Lessons from the art of stillness

Just now it's hard to be in Nepal. I've given myself a day away from everyone, in my friend's fancy apartment, so that I could relax, recuperate, and do some fun creative stuff. All that has happened is that I've given my mind the space to air all of the doubts and fears that I didn't have time to look at. I've committed to staying here for a long time, so I'm going to have to work it out one way or another, but at the moment I can't shake the feeling that I'm not the best person for this job, and at any rate, I should probably get on with making money rather than dwindling away what little I have on the comforts I seem to be increasingly needing. I look to facebook for comfort, and see friends who worked really hard at circus, and are now touring the world, doing amazing shows, and earning a nice living out of it, while I watch my skills fade away for want of training space, time, energy. But let me stop this self-pitying, cringeworthy, poor-me blog. I'll put up this thing I wrote a while back, about one of the jobs I had while I was living in Brisbane.

For a while now I’ve been meaning to put down some words about life modelling, something I’ve been doing a lot of. Each time I do it I come away with something, it is an amazing kind of school.

Yesterday I had to do a double – to pose with another model. I have done this only once before, and that other time it was a rushed thing, a distracted thing. There were so many external circumstances that it was just an incidental aspect of a bizarre life modelling session. This time, I knew in advance, and I was modelling with someone who I’d met only once before. She is one of the most experienced life models I know, having done it for at least 6 years and currently working 5 days a week at this curious job. She has a kind of introverted strength, a quiet confidence. She picked me up in her little car and she drove, and I talked. Soon we were finding our way up winding paths, through the crisp air and dense foliage of Mount Tambourine. The class itself was held in a church that was commonly used for weddings and functions, bright, but austere, and absolutely beautiful. On the way we talked a little about modelling, about how we might approach the evening. Mostly I model for university and TAFE courses. In those places there is a pervading air of concentration, a silence punctuated by the scribbling, scratching and sweeping strokes of the various mediums. A teacher either timidly offers encouragement and advice, or stalks as a predator, startling students with incisive criticism. This mount Tambourine group were so very unlike this. They are doing this class because they are old friends, and this is their way of catching up. They have been doing this for a long time. They are quick to express their appreciation of a challenging or interesting pose, and to rise to a challenge like old friends at a chess board. I felt very awkward posing with the other model. I had learned so much about holding my own body still in space, and now suddenly there was someone else who I’d never worked with before. Poses which should have been so simple were proving too difficult to hold. I’ve almost never come out of a pose early, but during this class I think it happened twice. Nonetheless they loved us, and plied us with food and wine, implored me to juggle, laughed along.

At some points, and it always happens, I experienced the power of the body-mind connection. In one pose I sat with my head in my hands, an image of mourning, while the other model leaned on my back sympathetically. After a few minutes of holding this pose I felt such a strong a sense of loss, of mourning. Imaginary figures dutifully ambled past me in single file,  all of the things I had to mourn, lost friends, dead relatives, failed loves, poor old Suthy our pet dog. Cloudier, spectral shapes - I could only assume were the things which hadn’t happened yet, the things I was yet to mourn – they filed past too, at the end of my lonely little centrelink line. At the same time, the human warmth of the co-model, being supported in this pose gave me such a feeling of poignant hope, of how far I’ve come and grown through all of these times. Another pose involved us in a sweet embrace, innocent and warm despite our nudity. And I have never been attracted to that girl, nothing beyond appreciating her looks and charm in a distant sort of way, but after about ten minutes of creating that image with her, I developed an overwhelming feeling of being in love with her. It was nice at first, but I was glad to hear the timer go off, and be relieved of the feeling that my innermost emotions and thoughts were at the whim of some life drawing class. That such a genuine feeling of love could be created by holding a certain pose, made acutely aware that the mind is not a fortress but an open shed, that I’m utterly susceptible to the outside world, its forces, its wind. This lesson has been confronting me almost daily, in varying ways, for the last month or so. It is a many-headed beast, one of its heads is this idea, still half-formed in my mind, the notion that I was never fully in control of my emotions, most of the time I was merely suppressing them, and if I can relinquish this particular kind of control then I will be able to be a better performer, writer, liver. Or, I might just go completely mental.

One of the members of the group runs a gallery. He has a worldly, jaded sort of artist air which poorly conceals a very warm and friendly nature. I was discussing with him this thing about life modelling which really grinds my gears.

After many years of studying circus, I have learned where my strengths and weaknesses lie, how to improve, etc. It was a framework, something solid, a source of confidence, because I knew even if I wasn’t satisfied with my skill level, I had a map, I could get there. Life modelling laughs in the face of that, because despite sometimes feeling successful, sometimes feeling uninspired, sometimes feeling absolutely great or completely useless at it, there is almost no correlation between these feelings and the feedback I get. In fact, the feedback is always very positive, which I find strange because people talk about what they like in a male model, and I don’t have those things. I don’t have muscle definition, I don’t do strong caveman poses, I’m not angular, I’m really quite curvy, and I don’t have a lot of tan to draw tone from. Anyway, this guy in the group the other day, he gave me a nice insight on it. He said “You’re great to draw because you’re likeable”. Now, it’s nice to be told this, and I get told it a lot. Not trying to blow my own trumpet, but I do. And sometimes I feel annoyed about this, like being a nice guy is the consolation prize for not being a good artist, especially when so many wonderful artists I know would never be accused of being a friendly, likeable person. But he elaborated “you’re really comfortable up there when you’re modelling, and we can tell that you like yourself, and this makes you much easier to draw. We’ve had some models who had amazing bodies, but they just had so much attitude, and you could tell that they didn’t want to be there. It’s as though your eye doesn’t fall on them as easily, you feel like you’re being pushed away.” This resonated, it was part of that many-headed beast. This feeling of being there with the life-drawers, of bringing them in, it came from the fact that I didn’t care that much. I mean, I love life modelling and I always try and do a good job, but in a much different way to performance, where I’m anxious, and serious, and it’s important that I do well, and this show could be the big one where I get noticed, and all of that crap. During a clown workshop I discovered that when I don’t invest anything in the performance, when I’m beyond the point of caring, of wanting so much to be great at it, then I actually allow myself to show something special to the audience. And I looked at the other model, her peaceful, almost distracted air, and I appreciated why she was such a good model, why she gets more work than she can handle.

aimless writing

At the immigration office today I, while I was waiting to get my visa extended, I was having a conversation with one of the officials. He told me about his wife and daughter, it was really nice to have a conversation with a Nepali man, to try and gain some insight about the strange culture here, caught between the old and the new as it is. I ignored his flirtiness because he was a lot older and it was a bit absurd. Besides, men are often affectionate with each other - one image I will always take with me is the sight of army men in full uniform and rifles, holding hands as they meander down the road. But then it got a bit too much and I decided to go to the bathroom. He followed me in, and continued to pat my stomach and remark on how big it was. I didn't know how to take this, until he tried to put his hand under my t-shirt. Excuse me, but what the fuck? If homosexuality wasn't punished quite so severely here then perhaps it wouldn't get manically misdirected at me. Rather than kicking up a huge stink, I said no and promptly left. After all, I was applying for a tourist visa, due to whatever loophole, I must volunteer illegally. Not that anyone seems to mind much. At the airport a few weeks ago (on the way to Singapore), the customs lady asked me what I was doing here in a token kind of way, whilst stamping my passport. I told her I was a volunteer teacher, so she stopped, smiled, and asked me again. "Oh, I'm a tourist!" I said.

It is starting to become apparent that I will never actually fit in here. In a way I didn't really fit in back in Australia either, but this is different. The other bideshi, they are not that friendly. With the exception of my friends of course. I see that Australian girl I met at that party, and say hello. I can see the corners where that painted-on smile is beginning to peel. I crave to have more interaction with Nepali people, but this is fraught with difficulty. Taxi drivers and shopkeepers form the majority of my Nepali interaction. I can do prices, products, and directions quite well now. I walk around, or I sit, and I think about how I could have said what I wanted to say. The taxi man I walk past every day, I caught his taxi once, and now he pursues my business with dogged desperation, believing that one day I'll crack. Today he stuck his tongue out at me, and implored, "Every day I wait for you and you do not come!" 100 metres further down the road, the phrase "Kina pharkanuhuncha, ta?" formed in my mind. Why wait then? Sometimes it works, yesterday another taxi driver followed me slowly in his car, ignoring my friendly rebukes until I said "Malaai ghumna man parcha". I like walking.

Soon I will come back to Australia, and be poor again. I will have nice accommodation, hot showers, drinking water straight from the tap, beaches to swim in, public transport, live music, but I will be poor. And then I will come back to Kathmandu, and will have none of these things. But I will be rich. Oh, and peace and quiet, space and time. Here comes someone now

Another old journal entry: Amiga is a dog

I should be sleeping. This knowledge keeps me awake. This, and the cold, and the full full moon. So here I am, lying in front of the heater, blessed warmth. It’s just you and me now, words. We don’t need love, warmth, cuddles. Heaters and words, they don’t lie awake, thinking about how much they need to be alone, but jumping at every creak and rustle, thinking that it may be a certain person coming to lie with them. Objects, concepts, sitting in smug silence. And then, on the other hand, there is Amiga. Flying through the house faster than her legs can carry her. Crashing into things, making noise, waking everyone in her desperate search for love and attention. I am more like Amga than I am like the heater, though I would like to be the other way. Really, everything is fine, well mostly. I guess if I was going to imagine what I’d like my girlfriend to be like, I’d start with someone who was happy to see me. I think X is, sometimes it’s quite hard to tell. Mystery.

Words escape through cracked lips like weedlings through chapped concrete.

Pen on paper. This is a kind of alchemy. My four-colour pen has just this colour left, my least favourite of all. No-one likes the red pen, it is the colour of tick and cross, and other such judgements. Normally red things entice, excite and invite me, but red pen hits my eyes, the red writing is the uninvited guest whom you were nonetheless expecting. The remarks of one who is telling you how to write, how to express, how to be.

I know a girl who makes me lose my cool. Where did it go? I had it a moment ago, and now she asks me to produce it and it’s gone. She turns me into myself, horror of horrors, and leaves me to deal with it, to babysit myself until the cool comes back. Coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, destruction. The thought of being healthy is repulsive to me just now, what the hell is going on? There, it happened again, just hearing her footsteps makes me lose my cool. Rattle, rail, shake those chains. I would like to sleep now, but I am so alive! I should like to write myself sleepy. Lots of loud noises and angry voices happen on the street outside, a thousand terrible scenarios play out in my mind. Slep now, young Ivan, worry less, fear less, let go, sleep. They will sort themselves out, they are apt to fight their own battles. Listen, now they are laughing.

Scooby Doo

I am currently enjoying a moment of peace and stillness, in an Israeli cafe here in the heart of Kathmandu. The password for the internet here is Baba Ganesh. Get it?

My boss, and some other people from the office, have been away this week. They are in Tamil Nadu, India, on a rescue mission. According to a documentary I just saw, our charity has, over the years, rescued over 300 children. Each rescue mission is different from the last. Sometimes they involve being chased by dogs and men with big sticks. Sometimes they involve long hours spent in police stations, dealing with beauraucracy and corruption. Of all the rescue missions this is probably the most bizarre. This time they are rescuing young girls from Dr. Job's Mission, another charity.

I cannot write emotively, can only report. I would like to paint a picture, the landscape, the long journeys, describe faces, conversations, but the whole situation is too sick. Maybe later.

It is difficult to get accurate information, and of course each story is slightly different. Here, a death certificate was forged, so that the parents believed their daughter had died. There, the website shows profiles of girls, falsely claiming that they're orphans. Perhaps Dr. Job's Mission actually believes this. The agent that was responible for trafficking the children has a particularly nasty reputation. Usually the agents are so well-connected that it is almost impossible to arrest them. The families tell us that they had sent their children to Kathmandu to get a good education. Instead, the daughters were taken to India, given new names and put in an evangelical christian school, so that they can continue God's work. One girl managed to get in touch with her brother back home. She begged for help, claiming that they were routinely abused, that conditions were terrible. Word made it to our organisation. Some family members were brought along to make rescue possible. One of the girl's brothers, perhaps the same one who received the phone call, had a seizure on the plane, I'm told that if he hadn't been on that plane, there would have been no way that he would have made it to the hospital in time, his life would have ended in that village.

The crew from EBT moved quickly, and managed to rescue 30 Nepali children. Each family has agreed to take the children back.

I cannot help but think of that line from Scooby Doo, "And I would have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for those pesky kids". One girl made a phone call, and 30 children were brought home. Surely more investigations will follow, what will happen next I cannot say, but I am happy to see that Dr. Job's Mission's website is down for maintenance. You can still see the title, "Welcome to the Home for Daughters of Martyred Christians"

hum

We've been trying to organise a film night for the circus kids for so long now. We want to show them that circus is not what it used to be. Those big tops full of sawdust and elephant poo still exist, yes, but there is a lot more to circus these days. We want to nurture their creativity, so that we can come closer to giving them creative control over their circus company. People often say that Nepali people just aren't very creative, and when I hear this, I want to slap them. Also, I want to prove them wrong. We also want to give the kids a chance to do something different, something social, show them that it's not all just push-ups and handstands. After constant set-backs, cancellations and miscommunications, we managed to finally have our film night yesterday. In the morning.

They loved the videos, all of them. In that way, at least, we succeeded. Amazing to show them one of my favourite old clowns, George Carl, and see those Nepali kids just lose it. That's what it's all about, it's not exactly high-brow comedy, but the universality of clown  is beautiful to behold (and to readers who hear the word clown, and think of Ronald Macdonald, or some other over-the-top technicolour nightmare, check out George Carl. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0eAVjaQrUA ). It's funny to watch if you grew up in a middle-class family Hawthorn, Australia, and it's funny to watch if you were sold off to be a child-slave in India at the age of 5.

I'd pictured the film night as an opportunity for the kids to unwind and open up. A casual thing, you know, groups sitting around tables, maybe some couches, bowls full of nibbles on each little table. I'd imagined promoting dialogue by asking simple questions, getting to know what people think, letting the kids talk freely. I got to our venue at 9:30 a.m. to see that it was set up like a cinema: rows of seats, all facing forward. Oh well, I suppose they were only trying to help. Between video clips, I stood up there and made an idiot of myself, asking everyone what parts they liked, what parts they didn't like, trying to talk about the difference between contemporary circus and old-school circus, or trying to tell them that if there were any skills which they wanted to learn from what they saw, then we could work it out together. Everything I said was met with mystified silence. I might as well have been talking Swahili. It reminded me of way back when I studied physics, and would sit in those massive lecture halls, with that little lecturer rattling on about quantum theory, completely oblivious to the chorus of snores and text messages all around him. I felt very alone just then. Towards the end of the session I finally gave up and just snuck around the room, chatting to people individually. This worked much better, and I discovered many of the kids' secret aspirations, and fears. I was explaining to one of the girls that these acts take years to master, and she said something like "But you're going to go away in a few months anyway, like all of the volunteers". I replied that I'm going to stay for at least a year, and she seemed genuinely pleased. It felt good to say this, because I'd been trying to decide how long I'd like to stay for, but now that I've said this to the Sapana kids, I have to follow through with it. It will be sad to dwindle away my last reserves of money by staying in a volun

Since that morning of the film-night-morning, I've been hitting the Nepali books hard, I'm determined to get enough fluency with Nepali that I can break down this language barrier. Then we can really start making progress towards building this company together.

I don't tell them about this blog

My experience as a volunteer.

I have been in Nepal for over a month now, although it feels like so much longer. People are always saying that something feels longer, or  that it feels like shorter. Never will you hear it said that it feels exactly as long as it appears to be. Why longer? Because each day is stuffed full of new exciting experiences. Our new house is next to an army barracks. I assume it’s an army barracks, because of the razor wire, and gun turrets. Those lonely men in their gun turrets, gazing out onto a suburban street. Army uniform, khaki, and it occurs to me that khaki is a very Nepali-sounding word, I wonder where its origin lies? Last night as I rode my bicycle home, one of the men had night0vision goggles on. I’d never seen night-vision goggles in real life, here in the poorest country I’ve ever seen I was not expecting something so futuristic. I smile and wave to those men in the gun turrets. Usually they smile and wave back, grateful for something to break the tedium. One day I will have a conversation with them, tell them about my life back in Australia. Sometimes when I smile and wave, they look back at me with a look of foreboding, uncertainty with a gun. This is the worst kind of uncertainty. I don’t blame them though, things are different here.

I sing to myself on the bicycle. Mostly I sing ‘Stormy Weather’, the Peggy Lee version inspires my rendition. It is not my song, but then again, it is not my bicycle either. I am borrowing it from my housemate Noah, while he is away ‘in the field’.. Before that, I had another friend’s bicycle, my other friend was away in ‘the field’ too, a different field. Her field was a village, the poorest village she has ever seen, one of the poorest places in Nepal, and therefore, almost perfectly wealthless. Apparently there are 7 aid organizations acting to help that village in some way, but their help is not apparent. Not slightly. Meanwhile, in London, people take to the streets, burning things, smashing windows and going midnight-shopping. Everyone is eager to attach meaning to this, condemning it as mindless or comparing it to historical revolutions. Political unrest? Why not? Opportunistic looting? Certainly. Flecks of meaning swimming through a soup of chaos, a feedback loop fed by alienation, disempowerment and innumerable personal stories that should not be hidden under blankets. No-one who has lived in London, who has been poor in London, should be surprised. Here, it is a different poverty. In some ways better, in some ways worse. Better in the way that people know how to make things out of junk, how to fix things rather than throw them away, how to grow their own food, distill their own alcohol and most importantly how to come together as a community, how to look out for each other. Worse in that they have no hope for the future, they are stuck where they are, and sometimes food just doesn’t grow. They leave in the thousands, once again I cannot remember the figures because I cannot fathom them, let’s just be conservative and say that thousands of Nepalis try to cross the border every month. In many cases, cowboy-NGOs and celebrity-endorsed charities catch them, stop them, send them back to starve in their own village. Tick, job done, the NGO-workers catch a group of women at the border, take them to the police for a severe beating, vision obscured, dollar signs in the eyes. The women are sent back to their village, and of course they leave again, are again caught, this time by the charity I work for, and so this story comes to me. We don’t do border rescues, as far as I can tell we are way less dodgy than the big players. We are a small charity, and very transparent about what we do, how we do it.

In Brisbane, I used to steal things from supermarkets, just little things. And the more the supermarket experience annoyed and nauseated me, the more I would steal in kind. In kind support from Safeworth. In this way, instituting my own pay-as-you-feel system, I found the supermarket shopping experience bearable. My housemates found it hilarious, which only encouraged me to steal more, and to steal weirder things. A particular favourite of my housies was a large bunch of bananas (my own obscure protest, for at that time bananas cost $12/kilo), which I just held in my hand throughout the whole shopping experience, so that when my time came to check out, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to continue holding it, no-one in the world would dare question it, least of all disillusioned supermarket staff. Aren’t we all just monkeys anyway?

Here in Nepal, I would never steal from a shop. Authorities predict that violent conflict is just around the corner, and I would not be surprised. It was certainly not what I expected, this place. The lovely people at the charity I work for asked me to write a couple of paragraphs about my time in Nepal so far. Something personal, entertaining, something they could quote. I accidentally wrote this. I should start again.

I left a very nice life in Brisbane to be here. I worked a little every day, teaching circus and sometimes performing. The rest of the time I would do my own training, or go to the beach, or visit my friends, or listen to live music, or drink delicious coffee.  Life is very different here. Every day I work in the office. EBT-N is a small team that does big things, and so there is always a lot to do. I came here to be a circus trainer, and for 6 hours a week, this is what I do. The rest of the time, I do things I never expected to do, not in my wildest dreams. Things like working in an office. On the street corner nearby, a man sits and mends umbrellas and shoes. People ride around the neighborhood, calling out in a special guttural voice, perfectly tuned to reach through the farthest window. Sometimes they call out “Aap!” which means they are selling mangoes, other times they call out what sounds like “Talagag gag Talagag gag”. I don’t know what it means, but I think they’re collecting junk to recycle.

I ride my bike through streets where staying on the left side of the road is not so much a rule as a guideline. As far as I can tell, there are only two road rules: Look everywhere all the time, and don’t hit anyone. Once you get used to it, and so long as you’re not in a hurry, it actually works really well. When you cross the street, just keep walking and the cars, motorbikes and miscellaneous vehicles will dodge around you like a school of fish.

I was only supposed to be here for three months, but now I want to stay for longer, at least a year. I don’t know why exactly. There is something beautiful about this project. People in Nepal need hope. If we can rescue a small group of kids, give them hope, and then let them share their hope through the medium of circus, then perhaps we can spread this hope. Who knows? As my friend would say, it’s worth a red-hot go

Why monkeys do not talk, the volunteer and the cake, and other stories.

Yesterday I learned a phrase, "Hawaa lagyo", which means "Taken by the wind", and is used to describe the effect of globalisation and Westernisation on Nepal. Nepal opened its borders around 60 years ago, there are many people alive here who remember when it could have been described as a medieval kingdom. Kathmandu is progressing and Westernizing like an avalanche, unaware of where it's heading and completely unable to stop. Hawaa lagyo.

I've been reading a book of Nepali folk stories. They are delightfully random, and often contain no discernible lesson or moral. Refreshing. Probably my favourite so far is the story of why monkeys do not talk. Basically, there once was a man who had a loyal and intellegent monkey companion. This monkey could understand everything that was said to him, and this made the man perplexed: he wondered why the monkey would never speak. He contrived a way to make the monkey talk by setting him an elaborate task, involving minding a bowl full of Buffalo butter which sat in the sun. The man hid nearby and watched when, as planned, the monkey could bear it no longer and called out "Sir! Sir! The butter is melting!" And at that, his head exploded.

And that is why monkeys do not talk. The end. Shaun and I have been talking about making a stop-frame animation of this and other Nepali folk tales.

I woke at 5 this morning, so that I could watch the gymnastics training that some of my circus students undertake. There are concerns from some of the caretakers at the refuge that doing gymnastics at 6:30a.m. then going to school all day, and then circus training in the evening, might be a little too much strain. My initial stance on the issue was that if the kids want to go to gym so badly, then they should be able to. Nothing is uncomplicated here, and I've since heard that the gym class is causing falling grades at school, and a couple of kids are missing breakfast in their determination to take gymnastics class. On the other hand, one of these kids has been rated amongst the top gymnasts in the country, and would have been sent to the Beijing olympics if he had come from the right family. Also, some of the circus students have been getting injured at gym class. The only thing to do was to go and see for myself. So I woke before the sun and made my way to the hall where the national gymnasts train, a ramshackle little room, stuffed full of mats, rings, high bar, etc. It was arranged by the people upstairs that a certain gentleman ex-Gurkha would accompany me. He has a politeness and a presence which commands respect, and of course the Ghurkas here have an almost celebrity status (their name decorates walls throughout Kathmandu, my favourite one "Show me a man who claims not to fear death and I say he is either a liar or a Ghurka"). Unfortunately, he never showed, partly my fault for not mustering the courage to call so early in the morning to confirm that he was coming. Partly I guess I wasn't really sure what I was doing there, what I would say to the gym coach, wanted an excuse to bail on the whole thing. So rather than meet the gym coach and say all of those things I thought of afterwards, I tried to talk to the circus students for a while, about being responsible, careful, safe, about the importance of school, about all kinds of things which I was the least qualified person on Earth to be preaching about. They got suitably defensive, and I felt like a real twat. So I shut up watched training for a while. What I saw was that the two circus students were there with their friends, were away from the refuge in the hills and in the heart of Kathmandu. I saw that they were having a great time. I left, feeling like I had made a complete mess of this supposed meeting, and that I would have to answer for it to my pseudo-military pseudo-bosses, but on reflection I can say that if nothing else, I got to see the circus students there at the gym class, being away from the refuge, amongst friends, having a great time.

There is a cafe near the office, which I frequent, espresso coffee and a small machiatto-stain of guilt. The place is nice and cool, has comfortable couches, and therefore it is usually full whitey bidesi folk, from the vast array of NGOs that pepper this part of Kathmandu. The owner of this cafe is a nice guy, with an interesting story of returning to Kathmandu after living in England for some time, so that he could grow his own coffee and live his own version of the dream. He was telling me that a Swiss NGO has offered to send top-shelf bakers to his cafe, to train up the staff there to make croissants and other such delicious pastries. These pastries would go to the mouths of the NGOs, and was therefore a wonderful real life allegory of the Trouble with NGOs. I do not know the name of this NGO, but it occured to me later that "Let Them Eat Cake" would be an excellent name.

I reflected on all of this as I sat in Cafe Soma this morning, after leaving the gym where I couldn't pluck up the courage to cross those cultural barriers and language barriers and try to talk to the gym coach, try to call the gentleman Gurkha, try to do all of those things which should have been so easy. I sat, drinking good coffee and eating a delicious brownie in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Someone told me that there are literally hundreds of NGOs here whose aim is to clean up the Bagmati river, but none of us have seen a single person actually picking up rubbish from that festering stream of junk. This is among the nicer NGO stories I've heard. That's enough stories for now.