Eating Out?

There is absolutely no connection between these two pictures.

Yes KFC and Pizza Hut finally made it to Nepal's capital a couple of weeks ago. Reports have it that there have been long queues at both outlets every since.

Its also reported that the raw material for KFC comes from Brazil. Seems a long way for a chicken to the top of the world.

As for the guy on the bike. I doubt if he is going to make a sale at the renowned outlet. Perhaps he is there to taste the opposition.

The hut. Well it will have stiff competition in Kathmandu. Here's to lower prices all round.

Yet Another Festival
Its said that every day somewhere in Nepal some ethnic group or other is having a festival. I was lucky enough to be in the far west of the country whenwoman were celebrating Teej, pronounced teach.
Shops close and after the obligatory worship, dancing takes place in the street and lasts long into the night. The woman (and this is specifically a woman’s event) will have fasted since midnight and will continue until the following morning, when devoted husbands will give them food. Other than weddings, these festivals are the only times for dressing up in the bright red saris. Tomorrow they will return to the daily grind of eking out a survival living from little plots of land, roadside teashops or cutting and carrying firewood. Festivals punch a bright red hole in substance living.

Ghats: Looking at Death

Yesterday was one of those special days for many devotees in this Hindu religious society. From early morning at the Pashupatinath (Pash Pattie) Temple they came to pour water from the river, scatter seeds around the temple grounds in the belief that the souls of the departed will receive salvation.

For at this temple every day the smoke of death can be seen. For here right in the heart of the city is its main cremation site and in keeping with tradition and belief right beside the river which eventually will wend its way to India and join with the great and holy Ganges. In fact it’s on the tourist trail. After the various temples and squares your taxi driver will take you here to see the body being placed on the pile of wood and the fire lit by the eldest son of the deceased. When the fire has consumed all then the ashes will be swept into the river for the long journey south.

By contrast in the west death is rarely spoken about and often hidden. Even spiritual conversation is viewed as not very PC. Perhaps its because in our materialist and individualist society we don’t want to be reminded that wealth, fame, possessions and education are for one life alone. Far too many of us do not have a faith to prepare us for death. In the Bible St. Paul says: “ Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?”

But in this society where faith is always nearer the surface we are reminded death is not the end. We need to put our trust in God not in ourselves.

Driving in the hills in the far west of Nepal.

The road is narrow and drops away steeply on one side. Winding where possible around the hills, but at times plunging into deep valleys only to rise again to 11 or 12,000ft.and into the mists and low cloud. It rained all night; a slow persistent cold rain, which, added to the monsoon a few months ago will mean the already loose slides, will have come down onto the road. We stop in a village beside a group of men huddled together drinking the hot sweet tea Nepali’s love. “Is the road open and will we get through?” we ask. They talk together occasionally pointing to our vehicle with their chins. “Yes, with your 4 wheel drive you will get through”.

More bends, more climbing then a few busses and trucks are parked, we tuck in behind. Sure enough a large landslide has all but closed the road. The drop to the river now brown coloured, evidence of slides further on is a good 1000ft.below. With others we tumble the manageable boulders over the edge. Occasionally a loose stone comes hurtling down from above. We clear a path just wide enough for a vehicle, its loose and bumpy; our driver is ready and accelerates through. It’s with thankfulness we climb aboard. Winding on hour after hour we pass lonely groups of houses, some serving tea and snacks, some much too close to the edge and are in danger of further slides. What kind of world economy is it that forces people to scratch out a living in situations like this?

Another landslide this time its loose sand and gravel that has blocked the road, huge pine trees lie on their side felled by the slide towards the river below. A bus is stuck in the middle. Some 30 people are pushing from behind, others are pulling on a rope tied to the front, and some are rocking the bus to help it grip the soft surface. In a cloud of black exhaust fumes it’s free. The ruts are filled in, and the now long queue of trucks and busses on either side gets moving again. We have been delayed a few hours but so what? For the people living in these remote regions where everything is brought in by road, a blocked road is more than an inconvenience; it’s a serious threat to their way of life. Perhaps later this week or next week the bulldozer will reach them. Until then this drive becomes a lot more dangerous. More rain is forecast.

It seems just another routine Wednesday morning. I am on my way to the domestic airport to catch a short flight to a District to participate in a workshop and meet a partner organisation. The huge snow-capped mountains always at their best at this time of year form an awesome semi-circular backdrop to the Kathmandu valley.

But out on the road there is an eerie feel, at ever junction and bridge groups of riot police are on duty. With their helmets, shields and metre long sticks they look ready for their business. Parked nearby are trucks full of armed police. The country faces another round of political street protest, blockades and the consequent shortages of essential items.

With food prices already rising beyond the reach of many due to world market forces and with all the other daily challenges facing the country, these good and kind people do not deserve a long winter of discontent.

We must re-double our efforts to talk our way out of these situations rather than make the people suffer.

Some Notes on Peacebuilding in Nepal

The sun shines brightly on the snow-covered mountains all around. Children dart out from behind buildings to have a look at the stranger in the village; they disappear when you smile at them. Over to my left woman are already in the fields harvesting by hand what they will later in the day, over an open fire, turn into a few pieces of flat bread. This is Nepal, high up in a remote hilly region where there are no roads and remarkably over 150,000 people live in villages strung out over hills and down into valleys like a string of cheap beads. I had been dropped in by light plane, its return would depend on the weather and a host of variables not least the reliability of the plane itself. On another trip after I had got out of the plane it simply refused to start. Great bellows of black smoke was all it offered. Left to the morning it started first time. Reminds me of a car I used to have.
What am I doing here? Sometimes I ask myself that question as well. I suppose like all associated with MNI trying to make things a little better, or at least not any worse.
The 10-year bloody civil war here ended with a peace agreement in November 2006 having killed at least 14,000 people, goodness knows how many injured and still today over 1000 people missing. But as always implementing a peace agreement is perhaps just as difficult as making it. The political in-fighting continues day after relentless day.
A few months after arriving here in 2006 I gave a short presentation on peacebuilding to the staff team, mainly Nepali, of the United Mission to Nepal (UMN) This large institution to which I had been assigned for a 4 year term as conflict transformation advisor has been involved in development work since 1953. At the end of what was probably a pretty boring and pretentious presentation a rather dour Nepali colleague took me to one side and said, “Joe we are always fighting, it’s the way we are. Its been going on for generations, but do your best”. Suddenly I felt very much at home. Here was good old norn iron writ large.

In what must have been a sort of prophetic statement sometime in my twenties my father warned me never to work in or travel to a country, which ended in stan. Perhaps even then he saw my interest in the chaotic, noisy, bitterly cold or hot and sweaty places of the world. I thought of him recently when a parcel arrived from home, posted by one of my 3 faithful sisters. The newspapers and chocolate were wrapped in the familiar brown paper he had salvaged from the wholesale grocery he worked in for 50 years and closed when he retired. Well at least Nepal doesn’t end in stan.

Conflict transformation advisor means you know more about conflict than others. Thats not such a big deal here since despite the war most people effectively ignored it. At least those with education in Kathmandu where it never really reached with a vengeance, probably shrugged and left it to the politicians. The idea that peace is everybody’s responsibility is still taking root. All the big INGOs are here and have been for over 20 years. However blending conflict transformation in and through development work seems not to have happened in the past. Like people everywhere the INGOs have taken a long time to re-calibrate their traditional work. Sadly a recent research report talks of development work done from the relative comfort of Kathmandu. What was really happening outside seemed not to be recognised. Until due to the conflict the space for development work shrunk to an extent that the large donors then demanded more work on the conflict rather than traditional development in a conflict country.

In the hilly region on this trip I will meet up with the small UMN regional team living and working among the local people. In particular I will spend time with the conflict transformation officer, one of 7 my Nepali colleague and I recruited and trained. Each is based in a regional team in seven of the poorest and most desolate parts of the country. Others will have responsibility to support local NGO projects in health, education, HIVAids, food security and other general development work. On this trip I might share some pearls of wisdom, but mostly I work to support, encourage and train the young team of conflict workers. As in N. Ireland peace will come not through some smart outsider, but because local people want it more than war. To-morrow as required I will need to check in with the local authorities. At the police post I produce my dog-eared photo-copied passport, fill in and sign various forms, take a glass or two of sweet tea. The more junior officers under paid and over armed will be happy to practice their English. Wherryoofrrom? How arr you? When however the superintendent appears in front of his officers he is like a bank manager behind his desk reviewing a rather disappointing balance. Yet relationships are everything here and my rather greying hair and age are a distinct advantage. Sometimes I am even called sir, a title I rarely got while teaching up the Shankill. More tea and hand shaking and we are the best of friends.

If my officer is on the ball he may have arranged a seminar on family violence, or trauma healing or peacebuilding and pulled in the great and the good from around the area. Here people always get a small allowance for attending seminars or training events as well as food in the middle of the day. These often take place in poorly lit and often damp rooms where people sit on the floor on small cushions. A sort of flip chart and pens are provided. Electricity is rarely available in remote areas. In another region the NGO is working with widows from both sides of the war. Widows are about as low caste as you can get. Seen as bad luck they usually are turned out of their husband’s Hindu extended family home and have to fend for themselves and any children they have. In yet another area small centres have been set up by a woman’s co-op. Disputes over water, firewood, grazing animals and the like are resolved through a mixture of western mediation and traditional elders’ consultation.

In all of these places you get wonderful pictures, meet amazingly friendly and helpful people and sometimes pick up a very powerful stomach bug. Often this lasts longer than the memories.

One young woman about 23 years old was very obviously disabled and as a result not good marriage material. The gunmen had swept through her village when she was 17. All families were to “donate” a young person to the cause of freedom. Her brother was taken. Her parents went into a permanent state of mourning for their only son. The Hindu culture demands that he light the funeral pyre for his parents after death. They remained inconsolable for many days. Finally this brave young woman made contact with the local commander and arranged to take her brothers place. The exchange was made. Then after over a year of active service she sustained a gun shot wound to her foot which stubbornly refused to heal. She was discharged and with the poor medical care these remote people have come to accept the infection spread. The rest as they say is a lonely poverty stricken life.

This is Nepal beyond Kathmandu and the familiar trekking trails where life is getting better but only very slowly.

Joe Campbell .

Nepal and the Phone Revolution

In common with many other developing countries Nepal has been benefiting from the phone revolution. Less than 2 years ago I met a man in the far west who had walked the most of two days just to make a call to far off Kathmandu checking up on his son in hospital after an accident. For the 160,000 people in that remote region there were 2 phone lines and not always working. Today lots of little corner shops have a handset connected to a satellite. Now people can keep in touch with relatives working over he border in India and others working in the Gulf and indeed around the world.
On the mobile front new companies have emerged, costs are dropping and the long queues for government approved zim cards have been bypassed. Control has been moved from often-corrupt easygoing officials to the private sector. Now in even remote areas where running water and electricity are very rare mobiles far outnumber cars, bikes and trucks. Charging is usually by solar power for the very latest Indian and Chinese made models with more gadgets and memory than would have been dreamt of only 12 months ago. People on pushbikes use them, motorcyclists have them tucked into the side of their helmets, and even Hindi priests have been seen reaching into their orange robes to take a call. As the FM radio network has grown now the mobile brings today’s news into homes and corner shops with not an electric wire in sight. Forget the old land lines, Nepal is changing and the humble mobile is playing a key role.

Mugu without Makeup

Its 5.30am, we have washed our faces at the guest house tap, bags are packed, ready for the 2.5 hr walk to the airstrip to meet the 8am flight back to Surkett and on to Doti vie Nepalgunj. Its already overcast reducing the chances of a flight today, but you have to be there just in case, flight turnaround time is about 10 minutes.

The birds have been singing for an hour and some shops and homes are already coming to life as we walk up the roughly cobbled street. Smoke is drifting out of windows and doorways as cooking fires are coaxed into life. Strings of plastic buckets and basins, others of pots, pans and brushes are being hitched to nails on walls outside the small shops. The dust and dirt from yesterday is swept up or pushed away. The bank awaits its bimonthly delivery of money by air, until then it acts as the keeper of the tic sheet, all to be repaid when the money arrives.

As our path drops down to the valley floor we cross a river where woman are already washing clothes while others wait their turn to fill water containers for the days cooking. Some have had their fill and are balancing the ten-gallon container on one hip as they make their way up the steep uneven path home. This is a district where over 60,000 people eek out a day-to-day living mainly in the fields and terraces. There are no roads, cars, tractors or bikes. Where walking is not a leisure activity, it’s a necessity.

We are struck by just how quiet it is as we pass through another village where we count at least 50 woman harvesting wheat by hand, soon it will be tasty flat bread for the whole family.
A few men work with pairs of buffalo to plough up another field preparing for rice planting, monsoon is expected in a couple of weeks. Small naked unwashed children appear and I am reminded that because of child mortality in this region they usually are not named until they reach 5 years old.

It’s got cloudier and somewhere we have taken a wrong path, as we ponder where next, a man shouts and gestures further up the hillside. He’s renewing the thatch on his house, and knows exactly where the two foreigners are going at this time of the day. From his vantage point he’s likely been watching us for the past hour.

As we get close to the airfield we listen for the small plane. We scan the hills and valleys, but they are disappearing fast in the gathering mist, no flight today. We join the 4 or 5 others waiting in hope perhaps this afternoon, or tomorrow. We spend a while watching the donkey owner move the 40k bags of rice delivered on yesterday’s flight to a secure store, then later in the afternoon workers, mainly woman arrive to be paid on the UN’s rice for work programme. Each gladly receives a bag, soon in the misty distance we can see the distinctive white bags slowly make their way up and over the hills on the backs of their owners. Its just not possible to grow enough food for the people who live in this remote region. The plane is a lifeline, but not today. Now its raining, visibility is less that 100 meters, we shelter, share the local rice, water pipe, toilet and the floor to sleep on.
This is Mugu with makeup.
(Mugu is a district in the far north west of Nepal. According to govt figures it is the poorest district in the country.)