Decision Time - Sept.27th, 2007

Well, I started making the resolution yesterday that I have to make a decision about what I am going to do for the relative long term. This would be the next 9 months or into next spring. I have 3 different ideas in my head. 1) to go to India at the end of November and finally go back to Varanasi to see Bijay and the Bhole Das' and pick up my bag with heavy winter clothes in it. This is should bring back here and put in the flat. 2) to go to Thailand and Sarawak, where I was as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Because I am now studying Buddhism, I thought this would be a good idea and I could maybe visit Cambodia too. 3) get the Residence Visa for 1 year and stay here for the cold months of Dec-Jan-Feb. just to see how bad it really gets and if Global Warming is affecting winter temperatures. Now today, I still can't see to come to some kind of decision on this although going to Varanasi/Sarnath and seeing Bijay is the most favoured because it is the least expensive. Next, of course, comes going to Thailand and visiting Sarawak and Cambodia, which could be fairly costly. I think I am down to these two choices because after these days of steady cold rain has not been the best. Actually, I have been in the mountains since April when I left Auroville for McLeodGanj. It was fairly "cool" there too. It was in this fated places that I had quite a bit of money stolen which has put me off for the moment. The money that was taken was to be for Tenzin and Lobsang, two monks of Tibetan Buddhism. Of course, today with what is going on, I feel pretty uneasy about this whole incident. I think it is the cavalier attitude that I had to deal with that put me off the most; it is very different here in Kathmandu. There, people can't seem to get a handle on "reality" and all they do is fool around with the "Westerner". This is not the monks, of course, but some of the others. Because McLeodGanj is the "homeland" of the Exile Tibetan community, these attitudes run a little thin sometimes. Back to being in the mountains. After McLeodGanj, I came to Kathmandu where I have made the decision about getting a flat. So, for the last 8 months I have been out of the hot, sweaty weather. Does this mean that Global Warming concerns are finally taking over my consciousness? This would be good because I don't want to be one those people who puts off accepting what this is. I know it might seem absurd to "plan" for this, which is probably one of the biggest reasons people don't know how to get a handle on this issue. How to plan for a catastrophic event if you are just one person? Here, in Kathmandu, it does not seem like anything is being done. I think if some NGO's formed, they would get a good response; but nothing so far. I, myself, have been thinking about the glacial melt, glacial lakes, rain, and weather change. So, this is why I can't seem to make a decision about what to do for the 3 very cold months.

These are my thoughts for today.

Rain and Kathmandu - Sept. 25,2007

Well, back to this blog for awhile. It has been raining, effectively, since I got here in July. Everybody says it is the monsoon this year; but I think some of Global Warming involved as well. For the latest spell of rain, it starts in the night. If it is still raining in the morning, it might rain for most of the day. If the rain stops some time during the night, then it maybe will not rain during the day. There has been no traditional monsoon here this year at all. This is an aberrational monsoon with a lot more rain than was expected. As for myself, I guess rain and water are still following me around. It seems that where I go, some rain goes too. In Florida, it was not fun to have to walk to work and have to avoid the heavy summer rains. Most of the time, it would start raining while I was on the bus to work. Now, that I am a retiree, living here in Kathmandu; I don't care when it rains. So, it has been raining every day since I got here in July. Mind you last year and the 3 years previous, on my visits to Kahtmandu, it did not rain at all. So water is good, yes? Not when it floods like it is doing in the tarai, where both Indians and Nepalese are being affected. The flooded area are extremely dangerous with snakes swimming around everywere.

So, my guests never did arrive; they are still out at Bhoudinath at the NGO. I think they thought I did not have enough cooking things in the kitchen for their tastes, so they decided to stay where they are. I don't think they much like Thamel either, whick is much more hurried than Bhoudinath. I am still here from when I arrived on July 9th, 2007. This is amazing to me that I never seem to get very far from Kathmandu. This is my fourth visit here and I made the
monumental decision to take out a flat and furnish it with my own stuff. I did this so I could feel more grounded than the travel life style of the last four years. Now I don't know what to think of the global backpack train. Is it doing any good? The packers are leaving a lot of money in the various countries; but a lot of cultural dislocation too. Here in Nepal, cultural dislocation is a very serious phenomenon, like Globabl Warming. So Kathmandu gets it on two counts - cultural dislocation and global warming. In the midst of all of this is the Maoist uprising which aims at controlling the "tourist revenue". Nepal now depends on this so I think it would do the Maoist a whole lot of good it they would get with a program of actually building a better Nepal and not all of the very destructive crap they are into now. The papers talk a lot about what is going on in the villages; but not the Maoist leadership at all. They have never paid any kind of restitution to the Gov't or the affected people or villages.

Well, this is it for today. These are my thoughts for the moment.

Nepal and Global Warming/Climate Change

Well, now I have a flat in Kathmandu, just outside of Thamel. I came here from India for the Visa but have decided to stay, maybe up to 5 years. I got an email that said we might be approaching God only knows what. So, of course, Nepal, wrapped here in the Himalayas are going to be affected, but you would not know it from the prevailing attitudes. Most of the people walking around the streets here, both Nepalese and "tourist" seem mostly intent on the affairs of that day; there is no talk of what might be coming down the pike. Of course, the Nepalese have blessed themselves into thinking that nothing is going to happen to them because no glacier affected river runs through Kathmandu. However, there are lots of other places that could be affected from glacial run-off. I do not think that is going to be the big issue here. I think it is going to be rain. I hope it is just water rain and not something else. Nobody is really talking about it.

Other than this, the political situation has devolved back to what it was about a year ago because the Maoists do not want the voting for the Constituent Assembly to go ahead as planned because the polls say they might lose. This, of course, is totally unacceptable to them because they have delluded themselves into thinking everybody likes a Maoist. I don't.

I am going to have friends coming over on the 22nd to stay for maybe up to a month. Joan and G are friends from way back in Delhi before I went to McLeodGanj before coming to Nepal in July. Joan and G are Tibetan Buddhists and do a lot of hiking in the mountains. We have talked about a trek to Muchtinath depending on the cold. I am interested in the trekking, but it is not the primary thing to me. I always like to make friends as a way of understanding something. This certainly helps in Nepal. G, however, is a Tibetan and, as I have been working with the Exile community for a long time, we seem to get along pretty good. Joan has been a Buddhist for a long time and actually spent many years in the nunnery. She reminds me of how I was when I first went to India in the 1970's. I fell under the influence of some of the Hindu trips in the Bangalore area and came away from the experience totally confused. It was my first experience of living around people who created whatever reality they want for the moment on a daily. Very confusing to me until I realized maybe it was an experience of impermanence.

Got to stop for now. These are my thoughts for today.

So, Taboo or not to Taboo

One thing about working in the taboo area is that the host country nationals are really motivated to do the job. I also feel that the degree of success depends almost entirely on the input from the host country nationals. If their input is strong, the likelihood that their impact is going to stick is quite high; if their input is ambiguous, their impact is likely to be mixed. This means that the work to change the taboo area can easily be reversed, especially after the volunteer is gone. This probably happens the most in social chanage areas. People want to be recognized as having embraced our modern time; but it is usually by the standards set by the host country national. I am going to stop for the moment and will pick it up tomorrow,

Reminesces of the Peace Corps

OK, I am going to try and do this again because the first one this morning got lost. I am going to try to contrast and compare my two (2) experniences with the Peace Corps. The first experience was in Sarawak and at the beginning of Peace Corps. The experience was mind boggling because everybody was enthused and up-beat. The second experience was in Kingston, Jamaica. The Peace Corps was now an established and respected Agency; the volunteers were still enthused, but it was a different kind. My two (2) experiences were quite different also. I guess in the the initial stages when there is still a lot of experimenting going on, the volunteer feels more a part of it; in the later on phases, like mine inKingston, volunteers tended to be a lot more laid back, less enthused and thinking they were trained and skilled enough to do a good job. They say from beginning to the end, the Peace Corps wants to recruit the same kind of "volunteer" over and over again. I am not at all sure this can be done. In Jamaica, people were more friendly with one and another and had socials on the week-end. In Sarawak, the living room of the house was always filled with Standard 12 students from all over Sibu and we would visit all of the time. I was not so friendly with other volunteers as I was with my friends from Sarawak; in Jamaica, this was turned around as I was more friendly with Jamaicans than with fellow volunteers. In both experiences, I was plenty experienced and worked comfortably with the host country nationals. One difference was in Jamaica, I worked in a taboo area; but I worked in taboo areas in Sarawak too. Maybe host country nationals were beginning to see that a volunteer will work in any designated area, and most are not put off by a "culturally sensitive" designation. This is not true for all countries. A consequence of working in two(2)differently designated areas will impact each volunteer differently. This working in "taboo" areas does, to a certain degree, create different volunteer expierences. If placed in one of the areas, I, myself, think it is wise to inform at least one from the immediate family.