A Little Bit Louder

so apparently a couple protesters were arrested and then killed in the last few days. So the city decided to have more protests… “agitators” as they’re called locally, take to the streets in angry mobs and block the major roads… in ktm, this means the ring road, which we’re on the outside of … when that happens, buses don’t run, people don’t venture out if they don’t have to, and the city shuts down.

I didn’t get to see any of it unfortunately, but when we ventured out this afternoon, the city was eerily empty. Streets that are usually packed with traffic, noise, pollution, and people, were for the most part empty. A few people on bikes were around, and lots of pedestrians walking around, probably because there were few taxis and no buses around. Most stores and restaurants all had their protective steel shutters rolled down. I managed to find one open bakery to eat at, but every time there was nose outside, the staff all rushed to the doorway to see if the mob had returned.

Everyone seemed quite nervous as they wandered around trying to buy what they needed from the few stores that were open. If i were to imagine a post apocalyptic world, it would look something like this. On the way home, there were hundreds of people walking along the road as the buses had not started running again. It looked like some sort of mass exodus.

As weird as things were today, there’s a good chance that things will be back to normal tomorrow. Protests happen 2-4 times a month and this sort of thing is perfectly normal. I heard a micro (small bus) hit a motorcycle, and the mob torched the thing within minutes. For some reason i found this really funny… maybe it’s because i’m a jerk… or maybe because the Solomon, the guy telling the story, couldn’t help but laugh himself. The Nepali are pretty good at laughing at how ridiculous some stuff is. I wish I could have seen it myself.

Oh, and I got a Gurka Knife as a present from a former Gurka army soldier. It was pretty cool… though I’m not sure if it was just a nice gift, or if by accepting it, I just agreed to marry one of his daughters?

So I called air canada today to see what it would cost to push out my return date and travel/relax a bit more before returning… $50 I’m told…

a week getting my PADI open water dive cert? Chiang Mai? Hong Kong? Vietnam? Laos? Cambodia? or rush back to the balmy Canadian weather?

Cheap technical clothing? Yes please!

Different:

• Men, women, and children all sit separately. I’ve been thinking of the merits of this… it seems to work really well…
• When it’s prayer time, everyone prays all at once… out loud

Same:

• I still get up late for church
• Cell phones still go off in the middle of service

Sunday was a pretty cool day. We went to one of the slum areas by the river to give some food and found there was a church setup there already. We didn’t feel like going… The morning hadn’t gone well while we were trying to buy supplies, and I was pretty tired having stayed up the night before to prep for speaking at the english service. Mark, Joshua, Bishwas, and I spent some time praying and then decided to go anyway.

They were appreciative of the food we brought for the children. Parents would come running with their kids to get whatever they could. They were all really friendly and surprisingly organized. Each family had their own little plot of land marked out with some makeshift fences and they took pride in keeping the area clean. In fact the street looked cleaner and in much better shape than the streets around the church that is in one of the nicer parts of town.