Life goes on

Lots have happened since the last time – some photographic evidence in our photo album.

Nepal finally managed to hold the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in April the 10th: a quieter and safer day than expected, when transportation was banned, "only" 4 people were killed, few intimidations and few constituencies had to delay their elections.
The Maoists have become the largest elected group. It was a surprise, even for the Maoists themselves. People, just wanted some change.

On the 21st of May, the elected CA members met for the 1st time to declare Nepal a Republic, after 240 years of Monarchy. This 1st session was about 10 hours delayed because the leaders of the key parties were trying to get a consensus on who would become Prime Minister and President and which will be their roles. They never reached a full agreement, but they did celebrate the CA assembly at about 9pm and the king has now 15 days to vacate the palace which will become a museum.
In the previous afternoon, the Government decided to declare a 3 day public holiday to celebrate the Republic – just few hours notice.

The role of the CA Assembly is to write a new Constitution. But, of course, the new government, with the Maoists as the major party, faces key issues to resolve, besides the petrol's high price, such as
• Maoist's People Liberation Army (PLA) currently confined in contanmens
• Youth Communists Leaders (YCL), the Maoists youth wing, carrying very violent actions without punishment. The Maoist leaders don't seem to control them
• Federalisms requested specially from the Terai groups

Since the snow is melting and the rainy season has started, Kathmandu has gone from 42 hours / week electricity cuts to about 9 hours. However, we are now facing a huge shortage of fuel and gas because India will only provide the petrol that Nepal can pay – about 50% of what's required. The petrol in Nepal is highly subsidized by the government leading to about 2 billions loss every month. The last time the government increased the fuel price, the people went to the streets "forcing" the prices back to "normal" after just 2 days.

On the personal front, we have had a couple of visitors:
• Guida and Pep, the daughter of one of my cousins and her friend and
• Morris and Margaret, some friend from Wimborne
With them, we did some tourism within the Kathmandu valley and in Chitwan, near the Indian border, where we enjoyed elephant rides, canoeing down a river with some crocodiles on its shores… The locals also killed a leopard that dared to wander near the village and attack a few people.

The construction work (and the noise) in our building is almost over and the top apartment is almost ready for rent. We are still suffering some water disruptions when the plumber comes to do any work in this new apartment, we are expectant to see where the paint will actually reach when they decide to paint the building's outside walls and we hope that when the work is over, they will clean up around the building... but we cannot really complain.
The landlord's family is very nice and they even invited us and the other tenants to an evening meal in their house.

Since April, we have new upstairs neighbours: another couple of VSO volunteers from the UK. We are now waiting to see who will come to live on the top floor.

Simon and I are very busy with our work.

Simon starts seeing some change in his organization and he has been in its district offices in the Mid West a few times. He is also now working, through VSO, with an Italian INGO for about 6 weeks to facilitate defining their Strategic Plan.

I have changed organizations since January/February, and I am now working in a very small NGO of disabled women and in a bigger and more established NGO who produces radio programs on social issues. I also went to a field trip in Rasuwa district by the Langtang valley, where they established a mobile radio station to encourage the local dialogue on their local issues. It was very interesting.

That's all for now. Regards,

Laura