A Change of Plan

My placement in Nepal comes to an end in November when I will have completed 2 years. I had planned to go to India to complete a yoga teacher training course before returning to the UK to potentially work in Manchester for my previous employers. But now my plan has changed. I will be moving to Kathmandu and extending my volunteering with VSO to work with a; Women’s Alliance for Peace, Justice and Security. This is exactly the type of organisation I want to work for, over the last 6 months I have been studying a certificated course in ‘Understanding Gender in Society’, which coupled with my own experiences over the last two years has given me a fairly good understanding of gender issues in Nepal. Gender inequality is an issue that I hadn’t given much thought about until I stepped out of the UK, as the inequality here is so glaringly obviously it is impossible to ignore. Though I have really enjoyed working with disabled rights and anticorruption, gender inequality is closer to my heart and I am really looking forward to the new challenges ahead of working with a new organisation. With two year of experience tucked under my belt I am hoping that my work experience, language skills and cultural knowledge can be put to good use, though it does feel a bit strange volunteering for three years.

Leaving Nepalgunj and joining the big smog of Kathmandu will present a new set of challenges. The air pollution is vast and simply moving around from A to B can take time and be frustrating. Also financially Kathmandu is more expensive and there is fairly large ex-pat community that get paid a fair amount of money, which I don’t. Whilst I still want to enjoy some of the benefits of being part of a larger ex-pat community, I don’t want to loose my solid connection with Nepali friends and this is very important to me.

One thing I really looking forward to is visiting the Kathmandu Circus and doing some hula hooping with them and I am going to set up a weekly hoop jam to get a collective hula hoop group going. I also need to decide what to do with Ziggy (my dog), he has a good home to go to with my friend here, but if possible I would like to take him to Kathmandu.

So lots to look forward to in the future, but before any of that starts I have my 77 year old hula hoop buddy Alan coming from the UK for some random adventures in September, a 10 day trek in the mountains in October, plus I need to procrastinate about doing the 50km Annapurna trail run in March.
Life in Nepal is so good, I LOVE IT!

Typhoid

Sometimes things happen which really are very sad indeed. This weekend whilst I was off enjoying myself on a motorbike tour one of my neighbours children died of Typhoid simply because she did not have enough money to buy medicine and she did not have anyone to ask for help. Although I had never met this neighbour I wish that I could have helped this situation.

A Rant About Nepal

Although it’s easy to paint a pretty picture of my stay here in Nepal, I think it also necessary to share some of the repetitive annoyances too that occur almost on a daily basis.


Stare bears
Living in a fairly remote city in Nepal off the tourist track there is little interest or reason for tourists to visit, which actually I like. In fact I think if you have time its far more interesting staying in these random places than that of tourist traps, the culture so rich and the experience so authentic. The down side of this is that any movement is bound to cause a stare and I mean any movement. And it’s not a subtle stare it’s a stop and have a really really good stare and take in every detail gold fish style stare. There are several ways to deal with this and these vary according to tolerance level, the person who’s is staring and general mood at that exact moment. Ways to deal with stare bears include; 1) ignoring it, 2) stare back and smile this usually causes embarrassment on their part 3) say hi or Namaste 4) or rare occasions say ‘what’, look mad and slightly crazy.

Married or unmarried
One of the many many questions that curious Nepali people fire at me is ‘are you married or unmarried’. This is actually a sensitive issue as the whole of Nepali society fiercely revolves around the expectation of marriage which I vehemently disagree even though I understand the reasons for it. Therefore its never a good question to start off with, my reactions can be blunt pushing on rude; ‘unmarried’ followed by firing a question right back at them, ‘are you married and do you enjoy it?’. The truth of the matter is once you scratch below the surface most young people would choose not to be married but don’t know what else to do and to be honest – what else is there to do in this country?

Your Fat
Where I come from its apparently good to be thin and bad to be fat, these are messages and images that we have been bombarded with from a variety of media sources forever, which re-enforce these ideas into our vulnerable minds. In Nepal though it’s the reverse, people think its good to be fat as it shows health and wealth and bad to be thin. So if someone says, ‘ you became fat’ its a compliment and if some one says ‘you became thin’ it not a compliment! It’s like a reverse head fuck and actually really interesting experience to witness my own reaction to.

Nepali time and Its Cancelled
Nepali time basically means everything starts later than planned. So training that was supposed to start at 10:00 am may start at 13:00, someone who I have arranged to meet at my house may come 1 – 2 hours late if at all, without informing me. Plans get cancelled at the last moment and sometimes never happen at all. Now you might think that Nepali time and cancellations may have caused me some annoyance and despair, but actually it doesn’t. I won’t lie that is hasn’t taken some time to adjust to this way of life, but now I have I actually like it because it means I can cancel things too and be late without any major consequence and I really like this as its so not allowed in the UK. I wonder if I will ever be reliable again.

Can I Have Your Phone Number
Without doubt the single most annoying thing in this country is people asking for my number and then calling me on it for no apparent reason other than for novelty factor. And if I don’t answer they just keep on ringing and ringing and ringing. It’s quite hard to avoid giving out my number the only real way round it is just to say no you can’t have my number.