I'm sorry I've been bad at doing posts to the blog recently although Sheila has done her bit. Starting work has been a bit a bit of a shock to the system and this week has been hectic with 3 days of conferences (sounds grand but believe me its not!). You probably all know all know that Wednesday was International Day against Homophobia so Blue Diamond Society had a conference to discuss sexual and gender rights in Nepal and how things might change with a new Constitution in the offing. A good turn out and the local big man from UN Human Rights made an important speech saying that the discrimination and harassment faced by sexual minorities was not acceptable and the new Constitution would have to correct this. A major step forward in a country where the majority of people either deny that homosexuality exists or consider it illegal. I'm afraid that my very basic Nepali meant I only understood about 1 word in 10 (words like "we", "and", "but", "for" etc - must learn some more verbs and nouns) but I found a brilliant translator to sit next to who gave me the sense of some of the personal stories. Apart from learning more about the struggle for sexual and gender rights, I discovered that the Nepal Bar Association (we used their meeting room) really needs to do something about its toilets. Any jokes about how many lawyers it takes to clean a toilet?
Thursday and Friday were Blue Diamond Society's National Consultation Meeting. Even more challenging on the language front! I think there must have been over 200 people attending, most of whom have been, or will shortly start, working in the BDS HIV/AIDS program which has just expanded dramatically. Lots of ideas and enthusiasm; the challenge for BDS is to maintain this whilst delivering effective services that make a difference to the fight against HIV/AIDS in its target group. The meeting finished on Friday evening with a Cultural Evening - apart from some traditional dancing and singing by a Hijra (that's an Indian/Nepali name for a eunuch - kids, ask your parents what this means) dance group, think drag queens do Bollywood. Great fun and I'm kicking myself for forgetting my camera. I'll see if I can get photos from one of my work colleagues. And for all my politically incorrect and insensitive friends, no I did not dress up nor did I perform.
It was our turn to do Saturday breakfast for some friends. Great company and thanks to Henk, who has a breadmaker (might go on our list of luxuries), some delicious brown bread. Unfortunately he did not bring the fantastic chocolate sprinkles (apparently the Dutch eat them on bread, I was happy to have them neat) we had at his place the other week. I was surprised to discover that David (American) and his wife Migyoung (South Korean) liked Marmite, so its not just a British taste.
Today (Sunday), it rained most of the morning and another volunteer who is moving from a small town in the south to Kathmandu came to talk about finding accomodation near us. We have had quite a bit of rain this month although monsoon proper is still a month away. If it fills up the hydro-electric reservoirs and we don't get any more load shedding power cuts I'm happy. However it would be nice if the newspaper weather forecast gave some indication that it was going to rain, it only ever seems to say "Mostly fair" or "Partly cloudy". We did get out this afternoon and bought some more bamboo furniture, no prizes for style but its cheap and functional.
Off to another leaving do for a volunteer tonight. I guess we'll get used to just getting to know people and then they leave. I'm sure we'll stay in touch with, and hopefully visit, our new best friends who are leaving to go to Sri Lanka in July. He got offered the job there just as peace broke out here and fighting kicked off again in Sri Lanka - clearly he likes conflict zones.
Hopefully, a quieter time for me at work next week. Hope you have a good one.
Cheers
Roshan
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