Another day, another danger!

Hello all,

Sorry it’s been so long since we last blogged. Since then we have been to yet another conference in Kathmandu! We can’t groan too much about this one though, as Steve was one of the organisers. Actually, it was a lot more interesting than the usual groans about the hardships of being a VSO volunteer!! The theme of the conference was ‘young people in Nepal’ so there were lots of young speakers and participants. These young people were involved in politics, young people’s rights, volunteering or education. Many of the young people were inspiring speakers and we also took part in a really good youth led workshop on HIV/AIDS.

In between our two quite recent visits to Kathmandu, schools have not been teaching because of exams, the inaccurately named ‘Welcome to School’ programme, and generally taking a long time to get going for the new school year. We kept busy, however, mostly by giving training. Some of this was at the Education Training Centre (government run centres for in-service training). We also had fun at some nursery school training organised by a local NGO. This involved learning and teaching some new silly songs and games. We hope to be doing some more nursery training soon.

Since we returned from Kathmandu a few weeks ago, we have been taking advantage of the fact that schools have been open and running (at least half time – the very hot weather means that teachers are quite happy to shut up shop at any slight opportunity). Two weeks ago, the temperature reached 43° Celsius – the hottest ever recorded in Mahendranagar. The heat on its own is not unbearable. It’s the humidity which is really uncomfortable! As the monsoon approaches, the humidity builds up over a week or two weeks and then is finally broken by the rain – a great relief for a day at least. Then the rains get closer and closer together until it rains on most days.

Despite the heat and humidity, Steve continues to cycle for up to 3 hours to reach his schools and tries to avoid cycling at the hottest times of day. As school times in this season are 7am-12.30pm, he sometimes leaves the house at 4am or stays in the villages overnight to be able to get to school on time the next morning.

The house update is… the builders are still here making a racket and a big mess, but despite looking around for a smaller place, we haven’t yet found anywhere that is as good for birdspotting and seems worth the hassle of moving.

We have heard that the British Prime Minister is facing some problems. We in Nepal now have a new Prime Minister, whose name, somewhat confusingly, is Mr Nepal. About a month ago the previous Prime Minister resigned, leaving us slightly worried that in the absence of a Prime Minister, anarchy would break out. In fact, the opposite happened. For weeks, there were few road closures and strikes because no one knew who they were complaining to! With Mr Nepal now in office, things are back to normal with strikes and bandhs as regular as ever.

Now onto this week’s theme:

This blog is dedicated to Mr Steve Briggs, health and safety officer in Student Services at De Montfort University… and all other Health and Safety folk out there, many of whom often had to put up with our complaints (about filling in endless risk assessments when we want to leave a building or walk down a street, for example).

Now, we’re not promising to give up our moaning, about the excesses of caution that we experience in Britain, but some of our experiences in Nepal have reminded us how lucky we are in the UK to have enforceable health and safety laws. The lack of laws, lack of law enforcement and belief in fatalism (what will be was already meant to be), means that Nepal is unlikely to win the gold medal for health and safety.

Here are a few examples of daily hazards in Nepal:

Taking a walk down the street, especially in Kathmandu, can be dangerous here. If you’re lucky, you will see potholes, uncovered drains and metal wires sticking up all over the place. If you’re unlucky, for example if there is a power cut or the monsoon rains are covering the street, you won’t see the hazards, and fall into one. Two volunteers have had serious accidents just by walking down the street:.As well as there being plenty of work for road repairers, electricians also don’t need to worry about lack of work anytime soon!

The law in Nepal says clearly that the driver of a motorbike must wear a helmet. However, it doesn’t say anything about whether the helmet has to be done up, or how many passengers can be on a motorbike, their age, or their safety. As a result it is a common sight to see 4 or 5 members of a family, including babies, on a motorbike without helmets (apart from the driver). Motorbike accidents and injuries are very common.

We have conflicting feelings about the access of children to dangerous materials here. On the one hand it can make the children more skilled and careful at using tools and dealing with things like fire – we have yet to see a child injure themselves on the razor blades they bring to school to sharpen their pencils (from the age of 3). On the other hand we have heard of a number of children drowning in rivers and child mortality here is high.

One of the biggest dangers here and the cause of a lot of illness and some deaths (especially of young babies) is the lack of health and hygiene rules for food and drinking water. This is a daily problem for us as we need to boil, cool and carry with us all our drinking water and try to eat in restaurants where the food is served piping hot. But this is not always a possibility and Mel’s stomach can testify about the results! On the other hand, the government is now attempting to test drinking water supplies for arsenic. This powerful poison is found in much of the water in our area. We don’t know what happens to pumps that fail although Steve was recently told that the water from a village pump had a certificate to show that it had “5% arsenic levels” (although there may be some translation or mathematical reading error here!)

This overloaded vehicle is just one hazard when it comes to road travel. Lack of laws to do with bus and lorry driving means that one bus driver can be driving a bus for the entire journey to Kathmandu (more than 18 hours). We don’t take those buses by the way, but break our journey into two instead.

A bit closer to home, a ‘safety at work’ policy would be a welcome start for the builders at our house, which can seem pretty hazardous with frequent chunks of cement and bricks falling and being chucked off the roof.

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So, health and safety issues allowing, we’ll try and blog again soon.

P.S. For photos of a slightly more colourful and maybe more interesting nature, don’t forget to check out our latest photo album which you can access on the right of the page.