It feels like spring

Last week we celebrated our 1st anniversary of arriving in Nepal and the weather is much the same as it was then so hopefully winter is over. It was a lovely sunny day today; I was in short sleeves for the first time in months. You can now count the days before I start complaining about the heat!

 

Another sad farewell last night as we went for drinks to say goodbye to Lucy. Fortunately she did not want a hard drinking night so we got back sober and at a reasonable hour. I know she reads this, so good luck in settling back to life and work in the UK Lucy and start planning the reunion in 2008.

 

It's been a busy week at BDS with a couple of unscheduled events, the start of a UNDP audit and a meeting called at less than 24 hours notice supposedly to finalise the National HIV/AIDS Plan. This Plan is for 2006-2008 and should have been finalised before the start of the financial year last July. Having listened (although the discussion was in Nepali, the document is in English so I could understand enough) to 3 hours of debate I now understand why it is still not finalised. In good participatory style, all the organisations working in HIV/AIDS are invited but it seems to be dominated by just a couple who, in arguing their own corner, appear to have no regard for getting the Plan agreed. After 3 hours we still had not got to the Budget and most people had drifted away. However as the meeting broke up, my colleague and I did manage to make a couple of points which hopefully will be incorporated. The meeting reconvenes on Monday so lets hope some progress is made so everyone can focus on the next stage without which it is all pointless – getting donors to come up with the funds to actually implement the Plan.

 

We were expecting the UNDP audit sometime but with very little notice it throws out our other work which is already proving difficult to keep up with when load shedding means we can't use computers for 3 hours of 4 days every week. We have power for the entire working day tomorrow (the first cut starts at 5pm) so hopefully we can get salaries done and print any reports the auditors need.

 

Sheila starts 8 days of helping run a training course tomorrow. Quite handy because her District Education Office may not be open next week due to two lots of protests. On Friday, one group padlocked the office whilst another gheraoed (picketed – not always peacefully) it. In the bigger picture, there are a whole load of bandhs (strikes) scheduled for next week which are likely to foil plans for the HIV & AIDS volunteers to visit some projects in Hetauda and Birgunj next week. Hopefully they will not disrupt our quarterly meeting on Thursday and Friday – apart from its importance to the programme, it is being held at a nice resort hotel just south of Kathmandu and I was really looking forward to having a bath.

 

Just remembered that my last post talked about going to Pokhara last weekend. Didn't make it because Sheila was a bit dodgy and definitely would not have managed a 4-6 hour road trip. Shame but hopefully there will be another time.

 

A quick break for a phone call from Josie including the news that Italy are currently beating Scotland – apologies to all Scots fans but I'd like to see Italy win, it sounded as though they played really well against England. Again no TV or even BBC World Service radio coverage of any of the matches so I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out the Ireland v England result. Sorry, for my non-sporting readers I should explain that I'm talking about rugby.

 

Right enough for now. I'm conscious that I haven't posted any photos for ages so I'll try to do some soon.

 

Cheers

Roshan