WLTQ going through storm of uncertainity

Nepalese sanitation for all campaigners had put large amount of thinking and energy for World's Longest Toilet Queue in Nepal to show solidarity at the global level for raising political commitment on sanitation. The campaign was formally to be launched on 20 March 2010 however Guthi and NGOFUWS had organized Soymanbhu Cleaning program, the place where we did our last candle vigil to memorize commitments made on the sector. The program was used as the means to orient volunteers on the forthcoming WLTQ campaign.

There were lots of meetings, discussions and tossing of brains. Last minute preparations were all completed. WASH Nepal, FEDWASUN and Public Health Association had taken responsibility to organize these campaigns in other nearly 30 places outside Kathmandu. Ashutosh Tiwari, CR, WaterAid in Nepal had been instrumental in bringing other stakeholders on board in the campaign. He together with Anil Thaman, another person with creative mind and logistic coordinator for the campaign had convinced Bhatbhateni Supermarket, the biggest supermarket of the country to launch the toilet queue in their premise. They had also allowed us to organize the queue in all three days for the interested customers who visit their supermarket. We were all thrilled with the crowd flowing to our queue however deep inside there was some suspicion that something bad could happen as we were given a hint, a day earlier by our CR to be mentally prepared to deal with this situation.

The queue was organized on the main entrance of the supermarket. The large plasma television was near to our queue, frequently we were surfing these news. It was around 1 pm where we received the news that Girija Prasad Koirala, supreme national leader of our country had died. Suddenly, the roller coaster of uncertainty of our campaign was there. We were sad as it was somehow affected all our energy and thinking we invested for last two months. We were numb and could not react, several calls from different partners flooded as we had also planned to organize a candle light vigil on the same evening. We were not sure what we do next?

Hope you are not bored yet reading my blogs till now, may be you should wait for my next blog to know what we did next!