Fight for Your Right

It’s been awhile since my last post. On August 24, a few drops of tea spilled on my laptop keyboard, instantly disabling the arrow keys and gradually spreading up to the Shift key. With the computer recognizing the Shift key as constantly being held down, I couldn’t enter my password and, lacking access to an external keyboard, couldn’t log-in. Unable to restart the computer (because I was still signed in), I let its battery run out before trying to reboot. But now the computer wouldn’t even turn on. I’d have to go to Kathmandu (which, for reasons I’ll explain, wasn’t and still isn’t possible for me), and even there the prospect of getting it fixed was uncertain.

Two weeks later, while playing Sudoku on my iPhone, the screen suddenly faded to black. With music still playing audibly, I figured it was a simple display malfunction and could be fixed. During a lull in the bandhs, I visited the bazaar, but the cell phone shops didn’t have the parts to repair an iPhone 4 and weren’t sure they’d be able to get them. With no computer, phone, camera, books, or music, and no certainty of getting them back any time soon, I began to despair.

I traveled to another bazaar to try my luck there. An electronics store salesman pointed me to the only person he thought might be able to repair a Mac. After sitting for two full days with the computer technician while he disassembled and reassembled the internal components without success and scoured the internet for potential solutions, we succeeded in jumpstarting the computer by shorting the power pads. He wired an external power button for me, and with the purchase of an external keyboard, I had a working computer again. The verdict on the phone is still out.

On top of my electronics issues, following a productive first month and a half, the past two months at site have been excruciatingly slow. Because of relentless bandhs, I’ve been unable to bring in over a hundred Moringa oleifera trees from a nearby district. I’ve also been gearing up for a community-wide improved cookstove training, but the recipients have been extremely slow to make the bricks. We’ve had our Peace Corps Close of Service Conference postponed twice (originally planned for the beginning of September, it will now take place at the end of October) and we’ve had to reschedule our boy’s camp three times, the past two times when Peace Corps’ refused to grant us travel due to safety concerns. Each time these events have been pushed back, it’s left me with a week of unexpected free time, which is already in good supply in a rural village. With less than two months left in Nepal, I have neither the time nor energy to commit to devising new projects. I came back after the earthquake with specific goals and expectations—to discard these in favor of impromptu projects seems nonsensical. So I, along with most of the volunteers in my group, have been in a holding pattern.

A few nights ago, I was complaining to my host brother about my lack of productivity—these days, I said, I just wake up, do laundry, eat, and sleep. Why should I stay here? I asked. He laughed, and replied, now you’re truly Nepali. Suddenly, it dawned on me that I’ve been facing the same want of opportunity that drives so many young men to go abroad. And indeed, in two more months, I will leave for the United States.

While I’ve been bored at site, Nepal has rarely seen so much excitement. On September 20, the country made history by promulgating its constitution by a vote of 507/25, with some assembly members abstaining. The historic day was celebrated by many, but some were unsatisfied with the result. Minority and ethnic groups, including the Madhesi, Tharu, Limbu, Magar, and Sherpa, have been demanding proportional political representation and states drawn along ethnic lines. There are new calls for protesting bandhs and conciliatory talks almost daily.

The bandhs in Nepal’s Terai, the southern flatlands, have now passed the fifty-day mark, and the organizing leaders are continuing to call for them to intensify. Over 40 people have died in clashes between police and protesters in Nepal’s southern belt, including an incident in which police were set alightand hacked apart with sickles and axes. Many of these areas are under police-enforced curfews that prohibit movement and assembly during most of the day. The bandhs have struck anenormous blow to the financial system; some have estimated that these bandhs have been worse for Nepal’s economy than the April earthquake. India, who “noted” rather than “welcomed” Nepal’s new constitution as other countries did, has begun to enforce a sort of blockade along the border, choking off the flow of essential goods into Nepal. Between the earthquake and bandhs, schools have lost over 50 academic days out of the year; an estimated 3.2 million students have been kept out of school by bandhs.

While bandhs have been crippling to many of Nepal’s industries, people are still able to travel (though with some risk) by night bus, motorbike, police escort, and airplane—all of which Peace Corps Volunteers in Nepal are banned from using. In other words, while the rest of the country is making do and muddling through, we have been stranded in our districts or, in a few cases, in Kathmandu.

Peace Corps Nepal has said that their hands are tied, that they are doing everything they can, and that they are “hopeful” the protests will end soon. This seemingly bottomless hope may have succored their consciences over the past fifty days, but it’s done little for volunteers in the field who have been waiting for permission to travel anywhere beyond the nearest bazaar. This wait-and-see, helpless-hoping-that-things-improve attitude has been completely ineffective as a strategy, if it could be called a strategy at all. Nepal has experienced over a thousand bandhs in the past five years; like it or not, they are a part of life here, and Nepalis make do. So far all Peace Corps Nepal has done is prove that when you tie your own hands there is remarkably little you can do.

This past week, Peace Corps’ ineptitude came to a head when they forced us to cancel our boys’ camp, citing U.S. Embassy recommendations that the Terai roads were not safe. They ignored our information from transportation offices and locals who without incident had been traveling the particular road we needed to travel; furthermore, recent news reports had been localized to clashes between police and protesters in the eastern part of the country around Kathmandu, neither in the Midwest where we live nor along the road we were proposing to travel. That a bandh had been declared throughout all of the Terai—even though no one was enforcing it here—was enough for Peace Corps Nepal to shut down our travel and call off the camp we’d been planning since February. We are still waiting until the so-called bandh, which is not an issue in our area, is “called off.”

Apparently, it is not Peace Corps but the U.S. Embassy who determines whether it is safe for volunteers to travel in Nepal. This was never indicated during our training, nor has staff mentioned it until this past week. Despite being prohibited from entering both the U.S. Embassy (except for the earthquake, when Peace Corps Volunteers took over many of its essential tasks to keep things running smoothly) and Phora Durbar, the “American Club” that houses a pool, commissary, and playing fields, we are nevertheless under the Embassy’s jurisdiction when it comes to safety and security. We get all the restrictions and none of the perks of U.S. government employees working abroad.

Instead of supporting volunteers in the work they do, Peace Corps Nepal has assumed the role of overprotective foster parents. Even though we signed all manner of waivers absolving Peace Corps of responsibility for our safety, we are bound to its strict rules and subject to disciplinary action and administrative separation should we break them, say by riding a motorcycle or traveling at night. Does your employer place restrictions on how you travel?

Safety, Peace Corps says, is its number one concern. If that’s the case, perhaps the safest thing is for Peace Corps to cease to exist. There will always be some risk in sending Americans into developing countries with volatile politics, temperamental tectonics, inadequate infrastructure, and a host of other perils. At some point, Peace Corps needs to take its hands off the wheel and leave it to the volunteers to determine the risks they are willing to take. Otherwise, it risks the tarnishing of its image by those who ought to be champions of its cause.