When I first packed my backpack for my trip all my clothes were fresh, folded and ordered. The freshness inside the pack lasted for about a week before clothes were inevitablely worn a few too many times bewteen washes, and, without enough time to completly dry out in the sticky, monsoon humidity,were back inside my pack a little too hurridly and, with a little less care than that first time back home. Traveling and from work everyday on to the local transport mini buses (or micros as they are afectionately known) has forged a new connection with the interior conditions of my pack. Like me, the husslers on the micro practice ‘wardrobe logic’…. if the door closes, it fits! Read back over my post on public transport in Sri Lanka and you’ll have an idea of how I choose to spend two hours of every weekeday.
I always found feminism to be quite an addictive idea to run away with, and almost cult in its invitation to become obessive and angry about life and society. But you don’t have to be a feminist to see that many big changes need to happen in Nepal to make the lives of women bearable, let alone equal or fair. Sancharika Samuha sees the media as the battle ground for the fight against violence against women, to get education and health services for women, to stop dowry deaths, to change laws so that rapists are actually punished, and to change attitudes like ‘educating a daughter is like watering someone else’s tree’. The list could go on. So many things make me want to scream, to swear and to cry on a regular basis, but my solace is that things are changing… slowly.
And to be a very small part of that change is both exciting and humbling. Though the language barrier means I can’t get my hands on as much as I would like, I am able to edit a lot of the women journalist’s stories, and I’m very involved in a new project to start an online women’s news website which we’re all very excited about.
I’ll write more about the situation here again soon but thought I should explain my lack of posts ASAP. Though apart from being busy, the start of ‘loadshedding’ (rationing power by cutting it out at peak times, apparently due to a power shortage from of lack of rain for hydropower…. what stumps me is that we’re at the end of monsoon and half of Nepal is suffering from floods…) and the many many recurring and frustrating technical problems with the blog have not helped either.
Until next time…..
