Nepal Update Early 2009 -Work - Training on the Terai

2009 has been flying by so far and my sunny Christmas trip to Chitwan National Park to see the elephants seems quite along time ago now and I have actually been quite focussed on work the last few months.

So what have I been doing ....We had our partnership review with VSO to look at our progress made in 2008. (Just a reminder I work for a The Dalit NGO the Dalit NGO federation (DNF), as an Organisational Development (OD) and advocacy advisor so I can share my skills - DNF is an umbrella NGO that unites Dalits across Nepal and raises their voice to secure their social and political rights). In some areas we have have made quite good progress but in other areas work can be a challenge I find! Nepalis have their own way of doing things, their own culture and approach to work and it takes time to work out what this is especially with the language barrier. What I have discovered is also backed up by the book fatalism in development - about development in Nepal. The book states and I have also found that Nepali organisations have their own unofficial communication systems amongst key staff and they forget to involve others, also responsibility often belongs to somebody else and meetings and events always get planned at the last minute and start late. This is fairly typical at my organisation and others! It also takes a while to discover some of these things and find out which of these things you can and can't change. The book also goes on to say that Nepalis equate hard work with pain and see it as an act of wisdom to avoid it and that they believe that God will ensure that any important work gets finished. Also organisations like to employ 'aphno manche' their own people- family and friends - this is either as they trust them or want to do them a favour - a job with a donor funded NGO is good to have - and whilst this nepotism may be frowned upon by us - many Nepalis see it is normal - for example Pachandra the new president has recently given his sister an important role in the Nepali Ministries! Whilst people do work hard and do a good job at DNF it is useful to understand the local culture too - for your own sanity!

I have found some ways to work effectively with DNF and delivering training seems to be one of them and as I have been doing quite a lot of this recently I have had quite a positive start to 2009 - after learning a few lessons on the way! As well as working with my organisation to deliver training I also work with other volunteers to support VSO's partner organisations too. So here's an update of what I've been doing work wise plus a bit of an insight into the turmoil that Nepal is in.

The 2nd week of January Miranda, Laura (two other VSO vols) and I held our monitoring and evaluation (M and E) pilot training, training potential trainers. As volunteers we often work together to provide training sessions for VSO's partner organisations. The organisations that VSO Nepal work with on the governance programme in Nepal are all NGOs fighting to secure the rights of marginalised people (Dalits, women, disabled and ethnic groups). The aim is we train representatives from each partner organisation and they then go back and deliver the training in their own organisation. For me It was fun to be back in the classroom (I used to teach) and the participants got a lot out of the interactive training and they gave us a fair bit of feedback on how to improve the session. Interestingly one of the things they found most useful was filling in a form that gave them a clear M and E action plan with a purpose, times tasks and even identified responsibilities! They seemed to really like thinking this through and having a structured plan. Thinking things through and having plans is something that Nepali's in my experience do not usually seem to do. In the training session we set behaviour rules - one of the things that Nepali's commonly offend at is being late and having their mobiles going off continuously - so we agreed the rule that if this happened they had to sing and dance to entertain us! Needless to say we had lots of singers and dancers - all the DNF participants had to perform (including myself! I'd forgotten to turn my phone off!) Nepalis love singing and dancing and are soulful and sincere when they do sing and they are also very good at it - there's rarely any shying away! -so it's all good fun!

After this training it was off to Pokhara to do the first of our 4 sessions of regional training for DNF member organistaions. DNF as a federation provides support to their member organisations -of around 300 small groups across the country that fight for Dalit Rights at community level. We had a VSO grant and had planned to deliver training on funding proposal development, vision, mission, goals and objectives training and human rights training in 2 days - so we had a lot to cover in a short time. The idea was to use our own staff from the regions to facilitate the training sessions and build up their skills by doing this as well as working with my counterpart Suman. We had invited the regional staff to KTM for a day's training one weekend to familiarise them with the materials - trouble is half the training day was hijacked for a board meeting, and the participants after the training didn't really seem to have familiarised themselves on their part of the training materials!

The day before heading to Pokhara my counterpart who I was making the training with was AWOL and not picking up phone calls. We were supposed to be meeting to finalise the training plan as it was our first training session -just so we'd be organised, know who was doing what, make sure we had all the translated notes etc... - he never turned up so I went of to pokhara hoping to meet him there!

I travelled to Pokhara on the Greenline tourist bus as this is seen as one of the safest ways of making the journey - plus you are not sardined in (you have your own seat) and you don't have to risk having a goat or a chicken on your lap!! The road climbs and snakes up out of the KTM valley and into the deep river valley below where rafting trips start. On the road - rangy changy (nepali for colourful) buses and trucks overtake on blind bends beeping their sonic sound deafening horns, their tyres are bold, the breaks squeak, they are desperately overloaded but they look nice and sound impressive. There is a worrying amount of smashed up vehicles en route on my last journey saw a bus with the top half missing, abandoned head on collision vehicles plus a few minor mishaps like trucks smacked into crash barriers! Crash barriers are a rarity - I just wonder how many vehicles end up in the valley below that we just dont see from the road. About 2/3 into the journey we arrived in Dumre and were stuck in traffic there for quite a while. I noticed our driver lie down on the seat and go to sleep. Why???? There was a bandh - a public strike caused by blocking the road in the town. Two buses were blocking the road - I asked a few locals what was happening - my Nepali can manage that - apparently the bus drivers had fallen out and one of them had been beaten up - possibly by the police - so they blocked the road in protest for several hours! After 3 hours in Dumre the roads cleared and I arrived in pokhara 11 hours after setting off from KTM - had a beer pizza and went to bed.

We stayed on New Road in town - a noisy dusty highway - for the training (not by the lake) in the hotel Deep Sagar - the staff were terribly nice and helpful and brought me buckets of hot water so I could wash my hair (what a princess!). There seemed to be a water problem in the hotel and the next few days there was very little - so no more showers! Many homes and businesses rely on electric water pumps to get water up from the ground but as there is about 14 hours loadshedding in many parts of Nepal this is not possible.

The next day, I'd arranged to meet Dil my pokhara colleague at 9 am to go through the training with him - I think we had different plans for how the day would go! He turned up at 10.45 and then as we tried to go through the training, his mobile phone was going 10 to the dozen - he is very popular in Pokhara - he told me. Soon after this his friends turned up and then about half an hour later it was time for dhaal bhaat. Dil told me he had his own ideas on how to make the training - which I thought was great - so after trying to get him to explain them to me I thought I should just leave him to it! I have no authority over these people - I just advise, encourage facilitate and train.

Dil is a great guy - he is a local activist and is currently not paid by DNF but still works for them along with other work - that is the way it goes with donors - sometimes the funding runs out and staff don't get paid or office rents too. We zipped around town on Dil's motorbike running on empty and at one point it wouldn't start - I met the local president of the board for dnf and Dil's family then we made some photocopies. My colleagues from KTM turned up about 9 ish - I'd gone to bed by then (things happen early in nepal) so no time to work out a plan!

The next day we planned to start the training at 9 am but things don't often go to plan here - the big national president who had to open the training was not there on time to do it and we couldn't start without him! He arrived over an hour later with other key people they'd been having their own meeting! We then had over an hour of welcome and formalities (yaaaaaaaaawn! !!) Nepalis all really like to TALK! Again this is a cultural thing they like to do to show respect to each other. And then finally we started the training. My colleagues started the training and talked to the audience for about an hour and then decided they or weren't sure how to continue and wind up the training session and announced to the participants that it was over to me for the rest of the day!!!! Great ! So I trained and they translated. We had lost half a day - about a third of our time and still had all the training sessions to get through. But ke garne? A popular Nepali expression which means - what can we do about it? -implying not a right lot! - so therefore why worry..about it.. (well actually because they -some of the younger nepalis do care and were a bit put out by the fact we'd lost so much time)

They were a lovely group of participants about 30 people from both city and some pretty remote parts of Nepal - all from small community organisations focussing on dalit rights. We made training on Vision, mission goal and objective setting and writing funding proposals. There was a lot of group work and improvisation, the electricty failed ages ago so there was no power point - we had no nepali student notes to give to the participants as ....well not quite sure of the reason here - they were always just about to be translated and my counterpart who was organising them seemed to think that he was immune from any responsibility here blaming electricity supplies in Kathamandu - despite having ages to get them done! Nepalis don't do responsibility. So we made the best training we could and the participants seemed to enjoy it mostly though there were some grumblings about lack of time, organisation and notes - which my colleagues picked up on and told me we had to do better on for next time!!! Great! Learning points achieved! We finished by making yet more speeches and giving certificates - Nepalis LOVE certificates. Overall it was a successful session and I made quite a few new Nepali friends over our morning khadga and dhaal bhaat.

I told my VSO colleagues about my training experience and they thought it was fairly normal for Nepal -but given the grumblings from participants I think it is good that they wont settle for second best and that they want things to be done better so this does not have to be normal for Nepal.

While our training was going on there was a bandh in pokhara - the day before the training there had been clashes between maoist students and UML (united marxist lennist) students apparently the former broke into a meeting of the later and attacked them...which wouldn't be suprisng as the maoist youths seem to be nothing more than a terrorising bunch of thugs that the government does nothing to stop or control, they've smashed up newspaper offices and beaten up journalists amongst other things and don't get called to account for it.

After the training I met up with Pokhara VSO volunteers for dinner and then relaxed at lakeside for a day. I hired a gearless Indian bike and had a leisurely and rather bumpy (i'm used to my mountain bike!) cycle to some villages round the other side of the lake - the sun came out and I stopped and sat by the lake out of town for along time and soaked it all up.

So I'm off to the mid and far west and then the eastern regions next, soon - all being well - although we have had to reschedule two of the events at the last minute!

Part 2

So It's now mid february and I have returned from all my training trips to the regions -down on the Terai - the plains of Nepal - in the regional capitals Nepalgunj capital of the mid west, Danghedi the far west and Biratnager in the East. Overall it was very successful.

So first I flew to Nepalgunj on a 20 seater propeller plane, Nepalgunj is about an hours flight skirting the edge of the Himalyas past the langtang, Manaslu, Annapurna and Daligiri ranges close by before the snowy topped mountains seem to sweep up to the north towards Tibet and our plane headed south down to the terai. It was hot, sunny and flowery at the airport a quiet place in a field away from town - and on arrival I jumped on a rickshaw to take me into town. I like the Terai it has a slow pace and you see lots of colourfully clothed women going around on bicycles. As we hit town there were a growing number of trucks amongst the rickshaws and cows probably as we were near the Indian boarder and this was a trade route. On arrival I checked into the hotel 'Green Palace' and went for a leisurely stroll round town before meeting up with my Nepali colleagues - I'm starting to take things more leisurely now myself! I went past shops selling dozens of types of different lentils, ropes and baskets, copper containers, past a big mosque and a pond side temple. The mosquitos here seemed like they were already in full force and it's not even hot wet season! I met up with LV the new regional coordinator and we did all the necessary printing shopping and organising for the training over the next few days - LV had worked in Dubai before had a great notion of time and was incredibly helpful. - I felt in good hands! The training over the next couple of days went really well, JB the regional president didn't feel the need to make long lengthy speeches, Suman my counterpart and I had got together and made a lesson plan, he facilitated the sessions he felt comfortable with, I did the rest we had participants for Mugu, Jumla or Humla and Dolpa (districts high up by the Tibetan boarder) as well as quite a few women participants. We did head shoulders knees and toes' to liven them up in the morning before the training. They loved it! And then on the second day in the training we were kept alert by a mouse running round! Again a lovely group of participants and I made friends with many of them over spicy morning snacks and dhaal bhaat in the evening. The only complaint (apart from the mosquitos and lack of running water) was that Neplai buildings do not seem to have any sound insulation - and neither do Nepalis! After our training had finished a new group came to the hotel at midnight. And they certainly made a noise - no consideration for the late hour yelling on their mobile phones, TVs on at full blast and all in a big echoey building! But if you are from the villages then coming to town to stay in a hotel is in itself a bit of a party!

After the training and before heading off to Danghedi a 5 hour bus ride a way we met up with LV and JB and discussed how we could support them in the regions in the future. In the regional backwaters they are so pleased to have both representatives from DNF and VSO in town- and for me, because of my feelings of uncertainty on how committed DNF are to having a volunteer at central office, it was good to identify and discuss ways that I might be able to support them in the regions in the future. This would be mainly through encouraging working with like minded organisations to get some funding into the area to deliver projects focussing on human rights awareness to livelihoods and training programmes to generate incomes for marginalised groups. They need so much support in the regions but little has been given in the past few years because of the Maoist activity there causing unrest before they came to power in Kathmandu last April. So we had our final teas and coffees mid morning and then looked at heading off to Dangeri the regional capital for the far west. We heard that there were bandhs on the way so we might not be able to get through but after a few calls with Birkha the far west regional coordinator and the local UN office we confirmed that the official Terai Bandh called by the Tharu a local ethnic group campaigning for their rights would not be held until the weekend (today was thursday) so after picking up the president of dnf who had just flown to nepalgunj we headed west!

The road to Dangheri snakes through royal badia national park - jungle where tigers and rhinos hang out and then it crosses over a large suspension bridge over the karnali river. It was a rather squashed journey in a microvan holding twice the number of people it was built for. We stopped for kadga and snacks in chisopani- which means cold water- before continuing our journey - however we were soon stopped by an unexpected local bandh (road block) called by the local community who were blocking the road. A few days ago the brother of the family had been killed by a passing motorbike (being ridden by a Maosit) and the family were demanding justice and compensation by blocking the road. The law in Nepal so I believe is that if you kill somebody you are responsible for their funeral expenses, if you just damage them then you are responsible for their health care - likely to be much more costly - so its best to finish them off properly to save yourself some costs! Some agreement was met before sunset and the road cleared and we pulled into Dangheri after dark, to the hotel Amit Plaza where we met Bhirka the far west coordinator, Nirp his asssistant and local student activist and the regional president. After introductions and chatter it was time for dhaal bhaat and bed!

The morning I explored round the hotel, there was a cowshed next door and you were more likely to see ox carts and rickshaws than buses going down the high street. Looking from the roof tops it was quite a green city and in the park over the road there were lots of birds flying around including tropical hornbills. I liked it! We did our shopping and printing for the training and set up the room (not even bothering trying with power point any more) and once participants arrived and had had Dhaal bhaat we started our training. The training mostly went well, Our national president opened the training Suman my counterpart delivered much more of the training this time making me more redundant! - But he being a Nepali male likes to talk and talk and lecture and he didn't take too kindly to my reminders of time keeping and so we had a bit of a tiff!!! But I didn't want to have another 'and now its over to Mandy' - when we ran out of time and still have a lot to cover!!! but overall he did a great job of training and translating. In the evening Birkha took Suman and I around town to the park, the Tharu market, the Hindu temple with a Bishwokarma god - God of the occupational castes - shoemakers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, tailors etc... We then went back to Birkha's for a cup of tea and met his family before evening dhaal bhaat.

The next day was a full day training. A real team effort with Birkha Nirp Suman and I making the training. After I'd finished my part on proposal writing training and they started on Human Rights in Nepali I wondered into town to get the certificates printed - I had to sneek in through the back door of the shop as it was the weekend Tharu Bandh. After the training we had kadga (snacks or as Nepalis usually write on their menus - 'snakes') on the roof and a few drinks - The boys were on the Nepali spirits but I stuck to beer as the spirits are usually cheap eythol alcohol and there were recent reports of people losing their sight! We had a final Dhaal Bhaat and then after discussing everything form the Russian revolution, the global economic crisis and world trade - went to bed! After all this Dhaal bhaat and snakes (ha ha!) and little exrecise I was starting to get quite a big tummy! We had a busy morning planned before my 12.30 flight.

The next morning Nirp and Birkha turned up at my door with piles of fried egg sandwiches - Oohh yummy! But I did need to save some space, as Suman and I had had an invite from our central president to go to his house for dhaal bhaat an hour later! You are probably recognising a recurrent theme here of how life seems to revolve round dhaal bhaat!

After the sandwiches we visited Dangeri government orphanage, which DNF's far western regional president was also president of - it was basic but certainly not unpleasant - it was boys only and they were playing karambo a board game outside in the sunshine. The orphans here were said to be genuine ones - children of parents lost in the conflict - rather than economic ones. They were all boys the girls were said to be in Kathmandu - but out of the few orphanages I have been to there is often more boys than girls - so where are the girls?? frighteningly possibly trafficed or in brothels or possibly the economic orphans - are boys and sent to the orphanages in towns to get a better start in life whilst the girls stay back in the villages and work.

After visiting the orphanage we then headed to the central president's house where he wanted to welcome me as a visitor (he's from Dangheri) to meet his family, for dhaal bhaat and photos, it was delicious local food and after food I said i'd make a quick hello to Nirp's family next door before heading to the airport. Of course no visit is quick in Nepal! Despite my protests due to time I had to have some snacks and meet everybody!

I was the only person with any sense of urgency about catching my plane! My counterpart Suman was off on a field trip else where and everybody else was on a different time mode - The airport was about 10km away by rickshaw and there was a Tharu Bandh. The other rickshaw drivers told us and our scared little rickshaw driver that we wouldn't get through to the airport due to the bandh. However Nirp, who accompanied me to the airport is the local student leader and knows everybody in town including the bandh organiser and after a discussion with a guy with a big stick we were through. Unfortunately the demonstraters had been drinking and were more likely to make trouble. I needn't have had any urgency to get to the airport as of course the flight was several hours late - fog in KTM probably - these small planes do not have radar equipment - so I took photos of butterflies and flowers and then I laid in the sun on the airport lawn and read my book - now you can't do that at Heathrow!

After 2 days back in town (KTM) it was back down to the Teari again this time to Biratnagar in the Eastern Region for the final part of our training. After my morning flight I was met by my Biratnager colleague at the airport on his motorbike - or course I didnt know I was being picked up like this and had a long tight dress on - so had an interseting ride back to the office where we had dhaal bhaat. After meeting colleagues in Biratnager we headed to Itahari about 30 minutes away where we would deliver the training. We stayed at the hotel Manasanta which had a kind of outdoor tropical feel and various pets including a python and little fluffy creatures running around. I met Dili Ram my translator for the training (Suman my counterpart had headed off to the Nepali hills to inspect a project DNF are working on) who was very easy and enjoyable to work with and did a very good translation job. Again our training was affected by bandhs (I really can't remember what the one in Biratnagar was for - but basically if groups want to get attention they block the road to stop transport, people going to work and supplies getting through. This is a real nuisance for Kathmandu as it is in the hills and all the goods and fuel has to be trucked in through the Terai from India). The final training went well and the participants worked hard, I made more Nepali friends. Itehari was another dusty developing linear town with lack of planning and noisy trucks rattling through. The evenings in my room were spent jumping around killing the many mosquitos who thought they'd be sharing with me. We celebrated after the training with the regional president and had beer and snacks and then on the Saturday Dili Ram kindly showed me around. We visited one of the training participant' s (Sheela's) organisation so I could find out more about what they did and the support they needed. Sheela had decided to become a Dalit activist when she was a school girl and had been beaten by her teachers for drinking out of the same water vessel - many years on she still has the scars. So she works on a variety of issues including 'Boxi' which translates to something like 'witchcraft' - Dalit women are often accused of this and punished by society and as they lack education they cannot stand up for themselves, domestic violence, administering school scholarships for DNF and actually Sheela had also helped Dili get his passport when the officials were asking for a cash bribe from him as he was a Dalit. We the visited Dahran a hill town on Dili's motorbike for lunch and to meet Gordon a new VSO volunteer and then headed off up into the hills to a view point. Unfortunately this time of year was a bit cloudy so we didn't see the Himalayas. The next day it was back to Kathmandu.

Overall the training went well and was the most personally rewarding work I have done here so far. DNF aim to support the grass root organizations they work for but do not really have the funding and manpower to do this at present and so for most organisations from the backwaters of Nepal it was the first time DNF have given them such attention and training and they were so pleased to be having some support and found it really useful - plus they had the added attraction of the foreign VSO volunteer ! A couple of weeks after the training and there have been constant Bandhs in the Terai so the training would not have been possible had we done it any later.