Monday, February 28, 2005
Hotel California
Lest anyone think that we're back in Canada soaking in a bath, scrubbing the Goan sand out of our pores, I just wanted you all to know that I won't be available to do coffee at Starbucks this week. We are still trapped in Delhi. Standby out of Delhi to Toronto (which has the largest Indian population outside of India) has turned out to be impossible as well as a wreckless disregard for the health and welfare of my blood pressure (usually low). The lovely East Indian way of doing things...so quaint and calming in Goa, makes something like air travel the equivalent of masocism involving sweaty anger and miscommunication. However, we are safe, well-fed, and not out of money--therefore, life is good...Ooooommmmm, ?*!x*! Ooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
The last blog entry
The last blog entry for awhile
We landed in Goa, on the west coast of India, and are watching the events of Nepal from there. We were in Colva, a fishing village and were staying at Our Lady Vailankanni Guesthouse, named after the patron saint of health—and after only two days,we were feeling better. Then we moved down the coast to Palolem, found a cluster of beach huts, and have settled here until our departure back to Canada February 26th (of this year of course).
This is what I wrote but could not send the morning we left…due to all the long goodbyes:
Now that we have communications, the extent of the situation is becoming a bit clearer, and I have decided we should leave, for awhile at least. We can observe the unfolding of the conflict between the King and the political parties, and the King and the Maoists, from the safe(r) distance of India. It seems that the next two weeks will be crucial as the political parties have now been able to communicate and organize protests to the Royal Proclamation/martial law/Royal coup/state of emergency—whatever you want to call it. The first protest was yesterday and conflicting reports came out as to what happened exactly—I decided to not go and see for myself. But the gist of the message was to restore the one-of-a-kind Nepali democracy.
But before we leave, I wanted to post more about other, more normal events that have gone on here…
KEBS Academy—The kids said goodbye to their school and their friends. Again, they were astonished with the generosity of kids who have the least. They returned home with humble but meaningful gifts of pens, notebooks, and ribbons. I taught my last English conversation class to the senior students, and we played one last game of Quiz Contest in which answers to questions on when the UN was formed, where Mother Theresa was born, and what is the capital of Denmark were shouted out in the unique English of Nepal.
The Toilets—The work at the toilets at the school in Imadol was interrupted due to “the political situation”. The brickwork and the plaster are done and the doors and vents need to be installed, the plumbing and painting still needs to be completed. Sovita, a woman from Nepal Reliance Organization, is going to continue to oversee the work and has promised photos once it is done.
The Imadol Health Post—The small health post in Imadol needed another clinic room. Despite repeated requests for plans and a quote on the cost, they couldn’t get the information to me. This was not due to their lack of enthusiasm but because it is a government organization and therefore, attached to the dreaded Nepali bureaucracy I have sworn to avoid due to their paralytic approach to things. Since I won’t be here for awhile, I passed on funds (and I am sure the accompanying headache) to Sovita from NRO to get the project started. I hope to be back for the opening.
Thuman Village—we couldn’t head back to Thuman Village as we had planned. We passed along money to purchase 4 pressure cookers for families in the village. Beyond the Kathmandu Valley, where Thuman is, pressure cookers require a permit to own as Maoists can use them for pressure-cooker-bombs. However, their intended use allows women to cook grains and beans faster, using less wood. By using less wood, there is less indoor smoke and less time needed to collect wood and less forests are stripped.
The Stupa Hospital—I am proud to say that the Hospital now owns not one, but two stretchers. One stretcher is a simple one that would be best used in the Birthing Centre since women give birth on a mattress on the floor. So in the event of a transport, a woman can be slipped from the mattress to the waiting stretcher next to her, then lifted and carried to the readied ambulance. The other stretcher is essentially a narrow rolling bed that can also be used for an assessment if the Emergency is busy. I hope these items make a modest contribution in reducing maternal mortality in Nepal.
Students at Stupa College—The nursing students moved from the classroom to the government maternity hospital in Thapatali, a neighbourhood in the south of Kathmandu, about 45 minutes away from Boudhanath. By the way, the ones in this photo are fantastic and in no way connected to the story that follows.
At Thapatali hospital, 60 to 80 deliveries take place within a 24 hour period. For the equivalent of 4 days of an unskilled laborer’s wage, a woman receives care for a normal delivery and 24 hours postpartum. Complications are added costs. For another day’s wage, she is required to buy a bag from the hospital pharmacy with her supplies of a syringe, oxytocin, iv bottle and tubing, suture and xylocaine, and pads. If some of these are not used, she can trade them at the pharmacy for vitamins or whatever else she wants when leaving. If she needs more oxytocin or more iv, for example if she were to hemorrhage, she would have to pay the extra cost for these. The women come from all over the valley, some arriving too early, and some arriving too late. The ones who arrive early, start out in ANC-A (antenatal care A). This ward room has beds for 30, and women in early labor or with complications requiring observation stay here. Once labor is established, they are moved to ANC-B. This is a ward room with 16 beds. There, they labor until ready to deliver. Families are not allowed in but they have to provide meals for the women, so the hallways outside the rooms are packed with families sitting on rolls of bedding, wrapped in blankets, or lined up with tiffins of daal bhaat, crackers, and chai for the women.
Once they are ready to deliver, the women are wheeled in the one wheel chair to the delivery ward. There are four rooms. Three of the rooms have three tables on which to deliver. The fourth room is the clean-up room where instruments are scrubbed and sterilized by female staff in uniform saris. They round up the buckets of instruments soaking in chlorine solution at each delivery table after each delivery. Gloves are washed, powdered and hung to dry before being sterilized again and again.
In the delivery room, the woman climbs out of the wheel chair, and up onto the table. The women wear their own clothes while in the hospital, so helping them unwind from their patuka (5 meter cloth belt), unravel their skirt, and hike up their petticoat, all on a wooden table half a meter wide, is a challenge. Luckily, they are as remarkably agile as I am clumsy. Four (!) students assemble to conduct the delivery, and another 10 may crowd around to observe—if there aren’t nine or so simultaneous deliveries taking place. Two students glove up, one junior and one senior, to catch the baby, one student blankets the women in a flannel to receive the baby, and one student readies herself with a syringe to give the woman a shot of oxytocin once the baby is born (to minimize bleeding) and listens to the fetal heart after every contraction.
In one of the first deliveries I attended of a first-time mother, she was pushing the baby well but everyone joins in coaching her nonetheless. The deafening cacophony of “go-go-go-come-on-go” rises, and I have to raise my voice to give the students instructions. If it were not for the bucket of chlorine at my feet causing my eyeballs to blister, I would be reminded of a particular moment in the Peel Pub involving beer and not birth. The junior student looks at me and says “Ma’am, I think it is too tight (meaning: I think I should do an episiotomy)”. “Really? How can you tell? (meaning: the baby’s head is no where near the woman’s bottom yet, so how could you possibly tell that the perineum is too tight?)". She wobbles her head and goes back to coaching the woman to push harder. “Now Ma’am?” “Now what?” “I do the episiotomy now, Ma’am?” “Little sister, what are the indications of an episiotomy?” Like are star student in Quiz Contest, she lists them verbatim from the World Health Organization’s Manual on Safe Motherhood. One indication is fetal distress. “Well little sister, is there fetal distress? You haven’t listened to the baby’s heart for…10 minutes (a bit too long a wait).” “Yes, Ma’am.” They listen to the baby’s heart with a dented but functional aluminum pinard horn (I am doubtful that one could hear a little baby’s heart beat over the noise in the room). This goes on, and together we rule out all the indications for an episiotomy. Meanwhile, the woman continues to push effectively. But as the baby’s head ploughs towards the woman’s perineum, the student reaches for the episiotomy scissors and blankly looks at me but doesn’t say anything. The others students continue to yell at the woman while looking at one another, worried there will be some sort of obstetric showdown between the foreigner and the star pupil. The chlorine fumes continue to rise from the bucket at my feet and now my trachea feels like it is dissolving. The next contraction begins, the woman gives a push and the student and I snap to attention to deliver the baby’s head, she still holding the scissors, me, blinded by fumes and coughing. Thankfully, the baby was not dropped into the bucket of chlorine and the woman, for her part and not any help from us, sustained only a minor tear.
I learned to move the chlorine bucket away from my feet and towards someone else with iron lungs.
We leave today and we are so sad about it. Aaryn said last night that he wishes he could bring Nepal to Canada or Canada to Nepal. I understand what he means. Right now, we are headed to the Stupa before catching our plane. Everything is completely calm in our neighbourhood. Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is going ahead unhampered. The Stupa is packed and new prayer flags are being raised for the New Year…
Here are some pics of the folks who have been so helpful…
The canteen staff who made the production of lentils and rice an act of love each and every day and used precious gas to make the Lipton Noodle Soup sent from grandparents in Canada.
< The guard and his family who took telephone messages, received packages, swept the dust from the stairs, emptied our garbage (never once commenting on the plethora of Toblerone wrappers) and retrieved badminton birdies from high hedges. The students at the Stupa Girls’ Hostel who immediately treated us like family, giving us up-to-date cultural interpretations of the events around.
Rushme in the financial office at Kai and Aaryn’s school, who helped the kids settle in and became our friend.
Ranjit and Changa’s family for also helping us to get settled and turning us onto badminton.
The canteen staff at the school who fed the kids well—homemade samosas, noodles, fried chips and of course, chai.
The Stupa Tibetan bread women—who provided nutritious snacks on the way home from school.
The porter, a.k.a. the patron saint of panicking mothers of feverish girls on high mountains, who carried Kai up a vertical ascent the equivalent of a double black diamond ski hill in the Rockies.
The women at the internet shop who provided service during strikes, provided cheap international phone calls, and stayed open late once communications were restored.
Sovita and the rest of the staff from Nepal Reliance Organization who got us settled and oriented because arriving in Nepal can be a little disorienting.
Alvin Sim in Ottawa who posted photos because I was too lazy to learn how to do it myself.
My dad, who helped me get to Kathmandu, and raised money once back in Canada for toilets for village children…
The staff at the Stupa Hospital who take care of women in a country where the profound event of birth is a polluted event, celebrated only if the baby is a boy—and therefore, the honourable profession of midwives is reduced to—at best, handmaiden to the doctor, and at worse, in the category of the untouchables.
We landed in Goa, on the west coast of India, and are watching the events of Nepal from there. We were in Colva, a fishing village and were staying at Our Lady Vailankanni Guesthouse, named after the patron saint of health—and after only two days,we were feeling better. Then we moved down the coast to Palolem, found a cluster of beach huts, and have settled here until our departure back to Canada February 26th (of this year of course).
This is what I wrote but could not send the morning we left…due to all the long goodbyes:
Now that we have communications, the extent of the situation is becoming a bit clearer, and I have decided we should leave, for awhile at least. We can observe the unfolding of the conflict between the King and the political parties, and the King and the Maoists, from the safe(r) distance of India. It seems that the next two weeks will be crucial as the political parties have now been able to communicate and organize protests to the Royal Proclamation/martial law/Royal coup/state of emergency—whatever you want to call it. The first protest was yesterday and conflicting reports came out as to what happened exactly—I decided to not go and see for myself. But the gist of the message was to restore the one-of-a-kind Nepali democracy.
But before we leave, I wanted to post more about other, more normal events that have gone on here…
KEBS Academy—The kids said goodbye to their school and their friends. Again, they were astonished with the generosity of kids who have the least. They returned home with humble but meaningful gifts of pens, notebooks, and ribbons. I taught my last English conversation class to the senior students, and we played one last game of Quiz Contest in which answers to questions on when the UN was formed, where Mother Theresa was born, and what is the capital of Denmark were shouted out in the unique English of Nepal.
The Toilets—The work at the toilets at the school in Imadol was interrupted due to “the political situation”. The brickwork and the plaster are done and the doors and vents need to be installed, the plumbing and painting still needs to be completed. Sovita, a woman from Nepal Reliance Organization, is going to continue to oversee the work and has promised photos once it is done.
The Imadol Health Post—The small health post in Imadol needed another clinic room. Despite repeated requests for plans and a quote on the cost, they couldn’t get the information to me. This was not due to their lack of enthusiasm but because it is a government organization and therefore, attached to the dreaded Nepali bureaucracy I have sworn to avoid due to their paralytic approach to things. Since I won’t be here for awhile, I passed on funds (and I am sure the accompanying headache) to Sovita from NRO to get the project started. I hope to be back for the opening.Thuman Village—we couldn’t head back to Thuman Village as we had planned. We passed along money to purchase 4 pressure cookers for families in the village. Beyond the Kathmandu Valley, where Thuman is, pressure cookers require a permit to own as Maoists can use them for pressure-cooker-bombs. However, their intended use allows women to cook grains and beans faster, using less wood. By using less wood, there is less indoor smoke and less time needed to collect wood and less forests are stripped.
The Stupa Hospital—I am proud to say that the Hospital now owns not one, but two stretchers. One stretcher is a simple one that would be best used in the Birthing Centre since women give birth on a mattress on the floor. So in the event of a transport, a woman can be slipped from the mattress to the waiting stretcher next to her, then lifted and carried to the readied ambulance. The other stretcher is essentially a narrow rolling bed that can also be used for an assessment if the Emergency is busy. I hope these items make a modest contribution in reducing maternal mortality in Nepal.
Students at Stupa College—The nursing students moved from the classroom to the government maternity hospital in Thapatali, a neighbourhood in the south of Kathmandu, about 45 minutes away from Boudhanath. By the way, the ones in this photo are fantastic and in no way connected to the story that follows.
At Thapatali hospital, 60 to 80 deliveries take place within a 24 hour period. For the equivalent of 4 days of an unskilled laborer’s wage, a woman receives care for a normal delivery and 24 hours postpartum. Complications are added costs. For another day’s wage, she is required to buy a bag from the hospital pharmacy with her supplies of a syringe, oxytocin, iv bottle and tubing, suture and xylocaine, and pads. If some of these are not used, she can trade them at the pharmacy for vitamins or whatever else she wants when leaving. If she needs more oxytocin or more iv, for example if she were to hemorrhage, she would have to pay the extra cost for these. The women come from all over the valley, some arriving too early, and some arriving too late. The ones who arrive early, start out in ANC-A (antenatal care A). This ward room has beds for 30, and women in early labor or with complications requiring observation stay here. Once labor is established, they are moved to ANC-B. This is a ward room with 16 beds. There, they labor until ready to deliver. Families are not allowed in but they have to provide meals for the women, so the hallways outside the rooms are packed with families sitting on rolls of bedding, wrapped in blankets, or lined up with tiffins of daal bhaat, crackers, and chai for the women.
Once they are ready to deliver, the women are wheeled in the one wheel chair to the delivery ward. There are four rooms. Three of the rooms have three tables on which to deliver. The fourth room is the clean-up room where instruments are scrubbed and sterilized by female staff in uniform saris. They round up the buckets of instruments soaking in chlorine solution at each delivery table after each delivery. Gloves are washed, powdered and hung to dry before being sterilized again and again.
In the delivery room, the woman climbs out of the wheel chair, and up onto the table. The women wear their own clothes while in the hospital, so helping them unwind from their patuka (5 meter cloth belt), unravel their skirt, and hike up their petticoat, all on a wooden table half a meter wide, is a challenge. Luckily, they are as remarkably agile as I am clumsy. Four (!) students assemble to conduct the delivery, and another 10 may crowd around to observe—if there aren’t nine or so simultaneous deliveries taking place. Two students glove up, one junior and one senior, to catch the baby, one student blankets the women in a flannel to receive the baby, and one student readies herself with a syringe to give the woman a shot of oxytocin once the baby is born (to minimize bleeding) and listens to the fetal heart after every contraction.
In one of the first deliveries I attended of a first-time mother, she was pushing the baby well but everyone joins in coaching her nonetheless. The deafening cacophony of “go-go-go-come-on-go” rises, and I have to raise my voice to give the students instructions. If it were not for the bucket of chlorine at my feet causing my eyeballs to blister, I would be reminded of a particular moment in the Peel Pub involving beer and not birth. The junior student looks at me and says “Ma’am, I think it is too tight (meaning: I think I should do an episiotomy)”. “Really? How can you tell? (meaning: the baby’s head is no where near the woman’s bottom yet, so how could you possibly tell that the perineum is too tight?)". She wobbles her head and goes back to coaching the woman to push harder. “Now Ma’am?” “Now what?” “I do the episiotomy now, Ma’am?” “Little sister, what are the indications of an episiotomy?” Like are star student in Quiz Contest, she lists them verbatim from the World Health Organization’s Manual on Safe Motherhood. One indication is fetal distress. “Well little sister, is there fetal distress? You haven’t listened to the baby’s heart for…10 minutes (a bit too long a wait).” “Yes, Ma’am.” They listen to the baby’s heart with a dented but functional aluminum pinard horn (I am doubtful that one could hear a little baby’s heart beat over the noise in the room). This goes on, and together we rule out all the indications for an episiotomy. Meanwhile, the woman continues to push effectively. But as the baby’s head ploughs towards the woman’s perineum, the student reaches for the episiotomy scissors and blankly looks at me but doesn’t say anything. The others students continue to yell at the woman while looking at one another, worried there will be some sort of obstetric showdown between the foreigner and the star pupil. The chlorine fumes continue to rise from the bucket at my feet and now my trachea feels like it is dissolving. The next contraction begins, the woman gives a push and the student and I snap to attention to deliver the baby’s head, she still holding the scissors, me, blinded by fumes and coughing. Thankfully, the baby was not dropped into the bucket of chlorine and the woman, for her part and not any help from us, sustained only a minor tear.
I learned to move the chlorine bucket away from my feet and towards someone else with iron lungs.
We leave today and we are so sad about it. Aaryn said last night that he wishes he could bring Nepal to Canada or Canada to Nepal. I understand what he means. Right now, we are headed to the Stupa before catching our plane. Everything is completely calm in our neighbourhood. Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is going ahead unhampered. The Stupa is packed and new prayer flags are being raised for the New Year…
Here are some pics of the folks who have been so helpful…
The canteen staff who made the production of lentils and rice an act of love each and every day and used precious gas to make the Lipton Noodle Soup sent from grandparents in Canada.
< The guard and his family who took telephone messages, received packages, swept the dust from the stairs, emptied our garbage (never once commenting on the plethora of Toblerone wrappers) and retrieved badminton birdies from high hedges. The students at the Stupa Girls’ Hostel who immediately treated us like family, giving us up-to-date cultural interpretations of the events around.
Rushme in the financial office at Kai and Aaryn’s school, who helped the kids settle in and became our friend.
Ranjit and Changa’s family for also helping us to get settled and turning us onto badminton.
The canteen staff at the school who fed the kids well—homemade samosas, noodles, fried chips and of course, chai.
The Stupa Tibetan bread women—who provided nutritious snacks on the way home from school.
The porter, a.k.a. the patron saint of panicking mothers of feverish girls on high mountains, who carried Kai up a vertical ascent the equivalent of a double black diamond ski hill in the Rockies.
The women at the internet shop who provided service during strikes, provided cheap international phone calls, and stayed open late once communications were restored.
Sovita and the rest of the staff from Nepal Reliance Organization who got us settled and oriented because arriving in Nepal can be a little disorienting.
Alvin Sim in Ottawa who posted photos because I was too lazy to learn how to do it myself.
My dad, who helped me get to Kathmandu, and raised money once back in Canada for toilets for village children…
The staff at the Stupa Hospital who take care of women in a country where the profound event of birth is a polluted event, celebrated only if the baby is a boy—and therefore, the honourable profession of midwives is reduced to—at best, handmaiden to the doctor, and at worse, in the category of the untouchables.
Friday, February 11, 2005
Leaving Nepal
We've left Nepal for India in order to watch events unfold from a safer distance...we'll update everyone once we have a minute.
Monday, February 07, 2005
State of Emergency
Tuesday February 1, the Nepali King placed the government under house arrest, declared a state of emergency, closed the airport, cut phone and internet, and broadcast himself (repeatedly) making an unmoving speech saying that for the next three years—he was the government as the one (he previously appointed) was corrupt and did nothing to remedy the present ‘political situation’. The next day, he appointed new ministers. Five days later, there was an hour or so of local calling, and today, international calls and internet has (temporarily?) resumed. During this time, we were safe, and managed one satellite phone call home to reassure everyone that we were fine…Because of the change in the ‘political situation’, we are planning to come home earlier than planned.
Things I learned during a state of emergency:
-babies are still born
-as there is no news, and rumours are unreliable, just pack a bag and sit tight, things will probably get better
-in choosing a taxi driver, never, ever, choose a driver who wears his baseball cap backwards. If you don’t die in an accident, you will surely sustain a concussion, or the very least, a broken collarbone from being thrown around the backseat.
-the cost of a taxi ride from an area of high concentration of military to an area of low concentration of military is three times higher. Conversely, the cost of a taxi from an area of low concentration of military to an area of high concentration of military is ten times higher. If a curfew, or rumour of a curfew, is approaching, choose a Buddhist looking taxi driver, as delivering a woman to her children is considered to be excellent karmic points.
-always have enough food and water for 4 days. Although this was never necessary, it was the advice I received from the Canadian Co-operation Office (the mini-embassy) once local calls were restored.
-if the BBC is broadcasting Bush’s State of Union address, updates of the Pope’s health, and whether Beckham has lost his form, nothing really, really bad is happening in Nepal. If the BBC station is replaced with Nepali music, something really bad may be happening Nepal.
-don’t bother with retrospective analysis…such as, “Oh, that is why, just last week, the government of Nepal shut down the Tibetan Office used for processing and settling the 1000 Tibetan refugees who walk over the Himalayas in the winter to escape the Chinese oppressors—so that the Chinese government wouldn’t criticize the King for stepping into the role of dictator…” or “I wondered why I was frisked and politely asked to pass through a metal detector to walk into the bank…it’s the new normal I guess…”
-while pausing what you’re doing, the sound of horns beeping is reassuring and the sounds of no horns beeping is non-reassuring.
-carry cash. ATMs and Visa don’t work.
-don’t waste your cash on a newspaper as you will just read the King’s speech reprinted verbatim. You can also read that journalists are reminded to not criticize the King. Or, you can read reprinted articles from Delhi, Dhaka, and New York about how to lower the fat in your diet (Nepali diet is 90% carbohydrates), improve your study habits, or encouragement to start planning for the wedding season now.
-don’t discuss politics (or religion or sex for that matter) as someone could get in trouble. In King versus the Maoists—one can find oneself in trouble for holding any opinion—it is best to talk about fat in the diet, study habits, and planning for the wedding season. Know that during a state of emergency, the constitution is suspended so Nepalis officially (as opposed to unofficially pre-state of emergency) cannot offer their opinion, cannot demonstrate peacefully, or get together in a group. They can be arrested as a preventative measure. Their property can be confiscated and bank accounts cleaned out. They are, however, safe from being exiled or killed by the state after a fair trial (capital punishment). But if they are an immediate threat, there would be no trial and execution can just take place.
Things I learned during a state of emergency:
-babies are still born
-as there is no news, and rumours are unreliable, just pack a bag and sit tight, things will probably get better
-in choosing a taxi driver, never, ever, choose a driver who wears his baseball cap backwards. If you don’t die in an accident, you will surely sustain a concussion, or the very least, a broken collarbone from being thrown around the backseat.
-the cost of a taxi ride from an area of high concentration of military to an area of low concentration of military is three times higher. Conversely, the cost of a taxi from an area of low concentration of military to an area of high concentration of military is ten times higher. If a curfew, or rumour of a curfew, is approaching, choose a Buddhist looking taxi driver, as delivering a woman to her children is considered to be excellent karmic points.
-always have enough food and water for 4 days. Although this was never necessary, it was the advice I received from the Canadian Co-operation Office (the mini-embassy) once local calls were restored.
-if the BBC is broadcasting Bush’s State of Union address, updates of the Pope’s health, and whether Beckham has lost his form, nothing really, really bad is happening in Nepal. If the BBC station is replaced with Nepali music, something really bad may be happening Nepal.
-don’t bother with retrospective analysis…such as, “Oh, that is why, just last week, the government of Nepal shut down the Tibetan Office used for processing and settling the 1000 Tibetan refugees who walk over the Himalayas in the winter to escape the Chinese oppressors—so that the Chinese government wouldn’t criticize the King for stepping into the role of dictator…” or “I wondered why I was frisked and politely asked to pass through a metal detector to walk into the bank…it’s the new normal I guess…”
-while pausing what you’re doing, the sound of horns beeping is reassuring and the sounds of no horns beeping is non-reassuring.
-carry cash. ATMs and Visa don’t work.
-don’t waste your cash on a newspaper as you will just read the King’s speech reprinted verbatim. You can also read that journalists are reminded to not criticize the King. Or, you can read reprinted articles from Delhi, Dhaka, and New York about how to lower the fat in your diet (Nepali diet is 90% carbohydrates), improve your study habits, or encouragement to start planning for the wedding season now.
-don’t discuss politics (or religion or sex for that matter) as someone could get in trouble. In King versus the Maoists—one can find oneself in trouble for holding any opinion—it is best to talk about fat in the diet, study habits, and planning for the wedding season. Know that during a state of emergency, the constitution is suspended so Nepalis officially (as opposed to unofficially pre-state of emergency) cannot offer their opinion, cannot demonstrate peacefully, or get together in a group. They can be arrested as a preventative measure. Their property can be confiscated and bank accounts cleaned out. They are, however, safe from being exiled or killed by the state after a fair trial (capital punishment). But if they are an immediate threat, there would be no trial and execution can just take place.
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