A disturbing article from Human Rights Watch on the kidnapping of children in Terai, in the Southern plains of Nepal for Ransom.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/03/29/nepal-rampant-child-kidnappings

If anyone in Nepal has any more information on this I would love to hear from you.

After being in Taiwan for two months I am becoming adjusted to my non-adjusted state. Slowly beginning to comprehend the sheer scale of humanity in Taiwan.  And just starting to grasp I know nothing here.

Taiwan apparently is one of the most intensely populated spaces on the planet and in Taipei this is evident, from walking the streets of my neighbourhood at night, to cycling to work each morning and when on the MRT -Taipei’s metro.  Human is packed upon human in a politely Taiwanese manner that may or may not acknowledge how frustrating the shear friction of numbers is.

For me the lack of space is a process, as is adjusting to the social and cultural mores of Taiwanese culture. In Taiwan it appears that things are done a certain way and that is how it is done, any subversion of this is either unacknowledged, denied or ignored. I can’t give a huge amount of evidential proof to back this up but it appears that Taiwanese culture runs on meeting certain expectations and it is assumed one will meet those expectations.  It is frustrating when you come across it as an outsider especially when trying to get done what feels like a basic thing. Stumbling unaware into  Taiwanese red tape is like an angry kitten in a knitting bag…you will become further and further entangled until someone with fluent Mandarin and local comes to your aid.

Recently I had a parcel sent back to the Post Office by a building doorman not particularly fond of foreigners and /or non-Mandarin speakers. To retrieve the parcel from the postal system took four people three days and me bursting into tears in the middle of the post office. Thankfully someone came to my aid and after going back to the building security and talking with the Post Office personal a couple more times the parcel was found.

Taiwanese culture from my initial impressions likes to present a good face, so when it came to retrieving my parcel in some ways it was easier for the post office to say they didn’t have it rather than admit they didn’t know where it was. I also have to own the fact I had no idea to ask the doorman what part of what post office department he had taken the parcel to. I had assumed with my western head it would be easily tracked. It was, but as an outsider and even with the aid of people who have lived here for years, I did not know the right questions to ask nor how to ask them.

The interesting thing for me is though I find this inability to do some things by myself – like retrieving my mail or getting a new sim card because my working Visa is still being processed – I don’t begrudge these experiences though they can be extremely frustrating. These experiences are what make a new country exciting, challenging and wonderfully tear your hair out mind-bogglingly magical. In ten years time I am sure I will look back on the whole how to get your mail in Taiwan saga and laugh. This stuff is expansive.

In Taiwan like no other country I have lived in I need to learn a new cultural interface. Things are so different here, the population pressures and the different cultural articulation of everything makes this a fascinating place to live. Taiwan is not a country you  just move to, it is a country you learn.

Image copyright Alexandra (Neesha) Bremner 2011

Chinese New Year - truck bed conversation.

Copyright Alexandra (Neesha) Bremner 2011

I arrived in Taipei, Taiwan a week ago this evening. It has been a whirlwind introduction to this island Republic of China.

The predominantly Mandarin speaking Western Pacific Island has a thriving expat culture and over the last seven days I have been taken into its buzzing  busy lifestyle. Taipei is a mecca of English native speakers teaching English, South Africans, Canadians, French and others working across the employment realm and boy does this community know how to live.

On first impressions Tawain has a very supportive expat community and this is a country where if you want to do something – you can make it happen  – from setting up a design studio to running a highly successful burlesque troupe that performs to  crowds of up to 30,000.

The costs of living here are half the price of New Zealand and that is across the board from apartments to food, clothing  and utilities. And to be honest the variety here is also larger if not strictly “western” in taste or clothing size. Going on wages as well, teaching English ,once I find a job (and there are plenty to go round), will also mean earning about the same money as home, if not a little better. Pretty good incentive for this woman to find a job and live here for a while.

As some of you may recall I have come to Taiwan to learn the in’s and out’s of video production as part of my education towards making documentaries with The Storyteller Project.

I went out on my first shoot last week with my mentor Tobie Openshaw of Big Nose Productions and I loved every minute of it. I am starting at the very beginning and I am grateful for that. But what I can say is that I feel very comfortable behind the camera and setting up rudimentary lighting and soaking in the work environment that is film. I have begun and I feel I am exactly where I am meant to be in my life. It feels pretty humbling to have this sensation and knowing on some level everything in this busy ignore the light change traffic mentality city  is clicking into place for me. (Yay!)

How else can I explain Taipei. 7 Eleven is where you can do everything, from buying asparagus juice (!), getting a sim card (if you have all the red tape boxes ticked and there are many – i’ve been here a week and it is still a work in progress – I need a sim card stat!!!) to buying wine , photocopying and paying your bills. You can even buy dinner there but I’m skeptical on that front.

This city is also a foodies delight with everything from insanely good burritos at Mucho Nacho, Poutine , a plethora of Japanese and traditional Tawainese fair. I really need to get to back to the yoga studio immediately!

A big thanks to my divine friends here who have totally hooked me up and introduced me to some great new friends, places and experiences since my arrival. I am grateful beyond words.  A big thanks to my mentors and friends back home and across this little spinning planet who have helped me get here – you know who you are –  I am so lucky to have you in my life!

This week my focus is getting a job, starting the process for my Alien Resident Card, I’ve always wanted to be an alien, following up on some apartments and orientating myself on my new bike Dolly to this city and its vaguely mentalist traffic. (It’s not Nepal crazy but boy you have  to be paying attention!)

So this is it, the beginning and I am loving it.

Ummmm and on another note can anyone send me some spokies for my bike???? hehehehehe!

Eastern Nepal is the home for a significant Bhutanese refugee population who have fled  what the UNHCR calls “ethnic tension”  within the Kingdom of Bhutan.

In a nutshell the situation in Bhutan resides around ethnic Nepali (Lhotshampas), whom have lived in the Kingdom of Bhutan since around 1900. Lhotoshampas make up about 53 per cent of the Kingdom’s population, the minority Ngalongs   at 17 per cent run the show with the Sharchop at 30 per cent  are caught somewhere in the middle. Those of Nepali origin have been harassed out of the country of 1.9 million (rape and murder seems to be the main tools of engagement) and over the border into eastern Nepal with the remaining “Nepali” middle classes becoming highly politicised and in some cases militant with interactions with Nepali and Indian Maoists groups. ( For more information check out the South Asian Terrorism Portal run by the Institute for conflict management here.)

Currently 72,000 Bhutanese refugees live in camps near the shared Nepali /Bhutan border. This figure has been reduced from 108,000 due to a resettlement program which the UNHCR (The United Nation’s refugee branch) runs. This success of resettlement was celebrated today in Kathmandu. For some reason the celebration of this resettlement program to Western nations such as the United States and New Zealand has me a bit irked.

Why is a UN run program celebrating the likely scenario that 40,000 Bhutanese so far re-settled will most probably never see their home again? Why is this UN program addressing the symptoms and not the cause of the plight of these displaced Bhutanese? To be fair the UNHCR states they will continue with  the international community to look into other options  such as repatriation when viable though in reality this is UN speak for maintaining the status quo.

This is my main concern  – we now live in a world where to live in your country of birth is no longer a right nor is it guaranteed that you will have a right of return if displaced. A world where the international agencies meant to deal with situations  such as  what is faced by  those fleeing from Bhutan have very few options. The UN and the international community as a whole seem reluctant to help refugee or displaced populations whose country of origin is not resource rich. It appears the inability for the UN to address the cause of displacement is being celebrated by celebrating the re-settlement of these 40,000 Bhutanese refugees – admittedly in a non-direct manner.

The UNHCR is helping individuals who have been in the Eastern Nepal camps since 1993 by resettling them to the West. Resettlement in many ways is better then living in the limbo life if a refugee camp.But it is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff solution. Surely the UN and it’s agencies can do better than facilitate the ongoing  “ethnic tension” and consequential  global displacement  then by moving the symptom elsewhere? Is this really what we want to be doing as an international community as a long-term solution?

Here is the link to the UNHCR story.

A quick update. The Storyteller Project now has a domain web address and email contact details. Yippee!

My luddite status is shifting…slowly.

The blog etc can now be found at http://www.storytellerproductions.net and you can email me at neesha@storytellerproductions.net.

A  thanks must go to Karen Burgess and Jen Lahey for offering their respective editing skills. And a big thanks to Daniel  Rintz and Jeremy Justice for helping me out with the website – this is a work in progress  so there will be a few changes over the coming weeks  and months – so hang on  while we make this site look ace.

Thanks as always for your support.

Neesha

A fantastic piece by Isabel Hilton from The Guardian.

FROM THE GUARDIAN, UK BY ISABEL HILTON It's not easy being Nepal. Ranked among the 48 least-developed countries, sandwiched between the emerging Asian giants India and China, ruled by a chaotic government that struggles to normalise the country in the aftermath of a nine-year Maoist insurgency, plagued by endemic corruption and the growing impacts of climate change in … Read More

via The Himalayan Beacon

Interesting little story of one issue faced by Tibetan refugees fleeing into Nepal.

Tibetans robbed in Nepal forest

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