From Republica. Lentils and rice are "dal-bhaat" - the national dish of Nepal. The typical Nepali person eats 1,600 kcals per day. And of course, "chiya" - with sugar and milk.
Food Glorious Food
I will post two diaries today - this one and another to describe the petrol situation and political situation. I want to keep these short enough to inform and not overwhelm.
Nepali tea - "chiya" is a staple. Share it with friends. The forerunner of "Chai" - very sweet. It will propel you along the trekking route.
I recently read
The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People, a book on the Irish Potato Famine that answered the question as to why the government didn't do anything to stop the famine. The answer? It took action - just the
wrong action.
DailyKOS readers might recognize the name of one prominently-featured reviewer who wrote:
John Kelly gives heartbreaking detail to the Great Famine that seared itself into the memory of the Irish people, and sheds fascinating new light on the policy decisions that made it even worse. The Graves Are Walking is a cautionary tale for all who would risk calamity--human, economic, or ecological--in the name of scoring an ideological victory. (President Bill Clinton)
Mea Culpa: When I read the news the other day it said there were shortages of food in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, due to the ongoing protests in Terai that have
cut the traffic on the one-and-only mountain road to the outside world. Apparently, panic buying has caused scarcity of some items, but the government gave an interview to a newspaper and released the following reassurances:
http://myrepublica.com/...
KATHMANDU, Sept 27: Stating that it has sufficient food stuffs in stock, the government urged general public not to panic because of the 'blockade' imposed by India. State-owned Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) has 7,800 tons of rice, wheat and beans in stock in Kathmandu Valley alone. Similarly, government warehouses across the country have 120,000 tons of sugar and 113,000 tons of salt in stock.
Government officials say the market is unlikely to see shortage of commodities anytime soon as they have sufficient food in stock and that the country is self-sufficient in food commodities.
Talking to Republica, Hari Narayan Belbase, director of Department of Commerce and Supply Management (DoCSM) said there won't be shortage of food commodities. "Our stock of rice, wheat and beans will last for months. Similarly, we have sufficient salt and sugar in stock to meet demand of one year and five months, respectively," added Belbase.
He also said the obstruction in supplies from India won't affect food supply in domestic market. "The blockade has, however, seriously affected supply of fuel as India is the sole supplier of petroleum products to Nepal," Belbase said, adding, "People should wisely use available petroleum products. Priority should be given to public vehicles and vehicles used to transport essential commodities." - See more at: http://myrepublica.com/...
Blockade vs. Stoppage
Language is important. The release quoted above refers to the problem as a blockade from India. This is in dispute. The one-and-only road to link Katmandu to the outside world goes through "the Terai" before linking to the dry ports with India. To me, the situation is a "bandh" - an internal affair between Nepalis of the plains and Nepalis of the hills. This type of bandh has been tried before. (as has blockading) The people of the plains have some legitimate grievances and are using this because other attempts to get the attention of the government in Kathmandu have gotten no results. It is a tool to strengthen their hand in negotiations over the new constitution.
The first rule of public health? do nothing that will cause the general public to panic. Tamp down any rumors. Nepal is a collective culture and this is important.
The topic of food.
dal-bhaat with all the fixins. Not all Nepalis are vegetarian. The traditional meal would have about twelve courses, but what you get at a "road house" is about five - rice, lentil, saag, chutney, and terkari.
There are few obese persons in Nepal. disclosure: I myself am fat. Overweight. "Moto." People in Nepal are not shy about remarking on this fact.
The main shortage is petrol - and the other diary will update you on this. But despite the above, food is an big issue.
In the Irish Potato Famine, orange was associated with the English Occupation. Join me as we stomp over the orange boundary, a place far from London, into the world of food insecurity...
First, a map. Always a map!
This one is from the 164-page detailed report of the World Food Program, on their website. The key takeaway of the report, is that food shortages already exist in Nepal, and their is tremendous disparity within the country. There are many maps and statistics, but this one focuses on "stunting" - you could call it "stunted growth."
This is from a study published in 2015
http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajphr/3/2/7/ and shows "stunting" - i.e., permanent sequelae of poor nutrition at key times in life when growth should be have been occurring. This is lifelong. Note, the areas with the highest % are in the Himalaya; the only mitigating factor is that the absolute number of children is relatively fewer due to sparse population. Even the Terai has >40% stunting.
This report was written before the earthquake. It is estimated that 800,000 more people already are at risk since then. Despite all the picturesque agriculture and the terraced rice paddies, Nepal is a net importer of food. At the village level, the earthquake destroyed granaries that held seed stock, just before planting season. Many of the hard-hit areas were "roadless" - and the WFP hired
10,000 porters to haul in staples on their backs. These people would have been working for trekkers otherwise.
I don't want to sound like a Sally Struthers commercial - but it's true that children suffer. They eat less, and it's easy to not feed them. There is an old Nepali children's song titled "Where's My Rice?" for just this occasion.
Measuring malnutrition in children is more complicated than it may first appear. The basic principle? every child starts out at eight pounds and grows. Adequate on-track growth can only be measured by comparing the child with their peers and with "how they were last year." for example, a five year old who weighs sixty pounds is robust. A fourteen-year-old who weights sixty pounds is not. It might seem simple but it's not. You have to find and weigh the kids that did not appear at the health camp. They also count.
What are the current issues in Nepal? ( From World Food Program, link below)
With a population of 26.6 million, Nepal is struggling to give itself a new constitution and a stable government after a decade of civil conflict. Nepal has a GDP per capita of US$1,049, and ranks 157 of 187 countries on the 2011 UNDP Human Development Index. Twenty-five percent lives below the national poverty line (less than US$0.50 per day). Agricultural production is not at pace with the population growth, and frequent natural disasters destroy the livelihoods of many Nepalese. According to FAO, 4.5 million Nepalese are undernourished.
"The food security situation is most serious in the hills and mountains of the mid- and far-western regions. Rural communities in these areas face three problems: 1) poor agricultural production leading to food insecurity; 2) lack of basic infrastructure—extremely poor road conditions and few bridges, health posts and schools in many remote villages; and 3) changing climatic patterns that are having a discernible impact on the livelihoods of rural communities.
"Malnutrition rates in Nepal are among the highest in the world. Forty-one percent of children under five are stunted, 29 percent are underweight and 11 percent are wasted. The prevalence of stunting in the hills and mountains of the mid- and far-western regions is extreme, with rates above 60 percent. Micronutrient deficiencies are also widespread; in particular, 46 percent of children 6-59 months, 35 percent of women of reproductive age and 48 percent of pregnant women are anaemic. According to the World Bank, GDP lost due to malnutrition can be as high as 2-3 percent. Malnutrition slows economic growth and perpetuates poverty through direct losses in productivity from poor physical status, and indirect losses from poor cognitive function, and increased health costs.http://www.wfp.org/...
I would be remiss if I simply laid this out there without listing the long-range efforts to address this which date back many years. The WFP, government of Nepal, Clinton Global Initiative and others have been working. But the bottom line is, the issue of availability of food in Nepal extends beyond the Kathmandu Valley.
If you got to this point, I'll send you a coupon for some French Fries!