Mero Naam Daire Ho

I’m writing this as I enjoy the soothing aroma of burning plastic in my apartment.  A lot of people burn their rubbish here and the leaky seals on my windows mean that when certain neighbours do it my apartment fills with the smell. Once a car stopped in front of me on a bridge over the Bagmati, a woman got out and threw a bag of rubbish in. Apparently it’s not uncommon. I’m not sure which is worse.

Most Nepali’s who work in the tourist areas of Nepal speak English, so it’s not necessary to speak Nepali to get around Kathmandu. But in rural areas often English is not spoken. Nepal is known to have about 125 different languages and less than half of the population speak Nepali as their first language but most can understand it. I started taking lessons before work a couple of days a week. I surprised myself with how quickly I got a basic understanding and how I managed to motivate myself to get up before work. It’s very different to my half hearted attempts at French and Irish in school.

1 Temples in Bhaktapur

The shopkeepers find it really funny when I speak Nepali to bargain for a better price. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s unusual that foreigners try to speak it or they are just laughing at me. Either way, its good fun and I get some help with pronunciation and a few new words every time. I can tell taxi drivers where I want to go and ask them how much it will cost, tell them it’s too expensive and ask them to make it cheaper; all in Nepali. I probably still pay too much for some things but part of that is down to not knowing what the price should be before I start bargaining.

2 Making sugar cane juice

At work, the guys in the office try to conduct the meetings that I am part of in English for my benefit even though everyone else in the meeting might be native Nepali speakers. Other times I try to listen and pick up words that I’ve heard in my lessons. Every project has regular monthly meetings where the partners present their progress and we discuss the bottlenecks and steps for the next month.    

3 Monthly progress meeting

I do some hill running at home and I’ve tried to keep it up a bit over here. There’s a group called the Himalayan Hash House Harriers. I’d never heard of them but Hash House Harriers have branches in loads of countries and are self described “drinkers with a running problem”. Runs happen once a week outside the valley in the cleaner air of the hills. They are marked in advance by runners called ‘hares’ who choose and then mark the route with shredded paper.  False trails and waiting points are incorporated, using different arrangements of shredded paper, so that all the runners finish fairly close together. And after the run, there is food and beer (or soft drinks for ‘softies’). My first run with the group was a full moon night run in the city along the Bagmati and through the dust and the smog. It was a bit tough on the nose and the lungs but it was a really interesting way to see some of the religious and historic sites.

4 Full moon hash

But the runs outside the city, through villages and terraced fields, up hills and along jungle type paths are a lot more interesting. Two weekends ago on a run, shortly after a beer stop, we came across a fresh leopard kill – a half eaten goat and a cow both killed by bites to the throat. Disappointingly there was no sign of the leopards. There was an overnight stay on this run. We stayed in cottages on top of one of the hills around the valley in a place called the Summit Lodge. When I woke up the following morning, I was told that had I got up earlier I could have seen the Himalayas but by that stage the eternal mist had returned, so I still haven’t got to see them.

5 View from the summit lodge

Even without the background Himalayas, the view was still pretty nice from the top of the hill. The ‘hill’ we stayed on was 1800m above sea level which makes it almost twice the height of Ireland’s highest mountain, but by comparison to the Himalayan backdrop, these are known as hills and doesn’t sound anywhere near as satisfying as running up a mountain….   

6 Breakfast table at the Summit Lodge

At work I’m developing a database/data entry system and data validation to capture the existing paper based monitoring and evaluation surveys and to help to spec a design for a hosted database and electronic (Android) data entry system to replace the paper types. The surveys that I’m using to develop this are from a solar multi use water pumping system. It is one of the projects that last year’s renewable travel scholar (Fintan) was involved in. Multi use means that the water pumped by the solar pump is used for both household needs and agriculture.

In order to test the database I’ve entered some of the existing collected surveys. The surveys are designed to be collected before and a year after the installation of the technology and followed up again 3 years later. They measure lots of things like a reduction in time spent walking to fetch water, a reduction in water borne diseases, increases in educational attendance among other things. I plan on doing some work on the data and writing a report based on it. Some of the really interesting parts of the surveys are the qualitative data captured as well. The respondents (usually head of household – male or female) are asked a year after the technology has been installed about how they use the time they now have as a result of pumped water and the lifestyle changes that have resulted. Without numbers of responses to hand, what struck me was the amount of different respondents who among other things (more time to perform farming activities, more time for education, better family hygiene etc) reported that they now had time to take rest! It is a very frequent answer to the question which really made me wonder what the lifestyle before installation was. Another really common answer was that they now had time to do household chores. I can’t even begin to think      

7 Kids playing a popular street game – We played against them and lost badly. You use a bigger (checkers type) piece as a cue ball - for want of a better description - to knock the smaller ones into the holes opposite you.

Last weekend myself and a friend I play football with rented scoters to see a few of the sites around and outside the city. It was quick to learn though as it’s just accelerate and brake. At higher speeds I’d feel a lot more comfortable on my road bike than the scooter.

8 Sight seeing via scooter

9 Religious offering including buffalo intestine

We travelled outside the city. Kathmandu valley is made up of three cities, Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur. Each of these cities has its own Durbar Square which are temple filled plazas that are remnants of the old kingdoms of Nepal each of which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. On the scooters we visited Bhaktapur and other sites around the valley. Bhaktapur is the nicest of the three old cities and has loads of temples and other tourist sites to see.  

10 Standing on a temple in Bhaktapur

At night, after getting lost and separated on the highway a few times, we visited Boudha, one of the biggest Stupas in the valley. It’s like a pilgrimage site. People flock to it and walk around it (always clockwise as with all the Hindi temples).

One of my other tasks at work is to bring the solar MUS sites to sustainability, which I spoke about in the last blog. In order to do this I’ve developed cash flows and a draft constitution over the last few weeks. The cash flow presents all of the costs maintenance visits and foreseen repair costs  as well as end of design life replacement costs for the lifecycle of the technologies. This information will be presented to the communities so that they can implement an economic model. We will show them how different tariff structures (fees collected monthly from beneficiary households) fare out over the lifecycle of the technology and how they will be able to collect enough money to replace all parts as they break (and end their design life), pay for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance visits. In this way the community should be able to manage all issues themselves and have the financing to replace the system at the end of the design life and not rely on any additional NGO aid.

I’ve also written a draft constitution using another one that was developed for another technology and financing system in East Africa. The constitution will give a legal framework to the elected water users committee, assign roles and provide guidelines on responsibilities and how elections are to be conducted for the roles. RW have some specific requirements that are also incorporated like the inclusion of female and adolescent participants in the committee and maintenance roles. This is to try to overcome the male dominated society. Communities will have to structure their committees using the gender and age balance provisions given by RW. I’ve sent the constitution to our local implementing partners and have organised a feedback meeting early next week to discuss.      

The world cup has just started and the time difference means that the games are on in the middle of the night. Tonight Spain and Holland kicks off at 12.45a.m. We have to get in before 11 when they close the doors as they are not allowed to stay open. So I’m off now to try to get a bit of sleep (the bit I missed through last nights match) before going to watch the Tika-Taka.