Wednesday 18 March 2009

Rain

Tonight it rained. For the first time since the beginning of October.

Drought has been affecting 2 significant areas of life here. The first is power which we have already mentioned in our blog recently. The second is of course water supply.

Water supply is always a bit hit and miss here even in the middle of monsoon. If you have any significant number of people living on your property you probably don't get enough through the main city water line, unless you pay the right minister a bribe, or live near someone paying a nice bribe.

For most people water only comes down the line for a short period of time each day and you have to pump the water from the main line into the property. Of course with only having 8 hours of power a day the chances of the water coming past on the main line coinciding with when you have power are significantly reduced.

We have friends who live in properties that are so short on water they haven't been able to shower for over a week, or wash their clothes for a few weeks.

You can order in tankers that bring water from streams outside Kathmandu, however their is now only one stream in the valley that still has enough water to supply these tankers. So no new orders are being taken, and current orders are having to be reduced. School usually has 4 or 5 tanker visits a week and is now down to half that, which when we have 200 people using the site daily poses problems for flushing toilets and washing hands. So far we've been okay but it has the potential...

So this is why everyone here is so pleased it rained tonight. Not that one evening shower solves all the problems of course, but it does mean that the season for rain is coming and the situation will hopefully improve. Until this time next year.

Saturday 7 March 2009

Nepali Wedding

Mid-January to Mid-March is wedding Season here in Nepal and last week we were privileged to be invited to a Nepali wedding. In fact it’s not actually that much of a privilege as traditionally in Asia the person hosting the wedding has to invite basically everyone they know. So much so that we have even been invited to weddings of people we’ve never met before in our time here.

However the wedding last week was a special wedding as it was the wedding of a colleague from school; our IT technician, a man who Dan works quite closely with. Nitin is 28 years old and had been introduced to his new wife through his Uncle. The week before the wedding Dan and the other ICT guy at school took him out for a stag-do! It involved about 10 staff from school going out for Momo’s, a Nepali favourite and Nitin’s favourite food.

Nitin actually got married down in the village his wife’s family come from, about 3-4 hours drive from Kathmandu. The marriage ceremony itself is normally a much smaller event than the marriage celebration which takes place a few days after the ceremony. It is to this that the world and his wife are invited.

Traditionally at a Nepali wedding the bride is supposed to look unhappy, so as to not offend her family as in Nepali culture it is viewed that she is leaving her family to join his. However it’s a good job that the groom is not subject to the same requirements as Nitin is always smiling. Although he’s not smiling as much as normal in this photo he did carry a big grin for most of the wedding. Keen readers of our blog may recognise the other guy as Ryan who we mentioned back in June when his wife had just given birth to their third child.

Talking of children, Becky and bump are doing very well. She is now into her third trimester and growing by the day. The baby is very active and as far as we are aware healthy. It’s now only one month until we return to the UK and we are starting to pack up our house. It doesn’t seem long ago that we were doing likewise in our house back in Liverpool.

By the way the second photo was taken on a recent walk with a group of friends. Not sure if we shall update our blog again before we return so if we don’t we are due back in the UK on the 4th April. We are currently trying to arrange meeting up with people, so if you’d like to meet up with us then do let us know and we’ll try and book you in. We’ll also use the blog to keep people up-to-date with baby announcements etc while we are back.

See you soon…