Today we'll all think of where we were on Sept 11th, 2001.
This diary, though, will take you to Nepal, far far away. It's a land of Hindus and Buddhists, an exotic tourist destination, the highest mountains in the world, and of course, a legendary place to go hiking ("trekking"). My novel of Nepal starts when the protagonist chooses to go to Nepal for a trek. He is hoping that the experience of spending time in a Low Income Country will help him get into medical school. Then - he gets caught in the Nepal Civil War. Nepal, he finds out, is not simply some kind of adult version of Disney Land. The people are not merely backdrops to be seen and selfied with. They want to be nice - their hospitality is legendary - but they have their own lives, their own ideas, their own way of being.
Not every Nepali person is Buddha.
And right now, Nepal is having difficulty. Before you learn why, you need to get the orange stamp in your passport..... it's a bit of a squiggle but your Tourist Visa is not valid without it.....
Boots on the Ground Journalism in Nepal
If you only read two things about Nepal today, read
a) this blog; and
b) the piece by Donatella Lorch in this week's "Goats and Soda" on NPR.
http://images.dailykos.com/...
It's titled 'I Am In Nepal Now,' Says New Tourist Campaign, But Nepal Is In Chaos.
Ms. Lorch uses the writing skills she honed over a long career as a freelance journalist, to help you see and feel the surreal irony of being in Kathmandu these days.
The piece starts with:
I have lived in Nepal for more than two years and have by now gotten used to up to 18 hours of daily electricity cuts, Kathmandu's open sewers, the frequent fuel shortages that have taught me to hoard diesel and propane year-round and the often violent political strikes that paralyze the capital and the country a day or two at a time.
I was here for the earthquake and have reported on the quake and its aftermath. Even four months on, government-led reconstruction has yet to start and hundreds of thousands remain homeless. The frigid winter is just over a month away.
But Nepal's present state of chaos is not only heartbreaking, it is deeply disturbing.
I won't quote any more. Ms. Lorch's work has appeared in
The New York Times,
USA Today,
NPR, ( A piece titled "On Happiness Day, 6 Nepalis tell how not to worry")and other news outlets, and she's been doing the hard work of journalism as opposed to simply repeating what the politicians tell at press conferences.
The polarization of Nepali Media has become more obvious during these days of conflict.
The Nepali journalists are not all bad - there is some great reporting going on, such as from Nepali Times (which happens to be in English). But Ms. Lorch is peculiarly suited to share her observations from a point of view that Americans can relate to.
The actual news of the day, from Nepal?
There is also actual news. In Mahottari, the eastern Terai, a policeman was wounded during a riot control action. they took him to a local hospital for twelve stitches to his head, then loaded him into an ambulance to go to a bigger hospital in Janakpur, several hours away. The ambulance decided to use a secondary road to avoid a protest road block, and a crowd stopped it. He was pulled from the ambulance, into a rice paddy ankle-deep with water, and "thrashed" to death( a "thrashing" is a beating with sticks by an impromptu team). On Setopati, a Nepali-language news aggregator, photos are shown; they burned the ambulance as well.
The process to get the constitution approved is on a two-day hold while the "Big Three" in Kathmandu try to hold talks with members of political parties from the Terai. There are other protests in Terai, in which the Armed Police Force is using deadly force; three or four more protesters have been shot and killed, to disperse the crowd. Here is a summary of events including the political maneuvering.
Thrashing in Patan
The Nepali news reported yesterday that two doctors were "thrashed" in Patan, by a policeman unhappy with paying for transport, who took care to change out of his uniform before he attacked. well now, this was an event unrelated to politics, but which highlights the work that I myself do when I am in Nepal. I teach critical care skills to doctors and nurses. In 2011 I identified that the threat of violence was a barrier to effective participation in critical care response by professionals in Nepal, and while I teach many things, I also address this. On Facebook I have a following of 6,500 nurses and docs. In response to this latest event, I wrote a blog piece titled Two doctors thrashed at Patan Hospital Sept 10, 2015 and what to do about it and in just twentyfour hours it got 942 hits. While it is only a small part of the puzzle, I'm interested in strengthening health systems of Nepal. There has been a disturbing number of incidents in which the violence ( like the event with the ambulance) spills over into the emergency rooms and hospitals, and I think all my colleagues in Nepal are coming to grips with that.
For my novel, I spent time researching the ins and outs of Nepali culture that create this situation, and I tried to describe what it felt like for each character of the book, whether they were Hindu or Buddhist, Nepali or foreigner. I did not think at the time we would all be living it again.......