A Little Bit About The Nepali Political Landscape...

It is difficult to fully understand the political situation in Nepal being here for just 3 months, but it is fascinating and also uncomfortable at times (like residual effects such as load shedding). As many of you may already know, Nepal has had turbulent times over the past decade. Problems with the monarchy, massacres in the royal palace, growing discontent in the populace, insurgency, the rise of the Maoists, dissolution of parliament, the list goes on…

One thing that is fascinating is the rise of the Maoists over the past 10 years. When dad and I came here in 1998, there were no real concerns regarding the Maoists and the monarchy seemed to be liked or at the very least tolerated. Life seemed peaceful in Nepal. After our visit, things degenerated, as the Maoist movement grew. This occurred mostly in the rural areas that were and still are very poor. From the outset the Maoists were regarded as, at best a voice of opposition to the government and at worst outright terrorists. Physical violence did occur and people went missing or were even killed.

The Maoists gained traction often through threat of violence but also because they represented change and offered prospects of better prosperity for the rural poor. Even though violence was a part of their strategy, the Maoists continued to gain traction and popular support. By the time Jenn visited in 2002, riots and demonstrations were taking place in Kathmandu, and things were a whole lot less stable. Leading up to our return in 2008, the Maoists had gained credibility and status as a legitimate party. They had abandoned their hideouts in the forests and set up shop in Kathmandu. In the most recent elections in the fall of 2008, the transformation was completed with the Maoists officially forming the government. Now the anti-establishment had become part of the establishment, and that is where we are today.

We are seeing a first time government struggling to develop a new constitution and make better of a country that has been long unstable (greatly in part due to their own activity over the past decade). We will see how things unfold…. There have been a great deal of stalls and impediments put up from the opposition party (Nepali Congress) and an increasing number of unmet promises on the part of the Maoists. There are already rumors floating around the country of a coup…. Interesting times indeed. The current Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (nicknamed “Prachanda” ), was quoted the other day saying that if his party were to be voted out or thrown out they would reacquire power by force. So, there you have it… now you know a little about Nepali politics. I hope I didn’t bore you too much with the limited amount that I know.

Load Shedding Revisited….

Ok, I’ve talked about this before but now I am officially complaining. Load shedding has taken hold big time, as most of Nepal is without electricity for 16 hours per day. Yup, that’s right. Electricity is on for only about 8 hours every day. So, as I mentioned before, the problems have been mounting as we are faced with an electricity supply “perfect storm” as it were. We are in the dry season, so water levels are low and Nepal traditionally cannot produce enough electricity through it’s hydro-electric dams to meet the demand of the country. Couple this with infrastructure problems with one of the dams. Nepal also normally imports electricity from India to make up it’s electricity shortfall, but due to flooding last spring of the Koshi river, power lines were damaged and electricity imports stopped. Beyond the situational problems, the chronic shortfall is also a comment on the inability of the government to install new generating capacity over the past decade due to a variety of reasons including political turmoil. In fact, Nepal’s current electricity demand is in the neighbourhood of 800 Megawatts (MW) and the current supply is roughly 260 MW. Thus…. 16 hours of load shedding. So, now we wait in the dark for… 1) the snow to melt (to bring water to the dams) 2) infrastructure repair, and 3) the monsoon rainfalls

Incidentally, I had mentioned before that because of our close living proximity to the Prime Minister we were not getting any load shedding. This privilege has disappeared. Fortunately we are not experiencing 16 hours a day like most areas, but that being said, our power outages can be quite unpredictable.

The effects of load shedding have taken a terrible toll on businesses. Getting work done can be incredibly difficult. Some solutions are power inverters (like a battery back-up) but this tends to compounds problems as when the power is on, there is an increased load due to people powering up their inverters. There is also the generator solution, but this also comes at added expense with only a small amount of generative capacity (enough to keep the lights on, but not much more). There is also the additional problem of a sizeable increase in GHG emissions and air quality degradation (as if that needs to get worse!) with the burning of diesel fuel. There is definitely no easy solution to the problem and the government faces real challenges with electricity supply. There have already been many protests regarding load shedding and articles in the newspaper about it almost every day….

Happy Loshar!!!

A couple of days ago, Jenn and I spent the day with my boss and coworkers celebrating the Gurung New Year. The festival is called Loshar and what is a Gurung you ask? The Gurung are one of the many indigenous people that make up Nepali society. Originally the Gurung people came from the Annapurna area of the country, but now they are dispersed throughout Nepal. They originated from the mid-hills to the higher elevation Himalayas of Nepal. There are in fact 61 indigenous groups in Nepal.

We started out our celebration on the evening of the 29th by going out for dinner with my co-workers. Parbat (my boss) has a brother who owns a restaurant, so we all piled into a taxi and headed down to the World Trade Center in the southern part of Kathmandu where the restaurant is located. The restaurant was very new (18 months in operation) and very nice, the food was good and we all had a good time. It was actually the first time that Jenn had met my co-workers so it was a very pleasant introduction.

The next day was the actual Loshar celebration which took place at Ratna Park in central Kathmandu. The celebration was much bigger than I thought it would be, and I was told that up to 50,000 people would be in attendance that day. We arrived a little later in the afternoon, as we skipped the formal speeches (seeing as we wouldn’t understand them anyway). We arrived in time for the start of the cultural program. The program included traditional singing and dancing. It was very interesting and entertaining, but the real entertainment was just watching the many people that were gathered and visiting with friends and family. It was an incredibly friendly environment. Many people stopped and wished up a happy Loshar. One child really liked Jenn’s hair and kept coming by to surreptitiously touch it. There were seemingly an endless number of booths set up and each one was selling food! It smelled pretty amazing, but Jenn and I withheld for the most part as Parbat warned us that the food was prepared in pretty unhygienic conditions. So we just smelled the food instead… We left at about 5:30 but the party apparently would go on all night! My counterpart Khilendra explained to me that Gurung celebrations always involve drinking and as such the party would get wilder as the night went on. Before we left we could see that the dancing had started. It was nice to see the spontaneous dancing that would start as the traditional folk music played on.

Jenn and I were very thankful to be invited and to take part in the Loshar celebrations. It is precisely events like these that make our time in Nepal interesting and worthwhile.

The Sign Says it All!

Jenn and I really enjoy going out, wandering about the city and taking in the local sights. One of the ongoing highlights is finding establishments with signage in English that are either overly literal or have “lost in translation” problems. Whenever I see a funny sign I make a point of taking a photo, or at the very least remembering it for future reference. I have compiled a few photos to share with you, but I will continue to collect them as we continue our travels.

When dad and I traveled to Nepal 10 years ago, we trekked along the Annapurna Circuit where along the way we came across many little guest houses and restaurants. I can recall some of the names like: Great View Guesthouse, or Mountaintop Restaurant. They tended to be literal and usually descriptive and every once in a while, quite funny. Since arriving in Nepal this time, I came across this very literal restaurant name: “Economic Restaurant and Bar” . Perhaps they should have called it “Quality Food for a Good Price Restaurant and Bar”. It’s all in the marketing you know….

I was taking the bus on my way home one day and I saw out the window a sign for a restaurant and I immediately started laughing. The restaurant was called “The Ring of Fire” Restaurant. Of course there are many things that can come to one’s mind… perhaps the owner is a fan of Johnny Cash? From the context of a traveler though… the ring of fire is often what results after a bout of traveler’s diarrhea. So, my guess is that any traveler on vacation may steer clear of this restaurant. To be fair, the restaurant is situated along the “Ring” road that encircles the cities of Kathmandu and Lalitpur.

A couple of weekends ago we took a little trip out of the city to a place called Bhaktapur. You can check out some of the photos of that beautiful ancient city in my slideshow. As we walked around the city we came across a funny name for a restaurant, and if you look closely at the picture and the sign’s font you should be able to identify what the owner was thinking when he/she named the restaurant. Yup, you guessed it… a Metallica fan for sure.

That’s all of the signs for now. I will keep you updated on my further findings….

Our trip to the Central Kathmandu Zoo

A few weeks back, Jenn and I took a trip to the Kathmandu zoo. Jenn and I over the years have made it a bit of a tradition to visit the zoo in the cities that we visit. We have previously had a membership with the Calgary zoo and we have been to zoos in places like Portland, New Orleans, Toronto, Mazatlan, Bangkok and now Kathmandu!

As a bit of a preface to this story, we have met many people since arriving in Nepal and one person who we quickly became friends with is Benoit Trudel (http://www.voirlemonde.org/) Benoit is a fellow Canadian and now a former Nepal volunteer who has since moved on to Vietnam to take a position in Hanoi. Benoit also has a son Rémi that he adopted three years ago from Vietnam, and so when Benoit had to go out of town we decided that we would take care of Rémi on one of our days off. We decided to take Remi to the zoo. In addition, we have also become friends with our landlord and his family, and so we thought we would take Siyarani (our landlord’s daughter) to the zoo as well. So the motley group went off to the Central Kathmandu Zoo, which is actually located in Lalitpur (Patan). We took a taxi, which cost us 300 Rs or $5 Cad to get across the city. Well worth it considering the hassle of navigating the public transit system.
Upon arriving at the zoo we entered a mass of humanity that surprised both Jenn and I. There were hundreds of people queuing to get into the zoo! I guess we shouldn’t have been that surprised, as Saturday is really the only day off during the week that people get in Nepal. We stood in line and when we reached the front of the queue, we tried our best to get the “local” admission price but we ended up having to pay the “tourist” price which amounted to six times the cost. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

I can honestly say that I have seen some bad zoos (San Jose, Costa Rica) and some excellent ones (Calgary, New Orleans, Toronto). The quality of the Central Kathmandu Zoo lies somewhere in the middle, between the San Jose zoo and the Bangkok zoo in terms of size and care for the animals. Many of the animal enclosures were small and often without the replica habitat that many modern zoos provide to their animals. Some features that the zoo did offer were elephant rides for visitors and a central pond where you could rent paddleboats. The highlight, however, was the display of guinea pigs which Jenn and I found quite funny. I guess we view the guinea pig as a domesticated pet, but it seemed funny to us that they were on display.




We had a nice lunch that Siyarani’s mother (Kajal) had packed for us and the rest of the time I spent carrying Remi on my shoulders as he feigned exhaustion. One funny incident occurred just as we were on our way to leave. A curious man stopped us and asked us where we were from and if Siyarani and Remi were our children. We were a bit taken aback, but as he asked a crowd formed around us. Everybody seemed to be staring and waiting for an answer. Remi started shouting out “Vietnam!” and Jenn and I tried to explain that we were in fact from Canada and that the kids were friends… one from Nepal, the other from Canada (but adopted from Vietnam). I am not entirely sure that we were understood, but we did get some very curious looks. All in all, the zoo was a fun experience, if not for the animals, then definitely for the company.

After our taxi ride back home, we entertained the kids by supplying them with paper, paints and felt markers and let them draw and create to their hearts content. At the end of the day I was exhausted. I give kudos to all of your parents out there, as managing one child seems a feat in and of itself.