Category: All Hands And Hearts
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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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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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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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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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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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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…