Sunday, November 30, 2008

In which life continues apace…

Friday’s banda never materialized, which is surely for the best. I’ve got far too much to do to be dodging flying brickwork in the process. And yet… sigh…

I completed my first semi-week at work. I’ve spent my mornings at Worldview Nepal, an organization that (at the moment) trains reporters, teachers, and other change agents (in the parlance of the field) in human rights-related issues. I’ve been editing a couple of reports and brochures on how to combat human trafficking without trampling on the rights of the trafficked. It’s undeniably grunt work, mainly copy editing, but on a fascinating subject that will allow me to get my feet wet with the organization before I attempt to shoehorn myself into their program work.

A bit of clarification on that last point is due. I’ve been hired as a Communications Advisor, which means that my official capacity is to write, edit, design and proofread English-language proposals, training manuals and marketing materials. This is not what truly fuels my professional passions. Why then, you ask raptly, did you take the job? I took it because the primary preoccupations (human rights, post-conflict development and microfinance) of my two employers just happen to be things that fascinate me to no end, and the things for which I’ve really been trained. My rat-race profession of Communications Something-Or-Other will serve mainly to bring me closer to those far more fascinating subjects, close enough (in theory) for me to jam my fingers into many different pies. I’ll start, the theory, by working on their written materials, and then pop my head in all the appropriate doors, wedge myself into all the relevant meetings, and generally make a nuisance of myself until I’m doing hands-on fieldwork. I’ve discussed my intentions with my liaisons at CECI, the Canadian organization that funds and organizes this entire endeavour, and they wholly endorse my mildly deceptive strategy. Nifty.

Until that happens, however, I’m getting the lay of the land here, and reducing the odds that my travels will kill me. I found a cruelly expensive, viciously ugly, canary yellow bicycle helmet that will nevertheless be more attractive than a skull fracture. Speaking of my wheeled commute, I had a bit of a run-in last week with the Chinese diplomatic corps. Cycling past the Embassy, I curved around a parked car at the precise moment that the driver (shoulder checks be damned!) decided to pull out, indifferent to my presence. I clipped the corner of his car and, startled, staggered to a stop without suffering any particular insult to myself or my precious bike. Not so lucky the lesser vehicle – I mightily tore the bumper, headlights and all, almost free from the car, and it dangled feebly by a few wires. A Chinese gentleman (whom I judge to be a diplomat by the fact that his English was more eloquent and precise than my own) leapt from the car, apologizing profusely, and assured me that the blame was his (or his driver’s, whichever). I bid him adieu before he could change his mind. Paul 1, China 0.

Much else has been underway: language classes, moving, plotting some epic treks, and a tale of $600 dumplings (not my money, thankfully). My internet connection will be a bit inconsistent for the next 3 weeks, by which time I’ll move into my permanent digs, but in the meantime I’ll sure I’ll find the bandwidth to share more tales of Kathmandu.

Friday, November 28, 2008

I've only been here two weeks...

... but I know what it means when the distinctive "you've got a text message" chime wakes me up - it's Banda time, baby!

In practical terms, this means I won't be able to make it to work, since it's needlessly provocative for me to try to run the blockades. It means that my long-delayed haircut gets delayed a little longer, since the shops will be closed. Food will be a little more difficult to acquire - I'll have to eat in the hotel restaurant, methinks. And, oh yeah, I'm going to go out and get some snazzy photos. It's just 7 AM, and I hear whooping crowds from the direction of Lazimpat, the nearest major street. Don't worry, they've no problem with photographers - helps to publicize the cause.

Yesterday I wandered through the mob that constituted the embryonic phase of this banda, which is called to protest (?) the as-yet unexplained deaths of two 15-year-olds, likely by nefarious means, on the outskirts of town. As I rode my bicycle home from work in suspiciously sparse traffic, I saw with curiousity that other cyclists were dismounting and walking their bicycles. It seemed wise to do the same, and shortly I came upon a nearly empty intersection normally swarming with taxis and tuk-tuks. A swarm of perhaps a hundred youths roamed the street, none visibly older than 15 (though it's hard to tell, in a country where malnutrition masks age very convincingly). They carried makeshift banners, photos of the two dead boys, and they accosted anyone disrespectful enough to drive a car or motorcycle through the bare street. I couldn't understand these conversations, but I infer that the protestors demanded the drivers show the banda the proper respect by walking home. Those who refused and tried to drive on had to dodge a rain of fist-sized chunks of masonry (none of which connected with anything fleshy, so far as I saw). A few plumes of black smoke that I (correctly, as it turns out) took to be the product of burning tires rose a few blocks away. Once safely clear of the mob, I slowly, and respectfully remounted my bike, like many other commuters, and enjoyed a remarkably smooth ride home on a street nearly devoid of traffic.

Oddly, about 30 minutes later, when I'd grabbed my camera from the hotel, life seemed to have resumed its normal pace. Traffic had returned and there was no mention of the riot. And yet, it appears that yesterday was the rehearsal - today we see a full-blown city shutdown. Photos and eyewitness accounts to follow.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

A day.

I had things to write about, but now I'm just watching the horrific events unfolding in Mumbai. It's a little hard to know what to think, right off the bat. The head of Mumbai's anti-terrorism squad has been assassinated along with his top deputies. At least a half dozen different sites have been attacked in commando raids entirely unlike the typical Al Qaeda coordinated attack. I've never heard of the "Deccan Mujahideen" before, and I don't think anyone else has either, but I presume we'll be hearing much more of them soon, though it seems likely that's a front name. I'll just watch for now, and keep my opinions to myself.

A few people have asked, so: I'm fine. I'm a thousand kilometres out of the way in a country that shares none of India's issues with Islamic radicalism. Thanks for your concern - I'm in no danger here.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The first of many...

Bandwidth remains a fickle, miserly mistress, but I've been able to cram a few photos through the thin straw and more will follow. First up, the riot cops last Thursday:

Banda vs. Police, Kathmandu

Next, a cremation about to begin at Pushpatinath, the holiest site in Nepal for Hindu funeral rites.

Cremation at Pushpatinath

I visited the temple complex at Pushpatinath last weekend, and witnessed several such cremations underways. My tour guide reassured me that taking photos was offensive to neither the grieving nor to Vishnu.
I accelerate...

It's a wonderful thing to be wheeled. After two weeks of walking, time enough to taste the contours of this jumbled city, I bought a bicycle for my 20-kilometre daily round trip commute. My new steed is a shiny craft of aluminum and plastic that would have mildly embarrassed me before the bicycling bourgeousie back home, but here it's the pinnacle of human-powered transport, and to me it's a genuine godsend. Uber-sophisticated it ain't, but it has brakes that appear to respond to pure thought, and fat, guileless tires that would grip and oilslick on an iceberg. It lets me outmaneuver the motorbikes and outrun the other bicycles. It's precisely what I need. The beast was costlier by a hefty margin than any of the others I found in a week of searching; indeed that's why I brought it home with me. The $300 price tag is a feeble midget next to the mighty expense a bent wheel would extract in blood and treasure. The gnashing maelstrom of Kathmandu traffic is not a place to entrust my sanity and endoskeleton to the wretched steel frames offered up by the lowest bidder. My colleagues with the dreaded "cheap Chinese bikes" begrugingly popular here have walked away from such potential mid-ride catastrophes as watching the handlebars or pedals abruptly detach from their trusted rides. I won't test my luck so.

That ominously said, Nepali traffic, for all its chaos and bluster, hides an odd tranquility. Lane markers are an absurd fever dream here, and stoplights an amusing suggestion. Traffic ostensibly moves on the left, but that's only a guideline, and shoulder checks are effectively a religious taboo, but somehow I don't feel my own mortality on Kathmandu roads the way I did in Chiang Mai. The overstuffed roads seem to naturally divide themselves into capillaries, admitting only one vessel at a time, and no one takes it personally if it's not their their turn. Nothing moves particularly fast, and my thin profile lets me weave through the nearly motionless traffic - I typically get places far faster than the car-bound. People actually slow down or (gasp!) stop rather than tear through me. It's busy, it's anarchic, it's noisier than anyone who hasn't been here could possibly comprehend, but in it all, I don't feel that anyone on the road is actively trying to end my life. Unlike Thailand.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Blowing stuff up real good...

I had many menial errands to run on Thursday; a bicycle to buy, a barbershop to find, self-medication to perform. None of it happened, because a Nepal has an odd tradition called the banda, which I’m told it shares with much of the Indian subcontinent. A banda is a particularly obnoxious variety of street protest wherein the aggrieved consider that they have the moral right to demand a complete shutdown of the entire bloody city. In this particularly obnoxious form of dissent, a mob of several hundred or more snarling citizens roams the street and, among other behaviours I don’t yet fully comprehend, ransacks any business or working vehicle that has the audacity to disrespect the banda by disregarding the general strike.

My employers at CECI send out a mass text message on Thursday morning saying that a banda had been called for the entire Kathmandu valley, and that those of us with long commutes should stay put and avoid the madness. I wasn’t working that day, but was a bit under the weather, and so I didn’t leave the hotel until 11 or so, camera in hand. The fun had largely petered out by then, but I still passed a public bus thoroughly wrecked by the angry mob, and the streets were littered with fragments of masonry. Kathmandu’s ample supply of tottering brickwork provides ready ammunition that presumably rained down upon riot police for much of the morning. Traffic was unsettlingly sparse, as only a handful of motorcycles and no cars plied the streets. Late in the day, hundreds of armored cops manned major intersections. A few wore a curious scarab armor that brought to mind feudal Samurai, but they rebuffed my requests for snapshots. I later snuck a few surreptitious shots of their less exotically attired colleagues, which will be e-displayed as soon as I have functional bandwidth.

My taste for urban chaos is well-known, and I briefly cursed my inertia for depriving me of a first-hand taste of Thursday’s banda. However, I’m new here, and it’s likely better that I avoid such lunacy until I’ve the local knowledge to safely navigate it. Bandas of one variety or another are reportedly a regular event, though this was (I’m told) one of rare intensity. There’ll be another for me to enjoy sometime tolerably soon.

Friday, November 21, 2008

I've had my reasons...

... for slacking off on the blogging. Namely, that I've been sick and still occupied with my Nepali language classes and general acclimatization. Much has happened (the aforementioned classes, a meeting with one of my new employers, and, amazingly, a banda which will defined and described in great detail when I have the bandwidth to upload photos tomorrow). I've secured an apartment (two, actually) and am settling in nicely, aside from being humiliated in last night's poker tournament. I've had two welcome lunches (at one of which I was required to sing) and am plotting treks to Everest, Annapurna, and possibly Tibet. All of these wonders deserves a post of its own, which it will get, but in the meantime I'm checking in.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Another try...
The following are worth a shot:

011 977 01 980 800 1055

011 977 980 800 1055

011 977 0980 800 1055 (especially this one).

Sadly, I can't test it from here. Whoever can tell me what works gets a free Sherpa.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Phone!

I have a mobile phone here - reachable from Canada by calling 011 977 1 980 800 1055. Fun!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

A victim of itself...

Kathmandu is a perplexing city, mystifyingly ancient and yet obviously wracked by adolescent growing pains. Pale Buddhist stupas and intricate Hindu temples lurk and loom in every neighbourhood, having survived centuries of South Asia’s famed mix of war, privation, religious upheaval, relentless monsoon weather, arbitrary seismic spitefulness, and a mercilessly thriving tourist trade that (I presume) predates outsized Americans in Tilly hats and cargo pants. Kingdoms have blossomed and withered here with stubborn regularity since before Gautama Buddha went for his long walk, and empires have washed over Nepal like tides, for longer than words have existed to record them. Every iota of this history and prehistory has left marks, and the occasional ugly stain.

But Kathmandu’s most belligerently obvious trait is its unmistakable newness. Nepal’s unsettling rate of population growth and textbook developing-world economic superurbanization have bloated this town far beyond its healthy size, a process greatly accelerated by ten years of moderate-intensity civil war that drove the capable and the fearful to the shelter of the capital. Planning was negligible, pollution controls nonexistent, and the city has a people-to-stoplight ratio somewhere (literally) in excess of a million to one. So now Kathmandu marinates in pollution far greater than wind and rain can alleviate, with demands on the water, electrical, road and sewage infrastructure three times what they were designed (I use the term loosely) to handle. The results are (here’s that peculiar Nepalese poetic incongruity again) both utterly predictable and completely flabbergasting. The street traffic is an extraordinary pandemonium that defeats my capacity for hyperbole. In most districts of the city, the power fails for (a meticulously scheduled) 35+ hours per week, anticipated to leap to 90+ by early December. Odours of genuinely demonic provenance occasionally waft up from… nowhere in particular. Kathmandu is struggling, and thus far failing, to deal with its own explosive growth, and one result among many is that there are a great many conundra here with which someone like me can busy himself.

This will be an interesting year.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The first day is always the most foolish...

My Nepali/Canadian hosts at CECI (my new French-acronymed employer) graciously opted, in light of my midnight arrival yesterday, to begin my day with a leisurely 12:30 lunch, for which I am boundlessly thankful. I awoke at 6:30 and briefly chronicled the sunrise with my shiny new Canon (still waaaay too much camera for me, I’m willing to admit). I sleep-chewed my way through an inoffensive hotel buffet breakfast, hunted down some bottled water, and quickly toddled back to bed for a few more hours. I roused myself for a lovely lunch with my new overlords and my fellow volunteers, and enjoyed chorizo enchiladas, a noted traditional Nepali delicacy. I suppressed jetlag yawns through a few hours of orientation, and then bravely (though not wisely) decided to walk hotelward from the CECI office.

Nepal’s now-extinct(dormant?) civil war left a heavy legacy of militarization, and so major government buildings remain lightly surrounded by manned gun nests, with sixty-year-old bolt-action rifles resting lazily on sandbags, indifferently attended by soldiers a third their age, barrels consistently pointed out into the streets and sidewalks. In the 30 minutes it took me to get badly lost, I walked in front of these ancient arms at least a dozen times. I’m sure they’re appropriately locked down, and so forth, but I find it unsettling to be forced to march point blank in front of the bloody things anyways. While observing this absurdity and wandering through this mangled labyrinth of a city, I unsurprisingly ended up badly off course, and was retracing my steps when a CECI coworker miraculously happened by on a motorcycle. He offered a courteous and very welcome ride back to my hotel (in unnerving Kathmandu traffic, of course, but there’s some line about beggars and choosers) and I wisely resolved never to try anything new or adventurous again.

Once returned to familiar territory, I purchased a single local electrical adaptor. Marveling at my ingenuity and financial acumen, I ingeniously plugged in my single Canadian power bar and ingeniously saved myself the cruel expense of buying multiple adaptors for my multiple toys. My power strip abruptly surrendered to the unfamiliar Nepali voltage, waving a furious white flag of searing blue plasma, molten plastic and acrid dark smoke. I’m reasonably thankful I didn’t ingeniously try this on my Xbox first. Ye GODS, my room stinks now.

And so I go looking for food, in the hopes that the stench of electrical experimentation will have evacuated in an hour or so. More to follow tomorrow.

P.S. Nepal is 13 hours and 45 minutes ahead of Vancouver. Ponder that briefly. If that’s perplexing to you, imagine how I feel, stranded in this temporal no man’s land.
At 11PM, Kathmandu is tomb-quiet, and nearly so dark. Little to see as we rode in from the decaying, crazed airport, except an abundance of street dogs rooting wherever. At 6 this morning (I think) - the red sun had barely risen and cast my hotel room in bright pink. I'll go exploring.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

In days to come...

History will be made tomorrow - and it won't even be a close outcome.

I'm moving to Nepal on Sunday.

I'm returning to my own life, after a year in someone else's skin.

'Bout bloody time.

The blog will be resurrected.