Visa

List of documents you need to prepare and collect to obtain a non tourist visa extension in Nepal:

1- write a letter to the Social Welfare County requesting a visa extension, with the following attachments:
1.1 - application form with picture. you and your dependent.
1.2 - copy of the General Agreement of your NGO with the Government
1.3 - copy of the Project Agreement (the reason why you need a visa)
1.4 - report of the activities of the last year
1.5 - personal report (how did you improve in the last year thanks to the fact you were in Nepal)
1.6 - marriage certificate (if you have a family who needs also a visa)
1.7 - birth certificate (if your family comprehends one or more child)
1.8 - translation in English of points 1.6 and 1.7, done by a certified translator. Please notice you need to submit 1.6 and 1.7 even if it's a visa extension. Like if in the meanwhile, my child decided to change parents.
1.9 -  Assignment letter from your employer
1.10 - CV


2- they will answer with a letter to the Ministry of Women Children and Social Affair. you should pick up the letter and bring it to the ministry, with the following attachments:
2.1 - application form with picture. you and your dependent.
2.2 - copy of the General Agreement of your NGO with the Government
2.3 - copy of the Project Agreement (the reason why you need a visa)
2.4 - report of the activities of the last year
2.5 - personal report (how did you improve in the last year thanks to the fact you were in Nepal)
2.6 - marriage certificate (if you have a family who needs also a visa)
2.7 - birth certificate (if your family comprehends one or more child)
2.8 - translation in English of points 2.6 and 2.7, done by a certified translator.
2.9 -  Assignment letter from your employer
2.10 - CV

3 - The Ministry will answer back to the SWC, and so your visa request can finally go to the Home Affair. A part of printing the umpteenth cover letter just changing the letter head, you should provide:
3.1-  their own application form with picture
3.2 - please copy from point 2.2 to 2.9
3.3 - their own CV format

4- if everything is ok, your folder will pass to the Labor Dpt.
A part of all the documentation, plus some extra pictures, they come to visit you office (for which you have to pay a per diem, even if not even them know why exactly they do the visit) and they interview you, with question like:
Why exactly a Nepalese cannot take your place?
How are you sustaining Nepalese economy and social culture?

then they tells you that from this year you are oblige to do the working permit, for which you have to pay 10,000 rupees (100 USD). Plus other 10,000 fine because you did not do it last year...when it wasn't required. And you pay.

5- Finally, you see land and you arrive to the IMMIGRATION DPT.
You can see the queue from a satellite picture. In the High Season is longer than the Great Wall.
That is because there are a lot of people, expat and tourist, who wants to renew the visa and because the people working at the immigration office are the slowest, nastier, arrogant guys ever.
You cannot apply for a renewal but just at the very last moment...and during this last election there was a 10 days strike which blocked many offices. So many people ran late and the visa expired.
The officers recognize it was a case of force majeure.

And then, smiling, the prepare the fine receipt.

Relativity

It's election time now in Nepal. But not everybody agrees.

There is a party alliance that call for a ten day national strike to prevent the election.
The situation is very complicated, I'm a swot in political analysis and I can't tell which ones are the good and the bad ones. If they are any.
Anyway, we planned a visit in the countryside (we call them 'missions'...jerk...) and to avoid the strike, which in Nepal means that all the streets and road are blocked by a yelling crowd, we went during the weekend.

We drove for seven hours, we spoke with some people, we met an NGO acting in the area, we slept in a tiny freezing room on a harder than wood mattress and, as usual, they brought us to visit a school.
I don't like to visit schools.
Especially if, as in this case, you do not have any plan to work with this particular school.
I don't like it because you always bring with you a high expectation...
"Oh!, the foreigners are coming! We are safe! We will finally have water, electricity, a computer and internet. We will not be isolated in this country side Nepalese mountain freezing village"
Then, I don't like it because they always use children to offer you flowers, to sing or dance.
And finally, I don't like it because generally children are so dirty and poorly dressed that you'd prefer to go to visit HAVING some future plans to develop in the school.

This visit was the compendium of all this, plus a icing on the cake.
The local NGO is implementing in that particular school a project aimed at increase the awareness of the students and the teacher about child and education rights.
Well, not only the children (dirty and poorly dressed) were waiting for us with flowers in a row at lunch time standing under the sun, but then they sang, played and three of them danced.
One of the dancer, one of those whom should be aware of her right as a children and a student, was forced, by one of these teachers formed in child and students rights, to dance even if sick.
For us. The ones who perhaps were coming with money.
Rights relativity.

The sick one is the one on the right almost fainting

  

Before

When I came to meet this man, he was at the end of his career.
Thirty-five years in cooperation. He was one of the first. He worked for everybody and everywhere. He met legendary people like Nyerere and the king of Afghanistan.
In those times only mercenaries and missionaries were living in countries like Congo and Cambodia, and so he was in the interesting situation to be considered one of the only objective eye on the spot.
He wrote for dozens of international magazines and, to make more money, also he started to take pictures.
He had thousand of interesting anecdoctes of this era where real adventures where not sold in internet for groups of 8 or more.
And, of course, he was an alcoholic.
Once, after a very heavy shift in Angola, he decided to take a break and, thanks to some friends, he was embarked on a luxury ship cruise as photographer.
"It was great", he told me, we were in a bar in Arusha.
"As part of the staff I could drink for free. And I was the only staff member who was allowed not to be always sober"
"And the pictures?"
"That part was also ok. But never try to work in the darkroom during a storm. Or to pee standing up. Or the two together. But, my god! what a superb whiskey, almost arrogant! And the champagne...friendly as a curious girl...Ah, the first week was memorable..."
"The first week? What then?"
"I start to vomit blood and I had to stop drinking"
"...yeah...there are more funny things to do than vomit blood"
"Of course, but you I did them before"
And his laugh was superb as a whiskey.

women wisdom

In this job, you have to accept a huge number of invitation:
schools graduation ceremonies, wedding parties of some relative of a cousin of a colleague, also funerals, Hindu festivals, Buddhist mountain climbing, and thousand of lunches or dinners.

I don't know how to explain it, but you always feel uncomfortable.
Once they asked me to do a speech  during a wedding of which I've never met before the groom or the bride. Just because I'm the foreigner, the attraction. Inexplicably, you become the guest of honor wherever you go.
Just because you belong to that part of the world the majority of the people in developing countries thinks is all looking as Hollywood.
It's annoying that the only reason why they want you at their celebration is so vain.
Even if you stink, or you are a pervert, if you are the expat, you will be always invited.

A part of the speeches, and the fact they always serves you first, and they always try to make you TOO comfortable, in Tajikistan was an additional reason to feel bad about those dinners: women were not allowed in.
Once I was invited by Makhtob, a translator, a woman, at her place for dinner. And I didn't see her at all during the evening.
Women were in the other room preparing the dishes, and kids were sent to bring them. In the dining, only men.

I asked about where Makhtob were, and his uncle explain me the reason: "She's not allowed"
I said I had to go to bathroom, a declaration that always create panic in the room (will our inadequate toilet be enough adequate for a foreigner pee?), and I sneak out to find Makhtob, imagining her in a tiny, dark, cold room preparing food.

I found her. She was with other women in their own female party. They were laughing, joking, chatting, and preparing the plate. When  she saw me she was surprised: "What are you doing here?"
"Well, you invited me for dinner...And I didn't know you were not supposed to actually be in the dinner"
"I knows, this is how it works...That's why in Tajikistan, between women we say: If you do not want to see someone, invite him for dinner!"

I don't know if she actually ever realized her gaffe

All men

Like a man

In each project there is a component of gender.
Of course also for the water project.
Women are the one (and child also), fetching water, managing it at home, using it. For cooking, washing, cleaning, take care of babies and all.
A full time job.
So our duty is to stress the communities to bring the attention to the great value women have in the family economy and try to involve them in the decision making for the project activities.
At the end, they are the one fetching water, isn't it normal they discuss where the pipeline should actually pass by?
Isn't it one of the most important achievement to bring equity for all those women and girls not allowed to go to school, married as a child to old men, sold as prostitutes by fathers, killed while still in mother's belly because considered inferiors?

As I told you already, we were living in a camp in the savanna with a Masai community.
The chairman of the village was also the manager of the camp, Isaac a pure Masai. He was helped to go to school, to send his children to school, his community has benefited from all the projects on the NGO: water, renewable energy, agriculture and so on. They were our neighbors, we were living together, we shared food, water, space, drought and floods, elephant incursions, sad and happy moments.
There was also a volunteer in the camp, a girl, Beatrix.
One day she stumble on a root and felt down badly, injuring her ankle. So I gave her my super arnica liniment and she recovered in a blink of an aye.
Few days later, also the Isaac felt down, badly, and because he was wearing the Masai dress, a blanket passed over a shoulder and tied with a belt, he got all the haunch injured.
I wanted to offer him the same liniment and so I addressed him: "Hey Isaac! I want to give you something. Remember when Beatrix felt down the other day..."
Suddenly, offended, he stopped me: "Hey! She felt like a woman. I felt like a MAN".

After five years of gender oriented project.

the camp. 

Justice. Expat heir.

There was a baby girl,
running naked in Chinese's hotel in Lhasa.
Her name was Justice.
Speaking Chinese and English.
Borne in Tibet, from an american couple.
The father was an expat, the mother...a Expat wife.

And then was Kaya,
Borne in Tanzania from a Dutch girl and a Tanzanian boy.
The mother was a beautiful, powerful Dutch girl giving her life to teach a job to the last Arusha's teenagers, the father a Tanzanian putting together slum's boy playing football as a team.

And then is my daughter, Frida. Spanish and Italian parents.She's two now and she had been living in Tanzania, Haiti and Nepal. Visiting Spain and Italy. She speaks three languages, she had been playing whit Masai, her first nanny was Creole.

Sons of expats. What they will do?
They will never have a country, they will learn different cultures.
They will not understand many thing, because they will not belong to a culture. Mr. Bean, for example, Sharuk Han will be more attractive than DiCaprio, maybe.
I they will have jokes we will never understand.

What are we doing to them...or are they the luckiest ones?

The snake

This is a short story to tell, no matter how good are your intentions,
you can always
fail.

There was this spring, down there in Tanzania
and there was a snake living there in the neighborhood.

People was forced to go to that spring because it was the only water source available.
And sometimes people was not coming back.

One day they decided to kill the snake, and so they did.
And water stop flowing from the spring.


This was because the snake, crawling between the rock's cavities, was keeping them clean, from mud and pebbles, giving water a clear path to follow up to the spring.

The village though they were cursed, and they moved in another place.