Making friends

Yesterday as I was wandering around I felt a soft poke at my calf. I looked down to see a friendly street dog looking up at me, smiling slightly and wagging her tail. I told her I didn’t have any treats and gave her a little pat on the head and she proceeded to follow me for about ten minutes before she disappeared down an alley way.  This morning waiting at the Himalayan Bank for my friend Srijana, the same silly dog came wandering over to me.  She probably made me out for a sucker because I totally bought some cookies from a nearby vendor and she politely pretended to eat one that I gave her before sloughing it out of her mouth onto the ground.  I guess street dogs are too good for knock off Oreos?

Srijana arrived promptly at 9am as we had planned and whisked me away on her scooter.  We first went to the school she is currently doing her masters at called the College of Development Studies and met with the director for an hour or so.  As we drank a spicy tangy sort of tea, the very humble director Dr. Shrestha filled me in on his take on women, agriculture, and development.  It is a complicated set of ideas to tie together but I was rewarded with affirmation of things I thought I had learned, as well as some new ideas to help fill in the gaps.

One interesting thing is that since he left ag development formally about 6 or 7 years ago, the outlook or approach to improving farm based livelihoods is evolving.  This bodes well for my research which is investigating the opportunities or impacts on women within the commercialization process.

Next we went and toured some sights, the very famous and impressive Bouddhanath, amoung other places. Then we went to the shopping district for some local cuisine: momos, a dumpling like dish that comes either fried or steamed.

Sri dropped me off at about 1 and we made plans to meet for lunch with her family tomorrow which is a super nice offer that I took her up on.  We also made plans for dinner in December when Nathan comes.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading!