Bardibas is an uninspiring, scruffy, two donkey—quite literally—town which forms the confluence of the roads going south towards Jaleshowr and north towards Sundhuli. A few kilometers to the east, yet another road heads south to Janakpur. Long distance buses and lorries with their ubiquitous paintings of Shiva on the side lumber through town at unnecessarily high speeds horns a blaring. Shiva is both the creator and the destroyer, and from the looks of the numerous truck carcasses along the highway on our trip here, there has been a fair amount of destruction…The majority of the commerce in town—a smattering of general goods stores, tea stalls, repair shops and fly-infested restaurants—lie right along the east-west highway (constructed with the help of the Soviet Union back in 1972, so say the signs…) with the quainter village dwellings set along dirt paths on either side of the highway.
To say that we are a little disappointed with Bardibas would be an understatement. The realities of life in the Terai all came to a head—after an almost seemingly pampered existence in Kathmandu—in our first few days in town. Blame it on passing traffic or a local indifference, perhaps, but Bardibas is strewn with litter of all sorts and could do with a bit of sprucing up. The two town “triangles” (where the roads head south and north)—normally the location for statues, monuments or other cultural trappings—consists of dead grass and discarded plastic bags. I suppose that is what is most depressing about Bardibas: the lack of any historical relics, temples or other cultural paraphernalia makes life seem a bit hard and harsh and questions even the existence of the town. Was it here before the highway, and is the highway to blame for its current ills?
Of course, one is just as likely to see a herd of water buffalo, goats, cows or tractors on the highway as much as other vehicles. Woman and children are normally the caretaker of animals (to have animals is to have some income or food), and in some of the more pastoral settings of village life that one associates with the developing world, children riding on the backs of water buffalo or a lone woman in a red sari with her herd of goats grazing in a field are national geographic in character. Curiously, Bardibas is a town without rickshaws although most people have their own bicycle—or two feet—for getting around and the town really isn’t big enough to warrant rickshaws. A few tuk-tuks or tempos—those curious three-wheeled vehicles with rows of seats in the back—ply the route back and forth across town, but they seem to be more for goods than people.
The midday heat has been oppressive and renders it virtually impossible to do anything except sit or lie under a ceiling fan (day temperatures have soared into the 100’s, and the monsoon is still a month or so away). Our bodies will hopefully acclimate to these conditions, but for now we feel swollen and sluggish—discombobulated in a way—and have no complaints about cold-water bathing… The power supply is sporadic at best and comes and goes without any sort of set pattern or warning—it is just as likely to happen in the middle of night as it is in the mid-afternoon, although the former renders it almost impossible to sleep without the aid of a fan. There are no phones in town except for one at the tiny post and communications office that is purely for outgoing calls, but I’m not even sure that works most of the time... This obviously means there is no email connection in town, much to our chagrin, although we have been told that phone service is due to reach Bardibas within the next few months. Bholi parsi (today or the next day) is a fairly typical phrase in Nepal—in some sense it is almost a defining principle of life here, so much so that it was part of my working in Nepal training—so we are not holding our breath for this to happen anytime soon… I’ll make the trek south once a week or so to get things out to the world…
Our search for a flat/apartment here has been difficult. Bardibas is not high on people’s list’s of relocation, obviously, so there is a quite a dearth of available space. Additionally, most people live with their extended families, so most of the places are much too spacious for only two and would require us to share certain facilities. An added difficulty is that many if not most of the houses in Bardibas are adobe/mud houses—charming and quaint, yes, but probably not the best way to begin our life here. We stayed in one of the few guesthouses in town our first few nights, and have since moved in with a family on a temporary basis.
I have little to report on the work at this point, since we have spent our first few days settling in. The office is located just east of the “business” district on the ground floor of a house. There are two offices and one larger meeting/training room. My desk will most likely be placed alongside the president’s in her office. There is a breezy front porch, which is nice for tea time, and our two resident cows munch on hay most of the day 10 to 15 feet in front of the office. I have met most of the staff that work in the office, but haven’t had the opportunity yet to meet/visit any of the field programs other than one clinic in an outlying village...
It’s not really my intention to continue writing about the strikes, rallies
and continued insurgency in Nepal, but over the past few days nothing else
really seems to have taken place. The opposition parties have now gotten
into the act, and over the weekend there were several clashes, the wielding
of truncheons by the police and tire fires as demonstrators attempted to
march on the palace. Their majesties are conveniently away on one of their
many felicitation visits in the western part of the country only having
recently made an appeal for elections sometime next year—not quick enough
for the majority of the population and certainly not for the opposition
parties.
Meanwhile, maoist bombs, clashes and blockades continue to wreak havoc,
demoralize and confuse. A bit closer to home for us, there were some
incidents not far from our future home in Nepal—the first incidents we have
read about, although we already know that the phone and electricity service
is down… An article in today’s paper surmises that the Palace is using the
current crisis, and defying UN appeals for the resumption of peace
negotiations, as a means of wielding more constitutional power and delaying
elections.
As usual, however, the calling of general strikes makes it easier to
navigate about town but difficult to find an open shop or restaurant. With
the exception of a few saunters around the city, we have stuck close to
home this past weekend resting up for upcoming workshops and meetings—our
last for a while in Kathmandu. We are still scheduled to move in less than
two weeks, although the insurgency situation makes everything tenuous at
best.
Migyoung and I have been to the Indian Embassy in order to secure a visa
for travel to India in the event of some sort of emergency and are unable
to make it back to the capital. We will be closer to the Indian border than
Kathmandu although there is some confusion about which border crossing is
open to foreigners. The whole process of acquiring a visa is indicative of
bureaucracy in this part of the world and perhaps even the bad blood
between these two nations. Here’s how it goes: One queue for getting the
telex form; next queue for paying for telex charges and having it sent to
your home country for clearance. One window manned by a helpful,
gregarious and unabashed nose-picker (the right nostril for me; the left
for Migyoung—the bounty subsequently flicked neatly off into the air) and
the other by a frowning and, no doubt, veteran of the foreign service. Day
2: Line up at one window to see if your telex has cleared; move to the
next queue to submit your visa application and pay fee. Later in day 2:
return in the late afternoon to pick up visa and passport. It’s all fairly
arbitrary if you are given a six month or one year visa. Come to think of
it, however, it’s not any more difficult or frustrating than attempting to
enter the States these days and is most likely the reason why an Indian
visa is more expensive for US passport holders than for other nationals…
A storm has blown over the valley on this second of a three consecutive day
strike. Just beyond the north wall of the royal palace, dried bamboo
leaves flutter about in the wind as children frantically grasp at them
before they land on the ground. One of the ubiquitous Kathmandu street
cows has fashioned a temporary bed out of a pile of bamboo leaves in the
middle of the road and is oblivious to passing pedestrians and cyclists.
On this cooler than normal of days, street side vendors are doing a brisk
trade in corn on the cob grilled over hot coals on the spot; rickshaw
pullers have draped plastic over their cycles as a makeshift shelter from
the rain and street bonfires of logs and tires have been temporarily
doused. A seemingly bored policeman demonstrates for his mates how to hit
a cricket ball with a truncheon; others snooze in the back of a tuk tuk
while still others—whose turn it is to stand watch—put on their chest
protectors, which resembles a circa 1940 baseball catcher’s gear.
Kathmandu is a city of great entrepreneurship and reuse—granted, it stems
more from a need for survival than for getting rich. Like many other
things in Nepal, people make do with what they have and whatever resources
they can muster. On practically every block it is possible to: have your
flip flops and sandals stitched up or have new soles put on your shoes; for
one rupee (approximately 75 rupees to one US dollar) have your bicycle tire
pumped up, weigh yourself on one of the many street-side scales or receive
a tika from a wandering sadhu. In the old quarters of Kathmandu, where the
narrowness of the streets and the crowds keep vehicles at bay, it is
possible to find small market shops specializing in just about anything one
could imagine—tin trunks and locks, fabrics and saris, bangles and
necklaces, kitchen utensils, spices and dried foods. And in the midst of
all of this bargaining and bartering, there is a centuries old temple or
shrine alive with activity, offerings and prayers. It is this merger of
the metaphysical with the worldly that renders Kathmandu such a fascinating
and lively place.
We are a bit behind schedule these days what with the transportation
blockades, strikes and general threats from just about every side of the
insurgency issue. Some of our “good governance” (seems rather laughable,
all things considered—no real government since October here…) and
participatory development workshops have been delayed, and so too has our
departure to the Terai. Nepal has received more international press over
the past few weeks with some particularly large attacks and a call from the
United Nations—Kofi Annan himself—for the end of violence on both sides and
a resumption of peace talks. These appeals have been brushed aside by the
government—the agitating parties as they are known here—which has, in some
sense, made the Maoists seem like a much more sympathetic lot. Nepalis
unassociated with the government speak of breakthroughs in the coming
weeks, but it is hard to sense in the current milieu. In addition to the
38 million from USAID for development activities and programs, it was
announced that the US is proposing to provide an additional 14 million
for “insurgency aid” although it did not specify exactly what form said aid
would take…. although we may assume the worse with this administration.
My talks, meetings and briefings with Nepali NGOs continue to enrich and
augment my development skill set in the most practical of ways. Overall I
have been encouraged and enlightened by what I see transpiring within the
NGO sector and civil society movement. Internal advocacy and awareness
raising programs have essentially only been in existence since Nepal’s
democracy reforms in the early 1990’s, yet, by all indications have made
great strides with limited resources. This is particularly heartening as
well due to the entrenched hurdles and restraints of culture, caste and
religion. Of course, I know little at this point regarding design,
management and implementation practices in the field outside of the
Kathmandu Valley. Much of the English language literature within Nepal—a
lot of it dated—focuses quite a bit on the fatalistic nature of development
in terms of cultural restraints and accomplishments, or lack thereof, over
the past decades. Granted, questions of what constitutes the nature of the
developed society or person and of poverty that development is supposed to
dispel are central to development theorists, and the aspirations and
necessities of development need not be simulacrum of the modern western
notions of development and globalization. For the most part, aid has been
driven by donor agency agendas with little being used to address the root
causes or alleviate poverty, and critiques of such agendas—in addition to
recipient country aid policies—are warranted. Although NGO aid is not
without fault, it is more likely to directly address poverty and support
and encourage alternative developmental models, I believe a fundamental
question, therefore, seems to be would poor and developing countries be
worse off without such aid?
Last Friday, I received a surprise visit from three members of my NGO—
Mahilla Sanskritik Utarn Kendra or Woman (sic) Cultural Development Centre—
who just happened to be in Kathmandu on other business. Our first meeting
was mostly informal in nature and went very, very well. I was pleased to
make it through most of this initial meeting with my halting and choppy
Nepali. The president is a pleasant and friendly woman with an infectious
laugh and smile… Although one does not hear a great deal about Maoist
activity in Mahottari, apparently, much to my chagrin, much of Bardibas has
been without phone service and electricity over the past couple of months.
This has been a typical scenario for much of rural western Nepal but it is
the first I have heard of such events in my own part of the Terai. Things
get repaired much slower outside of the Kathmandu Valley, but hopefully
this is only temporary and will not disrupt my work—nor communicating with
you through these pages—for very long… Although both Migyoung and I are
anxious to move the Terai, we still have a final week of language, a few
more workshops to complete in addition to more NGO visits that I hope to
make.
Segueing into a different topic, Migyoung and I returned to Manamaiju this
past weekend to visit our host families. This was a very Nepali sort of
thing to do—drop by unannounced—but no one seemed to mind and everyone was happy to see us. We made copies of some photographs of the family as a
small gift, which they loved and I am sure will cherish. I put a few
photographs from our return to Manamaiju in the photo gallery including my
first go at the outdoor, concrete ping-pong table.