Getting Anything Done

August 27 2007

Is Impossible. I am not kidding, on any given day I usually have a little list of things in my head that I need to get done. And on any given day Nepal will have it's own ideas... anything from broken pc's, power cuts that last days, traffic accidents bringing whole towns or highways to a standstill forever, or the strikes. Today it is the strikes I have not really mentioned the strikes before in too much detail which is strange because they occur almost every week for some reason or another. No one ever seems to know what they are for and we often only have a few hours notice of an impending strike. When Kathmandu valley has a strike whoever it is leading the strike (usually something to do with the Maoists) ensures that the entire valley comes to a standstill for however long they see fit. The way that they accomplish this is that on every major road every 100 metres or so they deploy groups of around 100 young men whose job it is to stop (and apparently in some cases destroy or at the very least deactivate) and vehicle trying to pass through the checkpoint. This is an extremely efficicnt system resulting in complete chaos throughout the city. We have experienced all of this first hand in Sugandas car on our second day here and it is pretty hairy I can assure you. If the car has tourists in it they are permitted to pass through but not after some nerve wracking whacking of the car and shouting at the driver... aaah Nepal. So today we have been trying to sort out Jon's US visa for Colorado. First we had to come to the city late last night and stay in a hotel because we knew that we would not be able to travel today.. then we arrive at the embassy only to find that it moved offices YESTERDAY so now we have to travel all the way across town through the angry mobs.. then to arrive and get in line behind around 100 Nepalis... by that point we were quite close to boiling point so when the american immigration officer started accusing Jon of trying to illegaly work in the US Jon just started shouting at him ha ha ha ha (that I would have liked to have seen!)but it seemed to work and he now has a visa hurrah!!

Ok enough moaning I should be used to it by now.. I will just update you on what we have been doing for the past few days. We have been working at a different orphanage to ours during the afternoons and helping the guys there paint the walls as they are absolutely filthy. When we pulled the beds away to get at the walls the dust was around 5 inches thick it was gross. These kids dont just have bites from bed bugs they have deep deep scars. Their bellies are distended perhaps from worms or perhaps due to the fact that they eat beaten rice twice a day and nothing else.. the toilet is disgusting, their clothes are filthy.. you get the picture the whole thing is very sad and we were quite shaken by the whole thing even though we knew what to expect before we got there. Some orphanages in Nepal are run as businesses basically the more kids you have the more funding you receive from the government so you can see where I am going with this. There is a little 3 year old baby who is smaller than my 1 year old neice back at home.. but anyway now they have a nice clean bedroom and today Suganda was going back to meet with the owner and discuss the cleanliness issues with them.

We are leaving for Phokara on Saturday with Tim who is arriving in the morning.. we are all really excited there are a few friends of ours joining us which is great so we will have a little gang. Just trying to finalise the details but its a little hard as everywhere is shut because of the strike but the plan is to raft from here to Phokara and then spend a few days relaxing there. After that we will take a guide and hike to the Anapurna Base Camp where we will take some lessons in mountaineering and ice-climbing etc and if everything goes well we will attempt one of the lower summits in that area (standing at a mere 5300 metres). The weather conditions are not optimal so it may not be possible but you can imagine we are all excited at the prospect of climbing a mountain in the Himalays!!

Caroline