Dancing Yak and Popcorn!

Steve's Blog, February 27th



Dancing Yak?

 It's about 6:30 here in the morning and I am still waiting for my 6:15 walk-up call. Oh well,  I am getting very used to it. There is no clock in the room -  silly of me to assume that there would be. The cultural dinner was fine,  kind of what you would expect, dancing and music highlighting the Nepal Culture. It was made entertaining by a dancing Yak during the performance. Dinner included the usual suspects: popcorn for an appetizer, wild boar for one of the main dishes and buffalo yogurt for dessert. Makes your mouth water, doesn't it? 

Yesterday we went to the Nepal Association for the Welfare of the Blind (NAWB). This is a braille library that provides books for the blind. There are approximately 75 districts in Nepal, however, at the current time they are able to provide books to only 14 of the districts. The director of the facility indicated that there are approximately 30,000 blind people in the country (sounds low to me) and that they are able to reach only 5,000 people, which is very sad. They have two digital computer machines that were donated by China that allow them to publish 600 pages per hour when the electricity is on. Sadly, in this country, the electricity may be on for as few as four hours per day unless you have a generator which most cannot afford. This is the only library in the nation and its receives little or no support from the government. There are small libraries in the schools but no public libraries in the community. They have a tremendous amount of books, as you will see from a photograph I took, and they are in the process of developing a catalogue system. Good luck with that one!

We are leaving Kathmandu this morning and heading to the town of Pokhara which is approximately 150 miles northwest of Kathmandu. This is a tourist town and is the primary destination for the citizens of Nepal when the go on vacation. It is about a 7 hour bus ride, which should be very interesting and very bumpy! Hopefully, we will not see an accident - it is a tradition in this country that if you are the victim of an accident, the people behind you must make a monetary donation to the victim before they can pass!

I am hopeful that when we get to Pokhara I can get internet service at the hotel.  By the way I am still waiting on my walk-up call.

See you all soon.

Steve Swank is member of the Rotary Club of Des Moines and is on a Rotary sponsored trip to the country of Nepal to view the projects that the club is currently supporting.