So I was walking back to my guesthouse yesterday and there was this giant cow sitting on the sidewalk….but no seriously it was HUGE. I had to walk out into the street just to pass by. I wish I had a picture but you’ll just have to take my word for it I guess.
Anyway, it’s been awhile since I posted, which is largely the result of my busy schedule the last few weeks. My translator Swastika started on July 1, and since then we’ve been interviewing everyday at the Kathmandu and Lalitpur offices of BDS, as well as Cruise Aid, which is one of the community-based organizations under the Federation of Gender and Sexual Minorities of Nepal (founded by BDS). She’s been terrific- as a recent graduate of social work here in Kathmandu, she already has experience interviewing and translating, and is aware of some of the obstacles I’ve faced to obtaining a substantive interview (like getting people to voice their criticisms). She did her field work as a student at BDS as well, and so is familiar with the organizational structure of the offices, as well as a number of staff members. She has also become a good friend of mine since we spend most work days together now- it’s so great having someone to show you around and help you find places when you don’t know where you’re going! Between my host sister Tara and Swastika, I actually have gotten to know Kathmandu pretty well, which has made things a lot more comfortable for me here.
Since I haven’t done much tourist-ing in the last 2 weeks, I just tell you a little more about how my work is going. I’ve come up against a couple obstacles this month as I’ve gotten deeper into my case study. The most obvious is that since I don’t speak Nepali, I often miss conversations about events or programs being held at the various offices that would be helpful for my project. I typically need to ask very directly if I can go to an event because the staff I am in contact with don’t seem to think that it’s the sort of thing I’m interested in, and if I’m not even aware that anything is going on then I usually end up missing the event (this week it was the human rights training for staff members). I think that I’ve made it clear that I would like to observe the workshops, however, and so this week I think I will get the opportunity to sit in on one.
The second major obstacle I’ve been facing is the absence of a clear paper trail on a lot of the programs that they have done over the last 9 years. Whereas we tend to document everything obsessively, the reports here at BDS are scattered through various locations, and I need to give a heads up in advance if there is any report I’m interested in looking at since it takes a while to track them down. At this point I have some documents and know I’m missing a couple more, but on the whole it’s hard to know whether there are any major reports that I should have that I don’t even know exist (the unknown unknowns anybody?).
The staff at BDS, however, is very accommodating, and when I figure out that there’s something I need to that I don’t have they are happy to help me out. As my key informant Pradeep warned me at the beginning of my project, doing any kind of work in Nepal requires a high degree of personal initiative, otherwise nothing will get done. With Swastika at my side, however, it is much easier to let them know what it is I’m interested in, and so my case study has definitively sped up considerably. So far I’ve done about 30 interviews, with about 20-25 to go in the next couple weeks. Whew! Needless to say I’ll be busy, but not too busy to enjoy a few days with my supervisor Magda when she comes to do her site visit this week! I already have a few fun things planned for us, so hopefully the weather cooperates and I have some more pictures to share with you next week!
P.S. I'll add some photo's in a few days...right now it seems that the blog is suffering "technical difficulties."
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