Katmandu Bound

The novelty of new-mom blogging has long since worn off, and one day I woke up with a kindergartener. Still, what I love about our friends in Baltimore is that they're genuinely interested in what Steve and I do for a living, and all the places we go. So despite the fact that the communications team at my office would rather me do travel writing fit for their copy on this trip, I'll see what I can do to instead use this blog to note down the inside scoop. Lucky for me there's someone from the comms team traveling to the field with us. 

I'm headed to Nepal this time. Well, I'm currently sitting on the tarmac in Philly so in theory I'm headed to Doha then Katmandu, Nepal. We will be visiting earthquake survivors from the areas of Lamjung and Gorkha, which are foothill areas before you really reach the Annapurna region. We'll be doing something that's a cross between an evaluation, assessment, and a general field visit. Our first goal is to confirm that the beneficiaries we've been supporting since April are now in a good place to meet their immediate needs themselves- mainly shelter and food. We are confirming our expectation that they are ready to transition to our support that focuses more on longer term recovery and rebuilding, mainly for what we call "livelihoods"- however they make a living normally to support themselves. Likely a lot of agriculture but I'm still getting up to speed frankly and have a stack of background reading next to me here. Shout out to my latest favorite intern Wesley for preparing that! (Side note- if any super rich people are reading this, I dream of creating an intern scholarship fund so that I can forever have a stream of fantastic interns who want to get their feet wet in international development. Some day.) 

Ok anyway. So we're confirming their readiness to transition to longer-term recovery activities. And, secondly, we're doing some beneficiary satisfaction surveys to see how satisfied they were with our delivery of immediate relief items since April. This work has been going on for a while by field staff and partners so we'rejust doing the last batch. And lastly, we're doing the field portion of an "after action review", following some HQ surveys on this, which is our staff and partner staff doing an internal reflection of what worked well and what could be improved. 

And according to our Nepal staff, though the exact field travel itinerary is still being finalized, this will be a roughing it trip.  Lots of trekking into villages, no running water, no electricity at times, staying some nights in beneficiaries' homes. Probably 8 days total outside of Katmandu. I ran my mouth off a whoooole lot when I turned 40 about how I feel so young, but despite being in the middle of a half marathon training program, I'm starting to wonder how much dead weight I'll be on this trip. I've done this before, mind you. Oh yes, Steve and my friend Nora and I did an epic Nepal trek deep into the Annapurna region- narrowly avoiding American hating Maoists by the way- but that was in 2003!! And it kicked my butt then. So my new hashtag is #40isthenew28

I may end up DFL, but I won't be dropped! (Plus I'm supposedly the team lead). 

[insert photo of intimidating mountains here]