Five weeks and counting...

I have been back in the states now for five weeks. It has been good to be back, see friends and eat great food! I have been lonely, missing the life and energy of life in Nepal. Upon returning, I set upon the task of securing transportation, housing and employment. So far I have only knocked one of the three out, but the easiest one! I purchased a 98 Honda Accord a couple weeks ago. This makes getting around MUCH MUCH easier! The car has been great, and should last me quite a while. I was really hoping to jump right into work as well. Avnet, the company that I worked at before is a great place and I was hoping to work with them again. Thus far I haven't been hired, but had an interview on Tuesday. Many of you have asked me about my plans and time in the US. I AM planning on staying in the states for a while, a year or two. I will be working a full-time job, and also furthering relationships with Nepalis in the area. I have also been introduced to the Bhutanese Refugee community in Colorado. Many Bhutanese refugees are being resettled in CO from refugee camps in Nepal. This is a great opportunity to meet them and help them and care for these people who have just come to the states from very depressed living situations in Nepal. So, ministry continues, even here! I have had opportunity to speak Nepali and that has been so great. I don't want to lose any of the language that I worked so hard to get! Your prayers for my job and finances are greatly appreciated. Also for good housing. I would like to room with some other people, but can't commit now without money, and don't know many people looking for room mates. Thanks all for your support, it truly is a blessing to me! Feel free to call or email me!

Catchin' up

My flight from Kathmandu to Karachi, Pakistan was great. As we were landing, I was looking out my window. I thought how dry and hard this land looks. I thought about how hard it would be to eek a life out of the dry dust. Islamabad was much like Nepal at the airport. Hundreds of people milling about, some waiting for passengers, some waiting for work, others just watching it all. I got to the guest house just before the power came back on. Brownouts are so common in Asia. I went to bed, knowing my breakfast would be served at 5:00am. At 4:00 there was a knock on my door. "Breakfast, ma'am." I told the man that it was 4:00 and I was not going to eat until 5:00. He kept knocking. Finally, there was a call on the room phone. It was the night manager, who spoke decent English. He told me that today Pakistan was going to change to daylight savings time, so it was in fact after 5:00. I got to the airport and boarded my flight to Gilgit. The flight was amazing! The plane flies low, in between huge mountains, I spent the whole time taking pictures! Gilgit was very warm. An oasis. The hills surrounding the city are brown and dry. Gilgit is very green and many trees can be seen. I spent the majority of my time in Gilgit sick. I think I brought something with me from Nepal, but also picked something up there in Pak. An Asian cocktail! I was able to go see Hunza, the valley that first fell on the hearts of my friends and our base. A friend and I went to a fort and got to see so many beautiful old women from Upper Hunza. They were so sweet and funny. They were showing us traditional dances and made us wear their hats. Pakistan is so very different from Nepal. There aren't many restaurants in Pakistan where a woman can go, let alone go alone. I spent 3 weeks in Gilgit, but never went to the market. It was great to SEE Pakistan, put my feet into that land and pray for it. It will be great to better understand what is happening and how to pray. NEXT STEPS I am back in Colorado looking for a job, a car and an apartment. I would greatly appreciate your prayers for this. I want to get settled and feel like I am "home" thus far, I am still feeling like I am traveling. I will keep you updated on that. Check my new photos, I uploaded a pile of them so you can see what I saw.

Another Article on Nepal's Sex Tourism

From treks to sex

Jan 24th 2008 | KATHMANDU From The Economist print edition

Is a new sort of thrill-seeker heading for Nepal?

“I CAN only dance when I'm drunk,” confides Srijana, a 20-year-old employee of the Pussy Cat Bar and Shower, a tavern in Thamel, Kathmandu's main tourist hangout. A few slurps from a customer's glass later and she mounts a small stage. There, to whoops from a few tipsy locals, she sheds most of her clothes and gyrates to a Hindi pop tune. Dangling above her is the Damoclean sword included in the bar's name: a silver shower nozzle, positioned to spray flesh-revealing water on a dancer below.

Such gimmicks are common in Thamel's bars, where competition for lascivious males is fierce. Until a few years ago Nepal had no obvious sex industry. There are now an estimated 200 massage parlours and 35 “dance bars”, such as the Pussy Cat, in Thamel alone—with over 1,000 girls and women working in them. Many sell sex. In the Pussy Cat, another dancer admits to turning tricks, for 1,800 rupees ($28).

That is a tidy sum in Nepal, South Asia's poorest country. It is much more than Nepali women are paid in India's flesh-pots—to which over 5,000 are trafficked each year, according to the UN. But the dancers in Thamel are chasing a richer sort of Indian: tourists. And their government seems to be encouraging them. In an advertisement for “Wild Stag Weekends”, the Nepal Tourism Board offers this advice: “Don't forget to have a drink at one of the local dance bars, where beautiful Nepali belles will dance circles around your pals.”

In a country with a rich tradition of dance, where paying for sex is illegal, this might be harmless innuendo. But not everybody thinks so. During the recently-ended civil war, Nepal's Himalayan tourism industry collapsed. Some activists think that sex tourism is replacing it. According to John Frederick, an expert on South Asia's sex trade, “Ten years ago the sex industry was underground in Nepal. Now it's like Bangkok, it's like Phnom Penh.”

The war, which put much of rural Nepal under the control of Maoist insurgents, has increased the supply of sex workers. Srijana is from the poor and still violent district of Siraha in southern Nepal. She was widowed there two years ago, and left an infant son to come to the capital. Yet she is remarkably cheerful—perhaps because she is drunk, and the shower is not working.

Interesting Article on Cabin Restaurants!

NEPAL: Cabin waitresses subjected to sexual exploitation KATHMANDU, 20 June (IRIN) - "I constantly wish I could be run over by a car and killed," said Rekha Biswakarma, a traumatised waitress, who works at a cabin bar in the capital, Kathmandu. She was raped by a client and threatened by her employer to keep quiet or lose her job. Her colleagues told the 20-year-old to forget the incident, warning that she would never be able to afford the court costs and had no evidence to prove the crime. But forgetting such an ordeal has proven impossible. Biswakarma has tried to commit suicide several times but stopped herself for the sake of her five-year-old daughter. Two years ago, she and her husband arrived in the capital to escape their impoverished lives in Makwanpur District where they constantly suffered food shortages for lack of income. They depended on her husband's work for a local farm and barely made US$1 a day. Her situation deteriorated in Kathmandu after her husband left her and disappeared. She had some friends working in the cabin restaurants and they offered to find her a job as a waitress but did not tell her what the job really entailed; she only found out when she was sexually abused and raped in her first week. Dangerous jobs Cabin bars, established during the mid-1990s in the capital as part of the entertainment sector, have since become venues for forced prostitution, according to local NGOs. Each bar has separate and private cabins where the waitress has to "entertain" the clients to encourage them to spend lavishly on alcohol and food. The waitresses, aged between 15 and 25, are mostly migrant workers from the villages in nearby poor districts such as Lalitpur, Dhading, Nuwakot, Sindupalchowk, Kavre and Dolakha. Most of them are barely literate, divorced, internally displaced persons and/or victims of domestic violence, according to a local NGO, Saathi, which runs a project creating a safe environment for the cabin-bar waitresses. "They should shut down all these bars or all the girls will keep on getting sexually exploited openly and without any control," said Biswakarma. She is one of thousands of waitresses in the capital who suffer severe forms of sexual exploitation, including molestation, rape and violence, at the hands of both clients and bar owners. According to the Nepal Restaurant Entrepreneurs Association, there are more than 20,000 waitresses working in 800 cabin restaurants and bars in Kathmandu. "Their stories have always remained under-reported in the media and their situation remains grossly neglected by the government," said Uma Lama, an activist from Saathi. One of the reasons why the waitresses do not get enough police and legal protection is because they are often portrayed as commercial sex workers in the local tabloids, she explained. Lama, who has worked on protecting the cabin waitresses for eight years, says she has met scores of women like Biswakarma who have been raped or sexually abused. Most continue with their jobs because they have no alternative. Re-training programmes "A lot of my friends became sex workers after they were raped, abused and forced to have sex with clients because they felt there was nobody to protect them and it was better to agree and make a better income," said Sabita Chettri, a former cabin waitress. Chettri was rescued by Saathi and provided with temporary shelter and training as a masseuse; she now works at Himalayan Healers [see: http://www.himalayanhealers.org/], an eminent spa centre, which is also helping to provide jobs to sexually exploited waitresses. Saathi has been helping 200 waitresses through its Gainful Employment Programme, which started in 2007, and trains them in security work, clinical care assistance, care-giving, massage, painting, driving, tailoring and as beauticians. Private companies have also joined up with Saathi to provide them with jobs after their training. Recently, the NGO helped to rescue 55 waitresses, 32 of whom were younger than 16. "The crimes against these women are so horrendous inside the cabins that we are often in tears when these victims tell us their stories," said Sulaksana Rana, an activist from Saathi, who also works as a counsellor. "Most are extremely vulnerable as they lack protection and are very poor and have to survive on the sympathy of the clients, who are ruthless and dangerous," Rana explained.

Last week in Kathmandu. It is coming to an end, and I am sad. It is hard knowing that some of the people I have met I won't be able to see again. I feel the weight of responsibility, to connect with these people, and continue to love and support them from the other side of the planet. Some friends are illiterate, and unable to email, and can't afford to call. Most of my good byes have been said. Most of the tears wiped and gifts exchanged. This year has gone so fast. but it is over and time to move on. Tapai ko nam ke ho = Aap ke naam kya hai Unable to get into China has changed my plans for the next three weeks. I will head to Pakistan, where some friends are working. I am excited to go and see them, and to see a new place. I am REALLY bummed that I can't go to China. I wanted to badly to go and see some friends there. There were some Nepalis in particular that I wanted to connect with. The Chinese Embassy has changed their rules for applying for visa, so I am unable to go this time. Pakistan will be an adventure! I know it will be so different and difficult for me. I am used to Nepali culture and can, for the most part, switch back and forth from American culture to Nepali. I am comfortable with my role as a single, white woman here. This will all change in Pak. I will be able to understand many things since Urdu and Nepali are similar, but won't be able to respond. Maybe that is for the best, since I probably shouldn't be talking anyway. I will have a pretty steep learning curve I am sure. Please keep me in prayer. I leave Nepal on 31 May and leave Pakistan on 22 June. thanks all!

The End Is Near...

So hard to believe that my "ministry" time in Nepal is drawing to a close. This is my last week of official ministry. The following weeks will be spent with friends and surrogate families. It will be a nice time to say good-bye to so many who have been such a blessing! My time in the village has been so great. I am sad to be leaving, and I know this weekend at church will be filled with lots and lots of tears. Knowing that leaving a place means maybe never seeing people again is hard. I don't know when I will see them again. So many foreigners come to Nepal, make great relationships and then forget about the people. I am committed to not be one of those people. I want to stay in contact with them as much as I can. I want to help them, encourage them and see them released into what God is doing in their country and their lives. NEXT steps... From here I head to Xining China, to visit friends and hang out. I am excited to see a new place, to reunite with old friends and meet some new ones. I have my tickets arranged to a near by city, but haven't gotten the ones to Xining yet. A friend there in China is arranging them for me. I also still need to apply for a visa. Keeping that in your prayers will be such an encouragement to me. Many of you know that the current situation in Tibet is tense. I am hoping that Tibet will reopen to foreigners and I can go to Lhasa while in China. I hope so. From China I will head to Pakistan. I am going to go up north to where some friends have been working for about 7 years. I have arranged my Pak visa, and tickets home from Pakistan. The edges of the puzzle are put together, but I have a few pieces in the middle that need placed. I am praying that either a team currently in country or some friends who are headed to Colorado will take one of my bags back with them. This would surely lighten my load, and allow me to bring a few more gifts for friends to China and Pak. Also, I need to arrange transportation to Pak from China. This is the last flight that needs arranging. Please be keeping these things lifted up in prayer. THANKS SO MUCHIE

Six weeks and counting....

It is so hard to believe that my time here is drawing to an end. Six weeks is all that remains of this Nepali adventure. I am blessed to yet again have been in Nepal during such an important and significant time in its history. Being here during the Constituent Assembly elections has been exciting. Watching Nepalese take their future into their own hands; seeing believer’s take responsibility for voting; demonstrations, demonstrations, demonstrations. Loud speakers shouting catchy slogans and bashing their opponents. These have all been very visible aspects of the elections. And they happened, PEACEFULLY! It was so surprising. While I have been in Nepal, the elections were postponed twice, and many thought it might also get postponed a third time. Many were worried about violence and retaliation, but the elections were peaceful. The people of Nepal have decided to let the Maoist Party write their constitution. They have decided that communistic ideology is the best ideology. I can’t say I am happy about it, or that I am not afraid of the future of mission and Christianity in Nepal, but I am happy that the people have voted. From the frying pan into the fire: I am hoping to head to Lhasa, Tibet in June, to see the Potala Palace and then go to Xining, where I have some friends studying. I will spend about a week and a half there, seeing friends from my school in 1999 and also some Nepalese and Pakistanis that are training and staffing there. I am excited to go to a new place, and to see friends. Please be praying for my time. The news is rife with stories of Tibetan refugees and Chinese oppression. I want to see this land, but need to be careful as well. I want to go to Tibet directly, but the area is currently closed to foreigners. After China, I will go to Pakistan to see other friends. I am so excited to go and see them in their home and ministry. I will be applying for a Pakistani Visa this week, as well as filing for an extension to my Nepali visa for the last month I am here. Please continue to pray for me and my upcoming travels. THANKS!