A night out at the bar…

I had forgotten about this story and now that I have it on my mind I might as well share it with all of you. Go wayyy back to November, shortly after Jenn and I had arrived in Kathmandu. It just so happens that when I arrived in Nepal, my cousin Wes was here working on co-ordinating dental workshops for Nepali children. What is so strange about all of this, is that I haven’t seen Wes in years! It’s the usual story that while in Canada we both lead busy lives and we just never seem to meet. So, we both had to come to Nepal to catch up with each others lives… We had made a couple of attempts to get together, but due to our schedules we were not able to meet until a day before Wes’s flight out of the country.

We had arranged to meet in the evening at a popular jazz club in the Lazimpat area. Jenn wasn’t feeling well that evening, so I went by myself to meet up with Wes. I arrived a little late and having phoned Wes, I knew that he was already at the bar. I didn’t have any difficulties finding him, but when I did see him he blended right in and looked to me as if he could be Nepali! I sat down, ordered a drink and we proceeded to catch up on each others lives. It was great hearing what he had been up to. Wes has been working for a non-profit group that runs dental clinics in developing nations. The organizations recruit dentists from the US to come on a working holiday to countries like Nepal and Vietnam. They set up mobile clinics and offer free dental work for school children. What a great program! Wes’s job was essentially general management, co-ordination, logistics and host. Yikes, sounds crazy busy! Not only did he have to co-ordinate the clinics, but he also had to play host, and keep the visiting dentists safe and happy. Not an easy job, but from the sounds of it, very rewarding.

We caught up on each other’s family news and I told him what I was doing in Nepal. It was really great chatting and quite surreal given our location… As we were chatting, a server came by and interrupted us. He had a shot of tequila on his tray and explained to me that the shot was given to me compliments of “the woman in the corner”. I was kind of shocked and kind of embarrassed as well. I scanned the room and Wes did the same, trying to identify who this person might be. I felt pretty awkward as well, because I certainly did not want to drink the shot. Tequila is not my thing, particularly since I had a bad experience with it during my university days… we’ll save that story for another day perhaps. Anyway, as I looked around I did not see a woman in the corner. I did not want the tequila so I chose to ignore the situation and let the tequila shot sit on the table without drinking it. A few minutes passed as Wes and I continued to chat and the server came by again. This time he was more adamant and he told me that “you really need to drink the shot” and again that it was from “the woman in the corner”.

I was now feeling kind of pressured and I wasn’t being allowed to ignore it. I turned to Wes and told him “If I drink this and it is drugged with something, you have to take care of me ok?”. Wes laughed and assured me that he would. So, I mustered up my courage and mentally prepared for the assault on my stomach. I licked the salt that was provided to me, and downed the tequila! I had prepared the piece of lime to follow the tequila shot, but having tasted the liquid I immediately knew that I had been the butt of a big joke. The shot was water!! I looked around the bar and sure enough, Craig and Gary (my fellow Canadian volunteers) were on the other side of the room laughing and pointing at me! They had set me up! I had failed to see them as I was scanning the bar earlier. They both knew that I am not a big drinker, which made it all the funnier to them. I felt like an idiot, but laughed at how the whole scenario played out. I introduced Craig and Gary to Wes who was kind of confused as to who these two jokers were, but we all had a pretty good laugh in the end. The night ended in typical Nepali fashion at 11pm when the police came by to make sure that the bar closed at the proper curfew time. Wes and I said our goodbyes and he hopped into a cab to take him back to his hotel. Craig and I walked home amidst the other bar patrons and transgendered men that sometimes frequent the area. It was another interesting evening in Kathmandu to be sure….

The Climate Change Issue in Nepal

We all know how climate change has become one of the biggest global concerns that man has ever faced. It is an issue that leaves no person unaffected. As it is a global problem, it is expected that there should be a global solution and that it is the responsibility of every nation to address. Having left Canada and my job at Climate Change Central for a marketing position in Nepal, I didn’t really expect to be doing climate change work, but as it turns out climate change has become a pretty big policy issue in Nepal. Of course there are a lot of pressing needs that the government must address that concerns more basic needs (poverty, education, electricity etc..), addressing climate change is still emerging as a major problem and an opportunity in Nepal.

Some background… Nepal is a highly rural country with 80% of the population living in non-urban centres. In addition, the GDP per capita of Nepal is among the lowest in the world. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe that it is the 11th poorest nation in the world. As such, the overall ghg emissions from this country and on a per capita basis are undoubtedly one of the lowest in the world. Even though Nepal produces relatively little ghg emissions, it stands to be affected a lot by climate change. Being a mountainous nation, the Himalayas provide an abundance of water to Nepal and neighbouring India. With the melting of glaciers, floods could become a larger issue in the short term and in the long term drought may occur when glaciers melt away. Being a highly agrarian society, changing weather patterns will also greatly affect Nepal in that agricultural crops may suffer from drought or flooding or even just shifts in temperatures and growing seasons. Subsistence farmers may face a situation where they are no longer able to subsist.

Impacts aside, a strategy needs to be adopted in Nepal that not only addresses adaption, but also to look at mitigation strategies that reduce ghg emissions for the greater global good, and that also can benefit Nepal financially. Possibilities exist to leverage action on reducing ghg emissions into revenue for certain sectors on the Nepalese economy. This may be done through mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) process through the Kyoto Protocol, or other voluntary measures like the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS). Simply put, a developed country (that has binding ghg reduction targets) or an organization (that has a regulatory obligation to reduce ghg emissions) can, in effect, reduce emissions by investing in projects in developing nations (Annex II countries signed on to the Kyoto Protocol) or projects that are outside regulated activities. There are many complicating factors that make things quite convoluted, but this is the gist of it.

So, for example, if a company is looking to reduce it’s emissions but implementing process changes internally to reduce emissions are cost prohibitive, they may look to other ways to reduce emissions in a more cost effective manner. This might include investing in an “emissions offset” project which would reduce emissions in a developing nation. The emission reductions that are created due to the project would then be counted as an emission reduction for compliance by that company. Because climate change is a global issue, it theoretically does not matter where the emission reductions take place, as long as they truly take place…

So, if a community forest area in Nepal manages to reduce it’s carbon output through sustainable harvesting practices and they “sell” their emission reductions to a private firm from North America, both parties stand to gain. The Community Forest User Group gains a economic benefit for their sustainable harvesting practice, and the company gets carbon offset credits which help it achieve regulatory compliance at a cheaper rate than investing in costly upgrades to reduce emissions internally. Simple right?? Well, not really, but that will be a discussion for another day. There are always other complicating factors such as risk of project failure or reversal, problems of additionality (whether the project is truly incrementally reducing ghg emissions), project implementation and documentation… the list goes on.

So where does Nepal stand? Well, things are in the fledgling stages, but theoretically there is plenty of opportunity for carbon offset projects including: carbon sequestration through forestry practices, energy efficiency and renewable energy projects (ie. using bio-briquettes for heating, biogas and biodiesel for alternative fuels). There is a great deal of interest currently and projects will have to be initiated on a pilot basis to determine feasibility and cost viability, but there is no doubt as there is increasing worldwide carbon constraints the viability will continue to rise….

What am I doing in Nepal??

There are days when I ask myself that repeatedly, but really I am enjoying myself being here.... on a serious note.

I have not written much about my work yet, so this is an opportunity to let people know what I am doing here in Nepal. I am working for a natural products processing and trading company called Himalayan Bio Trade. The main products that they sell are essential oils (7 types including wintergreen, juniper, rhododendron, jatamansi, zanthoxylum, Artemisia, and abies) and handmade paper products (books, stationary, gift bags and gift boxes, picture frames, lanterns etc.). My job is to assist with their marketing efforts by putting together a marketing plan and helping with international marketing.

One of the many challenges that small essential oil producers face is capacity and ability to deal on an international level. This has been made easier through the increasing popularity of the fair trade movement where the value chain is shortened and the producer comes in more direct contact with the retailer of the product. By cutting out middlemen (wholesalers), producers can take home a bigger piece of the pie!

One of the great advantages that the Himalayan Bio Trade has is that their essential oils are wild crafted and not cultivated. This means that the raw materials are harvested from the forest and not grown in cultivated crops. When harvested in a responsible manner, this is a much more environmentally friendly and sustainable way of utilizing resources. In addition, Himalayan Bio Trade has certified organic products, so consumers can be assured that there are no unnatural chemicals (ie. Pesticides) applied to the raw plant material or the oils.

An objective in Himalayan Bio Trade’s mission is to provide economic benefit to the rural communities and rural disadvantaged groups. Often it is difficult to make a living in rural Nepal as it is a heavily agrarian society with often difficult terrain and marginally arable land. The challenge is to find ways to bring economic prosperity to these communities. Himalayan Bio Trade offers employment to many rural poor by giving a fair wage to those who harvest the raw materials for both production of essential oils and handmade paper.

Himalayan Bio Trade also does what we call “value add” processing which sees the distillation of essential oils and also paper manufacturing in the rural areas. Where other operations may ship raw materials to the city or even sell and export raw materials, more value can be derived by exporting processed products, but also shipping costs can be reduced by processing in the field.

So… my job is to develop a marketing strategy and messaging that can help Himalayan Bio Trade grow. To increase market presence, but not so much that they cant deliver “the goods” so to speak. The organic certification and Forest Stewardship Council certification will help in creating a unique selling proposition. Overall it’s been a really good experience so far and I am proud to help a company that has it’s heart in the right place.

Update and General Goings On

It’s been a while since I last updated the blog, and I have no specific topic to address, but thought I would give a little update on our status here in Nepal.

On living conditions…. Things have shaped up in our apartment. We no longer live as complete minimalists and we have replaced our plastic patio table and chairs with a real dining room table. We now are the proud owners of a spare bed, so all those who stay with us can sleep on a real bed!

Electricity has been the biggest inconvenience so far, as we are now operating on 8 hours of electricity per day. We get 4 hour chunks of electricity interspersed between 8 hour outages. Very difficult to get work done, or anything done for that matter! Sometimes that 4 hour chunk will come at 4 in the morning, so the useful hours of electricity in one day can sometimes be only 4 hours!! Crazy! I have heard that the hours of electricity will increase come March, but I will have to see it before I believe it.

On the weather…. Things are warming up here in Kathmandu. It feels as though the winter is over. The days are warming up (although the days never really got that cold), and the nights are definitely not as cold these days. We do not need to use our heater nearly as much and I have stopped wearing my long underwear! This must mean that winter is over right???

On friends…. We have seen quite a few friends come and go now that we have been here for over 3 months (getting close to 4!). It is a bit of a transition period for the Uniterra Program that I am working for. The program is up for renewal and until the minister signs off on the program, there will be no more recruitment of volunteers here in Nepal. So, the numbers of Canadian volunteers is dwindling as people finish up their mandates. Since Jenn and I arrived we have seen about 7 long term volunteers leave and only one arrive! They have been a good support group though and have definitely made our transition to Nepal easier. We also have made friends with a number of wonderful Nepali people and have spent some time visiting with them in their homes… I will write about that another time.

On language… Jenn and I have started taking Nepali language lessons. It’s pretty slow going, but we can do some counting (ek, dui, tin, char…), ask people their name and how they are doing (tapai: ko naam ke ho?) and conjugate a number of verbs. It’s not very useful yet, but we’ll get there.

On entertainment… Sometimes it is difficult to entertain ourselves when we are sitting in the dark, but we have been able to keep up with recently released movies. Nepal has a thriving bootleg DVD market with numerous shops around the city selling recently released movies on DVD. So, we have seen a number of the Academy Award nominee films on DVD already including Slumdog Millionaire, Revolutionary Road etc. The quality can be somewhat suspect, but for the most part they are watchable. Jenn and I have also been catching up on television series that we had previously missed, such as Heroes and Carnivale. We are trying to keep up with the Lost series as well, but it takes us forever to download the files off the internet. The first two episodes took me 4 days to download! The power kept cutting out, so it would interrupt my downloading…

On health… I have been very healthy (knock on wood), but Jenn has had difficulties adjusting to the polluted Nepali environment. For the first two months, Jenn really suffered with a very bad case of sinusitis and one cold after another. She felt better for a little while and since then has gotten sick again. It’s been really frustrating for her, as she wants to do the things she had planned but her health has been getting in the way.


It’s been a difficult past couple of weeks and at times both Jenn and I have been Nepaled out. The electricity situation can be demoralizing, and on top of that the constant onslaught of pollution. Recently Jenn got her hair cut and she had asked for just a trim (less than an inch). What she got was 6 inches cut off and a Nepali style haircut called a "step cut", which is apparently just 4 chunky layers (not even blended). She was horribly upset as it had taken her sooo long to grow out her hair to a length that she liked.

To make things worse, we had purchased a very expensive Thangka (Tibetan religious painting) a while back. It was a beautiful piece of art! We were heading out to get it framed and we got distracted as we got out of the taxi… we forgot the thangka in the back seat and he drove off. By the time we realized it, he was long gone. There are so many taxis in this city, that there is no way we could ever find him again. C’est la vie! It just kind of topped off our week. In protest of our rough week, we went with a friend out for dinner and had a nice big helping of steak and beef burgers!

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.

My search for a new guitar

When I made the decision to take this position in Nepal, I had contemplated bringing my guitar. I thought it would be a nice “comfort” of home that I could use for entertainment and to pass the time should I need to. After thinking things through a bit more, it became obvious that it was too much of a “luxury” to bring along considering how much luggage we were allowed and all of the other things that I would “need” rather than just “want”. So, when it came time to pack, Jenn and I made the hard decision that my guitar would remain behind. Jenn reasoned that it would likely cost more to ship than to buy a new one in Nepal.

Not long after we settled into our apartment, I started my search for a new guitar. This was in part precipitated by the fact that we live next to a drug rehabilitation center. How does having a drug rehabilitation center across the street from you make one want a guitar? Well, as it turns out the guys at the drug rehab center apparently have a lot of time on their hands and to pass the time they pull out their guitars and sing. These songs range from Hindi pop songs to The Eagles. Fittingly, there is one song that they sing that our neighbour swears contains the words Feliz Navidad in it, but I’m not sure… Their concerts occur every day (and into the night) and we have heard songs from Nirvana, The Cranberries, Neil Young, Guns n’ Roses, the list goes on.

So, as you can see I have been listening to them play their guitars for weeks and it makes me want to play (in part to drown out some of the terrible songs they play…). So it was a couple weeks back when I started my search to purchase a guitar. We were not sure where to go, so we started out in Thamel where all of the tourists go to shop. I ran across a couple shops that sell instruments and they had a variety of guitars.

As many of you know, some of the big name brands of guitars include Gibson, Epiphone, Alvarez and a number of lesser known brands like Horner, Ibanez etc. As I looked upon the racks of guitars it became apparent that the guitars they sold were cheap knock offs of brand name guitars. One shop I walked into, the shopkeeper happily told me that he sold “real Gibson” guitars. I said to him, “Gibson?” and he responded yes “real Givson”. As I looked up at the wall with the guitars displayed, on the neck of the guitar sure enough it said “Givson”. It seems the guitar manufacturers were smart enough to realize that they would run into trademark law problems using the real names, so they adjust them slightly. Thus, Gibson became Givson, Epiphone became Epephone, and Alvarez became Alvariz.

As for price, guitars in Canada start around $200 for a very beginner model. Others can be had for less, but they tend not to be playable and do not stay in tune. The shops in Thamel were asking for about 8000 rupees, which amounts to approximately $133 Cad. I figured I could talk them down to $100, but I thought I would leave it for another day as I wanted to a do a bit of price shopping. So, on Sunday I went out with Jenn to the area in Kathmandu called New Road,where the streets are jammed with little shops selling everything from computers to sewing machines to freshly butchered meat. I was told by a co-worker that there were a couple of music shops in the area. We wandered around for a bit and asked a few locals for directions. At last we finally found the music shops. We walked in and found the Epephone and Alvariz guitars and I was told there were better guitars upstairs. Upstairs we found the “real” guitars where they sold Takamine guitars with a starting price tag of 35000 rupees or $583 Cad… Ouch! Realizing that I cannot afford a “real” guitar, I settled upon a nice Hovner (rip off Horner) that sounded pretty good and seems to stay in tune. The nice surprise was that getting out of the tourist area paid off as I ended up spending only 2500 rupees or $42 Cad for it.

So, now I can compete with the drug rehab guys across the street or perhaps just go over and jam with them. I will have to brush up on my Guns n’ Roses though….

On matters of pollution and environmental quality…

One thing that I would like to accomplish in my blogs is to paint a picture of life in Kathmandu from a balanced perspective. We all know that wherever you live in this world, you must take the good with the bad. I don’t want to point out only the good things and neglect the problems that I see.

Jenn and I have been here for getting close to two months now and it has become very evident that environmental quality is an enormous issue. I am guilty of having a romantic notion of Nepal and the beautiful pristine Himalayas in the north and the jungles in the south where you can find an abundance of wildlife (rhinos, elephants, tigers etc.). Having spent some time now in Kathmandu (which has a population of over 1 million people), it has become obvious that the environment is a real issue here. It is very true that there are remote areas where pollution may not seem a big issue, but Kathmandu is a totally different story.

Waste management is one of the most evident issues in Kathmandu. While I have seen garbage trucks picking up garbage in woefully inadequate trucks (the size of a small pick-up truck), the vast majority of garbage in the city is burned. It is a very common thing to see bags of garbage or just loose garbage laying at the side of the road. The smell can be pretty bad too… Jenn and I have often seen people just throw their garbage into the street. It offends our sensibilities, but that being said, what is the alternative? The city evidently does not landfill their garbage, it is often just burnt… When Jenn and I package up our garbage it does get taken away, but where it goes from there we don’t really know? Most likely it is burnt somewhere, so are we really any better?

The burning of garbage, in turn, creates another very visible problem and that is air quality. At times the air will be thick with the smell of burning garbage which includes burning plastic. I can only imagine the amount of dioxins and furans which are released into the air as a by-product of burning plastic wastes. This bad air quality has played havoc with Jenn’s lungs and may be a reason why she has been suffering with symptoms of sinusitis.

I have already talked about water quality in a previous blog, but it is worth mentioning the rivers that flow through Kathmandu. These are among the most polluted waterbodies that I have seen, with floating garbage, raw sewage and sometimes even the remains of people who have been mostly cremated along the ghats at Pashupatinath temple. Because the Bagmati River flows into the Ganges River (the most sacred river to Hindu people) many practicing Hindus will have their relatives cremated and scattered into the river. Part of the problem is that wood is expensive and the bodies may not burn completely…

Party, Party, Party! Well, okay just two...

This past weekend Jenn and I were invited to two parties. The first was a party organized by our neighbour and fellow volunteer Kelli. She has been visiting and helping out an orphanage down the street and put together a party for the kids on the rooftop patio of our building. Jenn helped out by creating a piñata for the party. After a number of hours of labor, Jenn managed to make a beautiful pig piñata as illustrated in the photo. The kids had great fun being blindfolded and taking turns clubbing the pig! Unfortunately our broom suffered a major casualty as we were using our broom as “beating” stick for the piñata. The first few kids managed to hit everything but the piñata, including a metal pole. The broom handle at the end of the game was irreparably bent in 3 or 4 places. I guess we need to get a new broom! The pig on the other hand was definitely more durable than the broom. Jenn had created an industrial strength piñata… they ended up having to tear the pig apart by hand to get at the candy!

The second party was a birthday party held by our neighbours downstairs. They are a Nepali family… Prasand, Prasana and their two children. It was Sanskriti’s sixth birthday and Jenn and I went out and bought her a Barbie doll… well, not a “real” Barbie, but she looks like a Barbie. We arrived at the party at 2pm, which was wayyy too early! We ended up sitting there for a couple of hours before the other guests started arriving. At least we got to know them a little better, and I practiced my very limited Nepali, which amounts to asking people what their name is and how they are doing… We ended up leaving around 4:30 with the promise that we would come back later. 5:30 rolled around and we got a knock on the door for us to come back as Sanskriti was going to cut her cake and open her presents. She seemed to really like the doll! We stayed for another couple of hours and played with the kids. Overall it was fun but exhausting. It is kind of tough with the language barrier, but with kids there always seems to be a way of overcoming language barriers through play….

Food and Hygiene in Kathmandu

Things in Nepal have changed drastically over the past 10 years… Even 5 years has made a huge difference. There is very little that you cannot get if you live in Kathmandu. In fact, you would be hard pressed to mention anything that you can’t get as far as food is concerned. Some things that we have not yet found… maple syrup (although you can get the inferior Aunt Jemima kind of syrup), beef oxo cubes (but you can find chicken, vegetable and Mexican flavored ones), sour things like sour candies and salt and vinegar potato chips. I am sure there are other obscure things that are not available, but nothing so far that we truly miss…

So far, food is the one thing that you can spend quite a bit of money on. Sure, you can definitely do what the natives do and eat very cheaply. To eat pretty much the same way that we eat back in Canada it does costs significantly more… much more than what we pay for rent. The one good thing is that produce can be had for very cheap, so if you are ok with being a vegetarian, you costs should go down significantly.

An axiom for travelers abroad when in developing countries like Nepal or India is never eat anything raw! I have always adhered to this rule religiously as I am not interested in getting sick. While it is true that caution must be taken when eating in a restaurant, it is different when you prepare the food yourself. Raw vegetables can be eating without any real concern so long as you prepare it properly. This entails soaking your vegetables in iodine treated water. It doesn’t take much, just a few drops in the water and soak for 20 minutes… voila your vegetables are ready to eat!

I must say, I have been eating like a king since arriving here and in particular since we moved into our apartment. Jenn is an amazing cook and the fresh produce that we can get here is pretty much like eating out of a garden. Jenn has cooked an amazing stew, her famous spaghetti sauce, stirfrys galore and even nachos with fresh guacamole yum!!

On Matters Concerning Electricity and Water

Funny enough as it turns out, the two are inherently linked. Electricity in Nepal is a spotty thing as there are scheduled outages of electricity based upon which district you live in. In Kathmandu, depending upon the time of year once can expect the electricity to be out between 30 and 40 hours a week. We recently heard that this increases during the winter. We are currently looking at 45 hours a week of what they call “load shedding”. Why does it increase in the winter? Well, there are two reasons why this might happen, one is demand and the other is supply. During the colder months there is a greater demand for electricity for heat. Also, during the winter months there is less water abundance as we are in the middle of dry season. As a result there is less hydroelectric power available due to low water levels. It’s a bit of a double whammy actually… While all of this sounds very inconvenient, it is not that bad, as often the outages will occur late at night or early in the morning, so you may not be affected at all some days. It can be a bit difficult at the office however. In fact, I am writing this blog at the office (my bad…) during load shedding. It makes you appreciate having a laptop that much more! Thanks Climate Change Central for letting me keep it!!

The saving grace to all of this “load shedding” business that occurs is that Jenn and I just happened to find a place to live that is located strategically close to the Prime Minister and the President’s residences. As it so happens, rank has its privileges and the Prime Minister and President are exempt from load shedding (at least for the time being). So, by default the lowly volunteers from Canada are exempt as well! So, apart from a few hiccups in power from time to time we have been lucky to have the lights on consistently.

As for water, it can be scarce during the winter months in Nepal. We were told to be careful where we chose to live, as the water taps can run dry at times. We were careful to ask about water supply and it appears that there is no issue where we live as they have water pumps and large supply tanks at our building. Hot water is a different issue altogether though… After talking to our landlords we were satisfied that hot water would be available on demand and the solar thermal heating system would be sufficient for the three families that live in the building. This is good in theory, but not in practice as I spent a week getting cold showers and I mean ice cold showers in the morning. The solar thermal system certainly works, but timing is everything. Of course, sunlight is also a must to ensure a warm shower as well and that isn’t always guaranteed either. So, long story short, Jenn and I invested in a “Geyser”, which is essentially a gas powered on demand water heating system for our shower and since then we have no complaints. Hot water until the cows come home!!! Woo hoo!! So how much does a “geyser” cost? Pretty cheap by North American standards I would say. We paid about $90 Cdn for system itself and another $50 for the gas cylinder deposit (which we will get back when we leave). The gas itself costs $20 Cdn/cylinder. I don’t know yet how long the gas will last, but whatever it costs it’s worth it for consistent hot showers!

So, now that you know all about our showers, you are probably wondering about water quality? Is the water safe to drink?? In short, absolutely not. The water in Kathmandu is definitely not fit to drink without boiling. We get our drinking water in bottles… much like we did in Canada. We get the big 18.9L bottles of purified water (distilled, uv treated and ozonated as well) and we get it delivered right to our door. The bottle deposit actually costs more than what we pay in Canada, go figure, but the water is cheap at about $2 Cdn per bottle.

Finding an apartment in Kathmandu

Jenn and I were told that as a general rule it is relatively easy to find a furnished apartment in Kathmandu. Unfortunately, this is not exactly what we experienced. Upon recommendation we met with a real estate agent named Kumar Lama. We tried to tell him what we were looking for, but there seemed to be a language barrier. We told him we were looking for an apartment on the second floor or higher (to avoid insect infestations and potential flooding problems in the monsoon season), fully furnished, and within a price range of 12000 – 18000 Rupees per month ($200 - $300 CAD). The first place he showed us was over $400 per month (at least it was fully furnished!), the second and third place he showed us were both unfurnished and one was even on the ground floor!

I know I sound like a big whiner, so I am going to cut this short. After looking at a dozen places we found a place that we liked for the location, the price and the fact that it was very recently built. We settled on a partially furnished apartment, which entailed an agreement to supply a refrigerator, a two burner gas stove (with a gas cylinder included), a bed and a kitchen table with four chairs. We also negotiated to include curtains so we could have some privacy, and some kitchen utensils and pots and pans! As we were quickly learning, everything must be negotiated, price always being the last thing…

Arrival In Nepal!

It is hard to believe that it has been over a month, six weeks actually since Jenn and I made the big leap and moved to Nepal for a year. I will give you the quick synopsis of our journey so far….

We arrived in Kathmandu on October 22 on a beautiful warm day. Both Jenn and I have been here before, so we more or less knew what to expect. We arrived in the morning after about 32 hours in transit and we were dead tired. Our CECI counterparts were there to meet us and they took us to the hotel to check in and freshen up. We went for lunch and then went for a meeting at the Canadian Consulate. Very nice! Nothing like fighting sleep as we listened to the consul try to explain to us his role in Nepal, which consisted mostly of telling us what he doesn’t do. After many head bobs we went back to the hotel to crash.

Over the next week or so, we had training and orientation. This consisted of introducing us to the CECI organization in Nepal, meeting all of the staff, learning about all of the current operating programs, cultural training including Nepal’s social and political history. We were also given a tour of the city to orient us, and taken to health facilities for a medical orientation.
Our training was interrupted by a 3 day national holiday called Tihar (or Diwali/Dipawali). This is the biggest holiday in the Nepalese calendar and could almost be described as the Nepali/Indian version of Christmas. Lots of lights, fireworks, firecrackers and lots encouragement to shop. This is the time for local businesses to offer sales and it is effectively an indication of how business and sales will go for the coming year, so it’s important to sell lots! It is also a time for family and most Nepali people will travel back home to spend the holidays with family and friends. While it was nice to experience, Tihar did get in the way of Jenn and my ability to look for a place to live, as our real estate agents that we were relying upon for assistance disappeared for 3 or 4 days!