a bigger picture?

After reading this aid/development blog  and this AYAD blog, I found myself sitting in a pretty lacklustre (we didn't even have a banner ) run of the mill data collection and field research methodology workshop (having just skills transferred /capacity some GPS knowledge) contemplating my job/current work/and chosen career (or my current career, maybe another 12 months of this and i'll be ready to pack it in and go back and use that law degree i did).


one blog piece is about motivation to work in humanitarian aid/development and the other is a personal experience of getting down and dirty with some locals (sorry to both authors for a crude overview of 2 very good posts). so i was contemplating and sort of falling asleep, and wondering whether what I have been doing here in Nepal is really for the good of anyone (mankind, children, women, Nepal etc etc). deep questions for a thursday afternoon I know. and also contemplating why I decided to do what I do (which is an ongoing pastime)


regardless of motivation, and my boring inner dialogue, its certainly hard at times to see how a desk job running, writing, reviwing, and developing  training workshops, is contributing to Nepal's development, and it certainly feels very distant.


its pretty easy to see the disconnect between

and this

But if that means that health workers know how to encourage

(young women)

to take iron tablets and avoid birth complications and Skinny children like these dudes

then i guess thats a good thing, right?

 peace out

x

a blog4NZ

this blog post- is part of the blog 4 NZ,  which is reminding people that theres way more to NZ at the moment to the earthquake, and well performing rugby teams. if you've got a blog do it. if you dont. read about it.

sorry in advance for the cheese - peace out to my kiwi peeps.

NZ is a place close to my heart and home to half of my extended family. i',m lucky enough to have been mroe times than i can count and even lukier to have a holiday house there near queenstown. i love NZ. i love the people. i love the countryside and the mountains ,rivers, beaches, towns, roads, tramps, sun, clouds, rain that make it such an amazing place to visit.

I dont get homesick in generall, but when I yearn for home and the familiar its not usually for sydney, or australia i get wamr fuzzy memories for NZ. for the countryside where i spent childhood holidays, eating tip top hokey pokey icecream, annoying my older cousins, bullying my younger brother, fishing, walking, swimming, performing ad hoc plays. for my late grandparents, family road trips, the road between christchurch and queenstown, the green, the snow, lake wakatipu, the view of mt cook at lake tekapo.  

x

nel mezzo

getting on, getting old, or something like that. I had major issues with turning 25, i thought i needed a real job, a real life and needed to stop being quite so, well, under 25. then i turned 25 and i got over it, and suddenly what felt like being really old, didnt really feel that old. something to do with moving to Nepal, doing (at least a little bit) what I've wanted to do for a long time, and hanging out with people anywhere from 7 years younger to 10 -15 years older than me, really made 25 seem quite young. and now 26 looms and i'm not fussed. im not really any older or wiser, though maybe one small step closer to a real job.

but these are some things I know

1. buy the ticket, take the ride
2. listening the the Clash 'should I stay or should I go" should aid all life decision making
3. a didi is a gamechanger
4. doing nothing at work in Nepal is infinitely better than doing nothing at work in Australia
5. when riding in kathmandu traffic. dont stop concentrating. ever. or you will ride into the back of a bus.

international wo(men's) day...

after a day off work for IWD and brunch with some pretty inspiring chicks working here in Nepal ,  a discussion on the status of women in nepal, and some research into the amazing work the Female community health workers here in nepal carry, here's out something for thought on international women’s day

tilsari (23) has given birth to three babies at home, without medical help, and all three died soon after the birth. this year she again became pregnant, and once again went itot labour at home. her husband and family again refused to arrange for her to go to hospital desipite the fact that ther labour was prolonged and she was weak. they said it would be cheaper for him to marry again if she died, rather than paying the costs for her to go to hospital....

I met this young lady on my field trip to the mid west. 21 , 3 babies, the oldest 5, the youngest 2 weeks old. she gave birth alone on her mud brick floor while her mother in law and husband were out in the field, and hadn't been for any ante natal checks while pregnant with any of the children

she was lucky. as it turns out tilsari above was also,  members of the commiunity heard of her situation and used emergency funds to get her to a hospital, where she was given an emergency C section and medicines for free. 

Fun ‘only in nepal’ stories from the day: one friend who is currently out of the valley found that due to the surprise public holiday on sunday due to the death of Nepals first PM, that the women he was working with were not in fact entitled to the Womens day holiday , while the nepali government decided that women shouldn’t get all the fun and declared it a public holiday for all. not just the women. 

Happy IWD yo

xx

friday songs

lacking in inspiration for blog posts after a busy/uneventful week, and a ridiculous weekend in dubai. new Radiohead is in my opinion totally awesome. and Led Zeppelin tangerine is a song that is

 a. continually in my head

b. continually on my ipod and

c. inspiring me to pick up a guitar again.

stay tuned and happy friday kids

xx

a brief absence

Dear small blog observing audience,


sorry, I've been meaning to write, but just haven't got around to it. its not you, its me. i haven't really been all that busy, i spent half an hour at work the other day trying to get my curly lions mane aka as my hair into a french style hugh bun, which i found the instructions for online, while using stumbleupon.com.
so a. you can see i've had time on m hands, and
b. it failed miserably. apparently to achieve the very louche and casual french style top knot as seen here you have to have hair that resembles a french model. or indeed anyone who doesn't have hair that resembles this

anyway, i digress. days here in Nepal continue to range from the ridiculous, the amazing, the bizarre, the fun, and the flat out frustrating mostly during the course of a day, the roller coaster of daily emotions from 'why wont my colleague give me any information about this project proposal she wants me to write' to 'kathmandu i F**king love you, usually leads to a daily wrap up with housemates, friends and other volutneers/aidworkers filled with amusing/frustrating anecdotes about working in Nepal. and I imagine in all less developed countries (i think thats the term we are using now). yesterday's little tale of the day, if it were to be written into short story would be entitled 'the time i jumped out the bus window to get out because it was too crowded to go through the door'. or 'writing a budget for a 3 year project without a clue'.

so i'll leave you with this, Kathmandu, i do love you, you are great, fun, amazing, dirty, full of inredible humourous, smart people, with amazing mountains, rubbish, dogs and 1980s style aerobics classes. but you are a challenging beast. 

Off to Dubai for the weekend, for sun, warmth, pools, overpriced drinks, seafood and shopping, 

i'll see you when I get back

xoxo pussymandu

ps other amusing anecdotes involve elton john singalongs, 'you cook us dinner' parties and the night we overdosed on mo:mo's (note the appropriate aspiration)

dreamfoods

the argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges writes of a man who cant stop imagining blue tigers, a coin that cannot be forgotten, of small disks that drive a man mad in his short stories.

i can completely obsessed by food. i'm thinking about the meal i'm going to eat after the one i'm about to sit down to while i'm still full from the meal before.
In borges' short stories the man dreaming of tigers end up in a cell surrounded by drawings on the wall of the unforgettable tigers, within which are pictures of tigers, containing pictures of tigers, ad infinitum.
I wonder if i will wind up in a room surrounded by sketches of plates of food, within plates of food disguising other plates of food.

a chef i once knew complained of being completely obsessed by food , that he couldn't stop thinking about food and cooking, at the time i couldn't see the problem. now im not so sure. the worst part is i'm not even dreaming of delicious amazing foods of amazing flavour. sometimes its just white bread with cheese. couscous with some raisins and tumeric. momos. muesli. porridge. i'm trapped in a glass cage of desirable and not so desireable foods.

oh and if you haven't read borges. do. now. you will be satsified.

its almost hell