Meet Kusi

Meet Kusi. She is about 12 weeks old now, the only female in a litter of 5, born to a street dog who had been adopted by the previous tenants of our house and then adopted us. Didn't realise she was pregnant at the time! Mommy dog has a really calm temperament; I have only seen her bark at crows who come into her air space, cats who walk along the fence, and a man who was begging at the gate (But by that point he was being rather annoying and persistent.) I chose Kusi because she has been the most social of all the puppies and because she has some spirit. She was the first to learn to climb down off a foot-high concrete barrier in the garden, thus giving her almost complete access to the rest of the space. Kusi means happy in Nepali.

We are still trying to find homes for 2 of the pups, Tiger and Sleeper, and in the meantime all 3 have started on their medicines and vaccinations. Once Kusi is the only one left, she will be allowed to come into the house, but until then she is bunking with the other two in the garden. Mommy dog has been trying to wean them completely so she only visits once a day but it is still good to see her then. I am not sure we can keep her inside; even when she is well fed she seems to need to get out. Maybe she just needs to get away from the kids!


I don't know why he's climbing in there. I don't think he knew either. Then he had to figure out how to get out. It was much harder after Noa closed one of the cupboard doors!

Toby and Noa are doing well, except for a couple of nasty colds recently. On January 14 Nepalis celebrated the coldest day of the year. Now we are apparently in spring! And really, it feels warmer! Both kids are talking more, but especially Toby. His newest word is book, to add to: bus, hot, up, down, tractor/ doctor, duck, juice, cookie, cracker, car, ball, numnum, and Nanu, which is Nepali for little sister and it is his name for Noa. Noa is much quieter (a surprise to all who have known her since birth!) but I have a feeling she will talk in the same style in which she walked: no trial and error, she will begin by stringing 2 words together.

Noa continues to be such a little helper around the house. She wipes the table or the floor whenever she has a cloth. (I know, I have to lighten up...) She carries her dirty dishes to the sink. This morning she brought Toby's clothes for him. And this afternoon when we arrived home she brought the shopping into the kitchen item by item! She understands a lot, and definitely sometimes chooses to ignore me! She can go down one step without holding on and can almost run. As you can see from the previous post, she loves to colour. The inside of their cardboard box playhouse is covered in crayon. She is a really good eater. No problem with a spoon or a fork and minimal spilling from a cup. Toby prefers his drinking box and even eats soup with his fingers but I am sure he will learn.

That's all for now. We have power cuts for 16 hours per day now so I am trying to take advantage of the internet when I can.

Love
C T N

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

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

Nagi Gompa

We are going to miss Natasha when she leaves. Natasha works with HI. I am taking over her job when she leaves on Wednesday; well, officially I will take it over in January but as she is leaving this week I will assume some of the responsibilities while still doing my current job. Tash has been a good friend and toddler carrier since we arrived. She hasn't hesitated to walk with us up and down hills, to the European Bakery, through Thamel during Tihar, and she even did more than her share of vomit cleanup during that holiday.



Today (Sunday) Toby, Noa, Natasha, Bjorn and I walked north from her house to Budanilkantha and beyond, into Shivapuri National Park. Apparently there are leopards there but we didn't see any. We climbed up to Nagi Gompa, a Buddhist monastery and retreat where we had a picnic lunch watching the sun finally fight its way through the clouds. We walked down through the forest and onto a ridge to the east of the city, then down into residential areas and back to the main road. It felt good to move and to breathe fresh air. I felt ready to head back into the office for Monday.

The weather is definitely getting colder here. This morning I poked my nose out from under the covers and felt the different temperature. And the butter just isn't soft in the morning now. Toby and Noa don't seem to notice the cold but today I saw goosebumps on Toby's legs as we were walking. In the midday sun it might still reach 20 C but evenings require fleece. I understand that we will hold meetings outside in the winter because it is warmer than inside, and I can already imagine that: my office doesn't get a lot of sun and my fingers become quite cold when I sit for while at the computer.

I will keep this short as I am never sure how long the internet connection will last. Hope you are all well. Love Chris, Toby and Noa

Welcome to Dadeldhura!

Namaste,
Just a quick note to accompany more photos! Two weeks ago I went on a field visit to a district called Dadeldhura, in the Far West region of Nepal. Prajwal and I flew from Kathmandu to Danghadi and then drove north for 4 hours climbing from the plains of the Terai into the hills on a winding road dotted with landslides. Yes, I threw up when we arrived at our destination of Amargadhi. We were there to monitor and provide technical support to 2 new community disability workers (CDW) and a newly designated but very experienced technical advisor named Indira. It is a beautiful place and as always I felt very lucky to be able to experience a new country by walking into villages and meeting people with disabilities and hearing about their lives. We visited 3 people in their homes, and listened to the CDWs give talks about disability so people are more aware of it and of the potential for including people with disabilties in the community activities.

One constant wherever I have been so far is women carrying huge bales of grass on their backs. Their daily chore is to wander out to any patch of green, carrying their small curved knife and a length of rope, and cutting grass, tying it into a large bundle and hoisting it on to their backs so they can carry it back to the house where it will dry in the sun. I don't know how much they weigh but they are doubled over as they carry the grass bundle. Or the bundle of firewood. Or 30kg sack of rice. Or... I am sure the men work hard too but they sure don't seem to do the daily heavy lifting.

One of the perks of field visits is the opportunity to eat the speciality of the area. We ate guavas fresh off the tree, soya beans from the farmer's field, warm and sweet milk rice for breakfast on our way back to Danghadi; and we bought walnuts, honey, ginger and garlic to take back to Kathmandu.

Last week was a bit lighter as we had 3 days of holiday for Tihar (the Nepali version of Deevali). Noa celebrated by vomiting several times on Tuesday and Toby 3 times on Wednesday. I will remember the holiday for the loads of laundry that I did and patches of spit-up that I cleaned up. We are keeping the local pharmacy in business through our purchases of Oral Rehydration Salts. But we did salvage some of the holiday by walking through Thamel and down to Durbar Square, dodging crackers and gazing at lights on the buildings and decorative mandalas on the ground. We marked the third day of Tihar with an attempt to be local: it is the day when sisters give their brothers tikkas and sweets and in return the brothers give their sisters money. Knowing that Toby doesn't like tikka, we skipped that part, but Noa gave him a soccer ball and a package of chocolate cookies. He gave her a red hula hoop and 10 rupees.

So we still haven't managed to get out for a real trek, but I am optimistic that we may be able to go on our own soon, and judging by this photo I may not have to carry anyone!

Love
CTN

Quick pics of the last couple of weeks

Two weeks ago was Dashain, the big family holiday in Nepal. We had 4 days off during which Toby, Noa and I enjoyed mostly car-free streets, walks in the backroads, balloon sellers in the street, and no power cuts. On one of the days, Dena who looks after the kids while I work, came over with her husband and daughter to give tikkas to the twins. At Dashain this means red coloured rice applied to their foreheads and a barley stalk behind one ear. Toby's didn't last long but I managed to get a picture of Noa's.

On the mornings when we have power we have gotten into two breakfast habits: either a banana lassi (Toby walks into the kitchen and points at the blender) or quick bread (a recipe Mom used to make for us when were kids and I try to make wherever in the world I am). This is a picture of the kids munching on bread, which they know the sign for, wearing their new shoes. A shoe shopping trip was necessary because Toby had poked holes in his, and when faced with the array of bright colours and sparkles, Noa had to have a pair too. Her fondness for glitz had to meet my simple tastes and we compromised on a pair of shiny black Mary Janes that had sparkles and beading in the shape of butterflies and flowers. I say 'had' because the stitching didn't last long. But she still likes the shoes.
We are slowly finding the 'easy' places to go as a family. Any place is easy if our friends are there as well, especially Clare, Mads, and Natasha. A couple of Saturdays ago we met Mads and Clare at Mike's Breakfast, a great place for dinner- kidding! As in most places here, the staff really like the kids and don't worry at all if they pick the flowers or drop food on the floor. And Toby and Noa like any place that serves lassis, which they drink as if they have just walked in from the desert.



This is the season for guavas. We have a couple of trees in the garden and the fruit is slowly turning yellow, which means they are ripe. The guards eat them when they're hard and green and introduced Toby to them. Unfortunately, he really liked them and for a few days he ate 1-2 per day. And then he got diarrhea. On the 3rd day I took him to the doctor, who prescribed antibiotics for the evident infection and advised a plain diet. He was better within 2 days and still points to the tree but I have told everyone that he is not to have anymore guavas for a while.
Namaste from Kathmandu!

CTN

The Garden of Dreams

On Saturday we visited the Garden of Dreams, which is an old formal garden that has been restored by an Austrian NGO and is now operated as a business. It is beautiful and quiet, with many places to find your own space. We explored it all, finding all the fountains and ponds, including one with fish in it, and Toby and Noa spent 20 minutes playing with the gravel in the path. I think we will go back there and next time I will bring a book.

After the garden we did another of our favourite things: we visited the European Bakery to buy fresh brown bread, dried lopsi fruit, cheese, and a chocolate eclair. I wanted to see how long it would take us to walk home so off we went: I had Toby in the backpack and Noa walked part of the way. It took us 45 minutes and wasn't too bad on a Saturday, when there is relatively little traffic- Saturday is the one full day off in the week.

This week is the build up to Dasen, the biggest family holiday of the year. We will have a party at work on Friday afternoon and then next week the office will be closed for 4 days. I'll tell you more later! Many of our staff will take 2 weeks of holiday around this time. At the end of the month is another festival called Tihar, which means 3 days holiday. In a way I'm dreading October because we have so much to do and not enough time to do it. We're going to make the most of it, though, hopefully with a short trek with my friend Mads next week.

OK, I should post this before the internet connection goes or the power is cut off!

Love
CTN