April 08

Namaste! And greetings from Kathmandu !

Can't believe I have been here nearly three weeks now. Sorry for the slow e mail - i have been just settling in and trying to get used to living in kathmandu. I am now on my third bout of diarrehea so its been a bit of a bumpy start so far-and as a result i have found some of the new tastes and smells of Kathmandu a bit much! I am now armed with antibiotics and pills to tackle giardia - so hopefully that'll all be over for a bit!

I am here with about 15 other new volunteers from the UK , India , Uganda and the Philipinnes. They are a good crowd. We are staying in guest house, in Lanchaur a quiet area to the north of Thamel the vibrant and at times overwhelming main tourist centre.

The guest house is on a square with a few local shops and restaurants - where you can by a plate of 10 (small vegetable dumplings) momos for 20p for a meal. There are ducks wandering around the square - the local people here are Newari and they like to eat ducks. There is a small holding up the road round the back of the british embassy where there are goats, cows, chicken and sheep which sometimes wander down the road past the hotel. There are also many street dogs around our area which home out and bark all night and curl up at the roadside and sleep all day. The street front is also the place for washing your clothes and your children. As we are getting close to election time there are aslo many election campaighns happening with loud speakers and jinngly music - these usually start very early in the day sometimes in the square outside our hotel.

The rest of Kathmandu is a chaotic mix of smells, colours, sites and noise.

The main streets are noisy and chock a block with traffic that belch smoke create dust and seem to follow very limited driving rules. Quite a few of the busy roads in kathmandu are not tarmaced so its very dusty at times.

The back streets are old tall dark and medievil looking with amazing little shops selling everything from colourful material and pashminas, spices, tea, metal wear and many types of rice and lentils to fresh raw meat shops with animal heads on dsplay ! This meat is often covered in flies and huge carcuses are put into the back of rickshaws and delivered. I have been vegetarian since i arrived! There are also colourful outdoor market stalls of flower garlands and fruit and veg.

Many of the old down town buildings have pretty carved wood Newari art work on the building fronts and windows - much of which is just falling into decay. There are also many templs and Stupas that appear on squares and street corners which local people make offerings at . While this is going on cows, wandering trades men bicycles and motorbikes all clog up the street, minibuses come trundling by beeping their horns expecting everything else to get out of their way, there is often litter all over the streets and a mix of smells from insence to spicy cooking smells and ocassioanally minging drains. I have recently taken to a bicycle and started cycling through all of this -i went on a reccee route to the office following another volunteer - the rules of the road are don't dither and the space infront of you is yours - and then just get on with it!

Many of the houses in this part of town don't seem to have running water so you often see people - mostly women at the local taps filling up numerous water vessels . It is the end of the dry season now so water is short in the kathmandu valley and there is only ever a trickle of water coming out of these taps - with which to cook, wash people and clothes with and drink- it looks a pretty hard existance! At the same time our guest house has a v good water supply and many of the larger and more expensive hotels have swimming pools. I have been swimming in a few of these -It doesn't seem fair but - I don't think i could survive here otherwise!

There are also many amazing squares here with Newari (the local people and crafts men) Pagoda like archtecture which are not preserved as a museum but are part of everyday living - a place to sell goods, hold a public event or just sit and chill out (if you are male).

I haven't started work yet - as we have several weeks of in country training to prepus for life and work in Nepal - we are doing a quite intensive nepali language course of 4 - 6 hours a day plus cultural and country training - all about the caste systems - how to eat a dahl bhat with your hands without breaking any local cultural rules - as we will be staying in a village for a week - each of us placed with a family -we have had squat toilet and public bathing lessons!

We will start work in mid may - but i won't meet my organisation til after the elections on the 10 april. I'll be working with a Dalit - low caste- group. There are about 50 volunteers in total throughout Nepal working in promoting equality/inclusion and human rights in education, HIV and goverenance programmes. We met quite a few of them at them already at our VSO office party when we fisrt arrived- but will meet the remainder of them april - as they will all come back to Kathmandu due to potential unrest throughout the country.

I don't know whether the elections are significant enough globally to Make it to uk news but it should be an interesting time - and i do wonder what will happen -I am trying to keep up to date through the local papers and hearsay - the Maoists believe that they should get the majority vote (as they have the interest of progressing many social reforms )and the outcome will be 'interesting' either way, there are also many separate groups in the terai - the plain in Nepal where most the population live that want to disrupt the elections and stop them going a head - there have been quite a few bomb blasts in this area by these groups and a few people have been killed - and so local ordinary people are demonstrating to get these groups brought to justice as nothing was being done - there is a lot of intimidation in rural areas and small villages pressurising people to vote for certain parties - many party candidates are also disappearing - Kathmandu has a high military presence to deal with any civil unrest - (the army is still controlled by the king). If it gets bad we may have to leave the country

As Kathmandu is so busy smelly and crazy - getting out of it at weekends is a priority for me!

The first weekend a group of us went to climb Jamacho a peak around 2100m above Kathmandu - (1400m) this is a nature reserve and provided a pleasant walk up the mountain through the forest to summit with .... a stupa on top and tons of prayer flags. When we reached the top we had a panoramic view over kathamandu - and we should have had a view over the ganash himal - big snowy mountains - but it was cloudy. What we did see before we were about to go down the mountain was that the way we came up was on fire and sit seemed to be spreading rapidly - there were towers of smoke rising from the forest - and through the binoculars - you could see large flames! We deceide to go back down the mountain - the otherside - which was lovely - beautiful trees, views and birdsong and we soon forgot about the fire - we did however come out at the back of an army training camp in a place we shouldn't have been - and it took a while - showing them pics we'd taken of the fire before they'd let us through! We then had a fair walk back to Kathmandu through some villages - but it was lovely - and we stopped for some tea and snacks in a friendly local shop. It was about a 10 hour day out walking in all. The next day the English language nepali newspaper said that the fire had been brought under control using several fire extinguishers!

This last Sunday i took to the nearby hills round Kathmandu on a mountain bike! The trails around the villages are great - excellent mountain biking terrain - the people were friendly and i had some excellent opportunities to practice my nepali - i received some compliments about my nepali being 'ramro' which is good ! and received blank looks off others! It was a delightful bike ride -I passed through green terraced wheet fields - through farming villages with cows and goats and past many temples as well as having the experience to chat to friendly locals. Whenever i got my camera out to take a shot children would usually pop up wanting to be in the photo - and so would their mums and dads too sometimes - they were just happy to see their photo on my digi camera screen and would all crowd round after to see - i will have to get some photos printed and go back. The majority of people here are very friendly - and want a chat without being invasive - especially going out through the villages round where they perhaps do not see so many badeshis (foreigners).

So it has been an interesting start here with highs and not so high bits - the real lows are the stinking toilets, traffic pollution and litter and the stinky minging river we have to cross to get to the VSO office - where some out of town people squat and make a living from the rubbish - oh and eating anything with rice is awful too!.

The highs are the friendly local people and an opportunity to experience an exciting colourful and vibrant place- and the opportunity to learn about and understand it. It's also great to explore and see life in the countryside and villages. There are also lots of nice places to eat out and have coffee and cake too that are within budget- if you do not go too often!

Well if you've read this far- it would be really lovely to hear back from you by e mail - or snail mail and find out about life back at home - and promise i'll send a reply! I'll try and get some photos out too and at some stage set up a blog site with all my photos and news.

So My address is

Amanda Talbot

Vso Nepal

Po box 207

Sanepa

Lalitpur

Kathmandu

nepal

Well bye for now - Love and best wishes

Mandy