We have been spoiled by great weather for the last three months – cool temperatures, bright sunshine and blue skies with great views of the mountains – but that has all changed in the last week. A haze has settled over Pokhara and with it, the temperatures have dropped. In reality, it never gets really cold here, but buildings here are generally designed to lose heat rather than retain it, and don’t have any heating in them. As a result, when the sun doesn’t shine, sitting at a desk for eight hours a day becomes a chilling experience and lots of layers plus a good supply of coffee are essential!

The latest proposed date for elections here in Nepal were announced last week, and immediately, the political tension has risen, with lots of obscure political groups planning blockades and strikes. Two of the most important references for everyday life at the moment are the load shedding schedule, that tells you when electricity will be available, and www.nepalbandh.com/ a website that lists when strikes have been planned and when you might be able travel.

Nepal’s electricity is all hydro-generated, but unfortunately, around 80% of the rainfall arrives during the summer monsoon resulting in flooding and voltage surges, while in the drier months river levels fall and there is not enough electricity to go around. Add to that, rapid development and growing demand for electricity, and an aging infrastructure that is not being invested in, and there are bound to be problems and load-shedding is applied nationwide. At the moment we are without power for around six hours a day, but at least with a schedule you can charge up batteries and get the candles ready!

Bandhs are a part of everyday life here. For many poor people, blocking a road seems to be the only way to get the government to listen to their concerns and actually do something. For others though, bandhs are also a useful tool, and are used by political parties and other vocal minorities to cause disruption and force their opinions onto the majority. Yesterday was a good example: the price of gas and kerosene went up (in reality, the government just reduced its subsidy) and so a group of students blocked the roads with burning tires near our office, trying to protect their ‘right’ to cheap fuel. The police feel powerless to do anything – if they tried to restrict the protesters’ ‘right’ to protest, the situation would probably just get much worse. As in the UK (and elsewhere), people are much more focused on their ‘rights’ than their ‘responsibilities’.

Bandhs do force the government into some incredible muddles. A group of petrol retailers held a strike to protest that they were not always getting the amount of fuel they were paying for from the importers – the Nepal Oil Corporation (because the tanker drivers were stealing some of the fuel). As a result they are now allowed to dilute their fuel with up to 20% kerosene (which is cheaper) to recover their profits: genius!

Last week INF hosted a visit from a group of young Australians, and Phil traveled down to Nepalgunj in the southwest of the country to help the team there plan and manage the visit.

We took them to see an area where INF is just starting a new community development project. Although quite close to Nepalgunj, it lies in a bend of a large river that floods badly during monsoon, meaning that flood waters arrive from three sides at once, completely cutting them off from the outside world.

The only way across the river was on a large barge that is punted to-and-fro by hand. The boat is used by thousands of people each day who collect firewood in the nearby forest to sell in the town. On each journey it can carry a hundred or so people and bikes, but we wanted to get two vehicles across, which was a different matter entirely!

Despite a previous agreement, it took the boatmen about two hours to get the first one across, and then another hour for the second. The return journey took a further two hours. I was very grateful for an extremely patient group, who graciously accepted that this a good example of the problems that can be faced by development organisations working in Nepal!

We spent some time in one community where most of the people did not have rights to the land they were living on, there were no toilets or proper health care and access to markets was very difficult – problems enough without the fact that their village was underwater for several months of the year. INF will try help them work together as a community to identify the causes of the issues they face and agree what they, the community, can do about them.

Another project the group visited was INF’s Drug Awareness and Rehabilitation Centre (DARC) who work in Nepalgunj to raise awareness about drug addiction and HIV, and work with drug addicts to help them reduce the harm they do to themselves and hopefully give up drugs. We spent some time with current and previous clients and their families. The group were all impressed with the standard of care that is given, and amazed at the honesty of all involved, and their willingness to talk to a big group of strangers about what must have been very painful aspects of their lives.

All is well in Morris towers. We are keeping fit and well, and Evie is on good form. Here are a few recent pics…

One event that happened last month that we haven't shared was the Golden anniversary of INF's Greenpastures hospital. The story of how the hospital came to be and slowly developed over the years is an amazing one and we feel very fortunate to be part of the organisation now.

There were three days of events to mark the occasion – a church gathering where God was praised for all that had been achieved through the hospital, an official programme where dozens of VIP's including the state minister for health went on a tour of the hospital and then took it in turn say their piece at the microphone, and a private gathering to reward the current staff members and thank them for their involvement. At the official event, there was a large tent covering a seating area, but there wasn't room for all who came and a big group of staff and patients spilled out of the back of the tent and sat in the on grass or in their wheelchairs in the sun.

There seemed to be three main head coverings of choice among the crowd: the traditional Nepali topi for the men, the scarf for women, and the pink woolen hat for either sex!

It all went off very smoothly in the end, which gave no indication of the amount of stress involved in the build up... There is a procedure for planning events in Nepal that requires nerves of steel. Nothing seems to happen until the very last minute, but somehow, things usually seem to come off! The guest list for the official event was a case in point. Although we knew the dates for the celebration, we hadn't actually been told if we were supposed to be coming.

About a week before the event I had a conversation with the chap in charge that went something like this.

Are we invited?

Yes, of course

Will we get an invitation or should we just turn up?

You will get an invitation, but we can't send them out until the chief guest has been confirmed. The Health minister should be coming from Kathmandu, but she has been invited to two different events and hasn't decided which one to go to.

So you won't send out any invitations until she has confirmed?

No

When will she confirm?

Some time this week....

The events went very well. These celebrations gave us a real sense of the history of the work that we are involved in, and the pride that staff so obviously took in that was hugely impressive.

A couple more snippets from life in Nepal....

Pokhara has a stadium. It consists of a grass football pitch with a dirt running track around the outside and a couple of concrete terraces. The running track is packed with a certain red soil that is chokeingly dusty in dry weather, while in the rain it turns into a mud bath that very effectively stains any clothes you are wearing an attractive shade of brown – this same soil is used to paint many traditional Nepali houses. Despite its drawbacks, it is close to our house and I try to use the track every week or so for training.

Often it is really busy. One of the most popular career choices here is to get into the Gurhka regiments of the British or Indian army, but they have very tough physical entrance requirements and competition is stiff, so any given morning or evening - from before dawn to after dark - there might be 50 lads on the track, either running on their own or with one of several training schools.

It is free to use, there don't seem to be any rules, and no-one monitors what is going on on the track – with the result that it is often chaotic. Every other running track I have ever seen is run anti-clockwise, but here people turn up, and set off in whatever direction takes their fancy – groups and individuals, some walking, some jogging, some doing intervals weaving in, out and around each other, somehow avoiding collisions.

One evening it was getting dark, and after narrowly avoiding a couple of collisions, I asked one of the 'coaches' why people were running the wrong way around the track. 'But that is the way they like to run' he replied, and it dawned on me that of course most of these kids had never seen an athletics meeting, but they just liked to run, and after all how could there be a right or wrong way to run round in circles?? 'Do people not realise how dangerous it is?' I asked. 'Este ho' was his reply – that is how it is. He then called to a couple of other coaches and they all set their grounps running in the same direction, creating some kind of consensus.

The next week it was back to normal.

There is a lot of road building going on at the moment, with a lot of tarmac being laid. Some of this is a combination of repair work to roads that were damaged during the last monsoon plus some new roads being paved during the dry season before they get damaged in next years monsoon. But most of the work seems to involve filling in holes caused by general wear and tear – the layer of tarmac they put down here is so thin, and I guess the foundations are not good enough, that they start they start flaking and holes appear again within a couple of months.

Almost all of the work of preparing and laying tarmac is done by hand, mostly by people who come up from the Terai in the south of Nepal. Stones are broken and chipped by hand, piles of gravel are shoveled onto big metal trays held over a big fire where they are heated before tar is poured on and it is mixed, again by hand. It is then dragged off the fire and carried by wheelbarrow to where it is needed. If they are lucky there might be a compactor to flatten the mix into shape.

You can see - and smell - where these road gangs are working from the fires. Incredibly, the fuel they use is mostly old car tyres which burn with clouds of thick black smoke. The people working the fires have no protection, apart from a scarf wound around their faces and the effect on their health, not to mention the environment, must be horrendous.

So another year has been and gone... It has been a bit subdued in our house recently and it was all we could do to see in new year at Australian time before falling in to bed.

Christmas was a good time - we were treated to a four hour Christmas programme at church where our friends danced, sang, acted to roars of laughter (much of which was entirely lost on us) and spoke. There are a few poor pictures copied below. After this we were ready for our dhal bhaat. On Christmas eve Elle had helped prepare some of the vegetables needed to feed the anticipated 1000 people - last year they had cooked for 800 and this was not enough!! All cooked over fires in giant pots in the field behind church and all really tasty.

Being here in Nepal and with INF's work gave us a new insight into the real meaning of Christmas. One of the major causes of infant death here in Nepal and one of the key focus areas for INF's community health work is the tradition that childbirth is unclean and therefore women cannot give birth to children in the home. In rural areas childbirth often still takes place in the animal shed, mothers are often alone and unsupported, and if they survive, mother and baby must stay in the shed until they are 'clean' again, a period of up to three weeks.

It only dawned on me recently after a trip to Mugu where we saw plenty of the filthy, dark, stinking animal sheds under many of the houses that these were the kind of conditions where Jesus was born. Forget the clean straw and smiling faces that you see in the Christmas cards and nativity plays. His birth must have been dirty, frightening, dark and humiliating, captured well in the song by Tim Hughes:

King of all days, Oh so highly exalted, Glorious in heaven above
Humbly you came, To the earth you created, All for love's sake became poor

Evie has been suffering with a really nasty stomach bug, but is fortunately now almost fully mended. She is normally so healthy and full of energy it was horrible watching her suffer and not really being able to do anything to help. It is great to have her back – thanks for many of your prayers.