First week

Tuesday April 3 9pm
Lying on the bed listening to Sherlock Holmes on the World Service and eating grapes. We are getting into a comfortable routine now, but in a few weeks I am sure we will be desperate to find a home of our own and be able to cook for ourselves. Karma is used to healthy eating veggie volunteers and is able to provide yoghurt, fruit and muesli for breakfast. The yoghurt comes in clay bowls, ranging in size from the circumference of a dustbin to that of a teacup. There is plentiful fruit (apples, tangerines, bananas, and grapes are in season, pineapples and mangoes just starting) and we buy a selection for our lunch each day. There and there are many small restaurants near the hotel serving local food. The current gas shortage as a result of the frequent transport strikes means many have to limit their opening hours and some are now closed altogether. In nearby tourist Thamel there are hundreds of restaurants with menus from all over the world at inflated prices.

We have 5 intensive hours of language teaching each day. Amita, my teacher this week (the youngest member of our group of 5), is excellent and it is good to experience the ‘communicative technique’ – no English or translation allowed. We move so fast and I am so pleased with the efforts we made before we came. I have finished my homework for this evening.

We had a language free day on Monday at the VSO office, situated in a beautiful house in the south of the city. Good resources, library and fast internet, but it is far from anywhere and difficult to find so it is not used much by volunteers. The staff were helpful, and we were overloaded with information and lunch, as a result of which 3 of our group were sick today. It will be very different from Ethiopia, when we were used to being in the office at least once a week when we were in Addis.

After work today, we took a taxi south to Patan, and followed (or tried to) the Lonely Planet route through old Patan. SatNav would have been very helpful. We followed tiny alleys with old 5 storey brick houses and elaborately carved balconies that led to open courtyards with shrines and temples. There were plenty of opportunities to practice our Nepali to get us back on track. We spent an enjoyable hour sitting in Kumbeshwar temple, surrounded by sheep, goats, and ragged children, watching women in bright saris, young people in jeans and T shirts, smartly dressed men with briefcases on their way home from work all coming for evening puja (prayers). Eventually we found our way to the magnificent Patan Durbar - as we approached there were tourist shops selling brassware, and a rickety ladder leading to a broadband internet café. The square was full of market traders, selling everything from temple paraphernalia to candyfloss and big knickers. We ate momos 5 floors up watching the lights go on in the square, a parade and band, practising our Nepali on the waiter, who had a remarkable knowledge of ‘literature’ from Milton and Shakespeare, to George Bernard Shaw and Rabindranath Tagore.

The attitude to volunteering here is very different to the incomprehension we encountered in Ethiopia. Here ‘ma swayamsewak hun’ immediately earns a friendly smile, no hassle to buy or inflated prices from shopkeepers, free entry to tourist sites and 10% off the bill in many of the smarter restaurants in Thamel. The hotel staff, local shopkeepers and people we meet in the streets are endlessly patient and helpful as we practice our language.

Friday April 6
We have visited the International Clinic today, a small house in a back street specialising in help for tourists and mountaineers. There was a group of young medical students there about to set off for Everest base camp to do some research into high altitude medicine. Dr Bashan was very reassuring about potential problems; frequent bouts of bacterial diarrhoea are common, followed by respiratory (the dust and pollution in the city are terrible) and skin problems. He tells us that Biratnagar is lovely, but very hot, and that the bicycle is still the main form of transport. We look forward to getting away from Kathmandu traffic. The evening was spent at our welcome party in the Decheling tea garden, starting with ‘snacks’ of which Nepali are very fond at 5:30pm. Most of the Kathmandu volunteers were there, and we met Joseph, the Ugandan volunteer from Biratnagar – he is delightful, and Biratnagar sounds like our kind of place. He is already looking for a house for us and for a couple of second-hand bicycles. The evening traffic jams consist of ox carts and bicycles, which after the horrible pollution and traffic here will be a welcome relief.