Murderous Bus-drivers.

While back in Denmark last summer, which is also monsoon time here in Nepal, I was so overwhelmed to see so many reports of bus accidents on the internet, that I joked to friends: "The Nepali bus-drivers were killing more Nepalis than the maobadis!"
I'm not joking now - it was always easier to face the grimm reality with a sneer and an uneasy laugh from 8.000 km away. But right now here, when a new tragedy occured, it hits hard... The hills around ring with brass bands, some streets in Kathmandu are half-blocked with dinner-tents, one meets whole marriage parties with best saree-dressed women bearing gifts - it's the marriage high-season! This nepali month called Magh (trasncr. var. as "Makkar" etc.) the Hindu astrologers marked 9 auspicious days for marriages. So my lady and me were really sad to hear that a bus yesterday skid off the road in Phuytan, west Nepal, killing 42 wedding guests, groom, groom's father, brothers and assorted uncles. Bride is in hospital.
I havn't taken a bus out of the Valley the past 12 years: (after going to India via Bhutwal, both DOWN and UP the bus met with an accident and it was sheer luck we didn't fell into the river!) Had I done that, there is a high probability a would have been statstic! The quality of the bus-drivers, and their vehicles' brakes and tyres is HORRIBLE. The drivers have no training, usually someone in the family of the owner gets the job, goes to Kathmandu, meets someone, pays some money, gives the guy a photo and PRESTO! Nepal has a new bus-driver! Week-after-week, there go 50, here go 30 "passengers". Why be afraid of maobadi landmines? Statistically they kill 10-20 times less Nepalis then the "friendly" bus-drivers.
What worries me is the attitude of the STATE - there is no outcry from MSM media neither - but it's the state which is the PROTECTOR of the humble and the meek, the role which in the West is taken so granted - we actually only perceive the opposite - too much traffic-regulation and control - and nothing is been done.
Last week there was a story in the papers about theft of more than 540 holographic stickers from Valley Traffic Police, and subseq. recovery of same in a houses of some of the officials! Of course, as we used to say in the old communist Czechoslovakia: "He who doesn't steal, steals from his own family!", and if they pay the policemen peanuts, they'll get monkeys!