The Bold and the Beautiful

That's what the headline was in a 2/3rd page article in Saturday's Kathmandu Post about Nepal's first same-sex marriage, a glamorous affair on the rooftop of Blue Diamond Society's offices which Sheila and I attended. This weekend was also Teej, an important Hindu women's festival, so the metis (transexual or cross-dressing) members of BDS were dressed in traditional red saris.
No sign of Hallo or OK magazine but there were a few other journalists to cover this historic event in Nepal's gay rights movement. Perhaps the lobbying to legalise same-sex marriages in the new constitution is ambitious but the fact that even 2 years ago the police probably would have arrested everyone and the newspaper editors definitely would not have printed the articles shows that Blue Diamond's campaigning has been effective. There was also a TV crew there taking shots which went out that evening as part of a 30 min health awareness documentary about BDS. From my point of view it was good that it was on Nepal TV 2 which apparently no one watches because in a fairly pointless and toe-curling piece they had an interview with me saying in a dorky voice "My name is......., I am pleased to be here at the wedding of my friends". I didn't even think to say the first bit in Nepali.

Enough talk, here's some pictures.The happy couple (above)


Another happy couple plus friend

Cheers

Roshan

P.S. An interesting lesson in the different cultures - I said to my boss that it was a shame it was raining during the wedding and he said not at all, this would be considered auspicious for the marriage. Fairly reasonable in an agricultural economy where crops fail and livestock dies if there is no rain. For those of you in the UK not dependent on farming, hope you had a dry and enjoyable bank holiday weekend (particularly Richard, Sharon and James in the Isle of Wight and Guy, Dawn, Ross Alex and Poppy in Cornwall who get mentions as my only friends WHO EVER BOTHER TO WRITE and let me know they have read this blog!)

6 months on

We arrived in Nepal 6 months ago yesterday. This should mean that I write a piece reflecting on our experiences and impressions so far. However my brain's not really in the right mode for this so it will have to wait until I'm feeling creative or to avoid waiting that long maybe I can persuade Sheila to write it.

 

It was deja vu all over again this morning when we got a phone call from a VSO staffer warning us to take care if we went out and to stay close to home. There were demonstrations yesterday and more planned today against fuel price rises announced on Friday. A bit more boisterous than the UK fuel price protests; we get tyres burnt in the streets and government vehicles trashed. These will be the many of the same demonstrators who were on the streets 4 months ago and for whom the fuel price is an excuse to vent their frustration at the slow pace of progress towards the democracy they fought for. A classic example being the drafting of an Interim Constitution which was meant to have started in June and be finished 15 days later - a totally unrealistic timetable which 2 months later sounds as if it is still more than 15 days from being achieved. The anger at the fuel price rise should remind the politicians of Bill Clinton's election mantra, "It's the economy - stupid" and it reminded me of a newspaper cartoon a week or so ago, a small fish called "Democracy" about to be gobbled up by a bigger one called "Peace Process" which in turn is being chased by an even bigger one called "Economy".

 

I must finish as I've been writing this as an excuse for not starting the thrilling task of checking a draft VSO "Partners Manual" and I can't put it off any longer.

 

Cheers

Roshan

AIDS 2006 Conference - my boss speaks

CBS News 14 August 2006

For one front-line worker, the fight against AIDS and HIV involves battling more than the disease itself, and that workers and others face arrests and other roadblocks.

Sunil Babu Pant of Nepal a speaker at the international AIDS Conference in Toronto on Monday says human rights violations and discrimination have made his job with the Blue Diamond Society, a sexual health, HIV/AIDS, advocacy agency representing sexual minorities, much more difficult.

“We have a lot of transgendered people and men who have sex with men who have been denied health care,” he said during a panel session on human rights. “No hospitals will take them, no ambulance will carry them.”

Pant says he and other workers have had to carry the bodies of those who died from AIDS to the cremation centre themselves. Once they get to their destination, he says, more complications await.

“Either they charge a lot of money, or we are pushed [to another cremation centre] farther away,” he said. “There is no place for transgendered people or those who are HIV positive.”

Pant, a gay man himself, founded the Blue Diamond Society in 2001. The stigma around gay and transgendered people and HIV and AIDS was so prevalent that when the Blue Diamond Society first registered as a human rights organization it was not allowed to make reference to its specific clientele, he says. He adds that his clients and co-workers have been detained for as long as two weeks by Nepalese police, often without charge.

“Over the last three years, 150 [clients and front-line workers] have been arrested, and more are unreported.” The problem prompted the Joint United Nations program on HI V/AIDS to issue a statement expressing its concern to the government of Nepal in 2004.

A ban threatened

The Nepalese Supreme Court has also threatened to ban the Blue Diamond Society, Pant says.

The potential harassment ends up pushing people with HIV and AIDS underground, he says. Those who need medical care don’t come forward until the last, critical stages of the disease.

“I tend to get discouraged and frustrated,” says Pant. “But that doesn’t help our fight.” What has helped their fight, he says, is the Elton John Foundation, which donated an ambulance, and other funding which has enabled them to establish a hospice for HIV and AIDS patients.

Pant is optimistic that the mistreatment of sexual minorities and those with HIV and AIDS “has to end.” He says Nepal is in political transition from a monarchy to a newly reconstructed parliament and the Blue Diamond Society is involved with a movement towards protecting gay, transgendered and those infected with HIV and AIDS. The group is lobbying to include language in the legislation to do that.

“I want to be who I am, and I want to live,” he says. “It’s my own fight.”

It's not Everest but.....

......... I still didn't get to the top of the climbing wall I went to a couple of weeks ago. These pictures don't show that the whole wall is an overhang (yes, really), some bits more than others which means that for most of the time you were holding your full weight on your fingers/arms. Now, I've lost a bit of weight whilst I've been here but obviously not enough to get my power/weight ratio back to what it was in the days I used to free climb yacht masts.

My arms quickly turned to jelly at which stage I just had to drop off the wall - I think the next photo shows my best attempt. I don't think I got much higher on this climb, it looks like I'm about to come off.


I will go again but maybe I need to get in shape first if I want to get higher. Apart from the power/weight thing, I'm glad I wasn't any heavier because the short, lean Nepali (a Sherpa?) who was belaying me was lifted off the ground when I came off. Not sure how they manage with big guys.

Cheers

Roshan

Gai Jatra

It was Gai (pronounced "Guy") Jatra, literally Cow Festival, on Thursday. Historically Gai Jatra was initiated by King Pratap Malla to help overcome his wife's grief over their dead son. On this day families around Nepal masquerade in costumes in the hope that they can let go their deep sadness at the loss of loved ones in the last year. They take comfort that a cow will fly the soul up to the gates of the afterlife - and why not, its no less credible than many religious beliefs. Traditionally it has also been the day when people could speak out about authority and oppression, a sort of Free Speech Day. The significance of Gai Jatra for us was two-fold - firstly for some people (I'll give you a clue - which profession has the longest holidays in every country I know) it meant they had yet another day off work. For us at Blue Diamond Society, it was the annual gay pride rally, Nepal's own Mardi Gras. The drag queens were the stars of course, in full make up and dressed in their finest, there were a few more extravagant costumes but I discovered later that these were limited by the fact that some were locked in a cupboard and the person with the key was away - shame. My contribution on the glamourous costume front was to wear my Kylidh (pronounced Kylie) crew shirt in homage to the gay icon (for the benefit of the overly masculine members of the Kylidh crew, I concede that one does not have to be gay to lust after Kylie). Not surprisingly not even my British friends who'd come along got the significance.

I have to admit to being late for the start of the rally, my excuses being that I was at a meeting that took longer than expected and nothing ever starts on time in Nepal - there had to be an exception! As a result we did not catch up with them until they had danced their way through the tourist area of Thamel and stopped at Durbar Square to light candles for those who had died of AIDS in the last year. I thought we could stretch this and I lit an extra one for someone special who I'm sure would have enjoyed the thought of her soul flying off with a cow.

I hope the press clipping is legible, apparently if you double click it it might enlarge. I'm afraid it was difficult to take pictures due to the crowds so the photo of my beautiful friend in red is rather spoilt by the bloke in front giving me the evil eye.