Interesting week this one. Following on from G's very sexist comments regarding shopping and clothes last week, we have spent a lot of time this week learning about the lot of Nepali women - not great to be honest! I'd already been aware that they do an awful lot of the hard labour here i.e. humphing huge baskets of greenery, wood, bricks, gravel etc on their backs but I'd assumed most of the men did too. That is the case for the lower castes to a certain extent but in general the men are apparently expected to be the bread winners so they aren't expected to do the manual work. This means that when they get back from their office or whatever, they sit about and drink raksi playing cards while the women look after the family fields, collect water if needed, get firewood etc as well as look after the house, children, cooking washing etc. And this is not just in rural locations but in the city as well!

Women still have a much lower place in society and in the vast majority of homes they serve the husband and any guests, then the male children then the female children before they get anything to eat at all! And if the husband is out they are expected to wait till he is back before they have anything! Only recently even when they were pregnant they only got the leftovers so child and maternal mortality until very recently was about the lowest in the world, and it was only about 50 years ago that the tradition of the wife having to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre was outlawed!

Widows are treated even worse. Once married a woman here is the property of the husband's family and in a lot of ways becomes the slave of the mother in law. Because of the dowry system they have no real rights at all and if the husband dies it is really up to his family what happens to her. They can keep his children and throw her out if they want and often her own family don't want her back as she is just a burden and will bring bad luck. This was brought home to me today when talking to one of our language teachers who is leaving her kids on their own for the first time next week. We asked if her neighbours would help and she said no, since her husband died her neighbours have been horrible and just after he had died one of them had tried to steal all her things! Child marriage of girls still happens in the countryside even though it has been illegal for years.

Recently things have started to change. For example women now have the legal right to inherit property and for the first time children of single mothers can now get citizenship in their mother's name, but it is very slow. So it is all quite shocking that when everyone is so friendly to us and wanting to be associated with us, such a huge part of society is completely marginalised. It does make you feel incredibly lucky to have been brought up in the West. There may still be issues at home but at least we aren't brought up from birth to feel completely worthless!

Anyway, enough of my ranting. Next Monday we are off to a village for a week where we will each stayin a different family's home so we will see Nepali culture at first hand! On the plus side it will be lovely to get out of the city for a while and hopefully see some mountains properly for a change, and I am looking forward to having to speak the language and hopefully getting a bit better, but of course we are all still a bit apprehensive about the potential standard of the facilities! We found out today who is staying with which family. I am with a family of 4 where the head - i.e. man! - of the household's profession is civil servant. They have some goats and an outside toilet and "bathroom" though I have yet to determine if the latter is just a tap! Gordon of course has one up on me since his family look like they are quite rich as they have cows - and that's plural as some families only have cow singular! - as well as an indoor toilet and bathroom- typical! In fact most of the male volunteers seem to have the better facilities! I think it probably is because most families would prefer a male volunteer to stay with them as that will be higher status for them! But if G thinks I'm not going to come round and use his ensuite he's got another think coming! In fact he will probably have a queue of female volunteers wanting to use it!

This week we also met our partners for the first time. My office is really close to where our new flat is - that is all sorted by the way, we move in the week after we get back from the village. We just have to rush around and source bits of furniture etc wherever we can. Anyway,everyone seems really friendly and they all speak very good English which makes life easier, though how I'm going to keep up my Nepali I don't know. G has also had a couple of meetings with the men - and yes they are all men - from the Ministry. The plans they have for things for him to do all sounds very positivewhich is great after the concerns he had from hearing about some of the volunteer's experiences at the Ministry of Education. We will both start work around the 12th May and it sounds like we will both be having to do some district visits so will get to see a lot more of Nepal, and maybe have to do some more village stays. Hopefully i will get the better facilities in future!

We don't get back from the village till 5th May so no update next weekend, but I suspect there will be lots of amusing stories to relate when we get back. Hopefully not to many of them will involve toilets!