Namaste from Nepal

View from the top of my street, and from my bedroom window. My room itself is below.

Kathmandu Week 1

I arrived, at last, after a long and exasperating journey involving multiple plane delays, a night spent on the hard floor of the Newark airport, a missed connection from New Delhi to Kathmandu, another day and night in the New Delhi airport (though this time I at least had a hotel room), and finally, once I got here, guilt upon hearing that my messages about the delays had not been passed along to the woman who picked me up, and so she had waited for me the day before, when I was supposed to arrive. At the airport. For eleven hours. She accepted my apologies, however, and drove the USAID-marked vehicle through some of the worst traffic I have ever seen. Vehicles in Nepal drive on the left side of the road- well, most of the time they do. Many people drive motorbikes, and pedestrians and drivers alike wear surgical masks to avoid breathing in the pollution from the cars and the dust of the road. It does not surprise me in the least that road traffic injuries are an increasing cause of death worldwide. As we drove, I saw three young cows curled up right on the side of the road, actually in the road but on the edge of it. It wasn’t until we ran into a traffic jam so bad that it took some creative maneuvering and the help of a young man who took it upon himself to direct traffic, and we could turn around and go back past them, that I remembered, seeing those cows peacefully ignoring the noise around them, that cows are sacred to Hindus. That explained a lot. We saw more cows hanging out on the side of the road, and lots of stray dogs trotting around. We made it to my host family’s home eventually, and I was able to unpack and rest a bit.

I am staying at the home of a woman who works at the project where I'm interning this summer, but she was away on a field visit when I arrived, and so I only met her last night. Her husband and his sister made me very welcome, though. My room is at the top of the house, and I have my own bathroom. It can get quite hot during the day, but there is a fan to circulate the breeze from the window, and at night it cools down enough to be very comfortable.

Although it is monsoon season, I have not yet experienced a storm. I bring my umbrella with me whenever I’m out, though, just in case. And I’ve been informed that I’m lucky to be here during this season because there is no more load shedding, now that the rains have elevated the river levels enough that there is electricity available.

It is very easy to be a vegetarian in Nepal. The Nepali diet pretty much consists of one meal, which is rice, a cooked-down green leafy vegetable like spinach, and a curried mixture of other vegetables like beans or potatoes. A lentil soup is poured over the rice, and there is usually also a spicy component like sriracha or a hotter curry to go with it. Slices of cucumber accompany the meal, to cool you off I guess. I’ve liked just about everything I’ve tasted so far, though I can see why people here are so svelte (besides the low fat content in the food, that is). I think that any urge to overeat is quashed by the knowledge that one will be seeing pretty much the same food tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. My host family grows a lot of their own food, and so far I've had beans and cucumbers from their garden, and last night, a delicious mango that my colleague brought back from her field visit. They tell me they also grow avocados, plums, bananas, and other delectable sounding things I hope I get to try. They also grow beautiful flowers, which are abundant everywhere I've been. For lunch, there is a canteen at the office where everyone goes and helps themselves. One can pay daily or weekly, and it costs 30-40 Nepali rupees per meal (approximately 50 cents). Yesterday I also tried a sort of sticky candy made of lapsi fruit, a Nepalese sort of plum (I Googled it, apparently it's also called a "hog plum" in English). The candy had sweetness and spiciness to it, and was really good, but it was kind of messy to eat. I want to see if I can find a hard candy version of it to bring back to the US with me at the end of the summer. In it's fresh form, it's green and very sour, but they boil it down and sweeten it, and it's very popular.

My internship with the Nepal Family Health Program II (a USAID project led by John Snow, Inc.) is going well so far (today will be Day 3). I am working with the Performance Improvement team, which works on quality assurance at the district and subdistrict level- basically, trying to help health workers provide the best quality care and service delivery they can, and involving them in creating action plans to overcome any gaps in quality that both parties agree on, together. I will be helping to write two technical briefs, and so I've been reading multiple earlier-published briefs to get a sense of their structure as well as of the project's diverse activities. I think I'm also going to help write a final report as the project is in its last year. Lots of writing and editing, which I do love to do, but I've been promised field visits as well. The team is also going to make sure I get a chance to work with the teams that are doing what I'm most interested in, personally, which is community participation in health decisions and strengthening local health governance systems. Nepal has a really interesting and decentralized health system that I'll write about another time, and I'm looking forward to learning more about how it works.

I've met just about everyone at the office now, I believe, though I'm having a really hard time with their names. Most everyone speaks and understands English well, but their accents can be difficult for me to understand, and they're very soft-spoken. I'm sure I'll get used to it, though. I had exciting news yesterday: the deputy director of the project (in USAID-speak he's called the deputy chief of party, or COP), is going on a field visit Saturday through Wednesday to visit another project office and a newborn health program, and I get to go with him! I'll get to see another part of the country and tag along and just listen, which sounds perfect for my first week here. Look for more pictures when I get back to Kathmandu on Wednesday!