Monkey Business

 It seems everyone has a gig these days, doesn't it? I mean truly - the guy at the local pharmacy wants you to buy a certain aspirin because he got that one for free from his buddy who made a deal with a Chinese company that was trying to unload it because it was about to expire.  The beggar at the stupa puts her baby in your face while cooing, "Papa, papa, buca" - the baby's got to eat, papa - as if I was the father (and I'm pretty sure I'm not) and I were responsible for feeding it!  And the driver of the 3-wheel bus who insists he can take more passengers even though you just saw a tire blow off a similar craft two blocks down the street that had half the number of people stuffed inside.  Or the shopkeeper in Thamel who wants to sell you a backpack for 8,000NPR until you tell her you want the Nepali price because you work and live here and then get the same thing for 4,000NPR....We call this monkey business. And there's no shortage of it here in Nepal.

Now I don't mean to suggest that the people aren't welcoming, warm, kind and generous... they're just trying to make a living and in this area of the world the living is tough.  Can you blame them?  Doing laundry is an all day affair - and how many of us do it with a smile on our face even though we have the water, the power and the technology to do it with the push of a button?
 This week we learned that there's some monkey business of a different kind taking place within the healthcare sector.  Medical products - specifically vaccines and syringes have shown up with forged paperwork to falsify ownership suggesting that the supplier obtained the goods from an unreliable source.  A truckload of condoms arrived - from an organization who shall remain nameless lest any of us question how our tax dollars are being spent - 5 mm larger than is appropriate for the Nepali population indicating that something is awry in the procurement of these items.  [Who'd have thought that such personal anatomic data actually exists allowing for objective comparison of men around the globe?] And tens of thousands of contraceptive products ranging from the single-use type to the long term implantable are arriving in quantities so great that if used according to package instructions without waste could bring the growth of the population of Nepal to a screeching halt faster than a stupa monkey could snatch a banana from your hip pocket.

Fortunately for me, I have some terrific colleagues - native Nepalis who can teach me the ropes like Suresh who studied and received his PhD in Public Health in Canada.  He and his lovely wife Asa invited me to their home last weekend where we went trekking in the hills around their home - despite the morning's monsoon, the weather cleared up as they predicted in time for a great hike following a great traditional Nepali lunch which included dahl bhat - lentils and rice (among a smorgasbord of other assorted local delicacies).

From the top of the hill, we met a number of young buddha women who, at the young age of 20-something have made a commitment to live solitary lives in a buddhist monastery in this rather remote place.  And if you are contemplating this type of lifestyle for a change of pace, you may want to review some of the basic rules that you would need to adhere to while preparing yourself.  Of course the list is by no means comprehensive as there were other more descriptive postings on the compound that support the themes seen here.  And, yes, in case you thought I misspoke, these are women - shaving the head is another part of the preparation for life as a buddhist.

 Yes, it's all around us - from the stupas to the merchants to the washroom, at the taxi stand and even ... or should I say and most certainly at the ministry.  It's monkey business and as benign as it may sound, it can be rather painful if you find yourself on the wrong end of the deal.

By the end of May, Nepal will find itself at a crossroads - the government that is in power has been promising the people a new constitution for 2 years now with a deadline of May 28th.  It's hard to know exactly what will happen if the Maoists who came to power after a civil war cannot present a new constitution by month end, but from here, you can feel the pressure that they are under.  Key government and ministry positions that have been unfilled for months were filled just the other night - 12 or more of them! Fortunately a new Minister of Health is among them.  It's too soon to know what this means for the ministry, the constitution or the stability of Nepal, but I can assure you that you will be among the first in the western world to know if this will be the precursor to real change - or just monkey business as usual.  All the best from Kathmandu.