01/12/19 Land of the living

First day I've woken without a headache, feeling brighter and have some energy.

Sun is shinning, dogs are sleeping and Kathmandu has burst back into life after a quiet Saturday (most peoples day off)

Funny to see the police out in force yesterday, busy stopping lots of motorcycles and issuing tickets. Reminds me of Mumbai on a rest day.

Exciting shopping trip out, restorative chocolate brownie and the purchase of a face mask (bad polution here) were as exciting as its been for the last 11 days. Happy to take the small improvements.

23/11/19 - 30/11/19 Out of Office

Still got concussion. Turns out it is slightly worse than I thought. Advice from the Medics (Drs) in Kathmandu and those at the change over in RIMS is to rest and limit time on the phone. I'd only been back at RIMS for 3 hours (2 of them asleep) and was then shipped back to Kathmandu for R&R.

I'll be back soon x

22/11/19 Curfew

There has been a curfew in place since we arrived in Pathiswara. It was 6.30pm and I managed to get it extended to 7.30pm to give the volunteers a little extra time to socialise.

The reason for the curfew?

Leopard attacks! Mainly on livestock and dogs, the most recent just a few days before we arrived. Actually the locals refer to Tigers but I think Leopards aree more likely.

Nothing further reported since we arrived in Pathiswara, that is until Wednesday night:

About 9pm I step outside to brush my teeth. There are two lengths of flatten corregated iron in the garden (for mixing cement on) and something stepped on one of the pieces and it made a noise. You need some weight to make it do this, so ruling out a dog or cat as neither are heavy enough and there are only 2 dogs in the village and both are friendly so would have approached me. Ran back in to grab my headtorch and glasses and went out into the garden, round the side of the building into the dark. I shone the headtorch out into the field and was met with yellow eyes staring back at me, about 15m away. The eyes were wide apart (although the same head) , certainly not a cat (haven't seen any here anyway) and dogs eyes do not reflect yellow....

The next morning I went back out and checked the area. Where I'd seen the eyes there was a large flattened area of maize, sadly the ground to hard to make out any foot prints.

21/11/19 Pipes and Head injury

Focus of the day is the 10,000 litre water reservoir. We have the Mason AND the Technical staff all in the same place at the same time!

Most of us had met at the meeting point at 7.30am as normal although a few of the boys from the other end of the village were late...and then we saw why. Up came the boys trying to push coils of 32mm black pipe up the hill. Turns out the coiled pipes were about 300m long and were really heavy so no wonder they were late. The last time the Technical guy unravelled pipes he pulled them put from the middle, effectively creating a spring which meant the pipe was useless and they spent hours trying get kinks out. Keen not to have a repeat I got a large thick piece of Bamboo to allow the pipe to be safely unravelled. Two hard jobs, one was to try and lift and hold the reel whilst it was being unravelled and the other was to run up the hill with the other end of the pipe. Very efficient though.

Meantime the extra reinforcing rods had been bent and were being wired into place on the reservoir. Unexpectedly the black pipe was then used to line the inside of the tank, each pass wired into place before the reel came around again. About an hour into this we were coming to the end of the second reel when one of the Volunteers who should have been holding the loose end let go. The end of the pipe that had been coiled then whipped round and hit me in the side of the head. The result was a reasonable amount of blood and a mild concussion. I swore loudly as it really hurt, later I apologised to the assembled Nepalese. I've spent the last 2 weeks telling the volunteers off for swearing, at least mine was justified!

Having got cleaned up and eaten lunch I was resting my aching head. The project partner popped by and asked if Helen and I could attend a meeting as his director was visiting and wanted our feedback. I gathered a few of the volunteers together and we waited. Waited for 10 mins. Then they came up and I started my feedback which was structured but very honest. Mid way through the Director took a call and stepped out...deep breath. Five mins after he stepped back in, midway through my feedback the 3 of them started to have a discussion. By that point I'd had enough so I told them I wasn't prepared to give up my lunchbreak to be at their beck and call if they didn't have the decency to even listen. That worked a treat and I had their undivided attention.

It must have worked as the Technical staff stayed in the village all afternoon and even helped the team with some of the work!

20/11/19 Back on it

Another misty, cool start to the day.

Another slow start trying to get the Technical staff up, focused and telling us what the days focus was. It would be so much better if they told us more info so we could plan effectively but it's like pulling teeth. I think the answer is that either they don't know themselves, or they make it up each day or that they are just slightly clueless.

I have a feeling its a combination of all three....

19/11/19 Second day off in 2 weeks

Certainly ready for a day off. Hard physical work so far plus keeping the kids focused certainly makes for a good challenge.

Helen and I planned a day Trek and had it signed off by Raleigh, they need to approve any 'Out of the village' trips.

The weather has been getting colder (at night) and less clear for the last week or so. The morning was very misty, very little visibility and quite cool.

Started the day with a Happy Birthday for Maartje, one of the Dutch girls in the group. She got to wear the pink pointy hat for the day, credit to her wearing it for most of the trek!

Great to get out of the village, even though the weather wasn't that good. It did clear up a little and quickly got hot again. A good 2 hour walk down one side of the valley and up the otherside. When we got to the other village the plan was to order MoMos then head up the Mountain for another 30 mins to a viewing platform. The mist was still below us so little point in traveling any further as there was no view to speak of!

Back in Pathiswara we took a detour to the Blacksmiths to pick up our little scythes. They are the real deal and very sharp, one of the Volunteers managing to cut their finger within a few minutes!

Group cooking in the eveing, lots of excitement as we'd bought 2 chickens to cook. First job was to catch them and kill them. A few of the boys volunteered to dispatch them, a little clumsey at first so hopefully the birds didn't suffer too much. Also had fresh Roti, Rice (obvs), Sag and a Bean curry.

One of the other VMs from another village was treated to Goat. He thoughtfully sent me a video of the slaughter, I'm glad I figured out what it was from the still and didn't press play.

18/11/19 B'stard flies

Bit fed up last night, went to sleep at 7.30pm as I was knackered from a hard physical day. Slept well enough, awake at 4.30am and dozed until 6.30am.

Exciting preamble to todays Blog post!

Dug three branch lines today, different village location and plagued by flies that just repeatedly try and fly into your eyes. B'stards.

I'll be honest, feeling very tired now and the flies have made another tough day a great deal harder.

A little ray of sunshine came in the form of one of the crazy Aama's coming out with a little wind up toy and cajoling 2 of the Volunteers to dance.

Finally got to see a tapstand demo, only 1 week left to go in this phase and we now have 19 more to build, along with the water reservoir, dig remaining branchlines, 4 awareness sessions, 2 toilets and 4 wash stations!

At about 4.30pm the Aama in our house called to say that she'd made a snack. A ran up the steps to be confronted by a bowl of purest green. Turns out that it is a Nepali stinging nettle soup with corn and chilli. It was pretty good, a little slimey but much nicer than I'd imagined. The nettles themselves, pre cooking, are really vicious, a sting hurts for almost 2 days, so pleased to report that there are currently no ill effects. The other upside is a massive injection of Iron which is very welcome.

17/11/19 Aama power

Apparently you can lift 2.5x more using a head strap than simply using your arms. This all depends on whether you have been trained from a young age and it is part of your daily routine.

Rather than use a vehicle, one of the days jobs was to shift several tons of sand and aggregate from the top of the village to the new reservoir by hand. Baring in mind that the Aamas can carry 50kg bags using their head straps, we did about 15kg a time carrying in our arms. Progress was slow until 4 Aamas turned up and put us to shame with their strength and big beaming smiles!

A morning of relentless concrete mixing followed so by late lunch time we'd finished the initial reservoir base in one hit.

I came back to the house, my Aama had a tika dot from a celebration of the God of Sundays (no idea what their name is!) I remarked on it and within a moment had a red rice tika mark of my own. A quick Namaste and lunch arrived. The main issue was that as the tika rice dried on my head it kept dropping into my lunch!

16/11/19 Paaaartay!

Worked on digging 5 tapstands in the morning, the shallow square hole is 110cm x 110cm and about 10cm deep. It then gets filled with rocks to form the solid base for the concrete. We have to build 37 tapstands, 1 outside each house (Nepal Govt directive). The debate on positioning sometimes takes longer that actually building the complete structure!  The method for measuring out the base is painful. The project partner uses string and 4 pieces of wood:

Bang in one peg.
Measure 110cm
Bang in next peg
At a right angle to that peg bang in next peg 110cm away
At a right angle to that peg bang in next peg 110cm
Attach string to the four pegs and you have a rough square
Now measure the diagonals to check they are 155cm
Move all pegs until you are within a 5mm tolerance
Re-tie string that has come undone
Remeasure all as one of the pegs has come put of the ground
Last stage is to use the pick axe to roughly hack the square shape, rendering the whole process pointless as the 5mm tolerance is laughable.

Alternative

4 weeks ago on the Project Planning visit I requested that the techical staff make a simple wooden frame 110cm x 110cm that we could drop on the floor, mark the square and then transfer the frame to the next location.

At the start of this Phase I asked for it again and every time the technical team were around.

And again 3 times this morning.

Having marked 5 out using the method above, a frame appeared. Well 2 'L' shapes, nailed together but I took it gladly!

The rocks we need for the tapstand bases need to be sourced. Obviously what you do is take them from the pile that are needed for the waterpipe trench backfill job as directed by the technical team. After all we can worry about the lack of rocks for backfil another day.

The afternoon was one of our 1/2 days off. One of the team was 18 so we had a bit of a celebration, a few treats and then topped the day off with music and a campfire. A few pissed locals turned up and made it weird, I had to step in to prevent the girls feeling too uncomfortable!

The music was played through a big mixing deck and some massive speakers, at first I couldn't see how they were powered as it was dark. I followed the wires and then looked up to see them run up to and across the electrical wires bringing power to the village. When the party ended at 10pm, the pole hooked over the powerline was knocked off with a large roll of paper!