Royalty

 Today I met royalty! The former queen's sister, Jaya Shah, was just elected to governor of one of the rotary clubs in Kathmandu. I'm not sure if she was actually the queen's sister because they use the word sister when they refer to cousins and other distant relatives. I googled her and it looks like she's distantly related. We met at her house in order to meet her son, Rajeev Shah. He's a politician in the area we want to start some projects. Her house was really fancy and I got to pet a dalmatian for the first time. Her son is one of the white-est Nepali's I've ever met. Which sounds weird, but when he walked in, I thought he was a westerner at first. They both had really good English and for some reason their Nepali was also easier to understand. 

We came with the intent of starting projects to build a bridge, school, and health clinic. Rajeev told us that the region is still very rural and that he's trying to get roads built first. Without the roads, the areas we want to work in are highly inaccessible. There is also the problem of corrupt local politicians. He told us that they won't even let us build anything unless the politicians are given half of the money.  We were planning to go there for a site visit. However, it is so rainy that the rivers cover the roads, there are unpredictable landslides, and the roads are muddy. We will go to the edge of the district, talk to some politicians, and visit some schools that CDRA has already built. The district is Jajarkot, in western Nepal. I have never been that far west, so that'll be interesting. We're going in about 4 days and we'll be gone for about 5 days.

Jaya Shah and her house

Rajeev Shah

Rubita and I borrowed some bikes and went for a long bike ride. It was really nice and pretty flat. We ended up at a tiny village.

If you click on this picture, you might be able to see all the tiny black specks in the air. Those are hundreds of these 2-inch long bugs. They were only over the corn, so something in there is tasty. Rubita said the monsoons make them active. She didn't know why.

Rubita

yours truly (look mum, wearing a helmet!)