Extended families are hugely important here in Nepal and each position in the family has its' own name relative to each other. Imagine our delight when we found out that my scatalogical younger sister is officially known as Evie's poo-poo.

All is well here. Work is very busy for both of us and time is going by very quickly. It feels like we are keeping our heads down, waiting for the monsoon to finish.

Elle is working hard in her HR role - accomplising a huge amount of work in very short timescales. She is also developing a bit of reputation as a film maker, having recently produced a DVD of speech therapy exercises for the local hospital, and is now working on some short films for the INF conference in the UK next month.

With so much multi-tasking required she has perfected the Nepali art of carrying Evie around in a sling on her back.

Donor wise, this is also a busy time, as last years accounts have just been finalised after the end of our financial year in mid-july and we now have to send annual reports to several donors - all in slightly different formats!

Evie has been having a bit of a painful time - her enthusiasm often often goes faster than her legs and she has had a few crash landings recently. She just got this new dress through the post - many thanks Esther.

Floods in NPG

Judging from the BBC website, it looks like the South Asian floods have slipped from the news headlines pretty quickly. The waters have receded from most areas here in Nepal, but leave behind a lot of destitute people and a high risk of disease. This has been my first experience of working in any sort of humanitarian activity that has been in the news, and it has been interesting to see how people react.

INF has a very good team based in Nepalgunj, probably the town worst affected by the flooding in Nepal. They are mostly involved in community development or supporting people who have been displaced from their homes. They have worked for years with some of the poorest rural communities in the area and have a deep understanding of the people and their needs. It is through this close personal relationship, rather than any systems or infrastructure, that they have been able to help people through the floods.

Fundraising is often a slow process: relationships need to be built, plans written, reviewed and discussed, objectives and measures agreed. In the last couple of weeks however, well over £30,000 has been raised for flood relief with hardly a question asked. People and organisations seem to relate to the immediacy of news headlines and the opportunity to save 100 lives now in a very different way to community education and development programmes that might save 1000 in the future.

Don't get me wrong, the money INF has received in the last week was badly needed and will prevent people dying. There will always be disasters that can't be planned for and large amounts of money will be needed to save lives in an emergency, but I can't help feeling that if people and governments had a longer term vision for their giving, some of these disasters could be prevented.

Community development in Jumla

The highlight of my recent trip to Jumla was being able to get out on field trips to two of the community self help groups supported by INF. These were both physically close to the town of Jumla, but a life time away in terms of people's attitudes and expectations. INF's approach to community development is a slow process, and usually involves nothing more than talking, usually to the women of the village, making them aware that they have rights, that there are solutions to the problems they face every day, and that there are people who will listen to them and help them if they work together.

Before visiting one of these villages I found it hard to appreciate exactly what INF was doing. INF hardly ever actually gives anything away, and yet the people we met really seemed to appreciate what was being given: time, encouragement and advice. In one meeting we sat down on the roof of someones with eight community leaders who represented the 100 households of the village, and we were able to ask them about their relationship with INF and how they were developing their community.

They said that over the last few years, 15 different NGO's had come and gone: all promised something, a few had delivered something, but none had stayed. INF was different they said – "INF didn't promise anything, but they taught us how to think". Five years ago there were no community leaders, not even a real sense of community. Now there are recognised leaders in the village who organise the building of toilets and for drinking water to be piped in – several of those who were confidently answering questions about their village would previously not have dared to speak in public.

One group decided that educating its children was the highest priority and they have now organised a community school that teaches children until they are ready to go to the nearby government school. Another decided that income generating schemes were important and so each group member no contributes around 40p a month to a fund that then gives cheap loans to group members to start small businesses.

The villlage is still extremely poor, there are few jobs for the men, and many of the old problems still exist, but I found it very encouraging that now the people had a forum for discussing the issues they faced, and they knew where to go to get answers. To me it was a real life example of the old proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day: teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime "

Gratuitous Evie shot....

After 4 weeks of rain we now have some much longed for sun which is enabling us to dry clothes and furniture. We have it easy though in comparison to a lot of you back home and to the people in the south of the country here.

We travelled down to Nepalgunj in the south a couple weeks ago in order to get a flight up to Jumla in the north west of Nepal to visit the INF projects up there. A road from Nepalgunj to Jumla has just been completed, but it takes four days in good weather, and with the amount of rain we have had, we were not taking any chances.

The journey to Nepalgunj by bus was quite nerve wracking as during the 13 hour journey we encountered landslides with alarming frequency. Fortunately none hit us and none held us up too long. The big landslides which completely blocked the roads saw queues of lorries, cars and motorbikes all patiently waiting for the hired help to dig through. One landslide site happened to have a mechanical digger nearby which meant it was cleared within 4 hours.

Once we arrived in Nepalgunj it was apparentall was not well. Floods were blocking most roads, and where we were due to stay the first floor was under water so we moved on through the water to a friends house. This was fortunately just above flood level – so a little haven for us as we waited for flights to go to Jumla albeit without power (meaning no fans or fridges in stifling 30deg heat and very high humidity).

People were losing homes and businesses as the water continued to rise and it was pretty filthy, stinky water! Right now there are about 130,000 homeless, 100 dead and many suffering with illnesses such as cholera, malaria and others. INF are not set up to be an emergency relief organisation but are carrying out emergency mobile camps to test and treat people and are giving out mosquito nets.

As it looked unlikely that flights would go to Jumla and even if they did, no guarentee we could get out again, I decided to cut my losses and head back to Pokhara with Evie. Phil perservered and happily arrived at his destination without to much bother and spent an enlightening week in one of the poorest parts of Nepal. He was invited on a couple of field trips to visit community self help groups that meet to discuss the issues in their village and agree on what do about them – from starting a community school to building toilets and roads. It was really encouraging to meet people from very poor, uneducated backgrounds who had big ideas about how they were going to improve the way of life in their village what they were going to do.

Not much is available in Jumla so many children suffer from malnutrition leaving one child of 3 about the same size as Evie. Most families only have land to grow enough food for six months of the year – the rest of the time they have to find work in order to buy food, or go hungry. Some high caste groups won't eat certain foods for religious reasons and so deprive their children of sources of nutrition which could have a big positive impact on their development. A nutrition project has just been started in the INF clinic is expanding rapidly.