Burma Video

With all the protests in Burma, I thought I would post an extraordinary 12 minute video that I got from the Back Pack Health Workers. These men are trained and supplied in Thailand then go to live in work in Burma. Since the Burmese government is trying to systematically destroy all of the ethnic minorities, there is no infrastructure for health care. These people carry all of their supplies in backpacks and treat people where they have fallen. Kind of like medics, but they do a greater variety of treatments and education.

The images and statistics that are in the video are truly compelling and disturbing. The video will start playing a couple of minutes after you click on the imag (do it now!).

And now what you've been waiting for...darkness

Da-dang, da-dang, da-dang....the familiar musical intro to India Idol (same as American Idol but in India). This is huge here because a finalist was from Darjeeling an area in northen India which is of Nepali descent...they speak Nepali, have Nepali customs....kind of southern Nepal.

Someone set up a huge projector screen in the streets and there was nearly a thousand people watching and cheering like crazy. I think that every TV in our town was turned on because just as the man,Prashant Tawang, was walking up to the microphone, one too many TV's got turned on and the city lost the electricity. You may have heard the sigh from where you are.

As it turned out, Prashant Tawang won the competition. The celebrations continued through the night and the performance has been replayed many times. When a friend was recounting the story and how his mother put a traditional Nepali hat on him after he won, she began to weep. Maybe she is too sentimental, maybe there is not enough to celebrate right now. Either way, I think it is sweet.

They are bad, but they are trying

I really dislike the Maoist. They espouse violence in their effort to get reform (13,000 died). Tourism and jobs have been badly injured. They lie ("the US does not want the elections" even this even though the US has given 10 million to finance them).

That said, they have a voice. It seems that not a day goes by without a rally where they spread their crap. The polls say they are not popular. The popular parties are quiet. I wonder why?

So I am having desert and a goat walks in.

Sometimes my life hardly seems real.

Last night Sandy and I stopped by a shop for some sweets. We were chatting to the daughter or the owner who we have become friendly with and a goat walked into the doorway of the shop. This is one of the non-edible ones that they have wondering around the city (more about that later).

We watched as one of the workers dutifully walked over to the goat and gave it a snack and it left. The daughter of the owner told us that the goat comes every night and will not leave until they give it a snack. Given the overpowering stench that the creatures have, it makes sense to feed them and get them on their way.

As we walked out of the shop, the goat had stopped at the next shop and was on its' knees waiting to be fed there.

There is poor and then there is poor

Last night I was talking with my brother and realized I never wrote about the place we live here. It is remarkably nice. It is situated over a shop overlooking Durber Square which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our first floor is our living room, dining room and remarkably small kitchen. The second floor is bedroom area and a remarkably small bathroom (no pic of the the second floor sorry) The roof has a garden overlooking the square. In the background of the pic you can see a couple of temples (one of which is from the 1400's). I put a pic of the front of a couple of the temples. We feel really lucky to have this place.

Who to trust?

I met this guy who is managing a children's home two days ago. I went to the home and found it to be quite nice. He told me that the financial condition was terrible and the founder and her foundation was not providing much support any more.

Luckily, the founder was an American with an NGO set up in the states to support the home. 10 minutes of checking on the internet and I found that the home actually raised $36,000 to support these children... of which it spent $21,000 of the money on the children. It has over 42,000 sitting in the bank. The manager of the home says that he has been raising money to support the home by selling goods and asking for donations locally, so the amount of money the home receives is likely more than what I can find on the internet.

I smelled a rat with this guy from the start because he must have said "it is hard" about the financial situation 30 times in an hour conversation. Given that the cost of living is very low here (82% of people live on less than $2 a day so it must be low) and doing some basic analysis running the numbers he gave me, they should be in great financial condition. I am not sure if this is a total scam, but I am not going to do anything to help them...to bad since the kids seem to be very nice.

shakin'

Two months ago Sandy and I met this couple two times and ended up having dinner with a group of people that included them. They were seated next to us for the entire evening so spent a couple of hours chatting. They were volunteering at a couple of projects we know in Thailand. We thought he was quite odd and she seemed nice enough.

I got an e-mail an hour ago. The two of them were apparently into drugs. A few days ago, he stabbed and mutilated the woman. He was found hours and hours later completly out of it sitting on the edge of the bed where her corpse was neatly tucked under the covers.

I am still shaking from the news.

Special Good-Bye

Indra is the head of TOIT and he is going away to Europe for a couple of months. This is a big event for him and his family. They decided to have a religious/traditional farewell ceremony which they invited us to. The ceremony involved offering fruits, throwing rice, placing a huge tika (red dot in this case) on Indra's head as well as small ones on our heads. As he walked out of their house, they dropped flower petals in front of him from the upper windows. Really a nice experience.

Restarting a country can be scary

Nepal has had a problematic monarchy including a recent incident where a prince killed the rest of the family over a girl and became king for a short period. The most recent king was disliked by the public and a Maoist revolution started in rural areas and spread through out the country. The revolution claimed 13,000 lives. A year ago the Maoist signed onto a new process to form a new government which will likely end all remnants of the monarchy's influence and a true democracy.

The first election, which will be intrical in establishing the constution, is supposed to happen in November. The problem is the Maoist are trying to prevent these elections. They say the stage is not set yet so they are demanding 22 conditions be met prior to the elections. One being they want the maoist army at the polls for security and to try to talk to people about the election.

The 22 conditions are unlikely to met by today (their deadline) so the Maoist are saying there will be a non-violent agitation. Given that a leader of an anti-maoist group was killed last night, it does not seem like the non-violent part is being honored.

There are positive as well as negative signs. Everyone says there is no danger to foreigners but we are still being careful. Ok, last night while walking through the streets we stopped at a little dance show for 10 minutes before we realized it was a Maoist rally...we promise to look closer next time.

Torn!

The brother of a friend of mine is a total piece of crap. He has 3 employees, the youngest being 8 years old. The children work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. They earn $15 US a month. If they do not do exactly as he says, he beats them. Sandy saw him violently shaking a child. My friend, who is as kind a person as I have ever met, has talked to his brother many times.

Child labor here is quite common, but this is despicable and far out of the accepted norms. I do not know what to do...I do not think there is anything that will change his ways. I did tell my friend that if I see him abusing the children (like working 16 hours a day is not abuse) I am going to stop him.

A new web site

Somehow I got suckered into making another web site. Please check it out and give me your feedback. The address is: http://www.toit.org.np/

If the site has a green background, it is the old site and the new one is not displaying in your area yet...so don't tell me it sucks, that is why we made a new one.

Thanks!

Monkey Laundry Time

Sandy was in the mood to do some more laundry by hand (ok that may be a lie) and decided to go to our roof garden to hang it out to dry. She was about halfway done when she realized the sounds she had heard earlier in the day were not the annoying raven like birds...it was a good size monkey. The monkey, who was about 10 feet from Sandy eating my plants, looked to be about 2 feet tall while seated...maybe 3 feet or more when standing. Her heart began to beat rapidly and decided to head down the stairs into the house when the monkey began to approach. She said she got the door closed and just in time. Once Sandy could breathe again, she decided she needed a picture of the monkey. She went and got the camera and quickly took a picture.

We had been warned to never leave our windows open when we are not home because the monkeys will come into the house and wreck havoc.

Who knew laundry could be so much fun...maybe I will try it sometime (another lie)

Turnin' Vegetarian

Sandy and I are turning vegetarian. This is not out of any moral qualms...as my favorite philosopher Homer (the one from Springfield not Greece) said, "if god did not want us to eat animals, he would not have made them so delicious." The real reason is our meat markets. The meat, in this case Buffalo not cow (they are sacred here), are covered in flies. Unless they refrigerate the sidewalks, I think the meat is not refrigerated. Of course, the meat does not all sell on the first days so there is no way to tell how many days it has been sitting out.

Sandy's first day

Today was Sandy's first day teaching. Nothing outstanding except at the end of the day when she got off the school bus a 5 year old girl grabbed her hand and then they went through the neighborhood hand in hand (with an immense number of people looking on confused).

Nice way to end the day.

Street Scenes

I am not certain what the snake dude was doing but he sure had a big crowd. The painted ducks are a colorful addition to the streets.

That'll take care of it

In an impressive show of technology, Nepali Airlines has demonstrated a new way of fixing its' trouble prone plane. As this story says, they are sacraficing a goat to fix it. Well....That should be the end of that.

Bombings

There were some bombings in Kathmandu yesterday. There are elections coming in two months and some groups are trying to make it impossible for them to take place. I do not think we are in any danger, but we are watching things very closely.

Water buffalo in resevoir

I have no idea why, but I think it was kind of funny to see a Water Buffalo in the reservoir (now you know one reason not to drink the water)

Finally settling down

Sandy and I have lived in a few countries now so we know what to expect. Usually the first couple of weeks are hardest because you do not know what is happening, who to trust and how to get anything done. In short, very stressful. We now feel like we are past that here and are really starting to enjoy ourselves more.

Good luck!

So I am standing outside of the office the other day and plop! Indra was with me and he had that look on his face like "I wonder if he will get mad". I laughed and he said it was good luck here. I relayed the story to another volunteer and she said it happened to her 3 times.

As you can tell in the picture, I turned the turkey neck feature on in my camera (there is no way my neck is naturally that fat).