~ sometimes there is no title ~

I am sharing this picture just for fun. I took this picture in a small village hamlet in a remote area in my district. A boy had taken his mother's suwral (shawl) and was running around and playing...

In a couple of days I leave for Pokhara to co-facilitate a training on Leadership for exective team and board members of local Nepali NGOs. I have also convinced my counterpart, Sushila ji, to come with me on the bus ride and to participate. She manages our current staff here in the district of 21 - and is a natural leader.

One of the great things about working on this workshop has been the opportunity to create it with four of my fellow VSO colleagues. Each of them has extensive experience in their field. Most, much more than me. So - I get to learn a ton from them, as well as adding in a few pieces that I feel passionate about: the value of emotions and emotional intelligence within the workplace and leadership, culture and the workplace, and the importance of staff development.

It's all an experiment. We will see how our ideas and plan translates within the Nepali context...I'm sure we'll learn as much as the participants.

In the meantime, I am attentive to the fact that the corn season is coming to an end. And the rice in the paddys has grown really tall now and is sprouting. I have no idea what comes next. I could ask someone, but am enjoying just learning the seasons and foods by waiting and watching.

I notice that my markers for time passing here is by watching the crops: planting, growing, harvesting, drying and packing...and noticing the seasonal changes. And have totally forgotten about school year calendars, reporting deadline markers, and the Western summer season.

Participatory Rural Analysis, Focus: Gender

These days I'm processing my field work experiences and thoughts from last month. Now that I've had time to rest, recover, think, and do loads of laundry.

I'll be writing up an official report of my experiences to submit to VSO Nepal that will be part of a document for policy advocacy at the government level and programming recommendations. My part will focus on gender in Nepal, in particular. And I have saved my more personal thoughts and experiences in a journal that I kept every day during the research.

Our focus: poverty. What does poverty really look like right now in the rural areas of Makwanpur? And specifically, for excluded women in this area?

Women could be considered excluded for a variety of reasons. In this project, by geography. Some villages are extremely remote. These communities don't have access to health services, education, or representation in local government. Invariably, however, geography seems connected with caste and ethnicity here. Usually it is the so-called higher caste communities that live closer to the main roads, and services. Indigenous groups, so-called lower caste communities live further away.

Our research was extremely thorough and participatory. We met with communities and had them give us information about who lives where, what services they have access to, the main community resources, and challenges.

We also had them define what poverty means. This is important to note - as poverty is extremely relative. In one community, there were people who didn't have toilets, but they considered themselves "middle class", because they live in a beautiful environment, have access to food all year long, and their children can easily attend school.

In another community, someone could live in a well built house and have all the amenities and food they need, but if they are comparing themselves to what they think it is to be well off from the television or stories they've heard, they consider themselves very poor.

One of the things that absolutely amazed me - coming from a culture where I only knew 3 of my neighbors really well- is that we could go to communities, sit with an individual or group, and get extremely detailed information for 50 to 100 of their neighbors. Number of people in the household, livelihood, access to electricity, water and toilets, levels of children in the house...

I got to know Hatiya, the area we our team was in, extremely well. Our team walked up into the jungle (i.e. forest) and met with small groups from the indigenous communities. We walked through rivers, and field and field and field of rice.

It is the rainy season, after all. Season of corn that has been harvested and is hanging from roofs. Season of rice shooting up as women bend over and plant, plant.

Several times women would grin at me, happy to see a visitor, and welcome me to come and work and plant with them. At those times, I wished our tasks weren't so overwhelming and I could have just worked along side them for a few hours. I've been told that planting rice is extremely difficult.

Also the season of, yes, storms. Usually we could just duck onto someone's porch for the hour or so that it rained so hard that it was hard to see the other side of the field. Once in our 15 days the rain didn't stop after an hour, and we realized that now we had to make a run for it.

When it rains that hard during the monsoon season, the rivers take over the roads and the buses stop running. So we ran through water up to my knees along a path way that had been dry 2 hours before. Made it to the bus, which - after strategizing for about 30 minutes - made a go for it and made it across the river. I'm not quite sure how, but I was certainly grateful to make it home for warm tea and a shower.

I drew up pictures of the maps that communities would make with local materials: rocks, leaves, sticks, dirt, was the team photographer, and hired a local youth to join our team and help with the health surveys.

I have a whole different sense and understanding of the work that we do in our organization now, and will find out this weekend how the management - using this information - to come up with the project goals for our upcoming 4 year project.

Dancing and Tea

I'm not going to lie. While beautiful and good - in so many ways - the last few weeks have also been really challenging and hard.

I heard that my grandmother (and last living grandparent) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and likely only has a couple of more months to live. She - and my father - are some of the most positive and flexible people I know, however, and my only challenge is a personal challenge of not being able to be there - for myself - to witness the process, be a part of this process. It feels really hard right now to be in Nepal and to not be in the Northwest.

Being with my other grandmother, Baba Dear, as she died last year, was profound for me in many ways, and one of the experiences I feel most grateful for in my life so far.

In addition, there is no end in sight to being really busy at work, so I have shifted from waiting for down time to realizing I need to carve out time to take care of myself and to stay in touch with people. It all happened so quickly, that realizing this has come bit by bit and through a bit of shock (what? this busy? in Nepal?).

Then I got an eye infection (from either a bug bite or something in the water) and my mosquito bites have become infected. I have never experienced this before. Maybe something to do with the climate and humidity? I am only moaning at this point - eye infection has cleared up and I have good medicine for my bites.

Then my camera broke. When I took it to Kathmandu to get it fixed, not only did they not fix it, but they stole my memory card (and photos that were still on it). That was really frustrating...

Anyways, I am not really feeling very negative or in despair. Though I have enjoyed a couple of good breakdowns in the last couple of days with friends. A good cry at the right time with the right person (or alone) really does help a lot of things, I think.

While not being at home with my family as we come to terms with realizing my grandmother won't likely live much longer is just really, really hard....the rest of everything is really a welcome, though highly uncomfortable, loss of a feeling of any sense of real control.

I've always tried to maintain as much of an illusion of being in control as possible - mostly for myself. And can't even really try right now. It's humbling, transforming, and really good for me.

In the meantime, I have been having a ton of fun visiting with other volunteers, visiting village homes, dressing up in saris, dancing, and always making time to enjoy a good glass of tea.

Over the last couple of years I have come to realize that a glass of warm tea is the cure to just about anything in life. Definitely, every Nepali I have met must agree, from the extensive research that I've conducted so far. Lots revolves around drinking tea here... Even if for just 15 minutes of warmth, comfort, balance, joy, and everything in the world - just for a moment - feeling just right.

Above: pictures of me enjoying Teej - a multi-day Nepali holiday where women dress in red, dance, fast, pray, and then bathe in the river. And a picture of "amma" (mother) making tea for myself, two of my friends, and the rest of the family in her upstairs kitchen of a mud house in what must be one of the most beautiful places in the world, Palung, where I spent last weekend.

Photos by Akke Antje Hettama

Post from my friend, Helen

Sharing this from my friend, Helen. Please note that yes, traveling in Nepal sometimes means that you aren't near restrooms. But rest assured that cultural norms dictate that men and women go far from each other and - while out in the open - there is a certain sense of "privacy" between the sexes that is insured!

A weekend in Hetauda

September 10, 2010 by Hels

Last weekend I went to Hetauda to stay with my VSO friend Tiffany. Hetauda is small town about 5 hours south of Kathmandu, heading towards the Terai region of Nepal (the hot bit that borders India). As its not quite in the Terai, its lush hills and greenery make it a really beautiful place to be, and I felt like I was on holiday for the weekend!

As Tiffany was in Kathmandu for a meeting we travelled down together on the 7:30am Jeep on Saturday morning. Taking the jeep is about three hours quicker than taking a bus as it follows dirt tracks a lot of the way. With 13 people packed into a jeep, it’s no more or less comfortable than a bus, however it does make for a slightly more scary and bumpy ride, and is definitely not for the faint hearted. Taking public transport is not only a great way to see more of the scenery of Nepal but also gives a great insight into the culture. People live so openly here and as you pass through small towns you really get a brief insight into their daily lives.
We arrived in Hetauda around midday after one tea stop and one amusing toilet stop, in which we were forced to bare all in front of a fellow female passenger who did nothing to hide the fact that she was happily watching us relieve ourselves in a not so concealing bush!

A couple of hours later, after venturing into town to get some food for dinner, we found ourselves at a Teej party. Teej is a three day festival for women which involves singing, dancing, fasting and puja (praying). Women typically dress up in their best red saris, bangles and decorate their hands with mehendi and either pray for the good health and long lives of their husbands, or future husbands.
Not happy to just let us watch, they ushered us in, sat us down, gave us food and much to my dismay, pretty much forced us to dance. Fortunately Tiffany is a fantastic dancer so this took the attention away from my awkward attempt and no one noticed when I slunk back to my chair to watch from the side lines!

On Sunday we headed back into town to buy some material – Tiffany wanted to buy a sari for another Teej party (for this weekend) and I decided to finally get myself a kurta surwal. Apart from the sari (mostly worn by older women), this is the traditional dress for Nepali women and is still worn across Nepal by the majority of women, with only the younger generation opting for western clothes. It is basically brightly coloured cotton baggy trousers worn under a matching or coordinating long top and scarf. It is currently at the tailors being made to fit but I will let you know how it turns out. I’m sure I will feel a bit silly wearing it, mainly as I’m not used to wearing such bright colours but, when in Rome…

I left Hetauda at 6am on Monday morning to make it back to Kathmandu for a meeting. The journey back was great and I spent much of the four hours marveling at the stunning scenery.

I am pretty busy this week preparing for the upcoming international youth exchange. 7 young people from a London based youth organization are coming to Nepal for 10 days. I first initiated this back in February and I can’t quite believe it is actually happening! You can find out more about this group and their visit by reading their blog – http://lic-youthexchange.blogspot.com

Busy yet?

One of the biggest complaints from volunteers who come to Nepal, highly qualified people who have temporarily given up their hectic lifestyles in the West or the Philippines or Africa, is that they come here and don't do anything.

Sometimes people in the organizations they are working with also aren't doing anything. Teachers have been known to leave the classroom and to go shopping for the day here, leaving the students in the classroom to fend for themselves. Others in NGOs can read newspapers for hours on end without beginning work. And it could seem, at times, there are more holidays and strikes than days in the office.

Sometimes volunteers work in organizations who are busy and doing a lot, but they can't quite figure out how to work together. There are certainly lots of people working incredibly hard here, as well. (Especially in the fields, but this is for another post).

I was sitting around so much at the beginning of my placement that I used all my creative energy to find ways to do things and to entertain myself. Which included finding a second NGO to volunteer with in the evenings and weekends. I did whatever I could to feel productive in the office: cleaning, listening, visiting people's workshops.. Reading and research. Connecting with fellow volunteers to see what was working for them. Trying various ways to let my colleagues know that really, I could be helpful if they would just let me in on the decision making processes.

After six months of this in my placement, I started to get worried. I am someone who has no trouble making myself busy usually. So this was an unusual circumstance for me to be working *this* hard to find things to do. And uncomfortable. It also went against my whole idea of the purpose of volunteering: to act, to think, to help create.....here in Nepal. If I'm not needed in Nepal (and there is an argument for this perhaps - to come in another post), then I should go back home, right?

Turns out I needn't have been so worried. I am so busy these days all of the sudden that I can't remember what it was like to have time for yoga in the mornings, to plan dinner while in the office, to write big, long emails to friends.

If I wasn't so exhausted right now, I would have the energy to be excited about this.

But after 6 days of training followed by 17 days of research in villages straight to meetings, meetings, and more meetings in Kathmandu....I am signing myself up for a massage tomorrow.

There is this place I know that hires and trains Dalit women in massage. The Dalit caste is traditionally considered the "untouchable" caste. Some Nepalis I know still refuse to eat at the same table as someone who is Dalit - not so rare, in fact. Untouchable, because if you touch a Dalit, you are then also considered "polluted" and then have to go through extensive purification.

Tomorrow's plan, then, social activism and massage in one fell sweep: yes!!!

I thought I could get away with my first full day off from work. I've been holding this day sacred for myself - mentally, at least - for the last couple of weeks. But alas, turns out there is a concept paper due tomorrow evening, and I was pleaded with to come into the office and help in the afternoon. Bargaining chip: extra day off on Monday. I'll believe it when I see it!

Now, I'm not complaining about all this work. This is GOOD you see. And there are so many volunteers who are very jealous of how much my organization is engaging me. I am lucky. I know I am really lucky. Really. But...I am now striving for a bit more balance between the two extremes.

Turns out that working in villages for 17 days is really, really tough work that I am still, apparently, recovering from. My eye infection is almost gone, and my energy is starting to come back again. I lost several pounds which I have gained right back now that I am in Kathmandu and around brownies and banana pancakes and lattes again.

The trash in Kathmandu is piled high - the garbage companies are on strike again. Not coincidentally, I think, almost everyone I know is sick. Fevers, bronchial coughs...not good stuff. While this doesn't fit into the I've-been-working-too-much category, it is mentally taxing to experience. It takes a fair amount of energy to a) sidestep the trash and b) mentally tune it out at the same time as much as possible.

Would I change any of it? No. Being in the field and all this work I'm engaged in is fabulous. I am learning a lot. It's pushing my comfort zones in many ways, and I'm experiencing things that travelers coming through Nepal could never experience.


Once I get a chance first to relax.....I will post some stories and thoughts from my fieldwork and time in the villages near Hetauda.

For now, I have a banana pancake on the way....