Spending the day with Nilan and Suman

Women are walking to and from the temple near by the office with small plates of sacrificing gifts and candle lights. We meet at the office, Nilan, Suman and I. The time is 6.25 am, and we pack our bags and start our journey Taiwa to have an IHL dissemination. It's a bandha (political strike), only a few bikes and motor cycles are on the road, so we start walking.




30 minuets - tops!
Are you sure it only takes 30 minuets?, I ask when we have walked for 15 min and are hardly out of the city center. Nilan and Suman have insured me that it is not so far ever since we started walking, but I have my doubts. Eh, actually, we have never walked here before, so we don't know, Nilan says, as we pace along the quiet streets of Kathmandu's outskirts. The hour and 40 min we use to come there gives us though very good time to prepare mentally for the task and gives a good energy in our threesome of IHL dissemination first-timers.




Autonomy + Youth = can it work?
We arrive Taiwa Youth Circle only 30 min late and of course not everyone from their groupe have arrived, so it gives us 10 min to make the last preparations. As this is a Red Cross Youth Circle, we start with a round of feares and expectations. I find this method a good one to make everyone comfortable talking in a group and for us it is very important to inform the participants of what they can expect from our presentation and maybe we need to do some changes in the presentation. There were a lot of expectations on learning about Norwegian Red Cross Youth, so we included this under the part about National Societies. For me this was perfect, as I love to talk about how Red Cross Youth in Norway governs themselves and that they choose their own focus and activities.






Rules of war in peace time - why?
Nepal Red Cross teaches about international humanitarian law (IHL) in peace time to prevent major violations in war time. We as Youth in Nepal Red Cross Society are, as I understand, the most important parts of the Red Cross puzzle to spread information and knowledge about the rules of war - both for international wars and armed conflicts and for civil wars. The issue of civil war in Nepal is a part of the youths recent past, and they are curious about what rules actually applies at what point. An interesting discussion in the group of 26 youths between 14 and 23 years is on the difference between Human Rights and IHL. Nilan, Suman and I does our best to facilitate the discussion.






The value of a walk
Due to the bandha, we dad to walk back again to town. Nilan and Suman had just finished their first IHL dissemination ever and I mine first in Nepal. We were bobbling over with enthusiasm the frst half hour, and our walk towards Kathmandu continued, we used the time to evaluate and reorganize a bit of the program for next time. It was a very useful time to both give positive feedback and to get into details that they were confused about. So thanks to the bandha (the pro-monarchy party demanded a referendum on constitutional monarchy, a Hundu nation and federalism, before the new constitution is promulgated by May 28th 2010), I think we made great progress in our dissemination package.


Tea, eggs and dhal baat tarkari
We started the day at 6am an around 1pm we was almort back in town, when Suman invites us for a combined breakfast and lunch in his home. So we went there, had tea and biscuits in his room before his mother and sister invited us up to the kitchen for what Nepalis eat every day several times a day: A lovely plate of rice, bean sauce and vegetables.