One year in Nepal!

Happy New Year! Today I have been in Nepal for exactly 1 year. As I think back to waiting around in the Delhi airport for my flight to be rescheduled, and arriving in Kathmandu, it's amazing to think how much has happened since then. It has been a really amazing year, full of all sorts of interesting experiences and opportunities. I feel really fortunate to have had the chance to live for a year in Nepal.

I am writing this on the last dregs of my laptop battery by candlelight (after already using up a work laptop's power), as this week Nepal started crippling 16 hours of load shedding a day. This means some days you only have 4 hours of power during waking hours, and everything in the country is being affected. We have a generator at work, fortunately, but even so, I was up several times this week at 6am (despite my normal preferences!) to get a couple more hours of electricity. (I in fact misjudged the amount of power-my battery died, and am posting this the next morning, although I guess its still Jan 15th in parts of Canada!).

The reason I am up at all hours using computers is that last week we found out that we need to re-write a grant to USAID for wheelchair provision. I was off trekking when they wrote the initial proposal, so didn't work too much on it, but now I have the task of writing the proposal to provide more services for less money (typical of granting agencies). The deadline was supposed to be today, but we claimed extenuating circumstances (lack of electricity), and got it extended to Tuesday. Still, I will be working full out (when I have power) to get it done by then. It's quite a challenge to work for a western deadline in a developing context!

On other news, there was much excitement earlier this week as there was a grass fire (started by kids, maybe) on the hospital property. Everyone dropped everything, and ran outside to beat it out with blankets and green branches cut from a nearby tree. We were fortunately able to contain it, and after much enthusastic beating of the flames, everyone went back to work. My friend took some great shots of the action.

Finally, I have at last had the time to post and caption pictures from my time touring Kathmandu with Jan and Julia when they were here in November here. Julia was particularly impressive by managing to take in all 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 4 days. I had to go into work, and had seen some before, so didn't have quite as gruelling a schedule!