Festivals and Faces!
on Sarah G in Cambodia (Cambodia), 22/Mar/2011 13:32, 34 days ago
February and March brought two of the major festivals in the Nepal Hindu calendar…A few weeks ago, we witness thousands of folk (100,000 the media estimated), tramping past our office window and flocking to the huge Pashupatinath temple just a little down the road. They were heading to join the celebration of the Hindu festival of Shiva Ratri– The great night of Lord Shiva, destroyer of evil - we were lucky enough to be opposite the holiest Hindu shine glorifying Shiva.At the sun fell lower over the Kathmandu foot hills we headed out to join the revelers– Shiva Ratri is a day when ‘intoxicating substances’ become legal for the day. Sadus (some naked) from all over the Hindu world who, just a week before set up camp in the temple complex, distribute (i)licit substances freely – its more like Hindu Glastonbury than your average day at the temple. The reason said is that Lord Shiva liked to dabble and hey, it’s his day!The atmosphere was akin to bonfire night; a night festival it really is, as the sun ducked behind the hills the feeling was riotous– gaggles of men chanting, bonfires, blessings and butter lamps. As darkness descended we decided it wasn’t the place for good ‘Nepali’ girls like ourselves (!) so headed home. Not before stopping off at our local shine; again a huge bonfire, hundreds of flickering butter lamps and whole families making offerings and hoping for some of Shiva’s blessings.Almost a month later– Holi, the festival of colour; it could be mistaken for the festival of water bombs – the week before it was difficult to avoid the occasional soaking from a wayward balloon lobbed from a rooftop. The excitement started early; kids shrieking on rooftops at 7.30, the women opposite taking greatplease in rubbing red powder all over my face - I was covered with paint by eight. Our little white face were like wandering targets as we ventured through our local neighborhood; but at least we could provide significant amusement of those lining the sides of the road and the roof tops above, justwaiting to adorn us with their chosen colour. The day continued as it had begun – water bomb, green, red, waterbomb, blue, red, pink, silver, yellow….as the end of the day brought the end of the festival, I wasn’t sure if I would describe our number as a beautiful spectrum of color or a resembling a muddy rainbow…The day of Holi is the day when the caste system breaks down, you can throw colour and anyone with no retribution. Caste is pretty important here and is indicated from your surname. Perhaps then surprisingly, I don’t note the divide between rich and poor as starkly as I did in Cambodia. Of course, there are super rich Nepali people and the spectrum of the rest of the population heads down from there, but, it seems to me the whole country is poorer.The stats support my insight, with the UN ranking only Afghanistan in a worst position in the whole of Asia, according to its‘development indices’. Some of the reasons are obvious it is hard to develop a good economy when you can’t supply a consistent stream of power to your capital city, even harder to provide basic services in remote locations days walk away amid some distant mountain plateau, putting in more roads is super costly and only benefit small the number who live there.But then there are the less obvious reasons. Like Cambodia, Nepal has suffered its own recent and internal conflicts; between 1990 and 2006 Nepal underwent considerable turbulence in an attempt to embrace more open political systems. From 1996 the country faced internal armed conflict when the Maoists launched an insurgency. In 2001 there was a royal massacre in which the king and other members of the royal family were killed and in 2002 the new king declared a state of emergency, sacked the government and assumed direct rule.After ten years of civil war, three weeks of demonstrations in 2006 brought an end to the King's rule and the restoration of Parliament. This ended a conflict that had claimed more than 13,000 lives, displaced 40,000 people and inflicted considerable physical, psychological, social and economic damage on these Himalayan people. The impact of this conflict is not obvious to me, but now and again you notice; last week the government declared no money feature a picture of the king would be legal tender; in our household at panic ensued– empty your piggy bags, getting sorting and quickly change the money before its useless.The years of insurgency slowed down growth and development to a degree where some remote regions in Nepal saw a regression in terms of food security, participation in national issues and availability of basic services. Five years later one-third of the population still lies below the poverty line, the Nepalese have the lowest life expectancy in Asia and the largest share of undernourished children.