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.)