'Soul-stirring Mourning'

Doing my darnedest to hold aid workers' feet to the fire of greater awareness, awareness of their profound effects in Nepal and beyond. With all due respect, this link is suggested reading for the foreign cohort intervening at all levels in Nepal. From my humble experience, intervention often supports (directly, and most often, indirectly) a dysfunctional and overpowering status quo and contributes to the endless political bandh (closure) that Nepal endures with prolonged economic strife and deathly suffering.

The country is filled with aid workers rushing in and around to cover for the government and inadvertently funding establishment goons with unmerited entitlements.

With external support and endowments, the ruling gang does not have to be accountable to the general population as they would have to be in a liberal democracy.

The country and majority of her people face crippling economic stagnation and dire poverty, and because of a lack of opportunity, the tragic option that many impoverished citizens turn to is to escape the frying pan of the motherland for the fires of work in faraway nations -- often, nations with dismal human rights records -- emigrant workers from Nepal to The Gulf and Malaysia have virtually no legal status and no representation...a grisly recipe for exploitation and suffering.

A migrant worker's journey ends with a coffin and soul-stirring mourning

#freeNepal, #donordarlings, #Bandh, #Nepal, #exploit, #modernslavery, #YellFire, #AidRiddenNepal, #AidBully

Another day, another bandh

Actually, Nepal has been in an endless #bandh (closure) for the foreseeable past -- a bandh that has crippled the people...a bandh resulting from the political establishment and entitlement gang and their dysfunctional status quo -- a self-serving status quo that is supported and underwritten (knowingly and mostly unknowingly) by foreign agents (including diplomats, I/NGOs, donors, and aid workers).

And then there are the day-to-day bandhs of a restless people wanting change, wanting freedom and making an impact the only strongest way they seem to know how -- shutting everything down that they can in a dysfunctional system. Despite the negative effects on commerce in a depressed economy, the long-running bandh spawned by corrupt officials and the vehicle halting bandh of the day, for me the latter type of Valley bandh is a chance to walk along uncluttered roadways. Yesterday, I made a comparatively quiet stroll to Basantapur from Thamel along narrow and uncrowded passageways.

Bandh or no bandh the ticket takers at the monument sites are always at their stations and ready to collect fees (a money-grubbing habit they learned from foreign advisers) that never seems to trickle back to the area for which entrance is gated.

One astonishing discovery du jour was Seto Machindranath Temple...a compound behind a wall that collapsed off a main thoroughfare near Ason Chowk. Just behind the crumbled wall the glorious temple can now be seen; otherwise, it had been hidden from street view. I have passed by this very busy area many times without the slightest notion Seto Machhindranath Temple was awaiting discovery there.

The temple is dedicated to one of Kathmandu's preeminent deities, Seto Machhindranath (similarly, Patan has its  famous Rato Machhindranath). Except damage to the minor retaining wall at its perimeter, the temple is fine and intact post-quake.

Below are photos from today of this mystical site revered by locals.

#FreeNepal, #DonorDarlings, #Corruption, #Bandh