Making it work, against all the odds

This is my first work related blog entry as a Kiva Fellow. You can view this blog entry, along with many other Kiva Fellow’s blog entries at the Kiva blog website: http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/

I will be updating this blog over the weekend with some less work orientated stories of my ‘Diddi’, the ferocious Putali at the orphanage and how the numerous village visits have gone.

Walking down Ring Road on Monday (the main road that encompasses the cities of Kathmandu and Patan) it felt as though there had been a mass evacuation and I was the only one who didn’t receive the memo. On a road that is usually so congested with traffic that I allow myself five minutes extra travel time in order to cross it, there was not a single vehicle to be seen and only a scattering of people here and there. The fruit sellers that usually ‘Namaste’ me on my walk into town had vanished and the usual strip of corner shops had pulled down their shutters. Tyre barricades burnt around the city and, as usual, a number of people who got in the way were attacked by protesters. A city-wide ‘bandh’ (a public protest) had been announced and Nepal closed shop for the day.