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.