A little spooked, a little less fond of Kabul, a little more eager to return to Kathmandu. Supposedly this is the worst rioting and anti-american display of violence since the fall of the Taliban. I'd like to say it was cool to witness it, to be a part of it. But it wasn't.

ps: My office has put in many emergency security procedures now including giving me a satellite phone and ensuring I always have a driver and a chaperone and I'm moving in with a lovely girl tonight, so the me, alone in a house surrounded by an angry mob situation shouldn't happen again. Plus only 4 weeks and counting!

Big Boss Blues

2006-05-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

It's official people, it is no fun being the big boss lady. I say get off that ladder now, because when you get to the top, things just get hard and stressful and it all stops being fun. How do I know this...well a week after I arrive in Kabul, the boss lady leaves and as she is getting on the plane (not quite, but you get the picture) she yells back "so you're the boss now."

I am in charge of an office of 10 Afghan men. I am in charge of the finances and the safe (which up until last week only had $50 left in it). I am dealing with the snake in the guard's hut ("we cannot sleep there anymore Gemma Jaan") and the quitting of the finance guy and the loss of my driver, to be replaced by another guy who although is lovely cannot speak English, reverse, or find anywhere in Kabul. I am having important and scary meetings with UNDP and FAO and FCO. I'm attending sharing workshops at the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Women's Affairs. I'm batting off the daily requests for money from the staff as we only have $50 now $40 now $30 dollars left in the safe (while we wait for a late transfer from HQ). I have to decided whether to use the last $30 for generator fuel for electricity or food for lunch. I am working with the content guy, trying patiently to explain to him what a radio presenter is and why a program needs one. I am working on radio dramas and re-writing scripts and organising 2-day media events for ministers in provinces. I am putting together concept papers and heading to a province with a pilot called tin-can-Bob to do research in to Human Rights. I am going to the bank to pick up the money that has finally arrived and paying salaries and saying no to advances and practically spending it all in one day. I am doing a study of all the production houses in the area, I am getting 20 emails a day with more to-do lists. I am surrounded by scraps of paper with bits of other to do lists on. I am critiquing other organisations programs and giving advice on broadcasting for disabled audiences. I am putting together ideas for broadcasting to youth, broadcasting on rural development, broadcasting on drug demand reduction. I am working a 61/2 day week. I am tired.

I know and I am reminding myself on a daily basis that this is all good experience and day-to-day I am happy (tired but happy) but man, when the big boss lady returns I will happily give up the big seat and the big desk and the big responsibility. And when the day finally comes (end of June now) I will happy drag my tired ass back to Nepal.

Sorry this was not a blog full of insights in to life and culture here, they will come, I just needed to splurge and try to explain why my contact and blogging is sporadic, but don't give up on me.

Afghan Chicken

2006-05-09T00:44:00.000-07:00

So I live in Kabul. How crazy is that? I am still having trouble getting my head around that reality. Although, to be honest, I don't actually live in kabul. Kabul is my day to day backdrop. I don't walk in Kabul (you're not allowed), the only times I have stepped in Kabul is the driveway to my house or the driveway to my office, oo I also stepped briefly on the pavement on my way into a shop. I see Kabul through a window, correction I see Kabul through a car window, you can't see Kabul through normal office or home windows because all the buildings I have been in (even the restaurants and supermarkets) are surrounded by a high wall. So I live in a bubble known as Kabul. I think that is why I am having such trouble getting my head around the reality, because my reality is not a normal reality.

I live in a house (surrounded by a high wall) where everyday dinner, a side salad and a dessert (apple pie, victoria sponge, fruit salad...) has been cooked and left out by a middle aged male cook with brilliant green eyes, where my washing and cleaning is done by a heavily pregnant lady who is the second wife of the guard (a guy with cheek bones that frame a ridiculously sharp jaw line and again those National Geographic eyes) who basically takes care of any other needs after eating and washing. Everyday I am driven to work by a driver, who picks me up at the end of the day and brings me home. If I need to go anywhere, there he is in his car, and while I eat in a restaurant or have a meeting with a UN agency, he waits in the car until I want to go home, or go shopping, or go to the bank. I am not quite sure what to do or think about this life. I know that it is very difficult to be Western here and live any other way, I guess it is pretty easy to be Western here and get used to living this way but something about it doesn't quite sit with me. Maybe if I could speak the language, so far I have mastered 'thank you', I would feel less colonial about it all. Maybe I should just get over my 'colonial guilt', maybe I should fight the system, maybe we're providing necessary jobs to locals who need money, maybe we're taking advantage of local people. who knows.

I work behind a different wall to the one I live behind. Work is no less surreal. I share an office with my boss Michele (who I also live with), the rest of our team are all male and all Afghan. And they all seem lovely, but I still figuring out what they do. Lots of men with huge beards and turbans visit the office everyday; I have no idea who they are. I've had meetings with Afghan Ministers who spend most of the meeting drumming the table, looking around the room or leaning across the table to ask me "so you lived in Nepal?", even though my boss is speaking directly to them. I've had to chair meetings where no one sticks to agenda and everyone just talks in Dari, while the only other Westerner there tore out her hair before yelling at everyone (including me!) I've been in meetings which include female high court judges and I just want to say "wow, so how did you get to be a high court judge in a country where women are rarely even let out of the house" but I can't, because I don't speak Dari and she didn't speak English, so she said "judge" and i said, "I am very honoured to meet you".(but I could have just as easily said "apples taste good in spring"), I've been to UN meetings and thought, 'do you even know what happens outside your high walls?', I've sat with colleagues and wanted to bang my head against a wall, as I know full well that "of course - inshallah" does not mean that any of what I spent the last half an hour explaining has registered, I've sat alone and wanted to bang my head against a wall because I don't want to be one of those ex pats who gets frustrated with their Afghan colleagues – it's a totally different culture, language, way of life, and do I really know better?

And I've only been here a week...or is it a year? I don't know anymore, all I know is that I've eaten lots of Afghan Chicken and Jase, for you information, it tastes GOOD. (Although not as good as jerk chicken).

ps the title of this blog was in honour of the lovely Mr JJ Codrington, who requested it to be so. Had he not requested it, I would have called it Kabul is so passé. This was said in my presence just 3 hours after landing in this rubbled, war torn country. This claim was followed by "actually Iraq is pretty passé too...isn't the Darfur the new Iraq?" Insanity!

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

2006-03-15T04:20:00.000-08:00

Sorry Guys it's a long-un, but it was a crazy wedding weekend!

It all started with an insane shopping trip with 5 young Nepali girls all very excited to dress the foreigner. We hurricaned into a sari shop, I was shoved on to a tiny stool (which sitting down, made me about the same size as everyone else standing) and all these beautiful cloths, in stunning colours were put up against me, discussed, debated, and discarded. The only word I could understand was Rato Rato (Red! Red!) so I presumed the plan was for me to wear red. And sure enough, at one point a very red sari was produced, held against me and approved by my entourage of stylists. I was a little disconcerted about the red-ness of it all. In Nepali, the bride wears red and knowing already how much I would stand out as a westerner in a sari, I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself by being the stupid westerner dressed up like a bride. But the girls were hearing none of it and after a 10minute heated discussion (my colleague Vidya is a mean barterer) I was the proud owner of a bright red sari with silver sequins.

As we headed out of the sari shop, across the busy market, up some stairs and into another material shop, I realised the sari was only the first purchase of the day. Next came a Kurta - a traditional Nepali outfit that consists of a tunic like top and tight trousers* - then bangles, shoes, a petticoat, a top for under the sari, more bangles, nail varnish ... and finally I was all kitted out for the wedding weekend.

Vidya's family live about an hour outside of Kathmandu in a village and it really is crazy how quickly you leave the urban, noisy, traffic filled sprawl of Kathmandu and find yourself surrounded by mud houses, cows, chickens, paddy fields that stretch as far as the eyes can see and hay stacks everywhere. Vidya's uncle's house (where the wedding was to be held) was an amazing, typical (Brahmin) Nepali village house. Built above a cow shed, no amenities, no running water, the kitchen was the domain of all the women of the family, who cooked fantastic food on a kiln type fire and the courtyard was where the men sat, chewed the fat and waited for the women to bring the food.

If you were to ask a Nepali what the most important thing in their life was, they would probably say Family. Families are everything to Nepalis. And not just immediate family, cousins are also called "sister" or "brother", aunties and uncles are like parents, close family friends are also referred to like family and children are everywhere, related to everyone. In true Nepali style, Vidya was related to practically her entire village and everyone she introduced me to was a sister or a brother or a cousin sister or a mother or an uncle-brother. And to make it more complicated, Vidya's mother is her father's second wife (as in he is married to two women) and they all live together and Vidya calls them both mother. Confused? Try being me, try piecing it all together bit by bit, over the period of a weekend, when most of it is in Nepali!

So I arrived on the Friday night and was immediately thrown into the middle of all this family and given my wedding duties, picking through a pile of grass to find suitable stalks to make the bride and groom's garlands and wrapping trays of food in red cellophane to give to the bride (see photos). We, the younger, unmarried girls of the family, were all staying on the floor of what would become the bride and grooms new room, but for the pre wedding night was where all the feverish preparations were taking place. We fell asleep at about 1am, got a few disturbed hours of sleep then at around 5am the next morning the busy, bustling, noisy preparations of it all started again. Now, since coming to Nepal, I have lived a pretty solitary existence. It is not like I don't see anyone; it is just there has been a lot of just-G time. For the next 72 hours, however, I was never alone. It was just people, people, people everywhere. Staring, touching, standing near, following, laughing, picking me up and throwing me into the middle of a crowd yelling "Nach, Nach!" (Dance! Dance!) The second night after the actual wedding I slept on the floor in a room with Vidya, her friend, 3 cousins, an auntie, a grandmother and a baby. It made me realise that I am a personal space girl, that this mass, family, people everywhere, never a moment alone was actually quite hard for me. So often in the West it is about gaining independence and standing alone. It's about moving away from your family, doing things for yourself and establishing a life on your own. But here in Nepal it is all about family, and that all consuming, living in each others pockets, sharing each others space side to huge, noisy, extended families. So to Vidya's family, I was the one to be pitied. I was alone. The older generation, particularly Vidya's grandmother (an amazing lady who at 84 was still very much the matriarchal head of the family - she had given birth to 15 children 9 of which had survived) found it nearly impossible to grasp the fact that I lived here, alone, while my parents lived in America and my brother lived in England. In her eyes, I was bereft, practically an orphan, how did I cope? Where were my uncles? Aunts? Cousins? This was all said through my broken Nepali and her hand gestures, but at the end of the weekend I think she offered to adopt me! When I left at the end of the weekend, I thought I would be so relieved to be alone again. But instead I just felt lonely. In Vidya's life there are so many women, and these women have such a strong bond, it seems that they don't look to their husbands for support and friendship (especially if like Vidya's mum you are one of two wives) instead they surround themselves with other women. At one point during the weekend I needed to escape just briefly from two young girls who had become my slightly annoying shadows, always next to me yelling "gemma you come with us, yes?", "gemma, london is the capital of england, yes", "gemma, you dance, yes?", "gemma, you eat, yes?", "gemma, you like Nepal, yes" so I made my way up into the kitchen, which was filled with women sitting around, eating, drinking tea, laughing, talking, smoking, cooking and I could have sat there for hours just listening to them sharing tales and laughter and understanding.

Sorry, I digressed from the wedding...so I will write the rest of that cool and crazy weekend in bullet points, just to keep me on track:

- So the tradition here is that on the wedding day the groom's family all pile into a car, a band strike up and everyone makes a procession to the bride's house to have a feast and then bring her back.
- Except in this case the groom's family were so huge, there were three bus loads of us all. So with the band strapped to the roof, three bus loads of giddy excited family members headed to get the bride from a park in Kathmandu (because there was so many of us the bride's family could not fit everyone in their house)
- And this entourage did not even include the groom's mother(s) or most of the older, married women of the family who are not allowed to come to this part of the ceremony but stay at home, prepare the house and dance lots while they wait for everyone to return.
- As it was an arranged marriage, the bride had only met the groom for 15minutes and through the whole ceremony part of this first day (which takes place off to one side while the guests eat an enormous amount of amazing food and occasionally wander over to see what stage all the ceremony is at) the bride keeps her eyes down and never looks directly at the groom
- In the evening, the bride comes home with the groom but none of her family and friends. So for this first night she is totally alone with a man she barely knows and an enormous amount of very excited people. Everyone (and I mean literally everyone) piles into the tiny bridal suite and the bride meets her mother in law for the first time and then has to fight with her on the floor over a pile of rice.
- Then everyone sings and dances and claps (regularly throwing the tall, pale girl into the middle of a circle to make her dance) and the bride just looked so confused and small.
- After a while the bride made her way back into her new room, but the groom didn't follow, he was too busy dancing. Instead a load of the guests follow her in and just sort of hang out in there, while others peer through the windows.
- By midnight, I was outside playing cards with the groom and all the men of the family and the bride was still in her room with all the women busying around her and all the children staring at her through the window – there was just no concept of leaving the newly-weds to get better acquainted! And neither the bride nor groom seemed in any hurry to be left alone.
- And the next day the bride had to be up at 4am to put all her clothing and makeup and garb back on!

(*I will not even begin to describe the awfulness of me in a ready-made kurta – the tunic tops all looked like kiddy-dresses I'd long since grown out of, the tight trousers clung to my skinny legs in a distressing leggings-type way, and all of this humiliation was carried out in front of a shop load of hysterical, short Nepalis! But finally I found one)

Time for more cool stuff...

2006-02-28T04:30:00.000-08:00

I think I am up to 22

22) Kathmandu is a rabbit warren and if you duck down alleyways and take a random left and a suspiciously closed looking right there is a whole world to explore! (I met a French guy who, along with a fab book called "kathmandu the hidden city", took me exploring)

23) Turns out Monasteries are fun places to hang out on a Friday night and when monks chant they sound like didgeridoos.

24) When you are in a monastery on a hill on a Friday night, and you look out over Kathmandu, all you can hear from the city below is people singing and dogs barking...seriously those are the only two sounds of Kathmandu

25) Hindi movies are far racier than you would ever imagine. I saw my first one a while ago and quite frankly, I was shocked!

26) I've re-learnt never to judge anyone or anything. The politicians here talk no sense and the child labourers who spend their days working in brick kilns or breaking rocks can have impassioned debates on 'meaningful participation' and can make amazing radio programs (I'm working on a project with street kids / child labourers).

27) In the dairies here (or at least the one near my house) you can buy all sorts of milk based products cheese, yoghurt, curd...but you can't buy milk! You can stand at the counter and drink milk, but try and take some away with you and all hell breaks loose!

28) The old women here rule the roost, totally!

29) One of the dangerous items you need to remove before flying here are teeth!

30) Summer comes here practically the day that people predict it would and when it comes the sky is such a brilliant blue and you forget what it feels like to be cold.

Election Day

2006-02-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

So election day finally arrived. This is the day everyone has been talking about since 2006 started. This is the day that caused the Maosists to call a 7 day national Bandh (meaning no traffic on the roads, no shops open, no restaurants running) for the 3 days before and the 3 days after the elections. The seven parties boycotted it. The Maoists killed candidates. Stories of people being coerced into being candidates and then backing out the next day have been filling the papers every day for the past fortnight. The only candidate who didn't back out in the town of Pokhara was a dog. This was also the first national elections in 7 years in Nepal and according to most of my Nepali friends, it was a total farce. But the king and the government stuck to it and yesterday it happened. Honestly, I am not sure how it all went, having poisoned myself with my own cooking (go G! and her first attempt at using her kitchen) I spent most of Wednesday running between the toilet and my bed. But when I did step out gingerly into the streets and hobble my way to my colleagues house for lunch, I think I passed a polling booth. I only know this because I ducked into a street and among the kids skipping and singing and playing cricket there were about 16 heavily armed soldier guys. Not a voter in sight though. I heard today that turn out was around 20%, although in some municipalities no one came out to vote and there are rumours of between 2 - 6 protestors being shot. People are already predicting what will happen next, they say the numbers who supposedly came out to vote will miraculously jump up, the election will be called a success, the king's first year of autocratic rule (he took power last February 1 and said he needed 3 years of autocratic rule to bring democracy and peace back to the country) will be legitimised and the people of Nepal who are caught up in all of this and who have lost a week of wages because of the Bandh will go back to work wondering what the point of it all was. I wonder where the international election monitors were....at least we made it on to the BBC.

changing direction

2006-02-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I have not met many non-Nepali people whilst I have been in Kathmandu but those I have met have been so inspiring. It seems that Nepal attracts people who have, without quite knowing why, been drawn here and now they are here they can finally breathe again (despite the insane amount of pollution) and start life again and never plan to leave again. Take Jane, Jane is in her late 40s, worked in London selling photocopiers, owned a flat, made good money. One day she was trudging through the rain across another miserable, grey business park somewhere near Stratford (east London, not upon Avon). When she finally reached her destination, soaked through and pissed off (her new suit ruined) it turned out that the person she was meant to meet wasn't in. Jane stood there for a while, rain dripping off her nose, running down her neck, she looked around her, at the buildings and the greyness and her ruined new suit and she picked up her mobile, dialled her boss and quit. Just like that, she quit and now she is living in Nepal.
I know I have a bad reputation for encouraging people to quit and leave and run out of London yelling "don't stop til you can see the sky again"...and I know this is not always the answer, and having left London I miss it and I know I'm not ready to turn my back on it yet. But man, you've got to have respect for Jane, for saying you know what this isn't the way I wanted my life to be, for giving up the money and the job and the security and all the things we tell ourselves we need to be happy and getting on plane and landing in Kathmandu and feeling happy and alive with nothing.

And then there is Nara. Nara is another wonderful Australian lady I have spent many laughter filled evenings with. She is so alive and full of spark and has really found her smile in Kathmandu. Nara has been hospitalised with food poisoning, has huge marks all over her legs from a bad case of bed bugs, has a dog that (is lovely) but regularly tears up her apartment or pisses in her bed, has no money and yet she is so happy here. Now, she is desperately trying to find a way to stay here and live in a mud hut, on a hill, in a village, on a patch of land that a Nepali family (who have practically adopted her) have given her. Yay Nara!

Simone's birthday

2006-02-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

I've told you about Simone right? She is the lovely, lovely Australian lady with the laugh that comes up from her toes and resonates out of her tiny frame. She is the one who took me under her Christmas wing and who I jived the New Year in with, who I feared the first time I met because we were the only two in a yoga class and she was bendy and shaven headed and looked like she came out of the womb in the lotus position (turned out, as these things often do, that she is the least fearsome and most humble beautiful lady). She is also the one who helped me navigate my first gompa (buddhist holy room) and who has helped me explore meditation and Kathmandu.

So a few weekends ago it was Simone's 27th birthday and she wanted to go to Pashnupatinath. Pashnupatinath is a holy Hindu temple, on the banks of a river whose source is the Ganges. It is also the place where Hindu's cremate their dead. I didn't really think about it much before, I knew that they were public cremations, but it is really hard to think about or picture a public cremation. And reading this you are probably wondering why I went, why Simone wanted to go, weren't we being disrespectful... The thing is, as with everything in Nepal, cremations are really open and really public. Pashnupatinath is full of old people, young people, couples, children, everyone all come to watch the cremations, visit the temple, pay their respects, just sit, I even saw one guy reading a newspaper. And it was so strange being that close to death, with life all around you. I won't try and be all philosophical, because it will only come out sounding trite but I saw the whole process, the body being brought to the banks, the family performing the purification rights, building the pyre, placing the body on the pyre, setting it alight, watching the fire turn everything to ashes, and then sweeping those ashes into the river before the next family start the process all over again...and it made my head reel. In one moment it makes death less scary, less isolated and lonely because there are people everywhere and I couldn't help thinking that when I die, I would much rather be surrounded by people shouting and crying and talking and living. But then in the next moment it brings death right to you, no niceties, no dressing it up as anything else, the family's grief is right in front of you, and there is no getting away from it, the seemingly peacefully sleeping old woman was a mother and a grandmother and a sister and a daughter and she had a life and now she is dead and now she is smoke and now she is ashes and now she is the river.

Kathmandu Belly

2006-02-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

Three things I have realised recently following my first real bout of Kathmandu Belly (a near cousin of the infamous dehli belly) ...

1) It is like having your stomach possesed by a crazed kicking, gurgling, spewing, angry demon
2) It makes you appreciate your western style bathroom and wish you'd never tried to cook food in your own kitchen (I think I was the source of my demise from iron stomach lady to sickly westerner)
3) It gives you lots of time to catch up on your sleeping, reading, cable tv watching and blogging

So this is why the following rush of blogs to the head (tee hee)

Fallin' in love...

2006-01-25T06:34:00.000-08:00

for those of you who don't like mushystuff, i suggest you turn away now for I have a feeling this could get all gushy. it happened all bistari bistari (nepali for slowly, slowly) at first, just aflutter in my stomach and an unneccessary smile on my face...but recently the feelings have been getting stronger, the smiles have been getting bigger and there is no denying it, I am falling all head over feet in love with kathmandu. some of you may be confused by my declaration, especially considering my last entry and the fact that there are men with guns all over the place. And it is not always the easiest place to live, you can spend a whole day in the office doing nothing but cursing bijooli (nepali for electricity) as it cuts out for hours on end, and then you have to change your lunch plans because outside the place you had planned to go and eat the police are clashing with students and the students are throwing stones and the police are getting the tear gas cannons ready and the women caught in the middle of it are just desperately trying to pack up their tiny fruit stall before it really kicks off. But sometimes the strongest love is forged in the most difficult of times and of course I would rather live in a Nepal that didn't have an insanely complicated internal conflict going on and where the electricity wasn't running out and where it was safe and calm to eat your lunch anywhere, but it amazes me how down one street the whole police student thing could be going on and in another street people are sitting enjoying rasma and roti (my favourite lunch). It also amazes me how after a ridiculous day in the office where we had literally 3 hours of electricity, my saathi (nepali for friends – nepali's have no word for colleague, i like that) are still able to chat and laugh and joke, despite the fact that everyone has a crazy work load and the next day is out too because the 7-party alliance have called another Bandh (strike). Of course everyone is pissed off and concerned and unsure what February will bring, but people don't seem to moan, not in a "my life is so unfair" kind of way, they just make the best of the situationa and still find time to smile and laugh. There is so much laughter here, I love it.

And have I told you how much I love my Kam-ko Saathi (work friends – the only way to say colleagues)I love Upendra's amazingly unique but always inspired take on the world, the way he talks with just as much sparkle and excitement whether he's talking about the versility of the common potato "oof (he always punctuates words with oof) the potato gems, who doesn't like the potato? aloo fried, piro aloo (hot potato) show me a man who doesn't like the potato!" or the beauty of the Nepali language. I love Binayak's huge smile and the way he can make me laugh with a story even though it is all in Nepali because throughout the telling he keeps having to stop and fall about laughing himself. I love Binita and Kripa for being my ladies and my sanity. I love likhit for his height (over 6 foot), for being the only person who doesn't make me feel like a cumbersome giant and for his patience and determination to keep speaking Nepali to me, even though I just stare blankly back. I love Nirmal's quiet patience and authority, everyone constantly teases him, even though he is the big boss man and he is always so gracious and full of smiles.

And not just my colleagues...I also love my nepali teacher, who seriously does have the biggest smile I have ever seen, who at around 5ft 5 tops thinks he is tall and who spends most of the lesson exclaiming Gemma Ji!!!! As I massacre the nepali language... I love the guy who sits at the front desk of my building, for our half nepali-half english chats about the conflict, my language lessons, his dreams of canada, my dreams of canada...i love the little girl who lives in our office building (she is the daughter of the guy who looks after the building) everyday she comes running to greet me "namaste!" "namaste" I ask her "tick-sa?" she answers "I'm pine thankyou" she asks me "how r u?" I say "sub tik-sa dhanyabad" and that is about all we understand...she chatters on in Nepali, I tell her about my thoughts in english, she counts to fifty (pipty) in english, I struggle up to 40 in Nepali...

And I love that when all the real seats on buses are gone you get hussled to the front and offered a small whicker stool, or if you are really lucky, the mound where the driver's gear stick is. I love that you can go for lunch in a tiny cafe and get bumped off your seat by an elderly Tibeten lady who cackles and dances at the comedy of bumping a giant English girl off her seat. I love that people sit, everywhere and chat and laugh and comb each others hair and just watch the world. I love that driving lessons here consist of learning to go forwards for a few weeks, then learning to go backwards for a few weeks, then the exam consists of going forwards through cones, then driving backwards through cones. I LOVE THE FOOD! And Yes, I know that there is a lot wrong with Nepal, but there is a lot wrong with the world and for today I just wanted to share with you a bit of my new love and the things that are making me smile!

ps I am still coming home though! Only 9 weeks til I see all your purdy faces again...whoop!

Apologies to the BBC

2006-01-22T01:15:00.000-08:00

News from Nepal made it to top of the headlines all day yesterday (Saturday) so apologies to the BBC for doubting their integrity and news agenda...

The past week in Kathmandu

2006-01-21T03:44:00.000-08:00

Before I start this blog, I just want to say that I will be using words like "bomb" and "curfew" and "tension" and "end of ceasefire" and "security"...but I am fine, I have been fine and I will be fine, so do not worry. There are so many lovely people keeping an eye out for me that all is good.

So if I thought it was weird turning on my radio to find the BBC had been switched off, imagine turning on your mobile phone (I finally have a Nepali mobile phone, getting it was an insane amount of beaurocracy and involved giving my father's name, my grandfather's name and my fingerprints...but I'll save the whole crazy story for another blog) to find you have no signal. Ok, if you have 3G, this is not that weird but I mean no signal, no amount of waving or banging or standing on furnitute and holding the phone upside down by the window will help. Nothing. Becasue the Government have switched off the phones and then you pick up your landline only to find that is gone too. I didn't even know Governments had the power to switch off phones, but turns out they do and there is nothing you can do about it, just switch your phone off, head to work and hope that they'll turn it back on again soon. And if anyone does organise a demonstration then the government has the power to call a day curfew, meaning no one in the whole city can be outside for the entire day. And there is nothing you can do about that either, because the army are allowed to shoot-to-kill anyone breaking the curfew, no questions asked, no apologies made. But I am jumping all over the place, this was meant to be a tale of the last week in Kathmandu, this was also meant to spread the news of nepal because it also turns out that if you are a tiny land locked, poverty striken country, no matter how beautiful your mountains or how amazing your people, the fact that you are falling apart and bombs are going off and governments are flexing their powers...none of this seems to matter to the rest of the world, cos you're just not news.
So on January 2nd the Maoists ended their cease fire. And last Saturday a bomb went off in a place called Thankot, which is on the outskirts of Kathmandu. It is an army/police (army and police are the same thing here) checkpoint and I think around 10 soldiers were killed in the ambush. (Did anyone in the West hear about it? No of course not, cos we're not news here!) Now this scared the living beegeebees out of the Government, because it was the closest the Maoists had come to the capital in a very long time (they tend to concentrate their attacks in the rural areas,where people are poorer and have more grievances and the Maoists can garner more support) and they made an announcement that they recommended people to be in doors by midnight. They made it very clear that this was not a curfew. But 24hours later, on Monday night, they changed their mind and put a curfew on the city, meaning everyone had to be in doors by midnight. Then tuesday this was moved back to 11pm, then changed again to 10pm. Wednesday was the day the phones got switched off (the landlines came back on a few hours later, but still no mobile reception) and the curfew was moved to 9pm. And it is crazy, right up until 8.55pm you could hear the usually constant noise that is Kathmandu, the cars and the motorbikes and the rickshaws and the yelling and the really quite annoying man who plays a small wind instrument outside my bedroom window every night. Then suddenly 9pm and nothing, not a sound, not a person, anywhere. Like I said, the policy is shoot to kill and if you need to leave your house during curfew you have to get special permission from the government. Now I found all this out from people at work and a lovely UNICEF lady who is like everyone's mum and calls round (even to our Nepali country manager) to check everyone is inside watching Topgun (bizarre but true, she called me and said "Gemma, stay in tonight, watch Topgun, Topguns a nice film, so stay in and watch it" ... ) but how tourists or people who don't speak nepali and don't know any Nepali people find out the latest is beyond me. I would always call my buds Nara and Simone, and they never knew anything that was going on. So thursday rolls round (i am feeling fresh as a daisy on account of all the early nights) and the Government are still really scared, and it is not just about the Maoists, the 7 party alliance (namely the other political parties who have formed an alliance against the king and the government) are planning a big demo for the next day. So in answer to this, the Government issues house arrests and arrests a number of the opposition leaders and then calls a day curfew for the next day. So just to recap, bombs have gone off (and not just in Thankot, a number of explosions have happened across the country including in Pokhara, which is the main tourist, trekking town), curfews have been called, people have died, phones have been switched off, opposition leaders have been rounded up and now a day curfew has been ordered...and all this in just one week. Every evening I switched on the world service, convinced that something will be mentioned but nothing, nothing until thursday night when, get this (ok soap box out now!) the headline (or the 5th headline behind Iraq and the like) was that India (yes the headline started with India) INDIA was worried about the rounding up of the opposition leaders in Nepal. HOw is it possible, that we only made the news via India's concern!!! The world is crazy, my belief in news agendas is getting shaky...India was worried??? What about the people of Nepal? Surely their concerns and the events happening in their country is enough to warrant a mention in the news. Insanity. Can you imagine if just one of this week's events happened in London? THe news would be rolling, for days. Craziness. Anyway, back to the week. So Friday (yesterday) was my first experience of day curfew. At 7am I got a phonecall from the guy at the desk to go out and buy any food I might need, so I pulled my fleece and tracksuit bottoms over my pjs and headed to the shops. The streets were full of people stocking up and scurrying about (government workers had to be in their offices by 8) I got a few things and headed back to bed. When I woke up again at 11am (I was tired, I been working hard!) the streets were empty. I looked up and down the usually crazy hectic road outside my window and there was no one, just a couple of security guards, and later an army man and a couple of street kids. The curfew lasted from 8am - 6pm and I just hung out in my flat all day, occassionally peering out of the window. Then at 5.30, just before the curfew ended, all the electricity went off. You gotta laugh! Just as one thing is about to end another thing starts! Turning off the electricity is part of something called load-saving (or something like that) and happens for a few hours, a couple of nights a week, in order to save the supplies. Normally when this happens around my area, the generators kick in, but because no businesses were open and everyone was home, no one started the generators so as the curfew ended, everything was dark. Load saving was til 9pm, by which time the night curfew had started and I had already got back into bed!
So this was my week in Kathmandu. February will probably be more of the same because there are elections (which the Maoists and the 7 party alliance are trying to disrupt), it is also the anniversary of Feb 1 (when the King called a state of emergency, disbanded all the parties and took over) and also a Maoist anniversary too. But as I said, don't worry about me, I gots plenty o' people lookin out for me. So I'll be all good. x

ps Nepal finally made it onto the World Service news in its own right on Friday afternoon, but I don't know what was said because every time the news mentioned Nepal, somebody sitting somewhere in Kathmandu would turn the radio signal off!

New Year

2005-12-31T22:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year People. 2006. Wow.

I started this morning by going to 8am meditation, which was a surprise even to me. I had not planned to, but bang at 7.30 my eyes popped open and I thought, I'm awake...why not. why not start the year with a bit of comtemplation, why not gather my thoughts and breathe a little. The second half of 2005 was such a whirlwind of new jobs, new people, new places, new smiles (and that was before I left London!) and now I am in Nepal surrounded by people I've only just met, and 2006 is a complete mystery to me. So after sitting watching my breath for an hour and trying not to let my thoughts wander, I took a deep meditation-ary breath and thought about all you people and thought about me and thought... 2006, yay, I'm ready for it. (and for the first time I sat in meditation for a whole hour and my leg didn't go to sleep! not quite enlightenment, but a start!).

So raise your glasses peeps, here's to 2006, here's hoping it brings lots of smiles and lots of quality friend-time, and happy family-time. Here's to a year that we all can take hold of and make our own in whatever way we choose to cos (and this came to me as I thought about you lot) you people are all amazing and you all deserve a year that makes you grin and say "yay me, I rock!" (cos you do)

Talking of rocking, I had such a fun and random new year's eve - nepali style, here are some highlights...

- not exactly a highlight but a random-light was seeing a banner that said something along the lines of "here's to 2006 and peace in our land" and then under this banner, a maahusive army truck was parked (blocking the narrow street) and inside the truck was filled to the gills with Nepali soldiers brandishing great big sticks and guns. They were there (i think) as NYE crowd control, but as they were blocking the road they were more like crowd agitators. I hope that 2006 brings peace to Nepal, but if this was a sign, I think there is still a way to go.

- Having roast beef, under the stars, by an open fire, in a nearby restaurant place with 4 lovely people

- Sharing thoughts about 2005 and dreams of 2006 with these lovely people, most of whom I will probably not see again.

- Finishing off the meal with amazing carrot cake

- drinking Margherita's under the stars by the open fire

- dancing to salsa music under the stars by the open fire and not caring that the DJ had about 5 salsa-ish songs on loop (one of which was THe Macarena)

- The midnight count up (the NEpalis count up rather than counting down to midnight but non of us westerners knew what number he would end on...and at one point he lost count and started skipping numbers, then going backwards and finally he just yelled 12! and all these balloons fell out of the sky and the nepali's went crazy and the westerners realised that 2006 had arrived!)

- Moving on to another club and dancing in a crcle of Nepali's trying to learn how to dance NEpali style and hoping that your turn to 'freestyle' in the middle of the circle wouldn't come!

- Seeing how the Nepalis celebrate 'Western calender' new year - they mill and wander around the streets and sit on pavements and dance in the street and eat a lot (pretty similiar to most evenings in Thamel actually!)

So yay to NYE and thanks to Simone, Nara, Christie, Harold and Kathmandu for making it a good un!

The alternative Queen's speech

2005-12-26T06:03:00.000-08:00

HAPPY CHRISTMAS / HOLIDAYS / CHANUKAH / DECEMBER and as they say in Nepal
LA SABAILAI X-MAS KO HARDIK SUBHAKAMANA lovely people! I hope that you all (or those of you who celebrated it) spent your Christmas stuffed with turkey, tofurkey, mincepies and cake. I hope that you laughed at the cracker jokes, drank too much, ate too much and fell asleep in front of a fire. I hope that you got to celebrate being surrounded by family goodness and friend fueled drunken ness. I hope that you got to raise your glass to the future and the past and most of all I hope you all got/get to rest your weary heads, cos man 2005 was a toughy (and a goody in many ways) and I know that you all needed to put your feet up, take a break, juvenate, refresh, refuel and prepare yourself for jumpin back into whatever 2006 has in store.

As for me...I did none of those things. But Christmas in Nepal was cool and fun in its own way.

Christmas eve I celebrated Nepali style - i.e. start the night at 6pm, laugh, drink, eat, SING but be home by 10.30! In fairness to my Nepali-saathi (friends / colleagues) this early to bed plan is partly to do with the present conflict situation (the streets are heavily patrolled by the army after 11 and it's just not nice being out and about on your motorbike) and partly to do with the fact that most of them still live with parents. But man! Between 6-10. so much random fun was had. At one bizarre point, one of the guys at our table started singing cheesy ballads. Now this was not in a drunken fool way, but in a full on "heart and soul, man I am feeling those words" kinda way. By this point the restaurant was mainly filled with just men (girls tend to leave first) and as our guy tripped over the words for the second verse of "have I told you lately that I love you", a group of streetwise looking Nepali lads started whispering amongst themselves. I was just waiting for them to start hurling abuse at our table, but instead they were simply conferring on the words and before you can say happy Christmas in Nepali, they had joined in with just as much gusto! After 'Have I told you lately', there was a perfect rendition of 'Last Christmas' then 'I haven't stopped dancing yet' and then some crazy 50s ballads that I had never even heard of! And I don't think this was just a result of Christmas spirit - as far as I can tell Nepali's love to sing and they love to dance and when they sing or dance they give their whole heart over to it and jitterbug or croon like their lives depend on it. I love it. No inhibitions, no worrying if you look cool or not, becasue no one judges you, everyone else is too busy winding and twirling and singing to notice!

So that was Christmas Eve Hindu / Nepali-style.

Christmas day I did Buddhist style. At one point on Christmas eve it looked like it was going to be Christmas day loner style, but I suddenly realised that I wasn't quite ready for Christmas on my own, so I joined my one non Nepali friend Simone and some 0ther people from the local meditation centre on a Cora (i think that's how you spell it - it means to literally walk in a clockwise circle around a holy place). So we wandered around a nearby temple (Soyambol or monkey temple on account of the many vicious monkeys) turned prayer wheels, threw rice, got attacked by monkeys, lit candles, chatted about life, saw amazing views of kathmandu, laughed, smiled in the sunshine and generally flowed. We even got invited to paint our own mini stupas (temples) that are then placed inside the big temple. A group of local people had been sitting making and painting hundreds and hundreds of these mini temples for weeks, just giving time when they could to sit in the sunshine, catch up with friends and paint! For Christmas lunch I had tibetan soup and nasty Nepali maize based-alcohol (why not we said! It is Christmas after all!) and I ended the day eating pizza in bed and watching american movies on cable.

So all in all it was a good day. The temple was stunning, the sky was blue, Simone is an inspiring lady with a laugh that seems to come up from her toes and I liked the way that the day just unfolded, no pressure, no stress, no preplanning. Also it helped that it was unique and in no way tried to be like Christmas day - having said that, as much as I enjoyed my very different Christmas day, next year I am going to pull crackers and sit by christmas trees and stuff myself to the gills with turkey and wine and cake and family!

ps: I am also liking the Buddhist way of thinking. At times during our day Simone would stand still and just be in the moment, which means that you take a moment to absorb your surroundings, realise you are there, breathe it all in and it helps stop the day dissappearing from you, so at the end of it all you don't have that feeling was I even there?

So yay that was my day!

The end.

Photos

2005-12-23T23:22:00.000-08:00

So now there are photos too! Just go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/gemmaq/ and you can see me and Nepal and the like. I have posted them in chronological order, but the site loads them backwards, so please start on page 5 (i know a lot of photos!) the first picture should be abudhabi airport. (actually the first picture is the european elite - but that has nothing to do with NEpal). If you do it this way the story makes more sense.

ok hope you like...

My first Bandh

2005-12-15T22:09:00.000-08:00

I got my first taste of a 'Bandh' (or general strike) in Kathmandu this morning.

It was all sparked off by an incident yesterday when a lone Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) soldier entered a nearby mountian village called Chihandanda (in Nagarkot, where I got my first glimpse of the Himalayas) and shot randomly at a group of villagers killing 12. Supposedly there had been some kind of argument between him and the villagers earlier in the day and he then returned in the evening with a gun. This incidindent was then used by the seven opposition political parties (who have formed the 7-party alliance) as the spark it has (supposedly) been looking for to start a campaign of strikes and public protest against the government, the army and the king.

So last night a strike (Bandh) was announced in Kathmandu, which means all the shops are meant to stay closed, no buses, no taxis and no traffic is supposed to be on the roads - and the people are meant to come out onto the streets in protest. I walked into work with my colleague, it took us about an hour and we did not pass one open shop on the way, although there were a few brave taxis and people on motorcylces - I bumped into my new friend (who I met in yoga and is lovely) and she said that she saw a group of people attacking and throwing stones at a taxi (becasue it was trying to work). All around on the streets there were rocks and broken glass, from clahses between the students (who are the most politically active) and the army. On the main road near my work building there is a student campus and as we approached I could hear them all shouting anti king and anti government slogans. The air smellt of burning tyres, trucks of army soldiers were driving slowly passed and the road was littered with glass and rocks. As we approached, you could feel the tension in the street and u could see that something big was about to kick off. But at the same time it felt more strange than firghtening. If you looked across the street there were soldiers standing outside the gates of a campus and from behind the gates you could make out students yelling. If you looked up the street, in the distance there was a huge group of army men running in the opposite direction with riot gear and big batons and guns. But on our side of the street, people were just trying to get to work and chatting with friends and almost carrying on as normal. Occasionally, we would stop and nirmal (my colleague) would look around and we would scuttle up a side street and wait to make sure the protests were not coming our way, but other than that it was almost like watching it on television. I guess this is the part that you don't see on the news, the other side of the street where people are just getting on with their day and not throwing rocks and not yelling or protesting. Supposedly, Bandhs were a regular part of life before February 1st (when the King took control and shut down the news and the mobile phones and the internet and declared a national emergency) but there have not been any for a while. Now that the 7 party alliance is trying to bring down the present government, I think it may be a winter of discontent. I am just glad that I am friends with lots of Nepalis, as it means I will always know what is going on. The few tourists on the streets today, just looked so confused.

One more cool thing...

2005-12-15T02:43:00.000-08:00

What number am I up to 21??

21) When a nepali phones you (ah maybe not all nepali's but when one of my lovely colleagues phones me) they say "hello Gemma", I say "hello" they say "hello Gemma?", I say "hello", they say "hello Gemma?" and this fun can go on and on and on until I say "yes.."!

It took me a while the first time to realise I had to say something other than hello. I knew the second time but it was fun to do it again. The third time, I knew I had to stop finding this so much fun!

Tiny steps - big achievements!

2005-12-15T02:22:00.000-08:00

It is crazy how when you are in new lands, the smallest things can seem like the biggest achievements! Far the past wee while, I have been under the careful and considered tutelage of one Upendra-Gurubaa*, who has been showing me how to navigate the streets and buses and tempo's (three wheeler tin can) of Kathmandu. Each morning and evening we would take a different form of transport to and from the office, Upendra explaining excitedly (because whenever Upendra talks it is always excited) where we were going, what we were passing, the places I could get off / on, should get off /on, might get off / on and should definately avoid! We took foot bridges and underpasses, waited on sides of roads (no sign of a bus stop), flagged things down, queued up, skipped queues, leapt on moving buses, leapt off moving mini vans. I learnt hand signals, facial expressions, landmarks, backroads, sideroads, mainroads...

And then finally the day came. Upendra had a morning meeting and wouldn't be at the office til late, I was on my own. Just like Daniel-san in his first fight without mister miaggi, I was nervous - was it wipe off / wipe on? Take the number 17 , which in nepali looks like 98 or the 98 which looks like 17? Could I remember how the route passed the fruit sellers and mini shrines to the bus area? Was it best to get in a full or an empty mini van?

ButI did it! In record time. I jumped on without hitting my head and got off without loosing my feet, I remembered the route and they understood my hand signals. To say I got in to work and home again, on my own, on public transport, does not seem that big a deal, but man, the feeling, that first morning when I realised I could do it and I had done it and it was ok...that was just perfect...

*Upendra is my colleague, who lives near me and whose office I share. Gurubaa literally means guru-father and I think means wise male teacher type.

Some more cool things I've discovered...

2005-12-10T03:49:00.000-08:00

11. (I was up to 11 right?) that schools have really cool names here. I used to live near Lovebuds High School and the other day I spotted a bus heading to Gems School.

12. that my name also means 'very long skirt' and 'grandmother' (I am sticking to the Tibetan version)

13. that everyone here is still lovely

14. that drinking water from a bottle without letting it touch your lips is really not so difficult afterall.

15. that i still don't know what all the different variations on shaking and nodding the head mean

16. that i have a lot to learn about bartering and it turns out that smiling excitedly and saying "only 100 rupees, cool" does not help.

17. that i have to stop converting everything to pounds cos it just blows my mind how cheap everything is here - the other week i had burritos, rice, salad, refried beans, water and a mojito for less than 2pounds.

18. that a lady cannot live only on nepali food - and sometimes a mexican and a cocktail is just the ticket.

19. that i am no longer of traveller mentality and can't take nasty toilets, sticky bedsheets or too much tie-dye.

20. that learing nepali is fun when you have a teacher whose smile is bigger than his head.

20 (and a half). that there are some hard nosed, mean people in the world of development!

Me and the mountains

2005-12-10T02:38:00.000-08:00

my first meeting with mountains was a couple of weeks ago on a work training trip to an area called Nagarkot, about 2hours drive uphill from Kathmandu. The place where we stayed was all windows, looking out on what we were told were panoramic views of the mountains, squint hard they said and you can see everest. whilst the view was dramatic, it was more dramatic in a cloudy way, like you could reach out and touch the clouds if you wanted to, and occassionally in a green valley and village down below, kinda way. I took hundreds of photos in the general direction that the mountains were meant to be (god bless digital) in the hope that something would come out on film. but nope, nahthing. Just lots of pictures of fog. then finally on the last morning, i actually saw the mountains and they were stunning. Peaks seemingly floating on nothing, white and clear against the blue sky. I squinted hard and yes there was something in the distance that might or might not have been everest (i like to think is was!). I returned to Kathmandu feeling all proud of myself. I had seen the sun rise over the mountains, i could talk about the beauty of the himalayas with the rest of them, i knew wht people meant now whenthey talked about how stunning Nepal was. Then last weekend happened..and I realised I knew nothing. I was on another work field trip (really weekends have no meaning here!) and we decided to take the old indian road that goes up over the mountains. We drove up and up and up, round and round and round the side of a mountain. To one side there was a sheer drop , but luckily the views were amazing enough to keep your attention away from thinking about that too much (except at one particularly hairy moment when all the nepali's moved to the other side of the mini van away from the edge!!). Im afraid idiot that i am took my camera without my battery so you will have to trust me when i say that nepal really is one of the most beautiful countries. at the top of the mountain road (6000ft??? I think) there was a 180degree view of the mountains that just...you can't describe it...it was just...beautiful, but beautiful isn't enough. there is something about mountains, something to do with their size and majesty i guess that makes them fill you, so you feel all still and amazed and in awe...and i haven't even got really close to them yet. Then on the drive down, the sun was setting and we passed through all these mountain villages where people still live an incredibly traditional life, farming plots of land that are cut in this amazing tiered way and thinking nothing of walking for days to reach the next village. and you just think wow, the world is a crazy-kool place, full of so many people living their lives in so many different ways!

And that is the story of how i fell in love with a mountain range.

ps many thanks to my djs - DJ-JJ, Rossko the music man and the delectable Miss-T-lady for providing me with a great sound track for my trip.

Waking up to a changed world article

2005-12-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

An article I wrote with my colleague Kripa, to be published on the UNESCO newspiece mailshot thing they send out- bit cheesy (it was our first attempt at writing for UNESCO!)but gives an idea of one of the projects I am involved in..

Waking up to a Changed World!

When she entered the Chetana Sadan (Awareness Centre) of Vijaya Development Resource Centre at Gaidakot, (Nawalparasi District, Western Nepal), little did Apsara know that the next seven days would change her perceptions of herself and the community she lives in. The date was Aug 1 2005 and it was the first day of the Radio Reporters Training for a new program by Equal Access, an international non-governmental organization, that produces development communications programs for positive social change.

The new program, Changing Our World, is an Equal Access/UNIFEM Initiative. The objective is to empower young girls and women by training local women to provide content for a weekly radio program on women, for women. This is the first time that Equal Access has drawn so heavily on locally trained reporters, to generate locally relevant content. So far 12 women from the four districts of Nepal (Dang, Banke, Makwanpur, Chitwan) have been trained to find, collect and record stories from women in their community. These will then feature in the 26 episodes of the program. Apsara Khanal is one of these 12 newly trained reporters. “I was always curious while listening to the news and other radio programs, how the material was collected and recorded”, says Apsara, an Admin/Finance officer at General Welfare Pratisthan, Banke Office (a developmental organization committed to making positive changes in the lives of marginalised communities.

This interest and the challenge she saw in collaborating with local women to let her record their stories for the program, led her to venture into this completely unknown field. Since the training, Apsara has been collecting the ‘voices of the voiceless’; going into the communities, visiting police stations and other organizations working with women and trying to find real life stories of issues covered by the “Changing Our World” program. “I have spoken to such a wide variety of people from different walks of life, Apsara reflects. “From illiterate rural women to lawyers and from sex workers to police...meeting so many people has changed the way I see my community and has helped me develop as a person”.

The name of the program in Nepali is Sundai Pherindai – ‘Listening and Changing’ and although only a few episodes have been on air so far, Apsara can already see changes taking place around her. During an interview with some women involved in sex work, she found out that they had been spending all that they earned. She explained to them the benefits of saving for the future and now two have opened savings accounts in the bank.

This small change is just one example of how the Changing Our World Programme hopes to make an impact in the lives of women. The program uses success stories of women who have overcome their sufferings, voices from the community and views from experts, to raise awareness of particular issues related to women. The local reporters are central to collecting all of this information, which is then packaged into a program by producers at the Equal Access office in Kathmandu. The project hopes that these 12 newly trained female reporters will go on to have long careers in radio. Apsara is excited about this prospect “I had never thought about being a reporter before, but now I am really excited about my work and hope to use my new skills as much as possible in the future – perhaps I will have my own radio show one day!”

Written By: Kripa Tiwari and Gemma Quilt

Kripa Tiwari is the Database Officer at Equal Access Nepal, and is supporting the Changing our Worlds Program as a researcher. Gemma Quilt, a radio producer from BBC World Service, is currently working at Equal Access Nepal. Gemma and Kripa are working as Ethnographic Action Researchers for the Changing Our Worlds program.

Why you should always say yes...

2005-12-02T03:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had already eaten one greasy, local lunch wrapped in newspaper (don't get me wrong, the food here is great, it's just that lunches tend to be a little samey) and my collegue - who I share an office with and who is the guy I work most closely to - asked me if I wanted to go for piro aloo (hot potato). My head and my still slightly delicate gut screamed "no", but as I am still not sure what Nepali for no is and shaking the head can also mean yes, before I knew it we were hot footing it out of the office and into the afternoon sunshine. Now had I managed to say no, the afternoon would have been pretty predictable. But because I said yes - I had a totally unexpected and amazing couple of hours. First we walked down the longest, straightest 'gulley' (alleyway) I have ever been down. On each side there were little shops and dark rooms where people hammered on metal or tailored or laughed with friends or just sat and watched the world go by. Then the alley opened out, and we walked in to this amazing square area with old temples all around (durbur square). My colleague ducked and weaved through the crowds and the cows and the kids and the lovers and took me into a dark room where 2 old ladies sat on the floor in front of huge cooking pots. A quick back and forth exchange in Nepali and we were climbing a rickety stairwell and up and up and suddenly out on to the rooftop. THe view over the square was amazing and we sat on tiny stools with other local lunchers and feasted on whatever had been simmering in the old ladies' pots. So far I have only really seen the crazy traffic, people every where, horn blowing, traveller meandering, inside an office side to Kathmandu. But this quiet, temple filled beauty took my breath away. And all because I said yes.

searching for an old friend

2005-11-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning (absolutely no idea where I was at first!) and instinctively reached over to my bedside table and switched on my mini FM radio. Now, the usual result of this morning ritual is the dulcet tones of Ros Atkins or Carey Gracy or some other BBC-ite, informing me that this is the World Today on the BBC World Service (words cannot describe my excitement on first realising that I could get the World Service on FM in Kathmandu). But this morning instead of being gently drawn me from my slumber with world news, intelligent discussion and witty repartee all i heard was grrrrrrrrrrrrrsssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhcracklecracklehissshisssgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssjjjje

I figured I must of knocked the tuner during my recent travels (I have spent the last 5 days doing training in the mountains - will write more on that another day) and so spent the next half an hour wandering aimlessly round the room pointing my receiver in various directions, twiddling the dial gently up and down, up and down, holding the radio in the air, out the window, upside down, shaking it, begging it, stroking it. But nahthing. I felt bereft but decided the only thing to do was to head down for breakfast, as no disaster can be dealt with rationally on an empty stomach (I am still in a hotel for the moment).

Now for the point of my story...

As I sat down for breakfast, I opened the paper (The Kathmandu Post) and saw the headline "Govt Shuts Down Sagarmatha FM". Sagarmatha FM based in Kathmandu is South Asia's first community radio station (started by my colleague), it doesn't broadcast news (the government are opposed to radio's broadcasting news) and as far as I can tell, it isn't controversial. It is simply a large and respected station run for and by the community and yet the government have the power to enter the control room, seize the transmission equipment, arrest journalists and shut down the station...they government also suspended the World Service relay transmission, which is why I couldn't receive it. The reason behind it was linked to a BBC interview with the Maoist chairman, but even that is a hazy reason as although the FM do play out BBC NEpali programming, they were not planning to broadcast this particular interview. Now, I knew the rights of the media and even the rights of NGOs in Nepal are severely restricted, I knew that FM stations got shut down in the middle of the night, but I guess until something actually affects you directly, until you go to tune into something that suddenly isn't there, the reality that this can happen doesn't really sink in. It's like going to sleep listening to Radio 4 and waking up to find that the Government have arrested John Humprhies and you can't listen to the Today programme anymore. I have no idea what this means, my colleagues are all shocked and a bit confused by it all too. The Maoist cease fire is due to end on Dec 2nd and I am not sure what that means either...they want the king to agree to holding free elections for a constituent assembly, but I'm guessing that's highly unlikely...

I guess I just wanted to share this with you as it was the first time I really, truly understood that I am living in a country in the middle of a conflict, where normal rules, rights and regulations just don't apply and you realise that when things like this happen there is really nothing you can do about it - except tell your friends so that people outside Nepal, know more about what is happening in this tiny land locked country. so go check out nepal news . com and read more about it all.

Top 10 things I've discovered so far...

2005-11-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

1 - That everyone here is lovely. I know I tend to say that about everyone everywhere, but so far the Nepali's take the prize. I got sick whilst away on the field trip (sun stroke - see point 2) and all my colleagues came to my room to give their get well quick tips and feed me rehydration sachets. Then the next day I found out that the hotel reception had stayed open an extra 2 hours, just in case I needed them.

2 - That when a Neplese person says it will be cold, it will in fact be warm, when they say warm it will be hot and so always take your hat and a bottle of water out with you on warm days or you will get sunstroke! (see illness above)

3 - That a dry packet of instant noodles crushed up and with the flavourings added can make a tasty snack. Like bombay mix without the peas.

4 - That drinking water from a bottle without touching it with your lips is harder than my nepali colleagues make it look.

5 - That you can generally spot a maoist because he is wearing a cap. We went to a Maoist village whilst on the field trip, supposedly they were all over the place, I just thought there were a lot of men in caps about.

6 - That my name in Tibetan means beautiful

7 - That so many people have so many stories

8 - That Nepali-time is even slower than Gem-time...if someone says lets meet at 7.30, you know that 7.30 means, 7.45 which means 8.00 , which is 8.30, which generally means 9.00!

9 - That being able to count from 1-5 in Nepali is a simple party trick that will always raise a smile and occassionally a cheer

10 - That I am living in the future here and the year is 2062 (the future is bright people, fear not!)

10 (and a half) - that this blogging business is not as scary as it looks!

24 hours in Nepal

2005-11-21T01:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, Ok so it's been more like 240 hours in Nepal, but I have been far, far away from the world of internet and lots of stuff has happened in the last 10 days, so rather than write a long and endless first entry, I thought I'd keep it snappy and limit it to my first 24hours (cos you know how I can ramble!)

I had expected to arrive Thursday night, have Friday to acclimatise, the weekend to explore Kathmandu, before starting in the office on Monday. Instead I arrive, meet some of my colleagues, get told I am going on a 9 day field trip, unpack, repack, negotiate drying my hair with intermittant electricity, crash out, wake up at 6 (with crazy hair) get a taxi back to the airport, meet back up with colleagues and 6 of us fly (in a 16 seater Buddha Air plane) to the terrain area in the center of Nepal. Once I had got the words of the ever dismal rough guide out of my head: "internal flights in Nepal are risky, they overpack the planes, which generally end up crashing into the mountains" (not an exact quote, but the general gist!) the flight was amazing. Only 12minutes long but over stunning scenery AND you could see the pilot and everything! We were met at the other end by a jeep and a local guy and drove for 2 hours to a town called Hetauda, where we dumped our stuff and got in a rickshaw (so small, everything in this country is so small and each day I have had to fold and roll and bend and stuff myself into various forms of transport - I was solemnly told that if I was Nepali, I would never find a husband on account of my many inches!). I still have no idea which side of the road vehicles are meant to drive here, all I know is that in Britain cars are far too complex. Here in Nepal vehicles have evolved past the need for wing mirrors or breaks or indicators or any of that nonsense, all you need is your foot on the accelerator and your hand on the horn. Even the buses have "horn please" written on the back. As we weaved in and out of bikes and mopeds and cars and people and cows and vans and buses, again the words of the rough guide came to mind "the roads in Nepal are death traps and you will probably die on them"(again not exact quote) but despite the ducking and a weaving we arrived safe and sound (see how I laugh in the face of your pessimism rough guiders!) at our destination, a partner NGO where we Namaste’d (my own verb, meaning lots of introductions and saying Namaste to everyone) before getting in yet another form of transport called a tempo (like a cross between a tuktuk and a 4 wheel drive kinda tin thing) and heading for a rural village, where Equal Access (the NGO I'm working with) has a multi media project. TO get to this village we drove, walked, crossed a river, walked some more and finally arrived. We were here to conduct Ethnographic Action Research (development speak for talking to people in rural areas about their lives, their concerns, their issues, their views on our programmes...). Once we'd finished we walked back down the hill, back over the river bed, back in the Tempo, back in the rickshaw and back to the hotel for my first dal bad* supper. After dinner I admitted defeat and crawled to bed, falling asleep to the sound of horns and people arguing and drills drilling and water pipes banging. Next day I was up at 6am the and did it all again...(in a good way).

Ok so not that snappy, but it was a busy 24hrs!

* dal bad is a traditional nepali meal, it consists of curried cauliflower and potato, salty spinach, runny daal and pickle. The amazing thing about dal bad is that no matter how often you have it (I ate it at least once, sometimes twice a day while I was away) everytime tastes like the first time and although you think you couldn't possible have it again, you find that you miss it went it isn’t there.

Happy Birthday Gemma!

2005-09-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

You are a star and we all knows it.

Now you can keep us all up to date with your eastern adventures.