Last Day in Nepal

Well today is my last day here. My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 9, and the journey takes me to Doha, London, Montreal and home. I am happy to be going home, but pleased as well that I had the opportunity to work here on this project. There are some things that I will miss – the exotic flavour of the city, the very pleasant staff, the ready access to inexpensive restaurants. There are other things that I won’t miss a bit – the bad air quality, the noise of the traffic, the care you have to take with food and water, the coldness of the apartment, and mostly, the being away from everyone at home.
Today was kind of a busy day, with everyone scrambling to complete their portions of the final report. We have started having lunch now, realizing that eliminating lunch was not good health-wise. Lunch today was apple slices spread with peanut butter. Rumo, the tea lady, brought me a box of red and gold bangles to wear with my Kurta. She is very sweet. She keeps trying to show me how to wear a scarf, but it is hopeless.

Yesterday when we arrived at the office there was a pigeon flying around. The windows are left open in these buildings, and the pigeon had come in by mistake and trying desperately to get out. On the way to work today there were long long lines of people waiting for gasoline for their vehicles. One line up I saw must have been 2 miles long.

Did I mention that a surprising number of men have red hair? It appears to be compliments of a strange dye job rather than the natural colour. Kind of strange.

Last night we ate at a pizza place in Thamel. It was particularly nice – called Fire and Ice, frequented mostly by foreigners, and a little bit expensive (about $18.00). The pizza was big enough that there were leftovers for breakfast. The coffee there is really the only good coffee I’ve had since arriving.

Tonite the whole team is going to have supper at a nice restaurant called Dhulikels. The owner salvaged a lot of the Newari carvings from buildings being demolished, and incorporated them into the décor for the hotel. Rooms there are very expensive, like over $100, which is really high for Nepal.

So unless something really interesting happens on my journey home, this will be the last entry on my blog. Until the next time I go someplace exciting.

The second focus group

Today’s crowd was not as big as yesterday’s. Yesterday were the survey types. Today were the land records types - those who work in the land registry offices. Some I had met before in the field visits. Others were new.

Nepali men wear their hats to meetings – indoors or out. Mostly they are the typical Nepali caps, others wear baseball caps. The other dress was either western garb, or a nepali suit with a suit jacket over the top. There were some unexpected visitors invited by the joint secretary. One was from FAO – the food and agriculture organization based in Rome, that promotes agriculture in developing countries, and is often a donor agency for projects. The others were from the Asia disaster relief organisation – three earnest Japanese who did not stay long.

I wore my new vest and looked stunning.

As per the agenda of yesterday, after an introduction, a local consultant spoke about the Business Process Re-engineering exercise that had been done for the project. He spoke in Nepali, and there were lots of questions. I spoke next, in English, and there were some questions from those who felt comfortable enough in English to ask them. It seemed to go well. You never know…..

I know you are waiting to hear what was on the menu – rice pilau, and several salads, and naan and roti, and a dahl, and several Chinese dishes, and a lamb meatbally kind of thing. All very tasty. Gulab jamon ( which I do NOT like) black forest cake and a halwah were for dessert. I may have eaten too much.

Afterwards we met to discuss the content of the final report, and then back to the apartment. I will wear my new Kurta tomorrow to work. It is red.

Focus group sessions

Well today was the first of the two focus workshops. This one was on survey and cadastre. Tomorrow’s (mine) will be on land records. To those of you not in the business I suppose you are wondering what is the difference. No need to go into that now.

The sessions are held in the Everest Hotel, a quite nice hotel on a very busy street. The lobby is grand, with some wonderful Newari carvings above the reception desk, and others on walls and posts around. The room for us is very similar to ones at the Delta, the staff as usual are pleasant and helpful. There were presentations and discussions in the morning, and then about 1:30 we broke for lunch. There were about 15 dishes you chose from buffet style. 2 kinds of dahl, a rice pilau, naan, roti, fish deep fried, lamb in a stew, paneer, papadums, 4 types of salad, and three desserts. The meal will be different tomorrow. I can’t think of anything they did not have today, so I’ll be interested to see what it is. However, for a nice hotel the bathrooms leave a bit to be desired.

The sessions seemed to go well. There was lots of participation from the group, and they had been brought in from across the country. No one seemed to think that it was a good idea to turn off their cell phones for the event, so there was a fair bit of ringing during the morning. One guy has a really nice Buddhist chant for his ring tone. Another person’s ring tone has a bit of music, and then someone yelling Hello, hello. Bizarre.

One of the local consultants told us a disturbing story. The land records here are really in a sorry state, and for any number of reasons they are easy to tamper with. So Mr. A sells a property to Mr. B. a very expensive property – several million US dollars. Only Mr A does not own the property. He takes the money and disappears. Mr. B is left with no money, and no property. It is clear that in order for the transaction to have been finalized someone had tampered with the records. And three low level clerks were implicated. As a result, one of them committed suicide. This happened in June.