A Whole Lot of Lasts

We fly out on Sunday and we’re officially at the end of our adventure in Nepal and there’s a really strong temptation to get all nostalgic. Consider this fair warning: I’m not making any attempt to avoid it. In fact, in the same way that the thrill of planning a trip is half the fun for me, I think I need a certain degree of melancholy to fully appreciate the impact of our sojourn and the excitement of going home.

Which is why all week I’ve been keeping a mental journal of “lasts”. The last time we’ll have dinner in Thamel and need to argue with taxi drivers about the quickest route home and what constitutes a fair price. The last time I’ll see that street dog near Kwality Café and be able to give him my left over curry. The last time I’ll buy bread from the Italian baker and get possibly the world’s best chocolate croissant thrown in. The last time I’ll have lunch with Jess and Liv at Tandoori Kitchen (the quickest and best paneer butter masala this side of the river). The last time I’ll hang out in Patan Durbar Square with all the other people who don’t have much to do on a weekday afternoon. The last time I’ll labour through a description of how I need my clothes altered in my awkward Nepali/English/hand language combo and have Anita understand perfectly anyway and give me her beautiful big smile. The last time we’ll have cooking lessons with Kalpana and she’ll tut and tell me I look too skinny, but isn’t Linda lovely? The last time we’ll get 4 bananas for 10 rupees from the banana man on the corner. The last time we’ll stick our heads out the window of our office and see a huge and magnificent stretch of the Himalayas, all covered in snow, rising between the brick buildings and billboards of Kathmandu. The last time I’ll see the lights of Kirtipur as I walk down I street at night like a compressed patch of stars and the last time we’ll see the sunset over Champa Devi, making it look like a massive cardboard cutout.

It will be good to be home, but I think I’ve dropped a little piece of my heart somewhere here in Nepal that I’ll have to come back and find one day.

The Micro Enterprise Panacea

There’s a lot of talk about micro enterprise and its associated issues at the moment, with many sallying into the debate on poverty solutions waving around concepts like micro finance and technology inclusion as sorts of panacea pin ups. There are plenty of advocates arguing that if only we could get the capital, or the computers, or the craftsmanship into the hands of the poor, we could deal a fatal blow to world poverty as we know it. But while micro enterprise undoubtedly has a key role to play, the evidence suggests there’s plenty of room for improvement in the construction of the concept. In Nepal, the Small Farmer Development Programme’s micro finance operation reports loan default rates as high as 60%, while in Bangladesh, journalist Gina Neff found 55% of the Grameen Bank's clients were not able to meet their basic needs after eight years of borrowing, with most using their loans to buy food rather than invest in businesses. What is going wrong? And what can be done to turn the situation around?

Perhaps the first place to look for answers is in the modern history of development aid and micro enterprise as a poverty alleviation program. Micro enterprise is not a new concept – since time immemorial, individuals producing goods or providing services and trading them in the market has formed the most basic level of economic activity. Accordingly, in the experience of the developed world, it’s to these foundations that people and governments perennially turn in time of economic hardship. Government support for small business and “ma and pa” operations across the developed world waxed throughout the 20th century during depressions and recessions, only to wane in favour of big business in times of plenty. And the Western world’s approach to development aid for third world countries, a concept only really formalised in the late 1940s, has mostly reflected these changing trends. Large-scale anti-poverty projects and campaigns with multi billion dollar price tags implemented by behemoth organisations have had their time in the not-for-profit sun, as multinational conglomerates enjoyed tax breaks and policy privileges in the corporate sector. But after years of globalisation, homogenisation and continual widening of the rich-poor gap, it seems there’s been something of an awakening to the flaws of big business in the West, and a backlash against it. Workers are demanding flexible hours and family friendly arrangements, or abandoning the corporate infrastructure altogether. “Buy local” campaigns are rallying citizens to keep their consumer dollar within the national borders. The slow food movement is gathering pace in resistance to the ubiquitous fast food, low taste culture. One-of-a-kind, handcrafted clothes and homewares are hailed an expression of individuality while their mass produced counterparts are seen as a sign of conformity. And micro enterprise, brought to prominence by the success of operations like the Grameen Bank and Opportunity International in the 1970s and 80s, has experienced a surge in foreign aid policy popularity.

This backlash has had a huge impact on the developing world as well. Aid delivery via small, locally operated projects is now favoured over remotely managed, international NGOs and program strategies focused on cutting the foreign funding apron strings sooner rather than later are the new conventional wisdom. These trends significantly alter the course of funding flows, with micro enterprise a darling of the current policy push. But for the most part, the developing world has skipped the step of disenfranchisement with big business that in part is driving the program donors as it leaps into the arms of micro enterprise – which has always formed the backbone of its economies but is now fêted in policy. The effect of this leap is that many micro entrepreneurs, instead of embracing the competitive advantages at the essence of a micro enterprise, are trying to replicate the big business model on a small scale. Instead of concentrating efforts on designing and developing unique products that reflect the ever changing nuances of the market, the focus is on duplicating the style of the homogenised competition. Instead of deliberately charging premium prices that reflect the extra time and creativity required to produce unique, individually crafted products, there’s a doomed battle to match the price of the mass produced competition, and perpetual pressure to cut costs and wring out the last drop of labour capacity. Instead of preserving the traditional techniques necessary to produce finely crafted, premium goods, handlooms and wooden spoons are being replaced by powerlooms and industrial mixers to produce cheaper imitations of the originals. And the result is a swath of struggling micro enterprises churning out a plethora of products that are neither handcrafted nor mass produced, but are inferior to both, which consequently are given a lukewarm reception at best in the market.

Perhaps one of the keys to resolving these shortcomings lies in reconsidering how micro enterprise programs are typically constructed. Firstly, there seems to be some confusion about the difference between micro enterprise and micro finance. Micro finance, as the name suggests, is concerned primarily with providing the cash necessary to operate the business. Micro finance services often also encompass some analysis and feedback on the business plan and training on basic budgeting and accounting skills as a means of ensuring a return on their investment, but that capital is the main focal point. Capital is an important component in establishing and growing an enterprise, but it’s by no means the only one, and the potential achievements of a program that focuses solely on the provision of credit are restricted from outset. In fact, any program that focuses on just one element of enterprise development constrains its own success. Programs concentrated on skills development, or improving access to technology, in isolation from other key components, like credit provision, entrepreneurship training and product marketing, are no better at delivering more than mediocre outcomes.

On the other hand, the Micro Enterprise Development Program, a joint initiative of the UNDP/Nepal and the Nepal Government, boasts a healthy – and realistic – success rate of 95% in establishing sustainable enterprises among the poor. MEDEP provides a package of services covering the key elements of entrepreneurship, which are offered to new micro entrepreneurs in sequential order. Business management skills training is provided before technical skills training; access to credit and then technology is addressed after that. The MEDEP model aims to develop micro entrepreneurs who are equipped to grow their business from start up to maturity and overcome the inevitable operational hiccups, rather than simply providing potential entrepreneurs with a hammer and hoping they will be able to figure out how to build the house themselves.

Apart from the design of programs at a government or NGO level, the success of micro enterprise as a solution to poverty is also dependent on society’s attitude to consumption.
And this is the point at which we all, as consumers, have a responsibility in shaping our own communities’ future. What do we demand from the products we buy? Is low price at any cost our main criteria? How much value do we place on marketers’ brands? Is it important to consider the social and environmental impact of our purchasing choices? Do those choices play a role in preserving traditions and skills or do they act to weaken them? It may be part of the answer to reducing poverty, but micro enterprise also raises a maelstrom of questions and the concept’s full impact won’t be achieved until they are addressed, not just by policy makers but by the public.

Out of the Valley

People say that you haven’t seen Nepal until you leave Kathmandu. So while Nepali families were celebrating the Dassain festival, we spent two weeks doing our best to see the best of Nepal.

First stop – Lukla. A few tense moments with the flights, including several hours of delays with the weather and the mechanical integrity of our plane (!), but an absolutely spectacular journey, flying through the valleys and past long stretches of the Himalaya. It was worth going to Lukla just for that flight, but the town itself is also lovely – one main, stone paved street edged with whitewashed buildings perched on the side of a mountain, looking down the valley on one side and up to snowy peaks on the other. Not much bustle, hardly any rubbish and a distinctly Tibetan flavour that’s embraced and even touted by local tourism elements. And long lines of Tzopke, half cattle half yaks bred especially for carrying loads, jostling with people for position on the narrow roads. The other small towns along the trail to Mt Everest Base Camp follow the same trend, materialising out of nowhere in between scarily stunning cliffs and forests and summits to offer out of breath hikers sleep and sustenance in their clusters of tea houses. We walked for two days to Namche Bazaar and were blessed with awesome views of Everest before heading back to Lukla and Kathmandu.

But not for long. The next day we headed off to Pokhara, on a bus through winding mountain roads, past roadside shacks serving deep fried delicacies and bare bottomed children teasing dogs. Pokhara is a beautiful city, set on a wide blue lake and ringed by the famous Annapurna mountain range. Tourists have been going there for decades and it shows in the great selection of cheap hotels and easy availability of good food for Western bellies. Somehow though, Pokhara has managed to stay removed from the more seedy elements that tourism usually brings, possibly because most visitors there go trekking and are too tired for causing trouble by the time they get back. It has all the convenience of Kathmandu, but with its own special, relaxed, holiday feeling.

We wound up our Nepal highlights tour in Chitwan National Park, which before the political violence of the last few years received 80% of Nepal’s international visitors. Recent trouble in the Terai has bitten into the statistics, but it’s an amazing look at a very different side of Nepal to the mountains. The steamy jungles of Chitwan are home to one of the world’s biggest wild populations of Bengal tigers as well as elephants, rhinos, deer, crocodiles and a wide array of birds. We paddled down the river in a carved tree canoe to see crocs and rode on elephant back to see rhinos and deer in the wild. We even joined the elephants in their bath and were squirted with water from their trunks, which despite being a touristy display was unmissable fun.

So there is a lot more to Nepal than Kathmandu, and lots of it’s awesome. But now Kathmandu feels like home and that’s amazing too.

Festive Occasions

In Australia, the average worker gets four weeks of paid holidays a year as well as a handful of about half a dozen public holidays for community- or sometimes nation-wide celebrations like Christmas and Easter. Compared to many other countries, it’s quite a generous allowance. But in Nepal, festivals are more a weekly event than a special occasion and working life is interspersed with a veritable bounty of public holidays. In the last two months alone, we’ve enjoyed no less than five festival days.

There’s no mistaking when there’s a festival in Nepal either. No matter which caste or ethnic group is celebrating the holiday, it’s inevitably marked with colourful and noisy public gatherings in squares and streets. Our first experience of Nepali festivals was Gai Jatra, a Newari celebration to remember and pray for friends and relatives who have died over the past year. It sounds like quite a sombre occasion, but actually there’s quite a party atmosphere. People parade through the streets with tall, woven bamboo monuments to the dead, drinking homemade liquor and carrying out complicated dance that involves banging wooden sticks with a partner.

The next major event (though there were some lesser festivals – holidays – in between) was Teej, which is exclusively for women. The concept of having a women’s only public holiday is also unheard of in Australia, but actually, it’s not a bad deal for men – the purpose of Teej is for women to fast and pray for the long lives of their husbands, or their future husband if they’re not yet married. It’s a colourful day with a special sense of camaraderie among the women, who dress up in red and spend hours queuing together to receive a blessing from Hindu priests, then spend the afternoon dancing to loud folk music with no shortage of enthusiasm despite their empty stomachs. The red ocean of thousands of women bouncing and waving to the music is an impressive sight to see.

This week is Indra Jatra when the Kumari, a prepubescent girl who Hindus believe is a living goddess, comes out to see the people and give a blessing to the king. This year happens to be the 250th anniversary of the festival and we gathered with thousands of others, waiting for four hours in the rain, before the Kumari was carried out to see us. Dressed in a suitable impressive gold and red outfit, she was seated in one of three huge, garlanded chariots, which were then dragged by mobs of cheering people in a circuit around the temple square. Even this festival bore the marks of the political turmoil though – as well as being a notable anniversary, it was also the first time in history that the king didn’t attend, allegedly because the largely pro-republican interim government refused to provide him with extra security. He was represented by the Prime Minister instead.

But the festivals aren’t over yet. In October, there’s the 10 days of Dashain, the Hindu equivalent of the 12 days of Christmas and the biggest – and longest – festival of the year, during the length of which offices across the country shut down. It’s followed closely by Tihar, just three weeks later in November. Tihar, the festival of lights, gets a pretty big wrap in travel guidebooks as one of the prettiest festivals in Nepal’s calendar. People celebrate it by stringing fairy lights around their houses and across the streets, and burning the butter candles that you can already see elderly people sitting in doorways painstakingly making. The best is yet to come!

In or Out

Yesterday, the Maoists resigned from the interim government here in Nepal in a move being called the biggest set back for the peace process since they declared an end to 10 years of fighting last year. It’s now just two months before the Constituent Assembly elections are due to be held and this throws serious doubts over the already shadowy hopes that they’ll go ahead as scheduled.

The Maoists’ pull out hasn’t come as much of a surprise to the people of Nepal. They have just made good on a threat issued a month ago along with a 22 point list of demands to be agreed by September 18. The other government factions agreed to all of the demands but two – they refused to replace Nepal’s monarchy with a republic before elections are held and they rejected using a proportionate voting system in the elections. This response was also expected, and accordingly the Maoist rhetoric had escalated over the last week with heated comments to the papers and a fresh outbreak of slogan graffiti, which is now painted across almost every spare wall in Kathmandu and even on the roads at intersections.

The Maoist leadership says their protest campaign will be peaceful. But it seems the general populous, who all lost family and friends and finances during the civil war and don’t have a great deal of faith in the speech-makers – a factor with obvious implications for the Maoists’ election campaign and which no doubt influenced the recent decision making - aren’t quite sure whether to buy that. When we got home last night, our landlord was at a neighbourhood meeting to discuss an alert system in case there’s trouble. A friend cancelled our dinner plans because of the possibility of a general strike. Contacts in the UN told of late night emergency meetings. Perhaps the protest action will be peaceful, but Nepal is waiting to see.

The Hunt for the Italian Baker

It began with a tip off from a woman with dark, fiery eyes.

Actually, to be more precise, it began with me complaining about how terrible the bread is in Nepal. I’m not usually all that much of a bread connoisseur at home, but I enjoy some good, savoury, soft-on-the-inside, crusty-on-the-outside, standard bakery bread to spread my vegemite on as much as the next Australian. Ergo, the Nepali version of bread, which is full of sugar and has the consistency of an Egyptian mummy – hard and leathery, but crumbles at a touch – has been an unexpectedly distressing element of life in Kathmandu. When we first arrived, I laughed as a fellow expat explaining the joys of the small things here told me how she and her once sister celebrated well into the night after finding a decent loaf of bread. Ha ha, I thought, I’ve seen bread everywhere. She must be really precious about her bakeries. That was before I found myself taking the three pieces of my toast that suffered continental drift in the bottom of the pan (as opposed to a toaster) and dipping them into the jam jar.

So when an Italian woman who works for the UN here asked me what I missed most from home over lunch one day, I immediately launched into a lengthy discourse on the shortcomings of Nepali style bread. Being European (where unlike the Mt Coolum bakery, they really pride themselves on staples like bread), she understood completely, and making a sympathetic face, said, “You have to understand that all bread here is just an imitation. But you really should try the baker up near the British School. He was trained by an Italian and it’s the closest thing to bread from home in Nepal.”

Having had my heart broken several times by now after following various recommendations only to find them all exactly the same – awful – I was sceptical. But we got the directions and set off that afternoon to try the Italian trained baker out.

Our first mission was to find the British School. We found the turn off (“down past the Banana Cat Café and right at the round about near the shop with the good looking tomatoes” and walked for what seemed like miles against the stream of motorbikes, carpet sellers, housewives, fruit vendors, small children and the occasional expat on a bike wearing a helmet. Eventually we found the school, where it was expected to be. Hooray, we thought, not so difficult afterall. Warm bread in two minutes. Alas, the next turn off (“a little lane with three houses, just on the left”) proved more elusive. We wandered along the length of the British School for half an hour, peering hopefully down the dozens of lanes packed with houses, looking fruitlessly for something indicating the presence of the best bakery in Nepal. Eventually, stomachs growling and feet aching, we struck up a one sided, English and hand language conversation with the Nepali speaking British School guard. While he had no idea why the badeshis were treating him to a display of rubbing their stomachs and eating their fingers, a passing British man took pity on us, asked if we were looking for the Italian baker, and led us to the right street, which oddly enough, really did only have three houses.

Great, we thought, almost home. All we had to do now was go to the middle house, shower them with praise for their very clever bakery disguise, buy our loaf and go. But the middle house was shuttered away behind some formidable looking steel gates and the porch of the house behind was littered with school bags and washing and ladies shoes. The much anticipated bakery sign was still noticeably absent. So we stood out the front for a while, kicking the stones and hoping some one would come out and ask us if we would like some of the best bread in Nepal. No dice. Eventually we plucked up the courage to walk in to what was obviously someone’s private home and knocked on the door, thinking perhaps they could at least give us some more directions. But a woman wearing a flour dusted apron answered the door and without even asking us what we were there for, ushered us past a lounge room with children watching TV and into a back room which looked like a old bakery straight out of provincial Italy. Big stone oven, solid looking wooden tables and piles of bread and pastries. Not just any bread – ciabata, focaccia, brioche, quiche, cakes, all manner of continental delicacies. Slightly over wrought from our ordeal thus far, we held back tears, picked out a loaf, handed over the very reasonable sum of 45 rupees and wended our way home.

And now we know where to buy bread in Nepal. It’s not the same as home – it’s a little more exotic than I’d like for my daily breakfast – but it’s certainly a reasonable substitute and well worth the adventure.

Violent Negotiations

Last week, five bombs were detonated in three Kathmandu locations, killing two people and injuring more than a dozen others. These injuries were not cuts and bruises, but loss of legs and other permanent disablement – a common outcome of violence like this that’s usually glossed over in the news reports’ reels of statistics. The bombs hit a mini bus full of commuters, a group of school children waiting at a bus stop, and a crowd at one of the city’s busiest shopping and transport hubs.

A couple of little known militant groups from the southern Terai region claimed responsibility for the attacks – apparently with little concern for the legal ramifications and apparently with good reason, because there’s been little in the way of a response at any level. And that’s been the most astonishing aspect of the whole dreadful thing for me. When we decide to come to Nepal in the lead up to November’s elections, during one of the most tumultuous periods of the country’s modern political history, we were prepared for civil unrest – strikes, riots, even bombs. And there have been plenty of strikes. Rubbish piled up on the street for weeks as garbage collectors went on strike to demand permanent working agreements. Tyres were burned in the street and all vehicles were forced off the road to protest the death of a young woman in a traffic accident and demand compensation for her family. But there has been no public action in response to the most significant attack on the capital’s security since the end of the 10 year Maoist insurgency. It seems people have been shocked, and looking to the months ahead, scared into silence.

A friend of mine is working with an NGO here in Kathmandu to promote good governance and inclusion as the new political system is developed. He was telling me of a new program they’re launching to train and encourage various political and interest groups to express their concerns and opinions in appropriate, effective and non violent ways. In a social climate where marginalised groups are targeting civilians with bombings designed only to maximise the loss of life and rubbish gets more attention than people, clearly, it’s vitally necessary.

It's an Aussie Thing

It’s funny how being thousands of miles away makes what it is to be Australian much more obvious, and so much more pertinent to talk about with other away-from-home Australians. Firstly, there’re all the characteristics that we already know about and are part of our articulated Waltzing Matilda national identity, the things we wear like a badge of Aussie pride on our travelling backpacks. For instance:

Being larrikins. It wraps up all those expectations of being the first of an international group to do the bungy jump and the last to stop drinking the night before, all while cracking jokes and refusing to take anything seriously. And we love this about ourselves – one of the greatest compliments for a travelling Australian is being called a larrikin. Inherent in the larrikin concept is also…

Limited respect for authority. It’s part of the tall poppy syndrome I guess, but there is no kowtowing among Australians. This is evidenced by the fact that each time we meet the Australian Ambassador our group of volunteers has to keep reminding each other to call him “Your Excellency”. This is not because he’s not worthy of the title, but just because it seems so foreign to be so formal with anyone. There’s also a distinct absence of unquestioning faith in the leadership in Australian culture. While trekking through the remote hills along the Tibetan border, where none of us had ever been before, we Australians thought it perfectly reasonable to question the guide on his choice of direction at a crossroads.

Independent. Closely related to the limited respect for authority notion, we like to decide ourselves how things will be done. We want to have access to all available information on anything vaguely related to ourselves and we will purposefully argue in favour of the opposing view, just so that side of the picture comes out. This is not to say that Australians aren’t team players – just that they want to lead it, or at least reserve the right to ignore it.

Belief in the Fair Go. Another concept we’re proud to tout. An incident in which a high caste man walked onto our bus and looked at a lower caste man sitting in the back row until he got up and gave him the seat left us seething with righteous indignation.

And then there are the characteristics that generally, we’re not so aware of at home:

Sarcasm. A sense of humour is integral to our much loved larrikin, but often the rest of the world doesn’t get our jokes. Americans in particular often think we’re just mean to each other.

Preoccupation with time. Somewhat in contrast to our reputation for being laidback, part of the love of independence is a need to know how long something will take, the estimated time of arrival, how long someone has been doing something for. This is particularly obvious in Nepal, where time is fairly low on the priority list and even among the best English speakers, questions about timeframes are rarely understood or clearly answered.

Low tolerance of falsehood. Australians have a gift for identifying a liar or a kissass from seven leagues off. Tall stories might be tolerated in a fishing legend, but insincerity or dishonesty is met with disgust. No ego stroking please, we’re Australians!

Justice for Some

Today I saw an emaciated man lying naked on the footpath, writhing around in the dirt.

What does it mean to all the people that stepped around him, getting on with their business? What does it mean to a country at war for 10 years to fight for social justice? What does it mean to me, the Badeshi, driving along in all my white glory, seeing it and sighing at it but not letting it interfere with my lunch plans.

Should I have stopped the car? Found some money or food or hope to throw at him? It would have appeased my conscience, which has been piercing me ever since. And maybe it would have meant something to him too: not just the response to the physical need, which must have been extreme, but the difference between the whole world ignoring the agonizing reality that must have triggered that reaction and a member of humanity reaching across an ocean wide divide and connecting with another.

But it’s hard. Nepal has no government funded health and welfare hotline that I’m aware of, few charities with time to spare for one hopeless case. There are so many other very valid causes jostling for attention.

So that leaves it to me – or one of the hundreds of other people who saw that man today. But a real live person, not a department or phone voice, to get dirty and be made afraid and step into that messed up life and do something. Honestly, I don’t know if I have it in me. But I hope one of us does.

Scarily Enough

Scarily enough, I think I’m starting to get it. Reasoning that completely escaped me just four short weeks ago has become seamlessly woven into my consciousness.

I understand that it can take six hours to pack a bag, be picked up from a hotel, and be transported to another location just 15 minutes away.

I’ve caught myself surveying peaks at least 3,000 metres above sea level and categorising them as hills.

I embrace the fact that a chocolate bar costs the same as a curry, naan bread and a drink or the tailoring of both a shirt and pants or a 20 minute taxi ride or a handwoven bamboo floor mat.

I recognise that there are approximately a gazillion meanings of the word “hajur” and it’s unlikely I will ever fully understand them.

I have come to terms with shopkeepers who try to extort huge amounts of money from “the badeshi” and then burst out laughing when they are caught.

I know the true meaning of feeling outrageously happy on a sweltering, sunny day, because despite the flies and sweat, it means a hot shower.

And most tellingly of all, I accept that there really is no plug in the entirety of Nepal that will fit my kitchen sink.

I’m not sure what this will mean for my eventual assimilation back into life in Australia, but it definitely makes life in Nepal more relaxing!

Happiness is a Dry Fart

I’ve always thought it was bizarre how all the previously private details of a woman’s bodily functions seem to become fair game during pregnancy. But our group of Aussie volunteers has reached a depth of disclosure that makes those Grade 10 Science videos on childbirth in the 70s seem like dinner conversation.

This new found openness is owed to the sheer variety and pressing nature of stomach complaints that accompanies life in Nepal. Diaorreha constituted an awkwardly large component of our pre-departure medical briefing, but I hadn’t really considered its potential to become such an all-consuming focus of my day-to-day attention. From the moment I wake up in the morning, I begin a micro analysis of today’s stomach status. Am I feeling cramps? Of course. Is it hunger or bowel? Too low for hunger. Just wind? Ummm….no. Have to go, right now. This thought process is eminent in my mind at most times, and I can only assume a similar situation for the other members of the group, as discussions on the scale of diaorreha, the nature of projectile vomiting, the specific location of feelings of unwellness and the possible root causes, which perhaps would be considered over-sharing at home, have become commonplace.

Thankfully, I’m not suffering debilitating stomach issues – they don’t stop me from going to work or to play and the other day I even had a Nepali cooking class during a bout of seediness and got through it ok. But one of our fellow Aussies has fallen victim to a particularly nasty round of bad-gut that kept her bedridden for two days and that’s served as something of a warning to us all.

If nothing else though, the unpleasantness is always a reliable topic of conversation. We’ve appropriated as a catchcry a philosophical quote one of the Aussies found among toilet graffiti in India: Happiness is a dry fart.

Sights Sounds Smells

It’s amazing how quickly you get used to drivers honking their horns at you. In fact, in just 10 short days, I’ve developed quite an appreciation for the sheer variety of horns, particularly the shrill, melodic, air-horns and their usefulness in saving me from death or at the very least maiming under the wheels of a gaudy transport truck. The thing is, the horns have to be loud to make it over the cacophony of life in Kathmandu. What with the packs of stray dogs barking, the Hindu puja bells ringing, the street vendors bartering, the traffic rumbling, and the throat clearing and spitting, there’s no place for pansy little toots.

Especially when you’re so distracted trying to nail down what on God’s green Earth that smell is. Is it the unidentifiable globule in that pile of rubbish, or fermenting fruit, or whatever skin disease that dog’s got, or the after effects of the curry that man clearly had for dinner? No. Bad, but kind of sweet. A unique blend of garlic and unwashed clothes and incense. And strangely, not altogether terrible…

Which really just compliments the view. Florescent pink fairy floss on a forest of sticks carried like a bunch of balloons. Beggars with twisted limbs and hollow eyes. Lush foliage bursting out of every unlikely brick nook and cranny. Gold and turquoise and fuchsia and red and green saris. Flies converging on a boar’s head and fresh meat cuts at the butcher’s stall. Elderly women carrying baskets of bricks held by a strap across their forehead. Boxes of stereo equipment leaning on ancient Hindu statues.

It’s an assault on the senses – and they love it!

Roots and Wings

I’m going to go out on a limb and say I have the best family in the world. Hands down.

I’ve always known they were great, but their collective reaction to us going away has really driven home the point. My mother-in-law battled cobwebs and climbed behind blinds to clean windows and my mum spent a day up to her armpits in my grotty oven and stayed upbeat about the whole thing with us despite her misgivings about us heading off in the wilds of Asia. Our friends, the family we have chosen for ourselves, brought their ruthless packing skills, laundering and administration services, hospitality, and just-at-the-right-time laughs to bear on the chaos. But the image that really illustrates the familial experience for me comes courtesy of my aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins – my “blood” family, as they jovially like to define themselves.

Grandma has made it a tradition to farewell all members of the family by waving a red scarf in public places – airports, train stations, bus stops. This has been met with various levels of embarrassment from all of us at some point or another and so is indelibly woven into the fabric of our shared experience. As we left my parents house for the last time, both my grandmas and my parents and brother were at the gate to wave us off, Grandma with her customary red scarf. We had a chuckle and drove off, but as we rounded a corner of the driveway, there were my aunts and uncles and cousins (just out of Grandma's range of vision), frantically waving anything red immediately at hand – towels, tablecloths and most notably the lid of the Weber kettle BBQ.

There’s nothing like knowing where you’ve come from and where you’ll end up.

Sqwark

I like to think of myself as quite a rational person. But it has become apparent to me that I have no adequate defences against the chaos that descends when one packs up a life. I keep finding myself sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of clothes and high school memorabilia and Tupperware that would put a bower bird to shame with not the foggiest notion of what to do next and an overwhelming desire to either cry or punch someone.

I hate packing with a vengeance and when we moved into our current house I told Matt I never wanted to move ever again – a comment I just know he’s very stoically resisting quoting back at me, since this whole Nepal venture was my brainchild. But that move was nothing compared to this. Not just packing to transport, but packing to store; not just packing of any description, but also mail redirecting, house renting, dog billeting, bill forecasting and paying, and so on and on and on.

I recognise that I am not the first person to have endured this particular form of torture, but the whole assault is exacerbated by the fact that Matt and I are both hoarders. I have progressed to the acceptance stage while Matt is still in denial but the truth remains. This means that we not only have little boxes full of basketball collector’s cards popping up left, right and centre, but that we are physically unable to throw them away. St Vinnie’s has helped alleviate this condition to an extent on some fronts, but even for a good cause, I am unable to part with my perishing purple feather boa or my jellybean jumpsuit from when I was 8.

Only slightly less traumatic than the actual packing experience is the realisation that if we ever are to cure ourselves of the hoarding affliction, the time is now – but the window of opportunity is closing rapidly and there’re no indicators that either of us is prepared to dive through. On the upside, at least we’re in it together – although Matt doesn’t know it yet!

Who Knew?

And so we begin with the revelations about how truly sheltered I am. We've just returned from a week of pre-departure training about all things medical, insurance, cultural and procedural. But with the exception of the astounding variety of worms we stand to contract just by leaving Australia, far and away the most eye opening thing for me was the realisation that there is a big, wide development industry out there. Of course, I knew that there were plenty of NGOs and an Australian government aid agency, but it hadn't really occurred to me that together all those sort of organisations make up a multi billion dollar sector all of their own. There's a whole section of highly educated, veteran professionals (including the five other magnificent folk heading to Nepal in the same deployment as Matt and I, pictureed here with Nepal's Ambassador to Australia and his lovely wife) who have made their career out of working in development. As I said, these are fairly elementary observations I guess, but they've just never entered my realm of consciousness. All this time, I thought I was one of a raggedy bunch of misfits (none of whom I know, but losely based on that arrogant yet strangely alluring doctor from the movie Beyond Borders) who make a sense of purpose outside of profit a primary job criteria. It's a real paradigm shift to think about myself as just one contender in the highly competitive development industry - it doesn't really improve my job prospects, but it has definitely sparked new ambitions!

One Great Thing

In this age of 30 second World Vision commercials and charity telemarketing, is it naïve and trite to want to make a difference in the world? Worse, is it arrogant to think one can? Maybe. It’s certainly a question I’ve struggled with since I first began to get this itch to go somewhere and do something significant. When all the rhetoric about being a good person, and eventually a good parent, just didn’t seem like enough – enough to satisfy my own sense of reaching my potential, enough to fulfil all that my parents and other big influences have invested in me, enough to invest not just in the society that I currently live in, but the one that I wish I did and hope I will. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s devastatingly important to be a good person in the ordinary, every day sense – I believe that’s what God created us to be and what we all inherently want to be. But I also think we have a tendency to use the concept as a bit of a cop out, a conscience salve, a motivation sedative. I think we all have a responsibility to take notice of what’s happening to the world, both down the road and across the dateline, to expand our sense of possibility, and most importantly, to be prepared to get off the couch. Which brings me to my One Great Thing Theory.

Life is busy and stuff happens. We all have lives to lead and people to love and beauty to imbibe and mountains to summit and if we didn’t there wouldn’t be any point to it all. I can’t stand guilt mentalities about the good things in life – feeling sheepish about your own abilities and successes or the blessing and bounty of your country and community doesn’t help anyone who’s less fortunate. I think everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy those good things and we should focus on lifting the bar up across the board, rather than striving for universal mediocrity. The problem is, it’s nigh on impossible to pursue such lofty notions on a day to day basis, in between doing the washing and remembering to shave your legs before going to work in the morning. Therefore, as well as maintaining my general good person status, I aspire to achieve One Great Thing in my lifetime.

I’m not sure what it will be, but I’m certainly keeping my eye out for it. It could be this trip to Nepal. It could be funding a string of eco-friendly, locally operated guesthouses in developing countries, or creating some innovative way to curb carbon emissions, or painting a masterpiece, or knitting a world record number of socks for children and the elderly (although this would involve me learning to knit as that’s something of a gap in my skill base). Maybe I’ll get on a real roll and achieve more than one.

But what if, as a society, instead of indoctrinating ourselves to believe that a bank balance is the most important measure of a company and a country and a life, we looked at what had been done to raise the world’s bar? What if everyone aimed to achieve One Great Thing? We’ve got a population of six billion, and surely six billion Great Things would start to make a dint.