Friday, December 26, 2008

Christmas in Kathmandu














Toby 'decorating' Christmas cookies.

Coming down from Sarangkot where we saw the mountains!
















Playgroup Christmas Party December 13


Noa monopolised the tricycle. Good thing we didn't show her the cookie decorating table until the end...




















The artist at work...












































Merry Christmas, everyone! And all the best wishes for 2009!

Love
C T N

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Field visit to Gorkha




Namaste

In the last week of November I accompanied two of my team on a field visit to Gorkha District, which is to the northwest of Kathmandu and as its name suggests is the original home of the renowned Gurkhas. One of our partners works in the district, employing 3 community disability workers who provide services and support to people with disabilities in 9 VDCs (a VDC is a subdivision of a district).

This is one of the CDWs explaining a poster to raise awareness of disability and the potential of people who have disabilities.


This is a typical house in one of the villages we visited. The village is a cluster of houses set on the northwest side of a hill. Very close knit, every one knows everyone else's business! I stayed in the little building on the right, slightly further away from the cows than I had been the previous night ( I woke up to the sound of one having a very long pee!)

This is a sweaty but very happy me having climbed out of the valley on our way out. (On our way in we had walked uphill for 5 hours...) Downhill from there! And what a view! The next set of mountains we could see to the west of these were the Annapurnas.

OK, it is now December 18 and I am way behind in posting this! Grandma and Grandpa arrived on December 2 and they and Toby and Noa have been enjoying eachother since then! We all went to Pokhara for a few days last week as I had some work to do there. And now we are preparing for Christmas! Very difficult to get in the spirit here- maybe we rely too much on the pervasive commercialism in North America.

More later!

Love
C T N