USC Canada » Blog Archive » Notes from Nepal: Namaste from Ottawa

| More

May 14, 2010

Notes from Nepal: Namaste from Ottawa

This item currently has one comment. Add your comment.

“Notes from Nepal” is a series by Kate Green, who manages our Nepal program. Kate is currently visiting Nepal, posting personal reports directly from the field.

Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive all the updates, or simply check back from time to time to catch up on Kate’s travels.

Many of you will have heard in the news about the general strike that was called in Nepal, right in the middle of my field visit! The result was that I had to skip my long-awaited trip to the District of Rasuwa.

I was fortunate enough to have been staying in the small city of Pokhara when the strike started, so my travelling companions and I were safe and comfortable as the country came to a standstill. I was even able to confirm my flight back home! But I won’t lie – it was a big disappointment, and not just for me. Our partner in Rasuwa, RACE, has been working for more than 10 years in the district and the staff there were anxious to show us their progress.

So the agenda for my next trip is set – Rasuwa or bust!

But our time in Pokhara didn’t go to waste. I was able to meet with Pratap – our USC Asia Regional Representative – every day each day, and work on a great many administrative and follow-up issues. Our partners in Nepal are growing in their independence and skills, and it has been rewarding to work with such dynamic people, even if the visit was cut short.

Writing these Notes from Nepal has been a great pleasure, too, although I haven’t even come close to exhausting my stories or pictures of the Nepal program and its challenges. If I’m in your neighbourhood in the next year on behalf of USC, I’ll have plenty of news to share. Or feel to contact me anytime about the work in Nepal, or about anything I’ve written about.

In the meantime, here is a short photo gallery with a couple of dozen images I took on my trip. Have a look!