A Rare serious moment...

The English newspaper here drives me crazy. The stories are so poorly written, the pictures never relate, and the grammar is just plain wrong. It runs the strangest stories--yesterday I read about a Polish heavy mental band that disbanded in 2005 after the guitarist was killed in a car accident. They don't have a new album coming out, they aren't come to tour in Nepal, they have been dead for 3 years, yet on November 28, 2008, The Kathmandu Post ran a story about them. They run full page stories on new restaurants in town, but place protests that shut down the city in small boxes on the 3rd page. Regardless, I read the paper every morning.
Today however, was not such a good day to read the paper. The headlines this morning were, for once, all relevant:
"Terrorist Attacks Rock Mumbai: 125 Killed, 300 Injured"
"Gunmen target Americans, Britons"
"Emergency at Thai Airports: Rumors of Coup Swirl"
It's like the world around Nepal is crumbling. Meanwhile, I'm back under house arrest (as I have been the last two weeks, hence no posts) after the city is shut down AGAIN due to another protest. The bodies of 2 teenagers were found in the Thankot jungle and the people are protesting the police force's complete lack of competence in tracing the teens after they were reported missing on Nov. 16th. They are protesting in Kalimati, Teku, New Road, basically everywhere. So one more weekend where I am not going anywhere.
This strike began yesterday. Usually, we go pick up Binod from his school bus stop in Kilanki, about a 30 minute walk from the house, at 3pm. Yesterday, I decided not to go since I was finishing up a proposal I've been working on. Jasmin, who didn't have school since she found out that morning her bus was on strike, went to pick him up alone. She left at 2:30 and didn't come back until 6:30. After waiting at the bus stop for half an hour, she heard someone say that protesting had begun. So she had to walk across the whole city of Kathmandu to Lalitpur, where Binod's school is, to pick him up and then the two of them-a 7 yr old boy and a 17yr old girl-had to walk 2 hours home through the city at night during protests.

I don't care if there are divisions between the "hardline" Maoists and the "Establishment Factions." I don't care if they can't agree on the "People's Republic" or the "democratic republic" wording. I don't care if they are arguing about electing a woman or a minority party leader to the Constituent Assembly. All I know, is that when the government is spending too much time figuring out how to become a government, the city and the people in the city are losing valuable time. In the 2 months since I have been here, the kids have missed more days of school due to strikes than I have fingers to count on. I can't imagine how much income is lost to the shops that have to close down for days on end, or the food that expires while the trucks shipping it sit on blocked highways for hours and hours. I have walked the dead highways during strikes and I have seen the baffled white faces of tourists scrambling to make their way to the airport or understand what is going on--I know that is nothing compared to teenagers opening fire in hotel lobbies, but it sure doesn't look good.
The problems with power supply and water coverage, lack of teachers in community schools, even rural poverty, are all symptoms of a developing country that I think Nepal can one day overcome. But when I see a government that neglects its people to the point that daily life is consistently interrupted in the nation's capital, I have to sit and think, "If things are this bad here, how are they ever going to get better out there, in the rural, extremely impoverished areas?"