In your last editorial ('The world is watching us', #222) you say: 'They want to revisit the commitments made at the Nepal Development Forum to see if resources aren't being fungified'. Now, what kind of a verb is 'fungify'? Is this derived from 'fungibility'? If so, that seems to take fungibility of English words a bit too far. Or rather is it a microbiology term derived from 'fungi' (as in Italian), meaning to turn something into fungus? Turning public resources into something mouldy has certain vividness to it. I certainly hope the editors are not going 'fungified' in the head!

Ben Ohara,
Kathmandu

. In your editorial 'The world is watching' (#222). I appreciate your courage for bringing up the crux of what I think is the ultimate challenge in Nepal.this I-can-do-nothing attitude, that whatever happens is written. If I get killed by a bus while crossing the street, it was suppose to be. So what do the Nepali people do about this? As you say, they having an incredible tolerance for abuse, and if they ignore it it will go away. Of course, it only gets worse. No surprise that Nepal has one of the worst motor vehicle accident rates of any country in Asia? And Kathmandu has the highest rate of lung cancer of any city in the world. It doesn't have to be that way, it is not fated. In the same issue Daniel Lak says ('Paying the price') it's high time the Nepali people were asked what they want. If I was made prime minister, I would ask all foreign donors to leave within six months and tell the Nepali people: 'From now on we're going to make it on our own or we're not going to make it at all.' Where are the leaders of Nepal? Where is a Nepali Vaclav Havel?

F A Hutchison,
Kathmandu