Making the Effort

Aid Work

On Saturday I went to a small rural village in the hills outside of Kathmandu with some students from the college to volunteer at a health clinic. I was basically useless because I couldn’t speak the language, but the students were really great manning the registration table. The guy running the clinic is a Nepali working for an Austrian NGO, and the clinic was in his home village. He found himself with an extra 1000 euros in his budget so he went and bought medicine, corralled his wife and some colleagues (all doctors) and set up this clinic for a day in his home town. About 200 people visited over the course of the day with ailments from burns to emphysema.

I had to put my Western sensibilities on hold as I watched them all crowding into the examining rooms to watch each other’s visits with doctors. At one point there were a half dozen women in the room, a young girl skipping rope and a teenage boy’s head sticking in the window while an older woman described her symptoms of menopause to the doctor. Nobody, the patient included, seemed to mind a bit. Nepalese people are incredibly nosy by nature, so privacy takes on a whole new meaning here.

Virtually everyone left with some “prescription” even if it was just vitamins for the youngsters. They seemed more impressed by the packaging and just having received something for free, than the potential beneficial effects of the medicines.

Sadly, I found out towards the end of the day that many of the patients had complained about the quality and quantity of the medicines at the clinic. I guess they figured it was somebody’s left-overs or something. The guy running the clinic was really disappointed after all the work he had done, especially given this was his home town. I have to wonder if there isn’t too much aid coming into this country: the Nepalese people seem to be expecting handouts all the time.

Street Cleaning

Deborah started a project at the school which has the kids going out for an hour before lunch every Tuesday and cleaning up the streets around the college. We pick up garbage, sweep the streets and have garbage bins hung on lampposts along the streets for use between our forays. We are going farther and farther afield, incorporating the whole community in our project.

The reaction has been mixed with some shop owners ignoring us and others putting out garbage bins of their own. We have solicited the support of the local municipal government (we’re outside the jurisdiction of Kathmandu) and the police. We were disappointed to hear rumours in the neighbourhood that because Deborah and I were out with the students, it was assumed that we were from an NGO and injecting all kinds of money into the school and this project. Another side effect of all the aid coming into the country, I guess. We wrote a letter to the community explaining that this was just a bunch of kids who wanted to make a difference in their community and their country. Before we had a chance to go door-to-door with our letter, Tamang Losar fell on a Tuesday and the college was closed. (I think I’ve mentioned holidays before: every day is somebody’s festival here so we choose our “official” holidays at the school based on importance to the students.) Because we weren’t cleaning the streets that day, the locals all had an impromptu meeting with the local government and police, voicing their fears that we had stopped the project due to lack of support from our neighbours. Despite their misinterpretation of the facts, it was nice validation for our work.

The following week the students went door-to-door with our letter and appealed to all our neighbours to support the project. Again there were mixed responses. Some were really supportive and agreed to help in any way they could. Others complained that they paid taxes to have their streets cleaned by the government, who clearly weren’t doing their job. Because we were keeping the streets so clean, they had no leg to stand on in complaining that their tax dollars weren’t being spent properly. They asked us to cease and desist.

The students really struggle in this environment, but so far they’re still cleaning the streets and taking pride in it.

We had a guest speaker at the college last week. He is half Sherpa and half Belgian, and is 24 years old. He has done an incredible amount of stuff in his short life including climbing Lhotse, Cho Oyo and Everest twice. His last Everest expedition included the introduction of alternate fuels and a large-scale clean-up of base camp. He has all kinds of projects on the go to help fight the environmental effects of global warming here, and to promote sustainable work among the Sherpas in the Khumbu.

The students really took to him and he was wonderful with them. He encouraged them in their street cleaning as well as a dozen other things they could do to improve life here. He also strongly urged them to stay in Nepal, or at least come back if they do their internships abroad. As he says: Nepal needs them and the West doesn’t. Let’s hope that this next generation is filled with people like them.

(Dawa Steven Sherpa www.ideas-action.org)

New Apartment

I started writing this post a week ago. It’s just so hard to get anything done here with the power off so much of the time. I am very busy at work as I am being asked to coach everyone else on campus (which typically translates into me doing their jobs for them). I often spend the electricity-filled hours on my off-days doing work as well. I had hoped to write a bunch of stuff before posting, but have decided to break it down into a few shorter posts in the hopes of getting things out there on a more regular basis.

My most recent news is that I’ve got a new apartment and will be moving on March 1. Deborah is moving to a house and I’m going to take over her apartment. It’s in a great neighbourhood where most of the embassies are located. It’s on the third floor of a house and while it’s a bit smaller than my current apartment, it is much better outfitted. It has a lovely sunny terrace which I’m so looking forward to hanging out on. It is also right next to the only park left in Kathmandu. I haven't checked it out yet but it's a wooded area that I'm hoping will be suitable for running through. Best of all it’s really quiet and I should get both sleep and privacy. I am also going to take “custody” of Deborah’s “didi” (literally "big sister" but in this case maid). Deborah can’t take her with her and so I thought I’d give it a go. I really struggle with the whole concept of having help, but I’m probably the only foreigner here not to have one, and it gives a Nepali a job. The apartment is cheaper than my current one, so even with Anju's salary, I’m still coming out even. In addition, I expect that I’ll save money as I’ll come home to a home-cooked meal every night and will be less inclined to eat out. Also, she’ll do my laundry which I’m also currently paying for. It will be a challenge for me to have someone around, but as Deborah says, it’s probably time I learned how to share my space. Still, I expect that I will be giving her lots of days off when I’m planning to be home all day.

Okay...onto the post I started last week.

Sorry I haven’t posted for so long, but nothing of consequence is really happening. My life has settled into a fairly boring routine of work, evenings out with women friends and weekend visits to the stupa at Bouddhanath in the heart of the Tibetan community. So instead of writing about what I’m doing, I’ll write about some impressions I have of living and working here.

Education System

In a word, it sucks. Teaching is all done by rote here and there is no creativity whatsoever in the classroom. Sadly, students are taught to memorise, but not to think. As a result, we have college students who need to be taught lessons that we teach to first graders at home. Although we are a college, it feels more like an elementary school from point of view of discipline and student conduct. Students cannot be left to their own devices and we have to take attendance and monitor them every step of the way. Deborah teaches a study skills class that endeavours to teach the students such basic things as initiative, planning and how to behave in a classroom. The worst is that they talk constantly throughout class. It just doesn’t occur to them that they might benefit from listening, and it certainly hasn’t been enforced as a behavioural practice. Never mind trying to tell them that it’s a matter of respect to listen when someone is speaking to you.

Cheating runs rampant here and is likely a result of the corrupt society that they live in. Each teacher has to write several sets of questions for each test and stagger them throughout the room. Fortunately, we have one administrative assistant here who can spot cheating a mile away, so she sits in on as many exams as can fit her schedule. Students also use their laptops and cell phones in class, both of which will be outlawed by yours truly at the next management meeting. I’m guessing that I’m not going to be the most popular person on campus in the coming weeks, but the students have approached me eagerly looking for orientation to living and working in Canada, so they’re going to have to bite the bullet.

Dining Etiquette

Nepalese people live on a staple diet of dal bhat, a lentil soup poured over rice. This can be accompanied by curried vegetables or pickle depending on what they can afford and what is available in the markets. They typically eat twice per day and utensils aren’t used in the home. There is a bit of an art to eating dal bhat. You continually play with your food, trying to roll it into bit-sized balls - a difficult feat given that it isn’t sticky rice so there’s not much to hold it all together. Nepalese are good enough at it that only their right hands end up dirty (you never eat with your left hand), but when I do it I need to follow dinner with a shower.

We are trying to teach the students at the college table etiquette which they are grasping at a very slow rate. We have them using utensils but we can’t break them of the habit of playing with their food. Their hands are constantly busy mixing the dal with the rice, making little piles, making new little piles and moving things around. It doesn’t bother me that much but Deborah goes out of her mind in the dining room at school listening to the constant tapping of spoons on plates.

I’m going to stop here or I’ll never get anything posted. More impressions of Nepal in the coming days...

The Twilight Zone

As I alluded to in my last post, I have been working on new living arrangements. My friend Deborah is moving to a new house and I am hoping to take over her apartment. It is in a great neighbourhood and a very quiet area. The space is a little smaller than what I have now, but much better outfitted (and cheaper!). The best news is that it is on the third floor of the house and has a lovely terrace that gets sunshine pretty much all day. My current apartment is on the ground floor with a communal fountain and lots of pedestrian traffic right outside my window, so I have to keep my curtains closed most of the time. I feel like I'm living in a cave and there's nowhere for me to sit outside.

Most of Deborah's arrangements have been made, but she has yet to sign a lease on the new house. Until she does that, she doesn't want to speak to her current landlord about leaving and having me move it. I also don't want to talk to my current landlord until everything is settled. Deborah is leaving for vacation on the 21st of February and will move her stuff to an outbuilding at the new house then. I expect that her apartment will be ready for me to move in by March 1. As time goes on, I get more and more concerned about the short notice that I will be giving my landlord about leaving.

The last few nights have been horrible at home. One wall of my apartment is actually on the "property line" (as if such a thing exists here!) so the neighbour's dogs are kenneled against the wall of my house under my window. There is the aforementioned public fountain about 10 feet away from my bedroom window with a public path between. The nights have been filled with dogs barking, the neighbour's baby screaming, metal buckets banging against each other and the stone wall at the fountain and motorcycles revving in the path. Sunday night was particularly bad and I got very little sleep. Monday night was worse. The neighbours have a generator which they felt the need to turn on at 4:00 AM as the power was off again. It's like have a jackhammer in my room. When I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7:00 yesterday morning, the power was still off and there was no water. I had heated water the night before for my morning shower, but I guess I was heating an empty tank. There wasn't even any cold water to splash on my face. At this point, I pretty much snapped. As I left for work I stopped and told my landlord that I would be finding a new place to live. I decided that if the arrangements with Deborah don't work out, I'll go someplace else - a hotel if I have to.

Last night I went to bed exhausted at about 9:30. When I woke up, it was dark out, deathly quiet and the power was on. I assumed it must have been before midnight as my power was supposed to be off from midnight-8 and it's usually quiet at that time of night. I checked my clock and it said 6:00 AM!!!! I couldn't believe it, so I turned on the light and looked again. Sure enough, I had slept right through - no generator, nobody at the fountain, no dogs barking, no baby screaming. And the power was on when it wasn't supposed to be. I was honestly so confused that it took me several minutes to get my head around it - thought I had wakened up in the Twilight Zone.

Just as I was leaving for work my landlord arrived to make an empassioned plea for me not to leave. He wants to put a bed in one of the other rooms to help me sleep; he seems to think that moving three feet across the apartment will somehow make a difference. Also he has been round to the neighbours asking them to keep quiet during the night. I feel really sorry for him, but I can't change my mind. I'm sure last night was an anomaly and there's no way that everyone in the neighbourhood are going to change their habits permanently to accommodate me. The fact that we had a few bonus hours of electricity certainly worked in their favour and they did admit that they wouldn't stop running their generator when the power was off. And even if the noise diminishes, it still doesn't solve the problem of being on the first floor and needing to keep my curtains closed against prying eyes. I am hoping I get some kind of resolution with Deborah's place soon.

I am working on another post. I should have it ready soon. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a photo of a little mishap beside the college this morning.