One of the things I love about living in Nepal is that it is easy to have things fixed. I need to throw away less, and helping me with this is a pleasant chap who squats at the little crossroads close to our flat. He has amazing skills in shoe repairs. He sews in strips of leather to reinforce buckles, restitches or glues trainers and repairs bags with hand-stitching. I hadn’t see him during the lockdown in Nepal during the spring earlier this year but then encountered him at the crossroads. He was without his repair kit. Looking skinny. Clearly he had no customers and talked of how hard life was. He was hungry. He was trying to pick up other work. A neighbour paid him to clean up the street outside their gate. I gave him a 5kg bag of wholemeal flour – the kind people made chapattis out of. I’d bought it during the first lockdown thinking food might be scare, but of course if you have money, food is never scarce. Life is never hard for us. We didn’t need to hoard food.
There are so many Nepalis on daily wages who can’t work though. This lockdown has been so bad for them. There are more beggars out on the streets. Even the street dogs are looking ever more skeletal.
Meanwhile politicians squabble and we don’t know if our month-long lockdown will end this week as it is supposed to. Some say it will be extended to staunch the possibilities of demonstrations against the much-criticised weak government. Let’s hope for the sake of our local cobbler and his like that we’ll be allowed to move about freely again soon.
At the time I wrote this in May 2021, didn't post a photo of him as it seemed disrespectful. Now it is November and life is easir again and he's put on a little weight so here he is, busy and smiling...
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| Queuing middle class Nepalis in the pre-monsoon rain outside a popuar shop specialising in imported food. The woman squatting under unbrella with her young son is begging. May 2021. |
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| Unusually empty Kathmandu ring road - during the May 2021 lockdown |