ROAD BLOG AHEAD

Still going slightly bonkers with Lena’s computer. It freezes at odd times, particularly in Microsoft products, which makes me suspect an anti-MS bug of some kind. My system cleaners turn up all sorts of suspicious stuff, but I wish I had Nyondo here because, without easy access to the internet while I run these things, it’s impossible to tell what’s friend and what’s foe among the suspect files. Bigger arghhh later… system has power but refuses to boot. Like mine. Something fishy here. Fortunately there are internet shops every ten yards in Kathmandu. Sigh…
Friday, 14 April 2006
So, we are cautiously thinking that this continuing revolution in Nepal may be bearing fruit, may be leading the nation closer to the representative democracy wanted by the vast majority of the people. It has been calmer the past 24 hours. That’s relative, of course. The demonstrations have actually gotten much bigger - hundreds of thousands in some locations - and involve pretty much every strata of society, including those with a lot to lose. There is still brutality and out-of-control retaliation from the police and the army, people are still being beaten and shot, but the outcry is so widespread, the international pressure being brought to bear is so huge, that the force behind the police violence has shifted from official policy to individual agendas by various law enforcement officials or squads. There are some really crazy cops and military out there, the cops moreso, with many of them being drunk. Many of yesterday’s demonstrations were so huge that there was literally nothing that the authorities could do to stop it or keep them from going where they were headed. Peaceful demonstrations, I might add. The surge of opinion and support has become far far too big to ignore and the more that people got hurt and the more that people were killed, the more outraged the general populace (and the international community here) has become. OTOH, they have deported a couple of doctors, one German and one American who were treating people injured in the demonstrations. The doctors, hospitals, nurses and all medical staff have rallied around the pro-democracy issue and have vowed to treat anyone who is injured without cost (in a country without general or socialized medicine, this is a big deal.) And the organization of private schools in Nepal have pledged to provide full education and scholarships to the families of the people who have been killed while protesting. *Everybody* is coming together over this. It’s quite wonderful; I am so impressed with the strength and the courage and the heart of the Nepali people!
Today is Nepali New Years and people are in a surprisingly happy, upbeat mood. Some of that is the retraction of curfews after a week of heavy restrictions. Some is just the holiday and a certain amount is that cautious optimism that things have started to turn around. The King made his annual New Year address last night and is now saying that, of course, it is time, in the 21st century, for Nepal to have a democracy of the people and that true representative government with general elections must be implemented as soon as possible, and that this is what he’s wanted all along! yadda yadda. I hope that the hotheads let him save face by saying that it was his idea all along. There’s no percentage in any other approach really and it is possible that a certain percentage of the really repressive atrocities were not carried out at his personal orders, but by the orders of various Royalist ministers while he was out of town. He can turn this situation around, but he’ll have to find some royalist scapegoats really fast. There’s some damned good candidates frankly that nobody would mind (well, they would obviously) being held to account for the stuff that’s happened.
The weeks to come will tell how it’s all going to shape up. The pressure and the awareness will have to continue in a peaceful manner and the international community (and money) will need to stand behind the pro-democracy political parties and activists or this will drag out for a long, long time with periodic flares and a lot of people will get hurt. I’m not so much a pollyanna that I think the fight is over and we won! I think some ground has been gained and that the Nepali people have reason for optimism to sustain their courage and determination.  Freedom of the press needs to be restored (they’re still trying to quell the opposition press and still beating up and arresting journalists.) Outside opinion needs to be listened to (India, Canada and the U.S. are all pretty pissed right now and making their opinions known on both political and financial levels.) One of the most ridiculous things I heard during the peak of the conflict this past week was the Minister of Communications refusing to discuss things with the Secretary General of the United Nations and scoffing publicly, “What? Don’t they think we are capable of solving our own problems?” Ummm… if the shoe fits….
It’s interesting to feel so personally involved in what is happening around us and not just because it is affecting the exchange rate, our coming and going or the supply of yoghurt in Kathmandu. It is the effect and the experience of  the people we see every day, the individuals we meet over a cup of tea or a plate of momos, that has drawn Lena and I into this on a visceral level. We stopped into a little hole in the wall shop outside the Thamel district last evening for a cup of tea and a plate of momo and ended up in a conversation with a couple of guys whose table we shared. Working men who were having breakfast (beans, chaptis, gin and tea) before heading to whatever they were about to do, one of whom spoke enough English that we could talk politics. He was really cautious until it became clear where our sympathies lay and then he - they- opened up and said that he thought it was going to be a difficult struggle, but that the pro-democracy forces would prevail and that it was time, that the overwhelming majority of the Nepali people are in accord on that. The guys we talk with are not under any illusions that it will be an overnight change or that it’s an easy thing to change an entire political system in a functional way. They keys will be education first, then economic opportunity and then things like health care and public transportation. These are the issues that have been brought up by every single thinking person we’ve talked to about the crisis. And it’s true - representative democracy really *does* required an educated populace with a sense of investment in making their system work and a basic understanding of the process by which the country is governed. I hope they have the sense to model it on one of the more functional representative democracies in the world - Canada perhaps or Iceland, rather than the U.S. which has a system that doesn’t work with a large, diverse population.
Ummmm, can you tell that I’ve been both a social studies teacher and a political activist and analyst at different times? I just never expected to find myself in the thick of someone else’s revolution!
I really have come to love the people, the environment and the culture(s) of Nepal in the month we’ve been here. No matter where I have gone, people are thoughtful, interested, curious, very very vibrant and alive. Women are more equal (those who choose) than in almost any other place I’ve been, even though it’s the guys you see most on the street. Things are divided vaguely so that the women own and run the majority of food/general goods stores, locals’ restaurants and bakeries that I’ve seen while the men do the tourist restaurants, the shops that sell scarves and shawls and artifacts and maintain things like sidewalk tea stalls and pull rickshaws. But there are women police and army squadrons, fully armed, women driving the buses and tuk tuks, owning businesses and young girls with cricket bats practicing in the alleys. I’ve occasionally been treated oddly because I am a foreigner but I have not yet once felt talked down to or my opinion discounted because I am a woman. It’s a really interesting cultural experience! Add to that how very kind and warm people seem to be - not just to us, but to one another as well. The friendships are really visible, the neighbors look out for each other, share information, make sure everyone’s kids are okay and that nobody is really without. Where we are, down the backside of Thamel in a residential alley, there is a sense of neighborhood and neighbors. I know the guy who watches the motorcycle park and the guys who run the pizza parlor upstairs and the tea walla and the boy who helps him. I know the woman who has the near little store that sells toilet paper, mineral water, cokes, cigarettes and candy bars and her two bright-eyed young daughters. I’ve watched them go to ground during the troubles or head out to the streets to see and participate. We share opinions and information.
We’ve also been adopted by our Newari restaurant owner and his best friend. Knowing that we’re coming by, Prakash has made it a point to bring our favorite greens from the market and to make sure that the mushrooms he talked about are in stock so we can try them. He comes over when there’s a lull in business and brings maps of Nepal and shows us places that tourists never go and that he thinks are the most beautiful places and tells us how to get there once the turbulence is over. He wants us to come and spend time with his family now that the curfew is lifted and we want to do so. His friend, whose name I don’t recall now, is equally interested and would like us to see his home town in Eastern Nepal, near the foot of Mt. Everest. Also the south, the Terai jungles and the reserves where the rhinoceros and tigers still roam. Lena has been quite amazed to find that the young Nepalis are fascinated by her stories of having been here thirty years ago and the things she did and saw then. Apparently those times are still considered a sort of Golden Age of Nepali culture and prosperity, when this Himalayan kingdom was first opened to the west and it was mostly the brave and intrepid who managed to find their way here. Lena, as one of those, is a creature out of one of the stories that people tell of the first blue-eyed folks that turned up, full of curiousity and willing to endure hardship to get here. As Prakash’s friend said last night, eyes sparkling as Lena told about a particular long journey she’d made on foot to Langtang where she’d been stuck in a shepherd’s hut in a whiteout blizzard, “You are one of the people from the legends!” So she really wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction! She’s enjoying it though and glad to find out that her experiences here were as meaningful to the people of Nepal as they were to her.