Our Poverty [and dry food to Japan]

Have a look at the following tweet by Steve Herman, a journalist for VOA, based in  Seoul, Korea.

Very interesting and true, isn’t it? Japan’s Kyodo News agency reports about Nepal’s dry food offer:

Nepal plans to send dry food, particularly biscuits, to Japan to help the quake and tsunami-hit nation deal with dwindling food stocks, a Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

”We came to know from a Japanese Embassy official in Kathmandu about food shortages in Japan,” Rudra Nepal told Kyodo News.

”We are holding discussions to send dry food, including biscuits and other packaged items, to Japan,” the official said.

”Though the Japanese embassy official did not make a formal request, we want to do what we can to help Japan, a long-time friend of Nepal, deal with the aftermath of the disaster,” he added.

Nepal, he said, has already decided to send 5,000 blankets to Japan, which are being procured from South Korea by Nepali Embassy officials in Japan.

Meanwhile, Nepal has put on hold its decision to send a 15-member team of security personnel to aid rescue and recovery efforts in Nepal after being informed by Japanese officials that most foreign rescue teams are already returning from Japan, he said.

==Kyodo. Read a related report in eKantipur

I quietly thank Japan every time I walk on the Tinkune-Jadibuti section of the Tinkune-Suryabinayak six lane road (which I do at least twice a day) for building such a nice road in Kathmandu. Now their international aid agency Jica is helping Traffic police set up traffic signals on the road. I can see people are finding it very difficult to get themselves acquainted with the rules.

So quake and tsunami hit Japan. We prayed for Japan on Twitter. Some of us will easily agree with the view that even the quake hit areas of Japan, including those near to the problematic nuclear power plant, are far far better than the average condition of Nepal. Many of us will not think for a second to accept an opportunity to trade our life here with that of the remotest/least developed parts of Japan. That’s because of the stark difference, as Steve points out in his tweet, between the annual per capita income of Nepal (US $450) and that of Japan (US $33,000).

Phew! The difference makes me tired. But I appreciate our government’s effort to send biscuits to Japan. (I hear that they will be bought in Korea like the blankets Nepal is sending to Japan). A small Thank You to Japan for building nice roads and infrastructures in Nepal.