Author: kath@kathmcguire.co.uk
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Protests
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I was in a taxi in Kathmandu going from the jeep stop to the Immigration office to renew my visa. On the way, we got to a stretch of road where the lane coming in the other direction was closed to traffic. Our side was open but very congested and…
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Hair
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Two things inspired this post. One was a conversation with a volunteer recently where she asked me about my hair journey (she has this conversation quite often with different people). The second was this afternoon whilst walking through Thamel (a very touristy area in Kathmandu), a man pointed at me…
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That’s Not Their Culture!!
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This blog post could equally be called “That’s not my culture” and it will contain reflections on both. But culture is an interesting thing, partly because it is simple, complex, hard to define, and easy to spot all at once. It is also really, really hard to see one’s own…
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Conversations You Have Whilst Travelling
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Travelling and volunteering and just generally larking about across the world having fun is great! For all the obvious reasons. It is great because I get to meet amazing people. And that’s great because I get to have great conversations. I also get to have conversations whilst travelling that I…
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International Women’s Day
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Saturday the 8th of March is International Women’s Day. It would be really nice if such a day could pass unremarked because there was nothing remarkable to think or talk about regarding gender equality. Maybe some year. 2025 is not that year. There is such a lot that could be…
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Communication
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I am terribly bad at languages. I really am. I’ve tried (though mostly somewhat half-heartedly) to learn a few languages and never with very much success. Part of the problem is that I just don’t try to speak enough. And that sound you can hear is everyone who knows me,…
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Frogs in Hot Water
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Humans are amazingly adaptable. We’re pretty good at just getting used to something. Things that seemed inconceivable a while ago can very quickly become normal. This is even more true when the change is gradual. Enter the frog. You probably already know the story of the frog. If you put…
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Alcohol
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I have a love-hate relationship with alcohol. Actually, that’s not true. I have a hate-hate relationship with alcohol, I just happen to quite enjoy some pubs. And I very much like a number of people who drink sometimes. And there’s a mushroom chestnut pie that really needs a bottle of…
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Private and Professional Lives
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I’m having a great time at the moment being a volunteer in Nepal. And I’ve been a volunteer in other countries with other organisations before. I’ve also been staff on volunteer programmes too. I’ve done residential programmes of varying descriptions and lengths as well, as a participant and as staff.…
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Male Attention
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Attention all teenage and adult men: if you would like to get the attention of a woman then pulling her pigtails or throwing buckets of water over her will achieve that; if you would like to get her attention in the hopes that she will actually think positively of you…
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Animal Tourism
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The world is an amazing place. For such a lot of reasons. One of which is the incredible biodiversity that we humans are the tiniest part of. There are astonishing animals spread all over the world. And for those of us who come from a place that doesn’t contain a…
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Dance Classes
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I’ve managed to run a few dance classes on base. We’ve had some Cha Cha, Samba and Rumba. I’d love to do ballroom, but we don’t quite have the space to do it safely. There is a big open space we could use, but the ground is uneven and has…
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Mentorship Programme
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All Hands and Hearts is running a mentorship programme. They have done a few batches of this in the past and are doing another session this year. I saw the invitation for this and thought it sounded brilliant, in particular they are doing a track for late career changes. This…
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Six Week Slump
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The Six Week Slump is a concept I’m very familiar with. On volunteering projects it is common for volunteers working abroad to have a slump in about week 6. It may actually be week 5 or week 7 but in most cases it is pretty much week 6. At this…
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Daughter of an Engineer
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I am the daughter of an engineer. This didn’t particularly occur to me as anything special when I was growing up. Mostly I was just annoyed that my dad no longer worked for the chocolate factory (the one that made Cherry Ripes) on maintaining their machinery so we didn’t get…
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Indicators of Under Development
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Sometimes poverty is obvious. We see it in our countries, wherever we live. Sometimes poverty is abject and crushing. Children in dirty ragged clothes playing on a rubbish heap is obvious. A tarpaulin strung up between trees on the median strip of a highway with a family of 6 living…
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The Nature of Ritual
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I’m not a big fan of ritual. In fact, if asked directly about my opinion of ritual, I will almost certainly say I dislike it. However, I also know that life is more complicated than that. There is a lot of ritual that I dislike. Rituals I have participated in…
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A Concrete Pour
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A concrete pour is quite an event on an All Hands and Hearts site. I’ve done a couple in Mexico and a few here in Nepal too. They are more of a choreographed ballet than the usual work. They need lots of people doing different things and working reasonably quickly…
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Intelligence
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Despite the existence of IQ tests, IQ is really quite hard to define, nevermind measure, both in formal disciplines but also in general usage. I was having a chat with another volunteer about intelligence. This was sparked by him claiming that he wasn’t particularly intelligent and me fervently disagreeing. I…
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Finding Breakfast
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While I was staying in Hetauda I had the daily joy of trying to find breakfast. The good thing about living on base is that breakfast is just there and I can get up, walk downstairs, put the kettle on, make some porridge and tea and eat some fruit or…
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Don’t Save Me
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This is another generic blog post that was somewhat inspired by a few things that I’ve seen on this trip and on other trips, as well as some things I know happen in the world, even if I don’t have direct experience thereof. Basically, I’m interested in the concept of…
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Charisma
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We have two volunteers here who have charisma to burn – they are quite different from each other in the type of charisma they have, but they both have it in spades. Now, this isn’t going to be a blog post about these people specifically (though I have no doubt…
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Breaks in Hetauda
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I’ve been to Hetauda for an overnight stay several times since I came to project. And there have been different reasons for the different trips. Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that I’m not that desperate to leave base, so I’m not running to Hetauda in order to run away from life…
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Finding Joy
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I suppose it isn’t that surprising, but joy is a truly wonderful thing. You can probably guess this simply by virtue of the definition of joy. 😊 Finding joy is something I’ve tried hard to do over the past several years. But not just finding it, also, noticing it. Sometimes…
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Traffic Accidents
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On New Year’s Day in Hetauda I went for a walk at around 7am ish to try to find a coffee shop to have breakfast in. While I was walking I saw two motorbikes collide. All three people involved walked away from it so it wasn’t as serious as it…
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Toilets
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Everyone loves it when I talk to them about toilets!! Ok, this might be a slight exaggeration, but it does actually surprise me that more people are interested than I would have thought. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me – toilets are a very necessary fact of life; they are…
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People on Project
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We have a great bunch of people on project. We’re quite a varied bunch so far, and are likely to become even more varied as our numbers expand. The staff will stay the same throughout, and three of us volunteers are scheduled to be here for the whole project, but…
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Site
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Site is a 15 minute walk from base along the main road (more like 20 mins back home at the end of the day though – the road is flat, it’s just that after all day on site we move a lot slower than first thing in the morning!). It’s…
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Base
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Here are two pictures of base – my home for the next few months. The building to the right is the house which has bedrooms (bunk beds), some squat toilets and a couple of cold showers. In front of that is the covered meeting / dining area. The corrugated iron…
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Trip from Kathmandu to Hetauda
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Hetauda is a regional city just south of Kathmandu. The trip (via Bhimphedi) is about 77km (along a road that Google Maps thinks is closed). Google thinks it’ll take 3 hours to drive. I left Kathmandu at 7:50 and got into Hetauda at 12:30 but we’d stopped in Bhimphedi for…
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Kathmandu
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I spent about 4 days in Thamel in Kathmandu. Thamel is a neighbourhood popular with tourists. I stayed in a mixed dorm in a hostel and just hung around Thamel mostly. It took a day or two to work out how to cross roads. For the bigger ones, I still…
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I’m on Project
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I arrived on project on Monday. There are other blog posts coming soon about my time in Kathmandu, the journey here and some more specific info about base and site. Unsurprisingly, the more interesting (blogworthy) things I do, the less time I have to write the actual blog posts! There…
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The Gym and Dancing
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It turns out that there are some very good reasons to go to the gym and to dance, other than because when you do these things with the right people they can be great fun (I’m missing all my lovely dance partners and my gym buddies). Who knew exercise could…
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Terrific Traveller, Terrible Tourist
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From quite a number of years of travelling to lots of different places (I am a very lucky bunny), I have discovered several important things about myself: I make bad decisions when I’m tired and hungry; I get travel sick some of the time (unpredictably); I love buses (despite the…
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A Buddhist Art College
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When I was walking through Kathmandu listening to a self-guided audio tour I got interrupted by a young man (Maneesh) wanting to say hi. He assured me that he wasn’t a guide and didn’t want money, he was a student and wanted to speak English. We chatted for a bit.…
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Goodbyes
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I’ve been saying goodbye to a lot of people over the past couple of weeks. I am so very, very grateful for the incredible people in my life, and seeing many of them recently has been such a joy and a privilege. Saying goodbye is very bittersweet. It is lovely…
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Packed
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I’ve packed. 🙂 My carry on bag is about 5kg. My checked in bag is about 13.5kg. The bag I’m leaving in Cambridge is about 10kg. So this is all of my physical possessions. It feels both liberating and terrifying to have got to this stage. Mostly liberating. When I…
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Work
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Given I’m leaving the UK for such a long time, I’m also leaving my jobs. I have been working at the Natural History Museum and last Friday was my last day there. I’ve been there for 3 years and I’ve made some good friends in that time. And while I’m…
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Nepali
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Namaste! I’ve started to try to learn some Nepali. I’m finding it slow going (not surprising, I always find learning languages really difficult). But I’m hoping that getting a few characters and some words under my belt before I go will help me learn more once I’m there.
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Vaccinations
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And one of the essential, but not glamorous aspects of travel is taking care of my health. I’m a big fan of vaccines – I mean, no one likes a Hep B injection, but I have a feeling that Hep B itself is significantly worse! Anyway, no Hep B injection…
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Stuff
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When I leave the UK I’ll be taking as little as I can and leaving as little as possible in the UK. So that means sorting out all my stuff. And I’ve started by rearranging some of the drawers in my cupboard and labelling them for things I’m donating, things…
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First Post
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Every journey starts with a single step – or rather a visa application, passport check, bank account check, much second guessing of one’s decision, vaccinations, travel-related shopping spree, travel-related getting rid of stuff, several goodbye dinners, packing, panicking … and then a single step! Every blog starts with a single…