I'm Home!

My travels have come to an end. I’ve managed to delay my trip to Afghanistan till either April or May (thank goodness!). I arrived home on Saturday afternoon, Paul had returned home from his trip to Namibia and Lesotho on Friday. It’s really nice to be home!

Here is a picture of him doing some monitoring work up country in Namibia.

Looking back over the past 6 weeks, I’ve seen and learned a lot. Watching the news now about the worsening violence in The West Bank and Gaza, I can understand the situation so much better. I definitely feel the plight of the Palestinians, but with the recent shooting at the Jewish school in Jerusalem and the complementing celebrations by the Palestinians in Gaza I feel it’s all a bit hopeless.

Jordan remains stable, but how much longer can it support the large numbers of refugees fleeing the increasing violence in Iraq? Our programs there are providing much needed health and psychosocial interventions, but they are really just a drop in the bucket compared to the needs of the refugee and host populations alike.

Nepal is beautiful as ever. The elections are scheduled for April 11, 2008. People are beginning to believe they might actually happen this time, but many people, particularly those in the rural areas are scared to vote for fear of violence and reprisals instigated by the Maoist groups. We have decided that our program we are proposing here will target the conflict affected community, those that really need it. Hopefully the donor will agree with our assessment.

Now that I’m home, I probably won’t be updating this too often. DC is just not as exciting as the rest of the world. I’ll be back on the road soon though, I’m sure. So keep checking back!

The Hunt for IDPs

So my whole reason for coming to Nepal was to develop a proposal for livelihood skill building and improvement of community services for the conflict affected internally displaced population (IDPs) in Nepal. After numerous meetings with Government officials and other humanitarian organizations in Kathmandu last week we had learned that there were over 5,000 IDPs in our target area of the Western lowlands (terai) of Nepal.

So Phanindra and I traveled to the field for 3 days to do an on-the-ground needs assessment of the IDP population that we have heard so much about. After 3 days of hunting for IDPs, we have come to the conclusion, which has been confirmed by the UN, DFID, and many local leaders, that there are no IDPs left! The real conflict ended over a year ago, the majority of the families have already returned to their ruined homes and villages to restart their lives. It’s true that there are still a few scattered families who are displaced, but these families are typically better off than those that did return, and way better off than those that were never able to leave their war-torn villages throughout the 10 year conflict.

In traveling throughout the Bardiya District (Mid-Western Nepal along the border with India) we saw a lot of poverty and met many people, particularly women, who were heavily affected by the conflict: women whose husbands were killed or have disappeared, orphans whose parents were killed, victims of the violence suffering from amputations and injuries. These people aren’t truly IDPs in the sense of the word, the majority of them weren’t displaced, they suffered heavily at home in the conflict zone, but these are the ones who need the most help.

So now I’m back in Kathmandu to wrap up my trip and re-evaluate my proposal, caught between the mandate of the donor for targeting IDPs, and the true needs of the communities on the ground.

From the lowest point on earth to the highest!

So this morning I treated myself to quite a unique little adventure…I took a “mountain” flight here in Nepal up over the Himalayas.

For the past week the weather here in Kathmandu has been beautiful (of course it’s beautiful when I am trapped inside typing away at a proposal 15 hours a day!), so I was hoping to wake up this morning, at 5:45am mind you, to a nice, bright day. What I got instead was a lot of fog settling on top of Kathmandu valley. So I arrive at the airport at 6:30am for my 7:30am flight…I finally got on the plane at 10am! Breaking through the fog layer is absolutely amazing, the Himalayas just appear and go for as far as you can see.

I do have to say though, I was a little disappointed with this flight - it does not actually go into the Himalayas, we were probably about 100 miles from the mountains. And the crowning jewel – Mount Everest – is really far away! I guess if I had thought about it enough I would have realized we weren’t going to just fly up and into the mountain range, my expectations were too high! I also got the short end of the stick with my seat assignment - right over the propeller! So for the entire flight my view was partly blocked. Poor me.

Regardless, it was pretty cool. And now I can say that in one trip I have been to the lowest point on earth and the highest!

After my flight I went to Bodhnath Stupa, the largest Buddhist temple in Nepal. I was here last year as well and really loved it. It didn’t fail me this year either!

Tomorrow I head out west to Nepalganj, along the border with India. Phanindra (IRD Nepal Country Manager) and I are going to try to collect some data on the Internally Displaced Populations.