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-