Human Rights. ???

School was cancelled today, due to strikes.

This is fucked up.

In Kathmandu it is illegal to ride a motorbike without a helmet...and to drive anything without a license. At night there are police checkpoints, where the corrupt police will pull over random people and check their licence and papers.
2 nights ago, there was a guy driving a motorbike and was carrying his helmet, not wearing it...and he didn't have his license on him. Two police beat him to death with bamboo sticks. Now, understandingly, there are strikes. Yesterday, and today. Today though everything is shut down and there is almost no one driving on the roads. According to some grade 10 students, there are never any repercussions to police. There is such a different understanding of human rights here, than what I grew up with.

It makes me sick.

Another story, that happened about a month ago.
In Nepal, the way 'insurance' goes for getting in an accident is: if you are responsible for the accident and the person who you injured is still alive you are responsible for paying their medical bills for the rest of that person's life. If that person dies, well you don't have any thing to be responsible for as far as money goes.

So about a month ago (and this is not uncommon) a bus driver hit a man on a motorbike. He went to check if he was still alive...he was. So the bus driver sits back down, and goes to reverse - to kill the man. Once the people on the bus realized what he was doing, they all got up and started beating the shit out of the driver. The driver got away and booked his ass as fast as he could. The people burned his bus down. (GOOD!)
NUTS!!!!!

Now, I know you may be worried for me after reading this...don't be. I am safe. I don't go anywhere near the strikes, and stay as far away from these police as possible. We never get home too late, even when we go out.

I just had to tell these stories, because it really shows how things are here, and how corrupt things are. So full of paradox. Talk about change, talk about growth and wanting to build a stronger nation, talk all you want. But when the under lying system is so corrupt, that is the reason why nothing changes. Why nothing can change.
To have that 'insurance' policy in the first place is just asking for trouble. People here can't afford to take themselves to the doctor, let alone pay for someone else their whole lives. The average family in Nepal lives on 2 US dollars a day. The average family in Nepal has at least 3 children.
Life is hard for the people here, in many ways. I can sense that citizens want change. Nepali's tell me so on a daily basis, especially when they ask where I am from. However, having life based on their systems here, does not help. The government is trying to change. But they have been relying on the help of other countries, and the UN, for so long they don't know how to do it on their own.
Every day I have been here I have learned something huge. This is changing the way I view the world. It is so unfortunate that things are the way they are here, and that there is only talking being done.

I guess it's part of the Nepali way.