Living Goddesses and Massacre on Valentines.

This is going to be a long one, it's been a busy day.

First, I'll just touch on a slight incident from last night.

Oops.

So yeah, I sat down on my bed and one of slats clean snapped in half. Too many mo-mos for this girl. Luckily when we told the guest house about it they were really cool and they told us that the previous three Turkish people staying in the room had been, ahem, very active. I can only assume they did a lot of dancing on the bed.

But on with the good stuff, it's been a long busy day so I'll try to keep it entertaining.

Friday night we decided to see some of the major attractions in Kathmandu and decided Durbar Square would be a great place to start, however our taxi driver though differently and dropped us off somewhere totally different. Once we'd paid the money to get in we realised we were actually at Narayanhity Royal Palace Museum, the site of a huge massacre in 2001. What better place to spend Valentines day, am I right?!

Nepal has had a very turbulent history in regards to monarchy and power and only recently have things settled. Now I'm no expert in the full story of the Nepalese royal family so for now I'll just summarise what happened at this particular site. On June 1st 2001 in the palace grounds, the heir to the throne, Prince Dipendra, is believed to have killed 9 members of his own family and himself, including the king and the queen. The prince survived and became king, however died 3 days later, never waking up from his coma. After his death, his brother, Gyanendra, became king. Very Game of Thrones.

This isn't the only massacre in Nepalese history, but as there is so much to cover I'll save that for another time.

(Like quite a few places in Kathmandu you weren't allowed to take any photos, so you'll just have to picture the palace yourself. Think lots of taxidermy and 60's style interiors and you'll have a general idea.)

Just down the road from Narayanhity Royal Palace is the Garden of Dreams which sounded lovely but in reality was full of smitten couples. Really beautiful place, really bad day to go. The gardens are actually very beautiful and it was nice to relax in the middle of such a busy and dirty city. There was a moment when I almost had to step in and save the day as a small child had fallen into a pond, but fortunately someone got there quicker than I did. I spent the rest of the time trying to get chipmunks to come over by throwing pieces of croissant that I'd taken from breakfast. It seems chipmunks prefer cheese Lays to croissant, for future reference.

(All my photos from here are currently on another camera so will update in due time, but I'm sure you know what smug couples look like)

From the Garden of Dreams we were going to walk down to the real Durbar Square but decided now was the best time to experiment with rickshaws. Oh. My. Gosh. This is where I turned into a huge wimp and was clinging to SJ for dear life. Being in a taxi is bad enough but being on the back of a blooming rickshaw is far, far worse. The roads of Kathmandu (and I imagine all of Nepal) are just not designed for bicycles.

Obviously this was before we set off.

I was so blooming (I'm trying to keep the language here as PG) happy to get off that rickshaw and into the overpriced Durbar Square, although once you buy a ticket it is valid for your entire stay providing you've got a passport copy and spare passport photo. Honestly, they truly love paperwork here. Anyway.

Now I'm no history teacher so I'll go to my good friend Wikipedia for a short description of what Durbar Square actually is:

Kathmandu Durbar Square is the plaza in front of the old royal palace of the then Kathmandu Kingdom. It is one of three Durbar (royal palace) Squares in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, all of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Durbar Square is surrounded with spectacular architecture and vividly showcases the skills of the Newarartists and craftsmen over several centuries. The royal palace was originally at Dattaraya square and was later moved to the Durbar square location.^[1]

The Kathmandu Durbar Square holds the palaces of the Malla and Shah kings who ruled over the city. Along with these palaces, the square surrounds quadrangles revealing courtyards and temples. It is known as Hanuman Dhoka Durbar Square, a name derived from a statue of Hanuman, the monkey devotee of Lord Ram, at the entrance of the palace.

Today, Durbar Sqaure was also host to a market organised by a women's organisation. To any of the guys from my Tajik programme, it was very much like our business fair but slap bang in the middle of a tourist attraction. After a mooch around the stalls we went to the museum section of the square which was absolute bliss in comparison to the busy entrance area full of guys trying to offer themselves as guides and even one man who offered 'the best night of your life' in exchange for just $1000. Who could resist?

Women Entrepreneur Handicraft Fair- always on the job.

The museum was a big courtyard with buildings on every side and a 9 storey tower containing a very ricketey staircase which all of a sudden made incredibly afraid of heights. It really was a very wimpy day. The views from the top were great albeit restricted. After the tower we went to the museum which was interesting but a little over the top. There really is only so much you can say about a king, not to mention every single one of his belongings being on show too. None the less there were some wonderful things on show and it was great to see a royal wearing sunglasses in almost every one of their publicity photos.

All along the square there were gurkhas, which offered a PERFECT photo opportunity. Naturally I couldn't resist and this guy is my favourite because he was so damn smiley!

My gurhka valentine. 

The nine storey tower. 

The next part of the day was by far one of the most surreal moments of my life. At 4pm they were going to be bringing out the LIVING GODDESS. I had only heard about the Living Goddess, Kumari, briefly before but the reality was just bizarre. The tradition of having a Kumari comes from the 1700's and a young girl is chosen when she is 3 years old and is considered to be an incarnation of the goddess Durga. The Kumari then spends all of her years up until puberty in the Kumari house being worshipped. She is allowed to leave the premises 13 times a year but isn't allowed to touch the floor so gets carried everywhere. Doesn't sound too shabby to me.

At 4 we crowded into a little courtyard to get a glimpse of her. It was all very exciting and as soon as she appeared at the window there were gasps and cheers. In reality it was a very young girl wearing some very lovely silk PJs wearing an awful lot of makeup. She came to the window, looked around and then left. It was very, very bizarre.

You're not allowed to take photos of the Kumari and there were threats from the security that they would break your camera if you did, so here's a photo from the web. I don't know if this is the one I saw but you get the picture, so to speak.

At the side of Durbar Sqaure is Freak Street, one of the popular haunts of many hippie backpackers in days gone by but now mostly just another tourist spot. From here we walked along the Kingsway and I had a case of Truly Bad Maths, asking a guy if he would do 3 for RS100 on DVDs that only cost RS30 each anyway. I blame tiredness.

I'm not entirely sure what this vehicle is but it sure looks good. 

The day ended back at one of my favourite haunts, Nema Cafe, with some buffalo mo-mos and a hot lemon and honey. Fortunately my bed has now been repaired and we have electricity tonight (yay!!) so I'll be living the rock'n'roll lifestyle watching a movie and eating Oreo's.

Lizzie x

Edit: literally as soon as I finished writing this the electricity went off. I guess it'll just be the Oreo's on their own then.

Training & Traditional Dress.

Today has been a really great day. I'm not going to go into too much detail about our training because it will be very boring/irrelevant to most people reading this, so I'll just assure that it's interesting and going well.

One thing from today though that was very interesting was a session about development issues in Nepal. Now call me ignorant but I'd never thought of Nepal being an especially poor country. This, however is not the case. The three major areas we looked at today were:

- Health: although heath is generally improving there are still many issues, for example 67% of children are stunted and 50% of them are underweight at birth. Due to measures brought in to reach the MDG for maternal health, the maternal mortality rate has been reduced from 415 in 2000 to 229 per 100,000 live births.

- Education: although 96% of children are enrolled in schools, the retention levels are very low and the numbers are often skewed. The average amount of years spent in school for males is 2.49 but only 0.6 for females.

- Gender: 7% of girls are married by the time they are 10, 40% by 15 and 51% by 18. Arranged marriage is still acceptable and although the age to be married has been risen, many villages do not abide by this. Women face many exclusions and discrimination, especially in rural areas.

In addition to this Nepal doesn't have much political stability. There have been 21 governments since 1990 and no elections since 2002. Nepal also suffers a lot from natural disasters, not helped by climate change.

For me the gender inequality was what hit home the most as I feel very strongly about this issue, and it was the theme of my project in Tajikistan. In addition to the training I also met one of the long term VSO volunteers who is working on an amazing project called Sisters for Sisters, which helps to get girls into school. She had a lot of really interesting stuff to talk about and it really is one of the best parts of working for VSO, as you get to meet so many interesting people with such varied experiences.

Despite the problems Nepal faces, VSO have been doing some great work through both the long term volunteers and the youth programme. The three main areas they work on are education, health and livelihoods, with cross cutting themes of gender and climate change. VSO have selected 20 districts across Nepal and aim to help women, youth and other marginalised groups.

On a lighter note...

After our training, SJ and I headed out with the two Nepali Team Leaders to go and buy fabric to have a traditional outfit made. Not as cheap as Tajik dress but still very cheap compared to the UK. I've had my measurements taken (was not impressed with the numbers, need to get hiking) and providing I don't look ridiculous I'll post a photo when I go to pick up the outfit.

Of course no outfit is complete without shoes, and I cannot resist a bargain so of course I picked up some shoes too. Here's mine and SJ's (pasty) feet with our amazing Nepali shoes.

The shopping was good because we got to spend a bit of time with the Nepali girls (funnily enough my male counterpart Rahul didn't want to come) as we've only been training together so far. They're really sweet but there are some clear differences between our cultures, especially our ways of working. The programme is all about cross cultural working though, so it's all part of the learning curve. 

We've found a great little restaurant near where we live which makes amazing mo-mos, which are sort of like a spicy dumpling containing either chicken, buffalo or vegetables. I can't get enough of them at the moment, which isn't going to help me improve those measurements! 

I'm writing this against the clock because we've had no electricity in the guest house all day and I'm running out of charge on my laptop, so that's all for now. I was having a bit of a rubbish day yesterday as I realised just how hard and challenging this is going to be, but my spirits are high again now and I'm really keen to meet my Nepali volunteers next week.

Lizzie x

Training Day.

So this is a short one because I'm going to lump all of the training into one post when it all finishes next week.

BUT.

I realised I hadn't even spoke about the weather. What kind of terrible British person am I?! Usually I wouldn't go into too much depth about this, but the weather here is just not usual at all. First thing in the morning, it's freezing. So you layer up, step outside and... it's toasty sunshine. By the time we walked down to the office I was really warm. Until you go back inside again...and it's freezing. All through the day there is beautiful warm sunshine but as soon as it gets to about 6 the temperature really drops. Right now it's actually not too cold in the room although I do have a chilly nose.

For any of the volunteers about to come out here, all I can say is go for layers because I've spent most of the day putting clothes on and taking them off again.

Lizzie x

Monkeys and Musings.

I woke up to the sounds of dogs barking, something I think is going to become a common theme. After a fantastic nights sleep I was able to have a hot(ish) shower and felt remotely human again, ready to face the first day in Kathmandu.

Some girls from the VSO office came to meet us and we had lunch and a catch up with the project co-ordinator before heading off into the city. As this is our first day, SJ and I were able to do what we wanted, and there was really only ever one thing on our minds...monkey temple.

Navigating to the temple (via the city for a SIM card and money cash) was easy enough. We simply found one cab, haggled the price, he refused, so we went to the next guy. This guy happened to be asleep but that's just not good enough when 2 eager UK volunteers want to see monkeys so we woke him up. We agreed a much better price and then...he went back to the first guy, told him what we were paying and we got in the first cab anyway. Sleepy driver gets a nap, we get to the monkeys. Everyone's a winner.

We were not disappointed. As soon as we arrived we were overwhelmed with monkey excited. Far less exciting was the walk up a very high, steep set of stairs to the temple. Luckily there were plenty of monkeys to distract us on the way up and I needed the exercise anyway after sitting on planes/in airports for almost an entire day. It seems that in Nepal they follow the rule of one price for locals and another price (four times as much) for foreigners. No matter though. Monkeys. The temple was really very beautiful and were got some absolutely amazing views of the city.

After our monkey adventures we headed to a very tourist-y bit of Kathmandu, Themal, for some dinner and maybe a gin based cocktail. I think at this point it would be good to explain that in Kathmandu there really is no concept of road safety and pavements are non existant, so everyone is in the road, expecting you to move out of their way. Luckily the cars move very slowly (probably because they are tiny Suzukis not really designed for rough terrain, but maybe that's just me), so no real damage could ever happen. Plus, providing the horn is working then that's all that really matters. Not a second goes by when you can't hear someone beeping their horn to make another car/person/animal move out of the way.

I'm home now in the very nice guest house and listening to the dogs, of course. There isn't a huge amount to do at night time, but all the time I have wi-fi I'll be able to inform you of my monkey and non-monkey based adventures.

Tomorrow my training starts so I'm really looking forward to that and meeting some of the Nepali volunteers. But for now, this will be all.

Lizzie x

Surreal Beginnings.

About 5 minutes after my previous post all of my mounting nerves vanished. SJ had arrived so I was able to fill my mind with comparing what we had brought with us and who had a worse passport photo.

The journey, despite being around 19 hours went relatively quickly. I amused myself with Whiplash and then St Vincent (still got it Mr Murray, sorry not sorry). We managed to find a women's only sleeping area in Doha airport so that covered the 6 hour stopover and then it was a short flight to Kathmandu. Waiting at Doha airport we realised that we were 2 women amongst a grand total of around 5, so we stuck out like a sore thumb. It was awkward.

The fun really began though, at Kathmandu airport. Before we even landed the Nepali travellers had decided they were going to get up and start getting ready to leave. When we were eventually let off the plane we had to figure our way through customs and then wait for approximately 10,000 years for our bags. Luckily our co-ordinator was there to pick us up.

Oh no, wait, no they weren't, they had the wrong day. All was good though, we got in touch with VSO and were safely in a car on the way to dinner (yay!) without having to wait too long. What I quickly learnt in Nepal is that they don't really use words for saying 'please can you move', they just blow whistles. So waiting at Nepal airport we were just in a big crowd being herded around by whistle blowing guys. Now I know how sheep feel. Except that at no stage were we going to be eaten. Or shaved for that matter, at least I hope not.

Sadly, driving through Kathmandu on the way to the guest house we couldn't really see much because there is very little street lighting and everyone goes to bed super early so all I could see was darkness. Darkness and stray dogs, of which there are plenty.

As we had arrived quite late, the only place we could find that was open was a bar called 'Mirrors' and as I walked in I expected one of the Corleones to be there. It turns out women don't really go to bars like this and as I sat down on a white leather sofa in an all white room with white tables and mirrors on every wall, surrounded by 10 or so intimidating men, I couldn't for the life of me work out why. Never the less it was actually very friendly. Surreal as hell, but friendly. I had a great garlic chicken dish which burnt out my entire mouth so I never have to worry about taste buds again. Winner. Extra points to the 'band' that were playing that night. Nothing beats an acoustic cover by Nepalis of Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box.

After dinner we attempted to navigate back (taxi drivers don't know the way) to the guest house and after a quick scan for any 8 legged friends, I fell swiftly asleep to the glorious sound of planes overheard and dogs barking. Living the dream.

Lizzie x

The First Post

Hello!

Welcome to my blog, where I will (hopefully) be documenting everything that happens on my trip to Nepal with VSO ICS.

I'm currently the most nervous person at Heathrow drinking a coconut water (that cabin pressure really dehydrates you, you know) so trying to get a quick post in to calm my nerves, although I have had a wonderful person at the end of the phone keeping me sane too.

So, as a little background, in 2014 I volunteered with VSO in Tajikistan, which was a 12 week project working with marginalised women starting their own businesses. Those 3 months were absolutely amazing and I got to work with some really interesting people, some of which have become life long friends. Although I was a 'regular volunteer' in Tajikistan, this time round I will be a Team Leader, which is a mostly pastoral role, making sure all the volunteers are OK and everything is running smoothly. I'll be working with a counterpart and we will lead the team of 8 UK volunteers and 8 Nepali volunteers. There's also a programme coordinator out in country to help us. The community I'm heading out to is called Lamjung but I'll be starting my training in Kathmandu to begin with.

Up until this point I have been frantically fundraising, packing and moving out of wonderful London back to my parents house in Kent. It's been insanely busy and that probably explains why it's only just dawned on me that I'm leaving. This morning was the last time I'll be waking up in my nice comfy bed with my quite frankly amazing duvet, and things began to feel very real.

Fast forward a few hours and here I am, nervous, excited and suffering from a somewhat psychological sinus infection. I'm not entirely sure what lies ahead of me, but whether it's smooth sailing or challenging, no doubt it's going to be an incredible experience.

I've noticed a real difference in how I feel today compared to how I felt just before I left for Tajikistan. Almost a year ago I spent the night before I travelled getting to know the 14 other UK volunteers I was flying out with. There was so much eagerness and anticipation that I hardly noticed any nerves. Plus, we all instantly got along so there was plenty of conversation to make the journey fly by. In addition, I had never taken part in ICS so I had no idea at all what was in store.

This time round I'm feeling a lot more nervous, partially due to the unknown and partially down to the added responsibility I have this time. I've had a lot more time to think whilst waiting around for my flight, and having had 2 weeks off work I've got very settled in at home. None the less I'm still insanely excited and cannot wait to experience Nepali culture.

Luckily I'm not totally on my own as I'll be flying out with another Team Leader and as I type my gate has been opened, so this is it for now. I would love to say 'next stop Kathmandu but I've got a 6 hour wait in Doha first. You win some you lose some.

Lizzie x