Nepal Revisited – Day 7

We had a very productive day today as Heather & I started the morning off by having a meeting at Mission Aviation Fellowship (M.A.F.) to re-register our credentials with them, while MJ headed to the Logistics Cluster.

We were each amazed by the amount of motorbikes and cars that lined the road waiting for fuel and also the number of vehicles to-ing and fro-ing on the streets.

The traffic is the busiest it has been for days!!!

Heather & I then headed up stairs to have a meeting with Sarah @ Mountain Child, who has been doing work in the Upper Gorkha District, which is a very remote area of Nepal. They have been an implementing partner in the area of distributions to communities and Temporary Learning Centers (TLC’s) at the schools which have been severely affected by the earthquake. While we were out of the country they had tried to organise a monitoring visit. Now that we are back they will look at rescheduling one at the earliest convenience.

Obviously, with the transitioning from initial earthquake assistance through to recovery, the needs have been constantly changing for the communities, especially in isolated areas such as these. So if we do get the chance to head up there, we will do a pseudo evaluation and provide recommendations to head office so that we can continue working in the area.

We also had a meeting with Child Nepal (another implementing partner) at Sisters to discuss progress to date with the TLC’s that they have been working on. There assistance has been hampered by the landslides in the higher regions of Sindhupalchok, caused by the monsoon season. Also the current fuel crisis has had an affect on their progress. However, they have completed four centers and are looking forward to our monitoring visit in early November.

The latter part of the afternoon was spent catching each other up on where things are at with the different projects and us sharing information that we had each gathered today.

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750,000 litres of fuel distributed to private vehicles

Over the past couple of days it has been fascinating to see the lack of cars, buses, trucks and motorbikes moving about on the roads. There have been long queues lined up on the sides of the roads however.

Yesterday it was astounding to see the amount of motorbikes lined up for miles as they waited for a fuel ration of 5 litres per motorbike.

The following article was published in the Kathmandu Post yesterday (13/10/2015):

Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) distributed 750,000 litres of fuel to the private vehicles in the Kathmandu Valley on Tuesday. Some 600,000 litres of petrol and 150,000 litres of diesel were provided by the NOC to 125 petrol stations across the Valley, according to Spokesperson of the Corporation, Deepak Baral

The state oil monopoly had ceased providing fuel to private vehicles for the past two weeks given the acute shortage of fuel in the country. The vehicles were playing on the road since Monday in hope of receiving the petroleum products rationed by the NOC.

Spokesperson Baral shared that not all the vehicles queued in a long line received the petroleum products due to the limited availability of the petro products. Motorcycles were provided five litres of fuel whereas four-wheelers received 15 litres.

The NOC is preparing to make available fuel to more of the private vehicles tomorrow until the import of this essential fuel comes in adequate quantity. The distribution of LPG gas would not take place until the Birgunj check point opens, according to NOC.

So hopefully over the next few days as approximately two million people head out of Kathmandu to their respective villages to celebrate the beginning of Bada Dashain images such as these will become less and less, as the fuel distributions become more commonplace.

(Bada Dashain is the most widely celebrated Hindu festival in the country.)

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Nepal Revisited – Days 5 & 6

The past couple of days have again been spent working through the administration requirements of sorting and filing of paperwork, reporting and organising meetings to be on the same day, so that we can conserve fuel.

As far as the reporting goes after these past two days I can honestly say I am almost there – hurrah! I reckon I am about 90% there. We have sent a message out to try and get additional information from previous teams just to show that we have some records etc. So by the end of this week I should have been able to complete this reconciliation project that has been quite a mission in and of itself.

Every now and again to get some fresh air so to speak we have dropped tools and headed down the road or around the block for a walk, and Sunday was no different. Apart from the fact that today we decided to head into Jawalakhel, just to see how far it was…

In the process we found out where the MAF & Mountain Child offices were which we need to go to on Tuesday. It took us about 45mins to walk into Jawalakhel, much of the first half of the walk was downhill. When we got there we grabbed a drink at one of the many cafe’s and coffee shops, then had a look around the area. After grabbing lunch we headed back to the house, which took us a bit longer, but not too much.

In the afternoon I tried getting hold of family at home, our internet has been quite spasmodic these past few days, eventually getting hold of Annette at night (her time). It was good to catch up as she heads to a conference in Wellington tomorrow for a few days looking at church growth.

We celebrated MJ’s birthday (which she had kept very quiet) by going to what has become our usual haunt, which is just around the corner and from memory all of us had a reasonably early night – must have been the walk.

The following day had a very similar pattern, although this time the walk was only around the block where we stumbled across a land block of arable land in the middle of the housing estate which had fields of rice which some were harvesting for the upcoming festival.

In the afternoon I even managed to spend some time in the afternoon doing some sermon preparation for the sermon series I am doing upon my return to Invercargill, looking at ‘The Power of the Whisper’ which is a book by Bill Hybels which I finished earlier this year and has been resonating within me for the past three or four months.

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Nepal Revisited – Days 3 & 4

Much of the past two days has been absorbed by administrative duties, planning & sorting paperwork as we get a handle on where all the different projects are at that we had been working on previously.

We have noted everything down on the whiteboard associating the project # to each item and have a couple o other lists of things to do and what needs to be chased up by who, when etc. It almost seems as if their is s much to do, with not enough time to get it all done in. Bearing in mind that MJ heads home in just over two weeks.

Also seeing as many people are conserving fuel at the moment, we don’t want to go to far out of town and waste time driving around just for the sake of it, so we’ll need to look at doing a few things at a time as far as meetings with other organisations, and going places etc. goes. It is just a tad complicated to organise at the moment as things are on go slow within Kathmandu and being the Sabbath and all…

On Friday we headed to Sisters Cafe & Beauty to catch up with Hayley & Anne who have come over from the UK to do an on site assessment of the project. They only have two days left of their visit so we haven’t got to spend much time with them which is a shame as it would have been good to show them some of the other things that The Salvation Army has been involved with. They did get to experience a distribution with  Major Sanga last weekend though.

On Friday Bhim & I spent the afternoon going back & forth into Jawalakhel to find out why the internet had been down for much of the day. Eventually getting everything back online in the late afternoon so we could clear the inbox.

On Saturday about mid morning MJ and I headed out of the house for a walk around the neighbourhood. Being the Sabbath pretty much everything was closed and there were hardly any vehicles on the roads. Along the way we came across the Community Earthquake Learning Center – which houses the Nepal Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET). Which may be worth a visit in the next week or so, seeing it is literally around the corner.

The NSET was conceptualized in 1994 with the main objective “to foster the advancement of science and practice of earthquake engineering and technology for mitigating the earthquake risk and increasing the seismic safety, to enhance professionalism, professional engineering and scientific ethics and to further the objectives of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering as applicable to Nepal”.

Bringing “substantial change in the application of technology to the many facets of earthquake disaster management for saving the lives of the people” has remained the guiding philosophy of NSET ever since its inception.

After setting the world to rights on our walk we headed back tot he house for lunch and got stuck into the paperwork for much of the afternoon. Even though we had got the internet going yesterday, it was down for most of the day. Only coming right in the evening after dinner.

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Nepal Revisited…

So the question is do I restart the numbering of days for our second stint in Nepal or carry on where I left off last time? At this stage I will just state Nepal Revisited… This post will take in the first two days which were spent either in airports or airplanes.

After lying low for just over a couple of weeks back in New Zealand after our withdrawal, as I said before pretty much the first couple of days has been travelling towards, past, and then back to Kathmandu. I have spent time in 6 different airports, in 5 countries, and traveled in 3 planes, and it has taken just over the 40 hours to get from Invercargill to Kathmandu.

Leaving Invercargill was a bit exciting especially as we past through the front that was marching its way up the country. The turbulence was like being on a roller coasters as we were buffeted by the wind. At one point it felt like we fell a few hundred feet in a matter of seconds and we were not only going up and down, but also knocked side to side. Coming into Christchurch was a bit easier but still the gusts played a little cameo.

While in Christchurch I met up with Mike & June for a very brief chat & coffee literally on the run as my name was called over the intercom to get to the Emirates desk pronto, only to find out that they were boarding the plane in 5 minutes. Coffee in tow I scarpered through customs, thankfully I was able to swig it down as I went through disposing the empty cup as I was picking up my scanned items. Then I was on a plane and in the air again this tine the flight was a lot more stable.

We were made aware that in Sydney we needed to disembark the plane, go through security and then get back on the same plane. If it wasn’t for the screens and walls I reckon we would have never lost sight of the plane. I did grab another Mocha while I was there though which was very enjoyable. Before long we were boarding again and winging our way to Bangkok.

While on the flight to Bangkok I tried to get as much sleep as I could, just so that the body clock could make its slight adjustments. Which wasn’t very fruitful as there were quite a few people on the flight so couldn’t really spread out and have a decent snooze. We didn’t spend a lot of time in Bangkok; it was really just a changing of the cabin crew and a quick clean of the airplane, before long we were airborne again. On to Dubai!

Arriving in Dubai was interesting as all the passengers were ushered through security to get to connecting flights, only to find out that I needed to be on the other side, (the side I was before) to get my boarding pass. However, when I finally got my boarding pass and after being told to go through security, again! I was kindly asked by the same burly guard who had helped me previously (Yes I did ask for directions) for my boarding pass so he could help me. I must have looked really lost at this point, or maybe he remembered that I said I was travelling via Fly Dubai. Anyhow this time he took me back through security to get to the other side so that I could wait for a bus to go to the other terminal building, which was about 20mins away.

I still made it to the rendezvous first @ Paul’s Cafe, and waited, and waited for MJ to arrive next. Did I say I waited I had about 6 hours before the next flight! Needless to say I was a bit surprised when Heather came through security first 🙂 As it turned out MJ had been to 3 different Paul Cafe’s in each of the three terminal buildings as she had a bit of fun also working out where she should be. Eventually we were all boarding the same flight to Kathmandu, the last leg of the journey.

When we arrived in Kathmandu it seemed to take forever for the bags to get off the plane, and there were parcels, quilts, TV’s and bags spread across the floor apparently lying unclaimed for now. We brushed through customs and got the first taxi we could. The roads were relatively empty in comparison to when we were here last due to the fuel shortage and it didn’t take that long to get to the house. It was quite surreal walking into it after a few weeks away and not having the other guys, Andrew & Shahzad there.

We got a couple of things squared away and headed down the road for a light dinner and then I headed to bed. I was starting to flag, over 40 hours travelling had definitely drained the reserves, but it was good, the first and second day!

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