There's no denying it, these bloggers are bound to make you jealous. Whether it's their guts, their energy or their tan you admire, overseas volunteers have got plenty to share with you about their remarkable work in fascinating countries. Read on to find out what you could be missing.

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Friday Oct 20, 2006

Sorry I haven't been around!!!

University has been busy at the moment, as well as work. I am now happily employed by the Kingston University Sustainability team, I am the Enviromental and Ethical officer for our students union, newly elected on the environmental council for NUS, attending Campaign Against Climate Change meetings, setting up a People and Planet society, writing for the university newspaper (when I get time) and also involving myself as an environmental mentor working with an NGO (under the Positive Environment Kingston pilot scheme)... So as you can imagine, I've been busy and also deprived of the internet in our flat. Aww poopy!

So I went to a volunteer party last night and got the chance to meet some of the Youthnet team, all of who are very nice people and I remembered then that I still have questions to reply to that were asked yonks ago. So here I am, answering the questions asked to me as best I can in a computer lab with people chatting and loud personal stereos... I hate loud personal stereos, a great thing about Nepal is that they don't have them!

Did you have doubts before you started, what were you thinking?

My friend told me two weeks before we were going to leave that he'd like me to come to Nepal. I said that I love children, but had no experience and he said that experience doesn't matter, that what matters is being caring. I think the reason why I saw logic in what he was saying and that I agreed to go was that at the time I had drank a bottle of wine to myself and was wasted at a barbeque... Hey, I'm a student!

And so I woke the next day, logged on to messenger and said "oh [insert rather offensive word here], I just agreed to go to Nepal with you didn't I". I was scared, I don't mind admitting that, I have never travelled and I was doing so with people I didn't really know. Planes frighten me and as an environmentalist, I am not fond of them, I also have a hatred for pharmacutical drugs and as a vegetarian there was also the issue of our Malaria tablets having gelatine in... Ew!

I doubted my experience with children, my competence for working in a team, I doubted my ability to take off in an aeroplane without freaking out. I was frightened about getting mugged or raped abroad, or arrested for doing something wrong or if a friend got injured and the hospitals were primative. I was worried about hygene both as a woman and somebody who doesn't want to get deli-belly, that they might not have good meat-free food and that a cobra might attack me.

Most of all what scared me was growing up and seeing things that I could always pretend to be knowledgable about, simply because I read about the situation in a text book. I think that growing up is something that frightens most people more than we'll admit to because we associate adulthood with having our freedom taken away. I was scared that mentally I would mature beyond the point of being able to turn a blind eye to injustice in the world, that I would realise that things have to be done and no longer be able to leave it to somebody else, or claim that anything we do won't help before I go back to sipping my Dr Pepper and playing my Playstation. I think what I am getting at is hard to put in to words, but I hope it is easy to understand. Maybe ignorance is freedom, maybe freedom is knowledge... But stepping outside ignorance is frightening.

At the same time I was excited, finally I would do something that I had always said I would do but always put off because of fear of the unknown and the worries I have mentioned above. I was looking forwards to meeting exotic people, staying in Freak Street where Hendrix and Lenon have allegedly stayed and of course working with children, learning about the culture, politics and issues of a new country and doing what I can to help. To put exactly how I felt down in words is impossible... I wrote to my friends and my family to tell them how much I love them and to my mother to tell her what to do if the worse happens. When you've never travelled you don't know what to expect... Even the more experienced travellers in the group had never been anywhere like Nepal.

But what's an adventure without conquering fears eh?

Did you ever worry about who/what you would meet or encounter while you were there?

Ohh yeah! I sat up for ages on the internet reading about venomous snakes and spiders in Nepal. I'm not afraid of snakes or spiders by the idea of waking up with a cobra curled around your flipflops, or a venomous spider dangling over your nose is scary. I was worried because a member of our group is gay and homosexuality is illegal in Nepal and the political tensions involving the Maoists was worrying.

The Maoists belive in the communist teachings of Mao Tse-Tung who was a political leader of the Communist Party of China, which as an ideology is very authoritarian, does not favour democracy and has an appauling human rights record comparable (in my opinion) on some levels to the atrocities of what the Nazi's did in World War two. I've heard they have concentration camps too. Anyway, in Nepal the Maoists are a political party who have used terrorist tactics to get what they want. They claim to want to liberate people from the caste system and give people equal rights they have allegedly abused people's human rights and used child soldiers to attempt to get what they want.

Then of course, how will Nepali people react to Westerners? Will they be racist? Try to steal from us? Resent us for our money?

How did these feelings match or contrast with reality?

Well we never met any cobras, although I did see a mongoose run across a wall off the balcony of the circus girl's refuge! Maybe then that mongoose was our saviour, snacking on all the mean ol' cobras to protect us volunteers.

Whilst we were in Nepal there was a ceasefire with the Maoists and in the Himalayan Times (there were both English and Nepali editions) it said that the UN were disarming them. Of course, how reliable newspapers are in any country, even one as liberal and democratic as our own is questionable. We met a volunteer who had worked with rehabilitating child soldiers and she told us that the Maoists had been going to villages and forcing people to fill a quota of how many children they wanted for their army. Apparently it was remarkably difficult to reintegrate a child back in to society after they had been a soldier. Nepali society is not as accepting in many ways as our own, it has no welfare state and maybe all of the help given to people such as ex-child soldiers, people with disabilities, circus girls and people with the HIV virus comes from NGO's.

As Westerners, something like this can be upsetting and the prospect of being attacked, held hostage or mugged by Maoists is worrying and very real. Certain areas in Nepal appear to be more concentrated, or maybe they are constituencies, I am not sure... But a Nepali friend we made told us that if Maoists hijack our bus, give them everything we own. Fortunately, we never met any Maoists. There were a few protests in Kathmandu, but we didn't experience any violence.

Nepali people are friendly, but on entering a country that still has a Caste system we have to be aware that we will see things that may upset us. The Caste system is ethnic, so the people of lower castes appear to have certain features, for example maybe they have a mongolian appearance. The people of higher castes are very beautiful, with elegant features and an almost Indian appearance, although their skin is fairer. Thus sometimes you will see people in certain situations and they all seem to look the same (not to be racist or anything, but they do) and this means that whilst we would dine with our friends from higher castes who could afford an American education there were a lot of people on the streets. Some were on the streets because in Nepali culture, that is their place. Then there are children who's parents have become alcoholics, other children who's parents have remarried and thrown their kids out (reconstituted families are undesirable in Nepal) and children who are on drugs.

Because of the amount of people living on the streets and the perception in the country of white people and their wealth, we encountered a lot of beggers. It is something that a lot of people from an affluent country such as the UK would find hard to handle; Children approaching you begging for money to eat. However, we found out from a Nepali friend that some of these children will use the money for drugs, some children work for adults who use their begging as a means to make money, some have homes and want sweets or luxiaries. It is understandable that somebody in such poverty would want something off Westerners, it's not like their families can claim Child Support of they can sleep overnight in a Saint Mungo's hostel. At first I found this a bit upsetting and at times frightening. I wondered whether I would be mugged by these people on the streets, yet we never recieved any threats even from the poorest of people.

The people in the shops always wanted to make a buck off us Westerners and they didn't leave us alone. Some would follow us and it became annoying, yet understandable. We knew they were ripping us off, we knew it wasn't done in malice and that it was just a part of their business. It is still puzzling however, how charming it can be when you're ripped off by some of these people. You can be left with a grin on your face having talked to a friendly shopkeeper who has charged you twice what he would charge a Nepali for some fabrics... Yet to us, the money is just pennies.

We never experienced any racism were were aware of (although people could have been muttering "chalky" at us in their own language whilst we walked past them diwn the street) and in Heteuda we became celebrities, the children running to see us and talk to us in what little English they know. The adults would come and talk to us about the history of their country, again in broken English but the effort was inspiring. How many people in the UK actually take time to explain the history of their own country to a foreigner? For free???

And finally (hope I haven't bored you yet), something we didn't consider was the amount of drugs going around, mainly marijuana. People would come up to us in the streets and offer to sell it to us, one of our hotel managers even offered to give it to us! We would walk past cafes with people sitting there smoking up like Hendrix probably did in the same cafe in the seventies. We never expected it!

But of course we were tourists, we were consumers and novelties. The experience we had as a group with Nepali people was very positive, but we do not know how they would treat us if we lived there. We are white Westerners, we are not part of the 'Untouchable' caste, we do not own a flat in Kathmandu and go out drinking with the lads. Also, as a woman... If I were not a Westerner I wonder how I may be treated differently. In the evenings women are rarely seen outside and we never saw any Nepali women in the bars. I can only speak from the experience of a Westerner in an alien land and in a way this sadens me... For Nepali culture is beautiful and fascinating and we can only scrape the surface of it as wealthy white travellers.

(And thankyou very much Dana, for your kind comment)

Posted by Selina ( 1:38 PM )
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