It started with my first attempt at negotiating “public” transportation in Nepal. Public is in quotes because the van/buses and tempos (I’ll post a picture) aren’t run by the government, but they are the least expensive mode of transport around the area and go many places, although with about as much speed as an MBTA bus. So, I stood on the side of the road in a spot of my choosing, there are no “bus stops”. It was a good 30 minutes into these efforts when a very kind Nepali man asked where I was going and I followed him to within 500 meters of my destination, via two buses and lots of busy sidewalks. If it weren’t for my kind Nepali man, I may never have gotten to Thamel (Ta-mel) to meet Mark. And I was early to boot!
We wandered Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu, searching for a small, soft cover notebook for my Nepali scribblings, a personal dictionary if you will, all the while trying to get directionally-challenged me oriented (of course Mark had a compass in his bag). We then had dinner at Rum Doodle, which is plastered with good wishes for all those trekking to Everest (like in the grocery store when they have a fund-raising campaign and the walls are plastered with shamrocks or whatnot.). We jetted from Thamel to Patan (20 minutes by M’s motorcycle) to meet Bret, who does something for the United Nations and is interested in Mark’s work on the bicycle generator project. The meeting took place at a westernized hotel where there were at least two United Nations vehicles parked out front and half a dozen shiny SUVs as well. Welcome to the world of global aide.
First impression of this place was that it is at least as warm as my bedroom at home (routinely 68°F) and I needed to shed two of my five layers of clothes. Granted, there was a fire, but I strongly suspect there was also central heating, which I haven’t felt since I stepped off the airplane ten days ago. Second impression was that the only Nepalis around were staff; I was no longer the minority! And not the tallest one ‘round, either. Refreshing not to be the center of attention for a few hours.
It took me most of the weekend, and another encounter with a westernized environment, to realize what was missing – contact with actual Nepalis. See, Mark and I also ended up at a late Mardi Gras party thrown by the US Embassy for its employees and their friends. Again, the only Nepalis present were serving staff and it was on the rooftop of a building designed for Western inhabitants, i.e. water filter on the sink, central heat, signs entirely in English.
There was much talk during both of the aforementioned social situations about the plight of the Nepalis in terms of political instability, petrol and cooking fuel shortage, and load-shedding. And yet these folks live like kings, using all of these resources flagrantly. Disconnect? For me atleast. Then again, none of the talk was about needing to conserve any of these resources; it mainly focused on needing to get more of the resources into the country, which is complicated by the political situation in the Terai (essentially all of the country’s land outside of Kathmandu that is not mountains). So perhaps not as much of a disconnect as I previously thought; must have been my Western, reduce-reuse-recycle mindset poking through. I’ll have to think on that further.
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