Here's a thing: Last week, in the district of Lalitpur near where we live and work a Dalit woman was accused of witchcraft as a few people had died in a neighbouring village. She was forced to eat her own excrement and was beaten by a crowd of about 15. This was of course reported to the police but they did absolutely nothing, which is quite usual here. Her accuser, a senior school teacher, thus continues to be at large and continues to teach! As the victim was a Dalit, i.e. the lowest caste (she would have to be, a high caste person would never have been accused, let alone beaten) my colleagues and other support organisations fought for some sort of justice using the usual Nepali process, i.e. they held a bandh and blockaded the local government office until their demands were agreed. I still don't think anything has been done and the victim is still in hiding. Living in the city with all the tourists and nice restaurants and shops it is easy to forget that we are basically living in a medieval country where superstition and brutal practices are still normal and rule of law is just a nice idea! Culture of impunity as the human rights organisations keep banging on!

Anyway, this leads on to 21st March, International Human rights day, when my organisation showed how creative it can be (!) and held a protest march! Gordon and I went to show support and despite having lived here a year I made my usual mistake worrying we would be late but of course when we arrived just after it was supposed to start there was all of about 20 people there and it took a further 2 hours before they got going! I've no idea what the chanting was as we were walking, or what the leaflets I was handing out said but it was all quite jolly and there were some nice photos in the paper the next day. Doubt it will make the slightest difference though as there is some sort of protest march here every other day, and it was certainly not quite on the scale of the G20 protests, but I suppose going on a protest march is one of those things you've just got to do when in Nepal!

Another thing you have to do while in Nepal is go on a trek so G and I have signed up for one starting next weekend i.e for a week over Easter or what would be Easter if this were a Christian country, but here is New Year! Not quite on the Everest scale but we thought we'd try a gentler one to see if we like it, so we will only be going up to about 3500m. I am certainly dubious as while its not quite camping, it will be much more basic accommodation than we would usually expect on holiday though G has checked and beer and pizza will be available at most places we will be staying! It still doesn't sound much like a holiday to me - getting up at the crack of dawn every day, no good food or wine, no swimming in fact freezing cold most of the time, but at least I managed to persuade G to let me have a porter so |I don't have to humph all my own stuff up the hills! And it should hopefully be beautiful scenery so we should have some nice photos for the next blog!

Though the weather may be entertaining. The winter drought has now seriously broken after over 5 months with no rain and we've had some cracking thunderstorms in the last couple of weeks. This of course will be falling as snow in the mountains so I'm taking my ear muffs.

The first volunteer from our intake has just left. Marri was also with my partner, NNDSWO, and I don't think she ever intended to stay for more than a year but at least G and I weren't the first to fall at the wayside. Another couple are leaving in May but I think most of the rest of us should make it through to Christmas at least. But we'll have to see if we survive this trek first!