I have found that in Nepal it makes little sense to plan too far ahead. Usually when things finally happen they occur suddenly and with minimal planning. Part of this feeling is of course due to communication problems between me, a non-Nepali speaker, and the Nepali speakers who make most of the arrangement around me, but there also is a cultural element. Ever since we arrived to Nepal people have jokingly told us about “Nepali time” which implies that people will not show up until at least 30 minutes after the scheduled start of any meeting or event, as it turns out there is more truth than humor in this little quip. I might try to tackle the context which has caused this kind of situation in some future article, but for now I will concentrate on a specific chain of events that resulted from this culture of sudden and late decisions and arrivals.

One morning at the office I decided to make a phone call to Jeff, my friend and fellow Advocacy Project intern who is located in COCAP’s far-western office in Mahendranagar. We had been playing phone tag for a few days and had never managed to catch each other at our offices. The last time we had talked we spoke of meeting in Kathmandu with all the AP interns sometime in the coming weeks to try and refocus our efforts to help the COCAP focal points as our efforts had become somewhat stunted by inactivity at some of the focal point offices. Once I did finally get through to Jeff I found that he was experiencing the effects of rapid Nepali decision making after long periods of delay. Essentially Jeff had been trying for about a month to organize a regional meeting in the far-west to try and create a collective action plan. For weeks his efforts had produced no results, but suddenly one Friday morning Jeff was informed that the meeting would take place and it would start in less than 24 hours. When I called Jeff he had just been informed that he would have less than a day to prepare.

As I had conducted a similar meeting before to some success, and time was so limited, Jeff invited me to participate and support him as he led the meeting. I was more than happy to join as it would give me a chance to hear more opinions and ideas from within the COCAP network, give me an excuse to see a few new districts and also allow me to hang out with Jeff and his wife, Songyee, for a few days. The only problem was that the meeting starting early the next morning and Mahendrangar is a 6-10 hour journey from Nepalgunj. Fortunately with a couple months in Nepal under my belt I am now better prepared to be flexible and take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Within an hour of hanging up the phone, I was packed and on the back of my colleague Krishna’s motorcycle headed to the bus station. Fast forward another bumpy seven hours and I was checking into a hotel in Mahendranagar. So while the culture of quick poorly planned action is so often frustrating and confusing, on this particular occasion it was a lot of fun. Spontaneous activity might not be the best course of action for NGO or business development, but it does make for some fun little adventures that have made my time here in Nepal such a wonderful experience.