VACATION!

Hi my dear readers, have you already missed me a lot?! Of course, I understand, but no can do, I had some misunderstandings etc. with this blog and I couldn't sign in for a couple of weeks, actually the web page said that the blog is destroyed, luckily it wasn't and now everything should be in order again! Finally!

Anyway there hasn't happened too much while the blog was put on ice, we had couple of field visits and at the one time we got announcement early in the "day-off"-morning (around 6 am) that there's a some kind of meeting at the field office and we should join there as well. So we had to leave to the field again during afternoon and say goodbye to our day off. After that meeting we got one free day and went back to the field for couple of nights. I like being on the field, the countryside of Nepal is so interesting and the views and the night's and morning's silence are amazing, but there still is some little problems as well (if you have to stay there more than one night). The place (one room near by the field office) where we usually stay over night is alright although it hasn't windows, only the HOLES on the wall, it's well air conditioned then ;) and the food is not that good except one little shop where we have sometimes our breakfast (= milk tea and biscuits). But refusal of offered food is a massive insult in Nepal which means that though we had eaten a great dinner, lunch or whatever in this little shop we would have had to eat at least a little bit the offered not-so-good food, so called "mud", at the field office as well. And that makes the life a bit difficult every once in a while. One more complicated thing is also the freshen up, there isn't any shower, only basins and a water tap and if you try to fresh yourself up in the evening there isn't any light either which makes everything even more interesting. The toilet is basically a hole in the floor, which I may mentioned already before, and it takes time to get used to it. But anyway despite those little things living in the countryside every now and then is nice and it helps me to detach myself from the hectic Kathmandu-life perfectly. I like it! (As long as I don't have to spend there too many nights).







Last two night's visit at the field was again exhausting but interesting. We arrived to the field office with two nepali student Bikash and Mina during afternoon and just talked, played (snake-game and ludo) and hanged around. Actually it was nice way to spend our spare time. On the next morning we were meant to walk to the farthermost parts of the village with the staff of CODEF field office. The main tasks we had were interviewing locals, staff of the schools and health posts, but there was only one school open on our way and we didn't see any health posts so we had to content ourselves just with interviewing locals. The answers were interesting, basically villagers in the farthermost part of the Devichaur don't have any clue of anything better, they give birth at their home, keep the cow in the kitchen and poo on the paths. There is a huge difference in the knowledge between villagers in different parts of the Devichaur not to mention the difference between villagers and the city dwellers.





The journey (by walking) to those places mentioned above was again very hard because of narrow paths and high climbs, the normal nepali geography. This journey differed from the journeys before because at this time we hiked in the local forest (where is said to be some tigers and wild boars) in the middle of leeches, yak! We survived and managed to leave those little disgusting things behind us. Unfortunately we didn't meet any tiger or wild boar but I saw some familiar birds, cuckoo and coal tit, if my eyes didn't lie?!?!

The day was soooo loooong but I was happy that I managed to walk the long long journey again. In the next day we came back to Patan so tired but so happy early in the morning and in here Yaba told us that we're going to have a VACATION lasting about 10 DAYS!!! And that's it. Today we wandered around Thamel, Kathmandu and… Bought bus tickets to CHITWAN NATIONAL PARK!!! The plan is to stay there a couple of nights and then head to the Pokhara and if I'm lucky I get a chance to do paragliding in there! I'm so excited! At first a little elephant trekking and elephant bath while watching rhinos and tigers (hopefully) and then some horse back riding, canoeing, rafting and PARAGLIDING (hopefully), awesome!!! So stay on line, there may be interesting stuff to read after a week :) Keep in touch!

H.

By the way I bought a cheese(?)cubes made of yak's milk and they're hard like a rock, if you know how to eat them, let me know :)

Living on the edge

(There is two persons on the cliff)
Yeah, that's where we walked and lived close by for overnight, nice steep, huh?! Now I'm going to think back for few days and trying to get you into it as well. After the first visit at the village Devichaur, we got a one day off before our next visit which was going to start on wednesday 12.5. During our day off I trained my language skills with nepali, we did some shopping, and tried to think hard what we'll need during our overnight-staying in the middle of nowhere, at the CODEF's field office in Devichaur. I was SO happy that my lovely little sister had generously loaned her beloved sleeping back to me for my time in Nepal. Thinking afterwards, that bag was an GOOD idea! Like some juice, a pack of biscuits and sneakers as well.

We left from our apartment, Kathmandu, Patan, around ten o'clock in the Wednesday morning and our lift was a little truck with some furnitures on the platform. The journey went nicely despite bad, sandy and bumpy road. At the office we had some rest and during that time I tried to learn how to use the local latrine, which means basically little, dim and unsanitary hovel with water bucket and the hole on the floor. That's what I'm possibly going to improve, will see, anyway I have to say that human being is able to adapt many kind of conventions in a quite short time if it has to ;) After a while we started our journey, by foot to the places where Jari was going to take some water samples and do some tests of the water which was meant for the households' use (Jari's thesis is going to be about the quality of drinking water in Devichaur). We walked on the side of the river (where the water goes to some households) and during our journey we saw a calf, some kids having a bath and cow's poo on the river, NICEE! Despite those things what we saw Jari didn't find any marks of phosphorus or ammonia and now we are just waiting for the results of the coliformic bacteria (which cause diarrhea) but so far I can say that the results won't be that good, surprise?! I don't think so although I'd like to believe so :/ The journey itself was an experience and I can really say that I like the countryside of Nepal, the traditional agriculture in there (fields are made with the help of bulls etc.), the views, the everything. Jari took samples from the main water source which was in the woods, after that we climbed up in the middle of the embankmented mountainside to the one farm if I can call it so, in Nepal farm means house, couple of goats and cows at the little backyard. There we took some samples from the farm's tap where was used a filter, a piece of cloth on the tap. Our last point was a water tank where the water of two different sources is mixed and where the water goes to the "centre" (to area where the field office is) of the village.

The whole episode took about half a day and after that we were quite tired and hungry. At the field office became clear that we should have taken some real food more with us because we were told by CODEF's staff that we shouldn't eat the local food (made of not-that-hygienic materials and we're not that used to these bacteria yet) but there WASN'T ANY food with taking care of our "needs"! I don't mean that we'd have needed to have some gourmet dinner but I just thought that there would be some kind of dinner made of something else than the local materials or at least a bread (there isn't any shops near by). But no can do. We went in one dim house (the door is little, I need to bend to get in), actually it's a room, which was filled with smoke and smell of food. There we sat down on the floor by the plates and, of course, our plates were already full of rice (maybe 500 gramms) boiled in that same water we tested earlier. With rice we got some spicy potatos, beans and a bit of a cold sauce. It's not that appropriate to leave food on the plate, so… I ate the dinner kindly thinking in every spoonful how many protozoa and different kind of bacteria I'll get… The food tasted good, but…

After the interesting dinner we started to go to bed and we faced to the cruel reality; there was four of us (me, Jari, Hari office worker and Mina our counterpart) and only two blankets on the thin mattresses (which we call almost as a mat in Finland). The thing was that I would share the one room with Mina, two mattresses and a one blanket and Jari and Hari would do the same in another room. Lucky me, I had the SLEEPINGBAG!!!! Actually my night was ok (I dremed and thought to be in Finland, maybe because of my sister's call earlier), Jari didn't feel as good in the next morning, Hari had taken the blanket and snored loudly ;)

Our awakening on that morning was a bit early as well, at 5 am, but I felt quite good with it. Quickly after morning doings we got a lift by a old and rattletrap tata-truck (even worse than my dad's (well-working) 25 years old truck ;) to the some parts of the village where we were going to meet locals and organize the womengroups. Actually the truck was able to go only to one part of the village and from there we had to walk from one place to another. We started the first foot-journey at 7 am and walked on the twisting footpath up and down in the mountainside while the sun was rising behind us. The weather was good for the walking, not too hot… yet, and the views were stunning, mountains everywhere, little houses with chickens, buffalos, cows, goats and corn fields on the mountainsides. But in some places the walking was quite difficult as well while the path was really narrow and under our feet there was some scree and we tried to go down on the mountainside with the angle of about 60 degrees. Omg. After a couple of HOURS we got to the next part of the village (don't ask the name, I DON'T know anything but that the name is same than the plant which they use for making roofs, something which starts with B). We were standing in the front of the small houses and locals started to bunch together and brought some chairs to us and to each other. Funny thing was that the meeting was meant to be for women but most of the people were men :D When we asked about that, we were told that this was the first group meeting and men wanted to be part of it at first and then think about if they let the women take part in later. Fair play. Anyway some women came to the meeting as well a little bit afterwards when they got a time from their dutys. Me and Jari were basically just listeners and I took some photos during the meeting. Somehow my camera pointed most of the time to the total wrong direction, and on most of my photos are buffalos, calf, goats, cat and young goats ;) The young goats were unbelievable adorable, there was three of them and all the time they were exploring something and playing. I was also happy to see some kittens and their mom, two of my favorite animals are hardly on view in Kathmandu valley, cats and horses, but at that place I got a chance to see cats for second time during my staying in here! :) And cats look like ocicats (one breed) thin, spotted, good looking ones.



After the meeting, which took couple of hours and photographing was time to eat, first time after my morning biscuit :) And what was the lunch?! Food by locals in even worse conditions than the dinner in the evening before! OMG! I felt very uncomfortable but I really needed to first ask just a tiny weeny bit a rice and later I had to refuse to eat everything. I didn't get any problems because of the food last evening but I didn't want to push my luck either. I don't know what the locals think about me now, but in that case my health is more important and they have to understand it (and I didn't feel comfortable thinking about running between bushes during the whole day in the middle of the nowhere). Luckily I had that pack of biscuits and a pottle of water with me so I somehow survived the whole exhausting day. After the lunch we had another meeting with another group quite near by the first one. At that place were only couple of men and all the others were strong minded women because their husbands were earning some money in the city, Kathmandu. I heard that the women were very interested about making so called women group and think about things they want to improve. But there was some misunderstanding as well, they thought that they get some money for that and then they doubt if they'll be stolen some money. And when those things became clear there was a little problem; how they can write things down, if they don't know how to write?! Anyway they figured something out and it was time to us to start the last journey by feet.

It was about 2 pm so the sun was shining from the clear sky (hot hot hot) and we started our up-and-down-walking on the small paths again, in some parts of the journey I thought if my flip-flops were the best shoes for that kind of trekking (I think our trek was even more difficult than the Mt. Everest trek for tourists and people wear the best trekking costumes during that). The route was even more dangerous than any others what we've had tried before, under our feet was scree, in our left hand side was about 1 to 1,5 km drop and our right hand side was a vertical mountainside where you could see the marks of landslides. At some points I really thought what if… But anyway it was the once in a lifetime experience (I really hope that there isn't too many of those anymore) and I liked the views and pushing myself really to the limit. If somebody had shown me the place and asked whether I want to go there or not I would have thought twice but at that time I didn't have options. I'm happy that I didn't sat down and would have been satisfied just with waiting a helicopter. I did it, I made it, yeah! It also became clear, that I don't need any trekking shoes, flip-flops will do :D

After the dangerous, two-hours-trekking we got a lift to the field office by MOTORBIKES, WITHOUT helmets (I have always wanted to get a lift by motorbike, yeah! But I prefer a helmet). At the office we took rest of our stuff (I changed my shoes from flip-flops to the sneakers, very good idea!) and hopped on the motorbikes again, the road was, surprise surprise, very bumby and the sand underneath the bike tried to run away, so the bike was a bit difficult to handle, but my driver did it quite well although he could have driven a bit more slowly and cautiously at least when we got finally to the main road which was paved. It felt like we were on a very hurry and we had to pass all the cars we saw in the front of us. But I wasn't scared, I somehow trusted the driver and kind of liked it, it was fun and I just smiled. Although I want to wear at least a helmet at the next time (good leather motorbikecostum wouldn't be an bad idea either ;)

So, So far so good, I'm still alive and not feeling any signs of food poisoning, but I've been thinking to go to laboratory after this trip, if I'll survive till august :)

Now we are just having a rest before the next trial (don't have any clue what's the next one, better so) And it's very hot in here!

And before this text is going to the end I want to congratulate the stallion and the owner of him (and the stables where I used to go before I came here) from the bottom of my heart for reaching the finnish record points at the Icelandhorseshow during this weekend, I wish I were there! Congratulations once again Liisa and Bragi frá Austurkoti, you have done a GOOD job and earned your place as the BEST!!!! :)

Hopefully you were able to read the text to the end, this was a long long journey :)



-Heli-

A couple of photos

There are some photos of our visit in Devichaur, people in the photo are one of our counterpart, social mobilizator ("going" to the toilet, etc. :) and villagers...

One week behind!

Hi again my dear friends!

We've stayed in Nepal already one week and it has gone quite nicely after the difficult and different start. I got used to this rhythm slowly but surely and now all seems to be in order, although we've some understanding problems with nepalis every once in a while. That's why we're not that sure anymore on what things we're going to concentrate in the project, but anyway I'm going to do what Yaba asks me to do and that'll do, I hope. I almost forgot to mention that the demonstrations are finally over at least there's a little break and partys try to find a solution without bothering the citizens. Thanks to that traffic is back in town, shops and grocery stores are finally open which means that high prices of the groceries and vegetables are going down and the people's life is getting back to normal. During last weekend me and Jari ventured eventually to go out from our neighborhood and wandered around the Kathmandu. That was a very nice way to spend a sunny Saturday, and after that, of course, I got sunburns. I'm just hoping that they're not that bad and I'll just get a beautiful tan. After that day I was even wiser and bought sun lotion what's ment for the kids (SPF 50 ;). On Sunday we visited in the CODEFs office with Yaba at the first time and during that visit I got wise to cruel reality that there's only one free day per week in Nepal! And that happens to be Saturday, so the only day to have a whole night long-party is friday, poor nepalis, I just hope that we'll have a little bit more day offs :)

below are some photos of CODEFs office, city of Kathmandu and makaki-baby and its angry makaki-mom




Today we had a nice day, we went to the project village, Devichaur, and during the journey which is long, difficult and in a quite high altitude (and Yaba wants us to go there our own by motorbikes in someday, o-ou! Will see if that day ever comes), we saw the great views and the traditional living of nepalis and the ethnical group of tamangs. First we stopped in the field office, where the staff of the project stays and has meetings together. The time at the field office was a bit boring because nepalis planned things in nepali and that's why it was impossible for us to understand the confersations. After a couple of hours we went to visit in some parts of the village and during that time we also realized that the village isn't just a little area with about 500 housholds. Actually the village extends for several kilometres from one hill to another and you can't even see the whole village at one sight. So we'll have a lots of travelling on the hills of the Himalaya, that's very interesting but also it may be dangerous while the monsoons and landslides. There was a school at the one part of the village where we stopped and I had lots of fun because of the kids around us. It was very clear that in those places white people hasn't been seen that much, kids gathered around us and stared us without feeling any shame. And when I put the camera out they ran away and tried to hide themselves :)


At the end of this text I could say something about the food in here. It's spicy but delicious! The one of the must-things-to-do is to taste momos, which are a kind of nepali versions of Mexican tacos. They are made of wheat, I think, and filled with vegetables or meat, I really like them and they remind me of the time in Mexico!

Good night, sleep tight!

-Heli-

P.S. Here is photo of geggo what I promised to add last time :)

The Nepal with the eyes of the foreigner

Hello hello!

I finally got a little chance to start this blog proberly so as the starters I'll tell you about why I came here, to Nepal. Ok, are you ready? Lets start then. I'm an environmental engineering student in Mikkeli university of applied sciences, in Finland and I heard that I could have an opportunity to work as a kind of volunteer in a little village, Devichaur, near by the capital, Kathmandu, of the Nepal for three months during the summer 2010. I applied and sent information about me to one finnish organisation of developing countries (Mikkelin kehitysmaayhdistys, KEMA) which project I had heard about. After a little while they called me and said that I'm the chosen one (actually there is two of us, me and Jari, my classmate). And that's quite it, now we have settled down in Kathmandu and after a couple of days we're going to start with the project organised by KEMA and CODEF, civil society of Nepal. Our main subjects are the hygiene of drinking water and the sanitation but we're also going to focus a bit also the health, women's position and agriculture. The project will last three years and we're the first finnish students working with it in Nepal during the summer so our job is basically to do the base survey about the situation at the moment. I'll let you know how the project is going when we actually can start with it, if you've some questions, please ask :)

The situation in Nepal is a little bit difficult at the moment, there is demostrations of Maoist's party going on in Kathmandu, that's why we had to wait about 6 hours at the airport for our lift to the apartment. The flight was great by the way, the staff is awesome and we could watch tv and movies the whole time, I could recommend the Qatar airways! After the flight the waiting wasn't that great, we were tired and hungry. After those hours we finally got to the apartment with some nepalis, Yaba, our new "boss" and with the landlord. I just wanted to get some sleep and rest at least for my voice (I lost it during the May Day-party in Finland before I left ;) but the nepalis stayed here some time (of course we had to sort important issues out) and some things weren't that well planned yet... Anyway we survived, and it's getting better all the time, that's good! I really was very confused when we got here, this is so much different than I'm used to, the smell, the people, the city, everything. You can smell here spices, poo, putrid (is that the right word?) and everything between those. The city looks a little bit like a big slum, houses, made of stone, next to each other are more or less broken. People have a dark skin and actually they look quite pretty and they wear bright colours and more or less good clothes. The city, Kathmandu is a bit chaotic because of this much people living in there and the demonstrations don't help, I think. Everytime you can hear something, somebody throwing something somewhere, kids playing, people talking, etc. just a basic noise. And when the humans are quiet, the frogs, dogs, ducks, geggos (we've two of them at our apartment, cuties :) and grasshoppers start. Now, when I'm getting used to this, I could say this is quite interesting, there isn't a time when nothing happens. This area where we're living is pretty nice and if you have a Lonely Planet-book about the Nepal, you can find us along the south west Patan walking tour around the point C (in the map of Patan). We live at the upper floor right under the balkony so we've pretty nice views from here as well.

In some point this demonstration-situation may get us a bit bored because there isn't almost anything open in here. Shops are closed firmly such as restaurants, offices etc. as well. We're not that interested to go in the middle of demonstrations either, which are, I think, mostly held on the main streets -> streets are crowded. Otherwise demonstrations shouldn't be a problem for us, so don't worry, my closest people :) And one thing yet, there are some problems with the electricity in the Kathmandu all the time so they have the special load sheding times for all parts of the Kathmandu and during those times no electricity is available. Basically we have electricity only a couple of hours in everyday and that time happens to be usually in the middle of the day, NIICEEE! :P By the way because of the electricity saving there isn't any streetlights in the Kathmandu, at least not in our area, it's interesting to walk around the streets with the flashflight.

Ok, I think this is enough for the start, See you later alligator!

By the way, I'm about to add some photos, of geggos ;), our apartment, etc, soon, so stay on line!

-Heli-