Nepal News

I'm studying for the GRE, and have learned that my vocab needs some serious expansion! In order to learn new words, I often employ the good ol' method of alliteration, so my apologies for the alliterated title...but as you probably guessed, I just finished studying!

The last few days have been a really exciting time here. In typical fashion I exited the airport to learn of a strike that was imposed by the transportation union for the day. Fortunately this time it was only a one day event in protest of the government not giving money to the family of a taxi driver who was killed last week--not the total public outcry against an ineffective, power-hungry king. After the shock of the place wore off again, I really started to figure out what my role could look like here.

Our ServLife team spent most of the day in meetings today, both just as international staff, as well as together with our national staff. We talked about our dreams for Nepal & our roles here, about tangible needs we can meet, and present opportunities we can jump into. More details on my specific role to come, but for now, it's important to just have the ideas stirring & know how I could be of use when I eventually make it up here.

One quick story...the newspapers here have been following the story of a school killing in Nepal. Now immediately in our minds we think a school killing would be a human killing story--not the case here--rather, it was a snake. And in fact, it's not really the dead snake they're following at all, but the effect the dead snake is having on people. The snake was killed early in the week, and on Wednesday nearly 50 students went unconscious at the school. Hindu priests were brought in to perform a cleansing and purifying act called a puja. Some people even said that the school needed to erect a shrine to the snake god (one of Hinduism's 33 million odd gods). Either way, the school was closed down after the bizarre incident, yet on Thursday, another 25 students went unconscious in their homes. To this point, no scientists have been called in to check the water or air quality. It's both incredibly humorous, and incredibly saddening to follow the story. This article wouldn't even make it in a tabloid in America, yet here it's front page news. So many people here have no hope, no security, and no God to call on in times of need. Instead, they're constantly working to appease the gods, hoping one day the gods may look down with favor at their works.