Woke up today around 5:30 a.m. needing to throw up; I ended up not throwing up all day. I also had diarrhea and low energy the whole day. I am assuming I got sick from the food. (the cooks don't have the best safe cooking practices.) Sickness is common here among the volunteers. I should be out in the field again tomorrow finishing up the last of the HRG program. We are coming to a close on our safe buildings and toilet project which has been around since January. HRG came from the pilot program I TLed on (50 Homes) which was started in July 2015. 8 months later with 100 houses and 50 toilets completed our construction programs will come to a close at the end of March. Besides sickness though, all is good in my life out here in Nepal.
I only have a little more time on Project Nepal before I move on with my travels. I am going to meet my parents in Ho Chi Min, Vietnam for a few days before heading of for the clear waters of Thailand. The question is how I will get from Vietnam to Thailand. I have a few ideas...I can simply take a plane, I could take a bus through Cambodia, or I could put my stuff on the back of a motorcycle and drive myself across Cambodia into Bangkok, Thailand. All of this really depends on cost and local laws, but i am mainly considering either a flight or the motorcycle.
Once in Thailand I will be scuba diving, surfing, laying on hammocks reading, painting, and trying whatever odd food I can get my hands on. I plan on being home first week of June to start working again. ( I sadly have to skip Europe this time around due to not enough funds.)
Keep looking for updates as I continue my journey through the world.
Just finished two weeks of building houses for the people of Kagati. Kagati is a wonderful place with extraordinary volunteers and beneficiaries. We have finished six of the fifteen houses that we are constructing for them. The beneficiaries are more willing to help than they were in Kathmandu and are in Melamchi. They get right down in the dust with you to dig the foundation or to put rocks in to support the post.
The base is different than any base I have been to yet. It is similar to The Gau, but the volunteers make it have a different feel. The Eagles Nest has a more communal feel, even more than The Gau. We walked to site everyday with great views of flowing rivers and the steps on which the locals grow their crops.
I am on break in Kathmandu until tomorrow and then I head back up to Melamchi until March 31.
Its been a busy week. Last weekend I went into Kathmandu for a two-day holiday with a lot of friends from project. We had a good time away from Melamchi and project. I ran into one of my best friends, Dan, from the last time I was in Nepal. On the way back I got my bag stolen by a local. That was the first time it had happened to me so I was pretty furious. The experience taught me about the actual value of material possessions.
It was a long week of putting up earthquake resistant walls and working as a Sherpa. I leave to go to Kagati on Tuesday where I will continue the same type of work but for one of the poorest communities of Nepal. 90% of the homes were destroyed in last years earthquakes. My friend Cara who is the logistics coordinator in Kagati told me that they are living in cowsheds and only have 4 toilets for 5000 people. I hope that the work we do will be enough of an impact.
I am back in Nepal now. AHV has moved out of the city and is in three villages. I live about four hours outside of the capital city of Kathmandu in a village called Melamchi. This small village lies next to a beautiful flowing E-Coli filled river. The village is a small and quite place, much different than where I used to live in KTM. Our other base is in Nuwakot, also a few hours from KTM. I have not been here yet, but when the Melamchi base closes down in two months I may move there for a month or so. We also have a satellite base in Kagati where we are finishing up the last 15 of the 50 Homes.
I have been living at a satellite base in Melamchi that we call "the gau". Gau means village in Nepali. At the gau we live in tents and cook over the fire. Every morning atop the mountain we are living on we look out and see a portion of the Lantang Valley (part of the Himalayas).
I have been working on the Hamro Ramro Ghar project which is an updated version of the 50 Homes project I used to team lead on. In addition to a better designed house we are also building 50 new toilets for the community and also providing safe building training for the locals called PASSA training. We continue to rubble houses and help rebuild this broken country after the two earthquakes last Spring.
As far as I know the petrol crises is still going on. I do not see the effects of it as much now that I am not living in the city but it continues to be a problem for the locals and NGOs trying to rebuild.
After flying from Fort Lauderdale to JFK New York I got held up by a snow storm. After a five hour delay and a twelve hour flight, i missed my connection to Kathmandu. The airline Etihad is gold class and helped me acquire a room in a five star hotel, all paid for by the airline. Instead of having an extra day in Kathmandu before I would head to Melamchi, I had a night to run around Abu Dhabi, UAE. What a country...what a country. Amazing.
First of i would like to apologize for not blogging as much as I had promised. My time on project was very busy and I ended up forgetting about my blog much of the time. The time on project was amazing and life changing. I found out today I will be returning there in early February 2016.
We moved out of Kathmandu to a district called Nuwakot. Here we will continue the same type of work we did while based in Kathmandu. I will be sent to a village called Melamchi to continue my work on a different base. Most of my friends will be gone when i return, so i will do the obvious thing and make new ones. I am looking forward to continue my work on the housing project. Its no longer called 50 Homes. It is now called HMRG and is more inclusive of the community. We will have a technical training program for the villagers so they can learn a new trade.
I cannot promise anything but i will try to update my blog more frequently when i return.
For most of my time here I have been working on building houses with a project called 50 Homes. We built homes in the Halchowk district of the Kathmandu Valley. Everyday I got to work above the valley and was blessed with an amazing views of Kathmandu. This week we finished our work in this district. It is sad leaving this area because there are so many more people that need help; also I have gotten used to the routine of Halchowk.
Now I am back at rubbling for the next few weeks until we move our base to Nuwakot. We are closing our Kathmandu base in the next month or so and moving our work to the village of Nuwakot. Life there will be very different. Nuwakot is a small village with twenty estabsihments at most. Night life will be smaller than Kathmandu. I have been told as well that the region we are moving to is predominatly Mongol. They are more open and we will be able to interact with the community more than we are able to in Kathmandu. I am looking forward to being able to see a new part of Nepal, but by the time we move more of my friends will be moving on with their travels. Adam will be heading home mid-November. Nessy leaves in two weeks. It is great to meet this new people, but i am still not used to people leaving. Its looking like it will be just Dan and I until the end of the adventure.
INDRA JATRA: FESTIVAL OF THE RAIN GOD
Tonight we headed to Durbar Square to partake in Indra Jatra, the festival of the rain god. As part of the festival people drink wine from the mouth of a statue representing the rain god. Only the strongest people can drink from the mouth because of the large amount of participants there. To make it to the mouth you need to push and shove your way to the front. Its best to have a partner run you in on their back. I was the base because I could push and shove my way to the front with ease. When you get to the front you still cannot just drink from the mouth. You need to reach over the others also at the front to be able to drink the wine. I ran to the front five times; four times carrying, and one time by myself to drink from the mouth myself. When you are at the front there are so many people that you are taking elbows and shoves constantly. Eventually if you are strong enough you will drink the wine from the statue.
This is an experience you should try if you have the chance. Its rough and difficult but very worth it. The festival continues tomorrow so we are going back to drink from the statue in the same manner.
Around 12:30 KTM time, we felt an earthquake aftershock. I was sitting in our lounge upstairs since I cannot go back to work until tomorrow, and I felt the floor shaking. As far as we know, nobody was hurt, and no buildings were damaged. It was such a slight tremor we weren't even sure what it was at first. The locals outside paid no attention to it. Updates will follow if we learn more.
I was injured while working last week and was told I can't work in the field for ten days. I will be able to return to my normal work duties on the 23rd. This week has been extremely slow since I can't do much to help out right now.
I am grateful that I am only temporarily out of the field and didn't have to go home to have my injury cared for. Last week my team had finished the house we were working on, so we decided we would pick up structures at the manufacturer to bring to our warehouse. While we were loading the metal structures into the trucks, a beam slipped and sliced my hand. At first I thought I would just need a band aid, but when I washed away the blood I realized the gash was much deeper than I thought.
We went to the government hospital, but the wait was too long, so we headed to a local private hospital instead. I had the wound cleaned and stitched. When I sent pictures of the wound to my family, my mother became worried that it hadn't been cared for properly. The stitches didn't seem to have been done well, and my mother was concerned about possible nerve or tendon damage from the depth of the cut. There was some talk of bringing me home for at least long enough to have a different doctor take a look at it.
Instead, I went to the United Nations hospital of KTM to get a second opinion the next day. I saw a western doctor, and he said there was no nerve or tendon damage, but that I would have a larger scar on my hand than necessary due to the poor stitching job the first doctor had done. He could have restitched the wound, but he chose not to because he felt reopening the wound wasn't worth the risk of infection. I have seen that doctor all week to get my hand cleaned and rewrapped. Today I had two of the five stitches removed, and the rest will be removed tomorrow. I am looking forward to returning to work in the field.
This Saturday was Maike's last day. We went shopping all day so she could buy gifts for her family. Last week our friend Max went to Melamchi, a satellite project All Hands is running. He joined a demolition team that backpacks up into the mountains for a week at a time to take down houses in the remote villages of Nepal. I had planned on joining, but I decided I am enjoying Kathmandu too much to leave for that long.
I haven't been able to update my blog as much as I would like because we are so busy. Most of us go out to the local pub nearly every night. We frequent a local Irish pub called Everest. There is nothing Irish about it except for one Irish flag.
I have been working on the 50 Homes Project wire team for a week now. We put up metal wire to protect homes from falling brick in case of another earthquake. I am now leading the wire team, which means I manage the worksite. I file any paperwork required for my team and make sure we have any supplies we need.
The week went by pretty quickly. I did everything from clearing rubble in the mountains and city to building shelters at IDP camps. Our water system broke this week, so we had to call a local plumber. He showed up and took apart our system, then decided he was done without fixing the problem. When we finally got him back, he fixed the problem...but decided to wash his feet with all our water. This type of behavior seems to be the norm here (being so comfortable you do as you please).
The driving here is controlled chaos. There are so many cars on the road but only a few stop lights, so people just cut in front of you. People do not stop for pedestrians crossing the street. We simply keep on walking, and they find a way around us. The first few times I tried to cross the street I had to have locals guide me.
I ended up getting sick from the water this week. The water here is not safe to drink, but I used it to brush my teeth, and that was enough to mess me up. People say the sickness will only last a few days and is cured by eating, staying hydrated, and sleeping. If it is still bad tomorrow, I may ask if I can take work off until I am feeling better.
This morning I headed over to the All Hands Volunteers base with a guy I met at the guest house (Steve). We got checked in and then headed straight to the work sites. We drove about 40 minutes from the base to an IDP camp outside of Kathmandu. From what I was told, the IDP camps ( Internally Displaced Camps) are basically FEMA camps. We worked on building community shelters. There are about 90 people living in the camp we worked at. I heard about other camps with up to 8000 people in them.
When I got off the plane this morning, I was excited to start experiencing everything Kathmandu has to offer. What I did not expect, however, was that everywhere I went in Kathmandu people tried to sell me things. You literally cannot take one step without a taxi or a rickshaw trying to convince you to get in. This is how I got dragged to the Monkey Temple today. The ride to the temple was not smooth. The roads have a lot of damage done to them, including plenty of potholes and bumps.
My rickshaw driver was an interesting fellow. He enjoyed pretending he did not know much English for the first half of the trip, which is how I got stuck going to the Monkey Temple even after telling him I did not want to go today. Oh well...it was a great time.
On the way to the temple he stopped at a Hindu funeral. I later asked him if they were closed for the family, and he said yes, so I have no idea why he had us watch. I think this type of thing will happen often while I am here.
The Nepali people are very nice and hospitable, but they do not like taking no for an answer. I ended up buying prayer flags for 500 rupee because the woman selling them just kept talking about how great the price was until I gave in. I will have to work on just walking away from those situations.
For those thinking 500 rupee is a lot, let me clarify. 1 USD is 100 rupee, so everything here is very inexpensive. I got my rickshaw ride for 20 USD, and we were at the temple for about three hours. For those who may travel here in the future, be careful about rickshaw drivers. Mine told me it would be 500 rupee, but when I tried to pay, he insisted I give him 2000 rupee! I will be avoiding the rickshaws from now on.
Its been an interesting start, but it will most likely calm down once I meet up with AHV tomorrow night.
Welcome to Nepal.
For the next two months, I will be working with the earthquake relief effort in Kathmandu, Nepal. The earthquake killed more than 9000 people and injured more than 23000 people. Schools and homes have been leveled into rubble, forcing people to rebuild their lives. I will be working with All Hands Volunteers (AHV), sorting through and clearing rubble to allow the people of Nepal to rebuild on their plots of land. I will also be building temporary schools because many schools were destroyed by the earthquake. Luckily the children were not in school when the earthquake hit.
Come back every week to see new blog posts, pictures, and the occasional video update on my travels in Nepal.