Dear Friends and Family,
We are sorry for no pictures, but limited electricity and computer internet connection, along with dial up when it does happen... prevent us from sending pictures now. When we finish at the school at the end of September , we will put in some of our hundreds of pictures!!
September 2013- Home Life
We have settled in to a life routine in our tiny village and
abode: up at 6:00am (two hours after our hosts, Rajman and Maya, who have
already fed the livestock, made 6 trips to the community well, and prepared
Khaajaa- our breakfast tea and fire roasted corn on the cob or sel roti, a
fried ring of sweet dough. Our mornings are quiet thus far, while Maya goes to
do her daily cutting of grass for the water buffalo and goats and Rajman heads
out early for school (7am). While we sit outside the house, doing morning
things, neighbors carry their heavy baskets of corn or grass through the yard
to the short-cut path to the other cluster of homes around us. Maya returns
home in time to cook the mid day Khanna “lunch” at 9:30 or 10:00 of Dhalbaat
(rice and veggies with curry or other sauces). Rajman returns from school for
lunch.
We sit for meals in the main, mud floor room, at our small
table and plastic chairs bought specially for the foreign guests- the only
pieces of furniture in the room. They generally sit on the floor on small round
mats; however, we have corrupted them to join us for a few meals. After lunch,we walk up to the school on our ¾
mile trek up the rough dirt road to the top of the ridge where the school sits.
We wash and toilet in the small out-building next to the
house, with cold water faucet and pit toilet. The rooster often follows us to
the john! We brush our teeth while standing over the compost heap (not smelly),
right next to the water buffalo and goats. The bold rooster wanders freely in
hopes of corn or rice castoffs.
Mid day has been hot (guessing 85-90); this is the quiet
time for them on the day off. They watch TV in their bedroom on the second
floor which serves as living room, study with computer, and TV room. We are
truly an anomaly, with books, sketch pad and paints (Carolyn) , recorder
practice (Joan) or computer picture sorting, writing, and planning for school,
since Nepalese TV is hard to follow! It is most intriguing to witness the
contrast between simple, old world life and true poverty with linoleum on the
mud floor, TV and computer in the bedroom (minimal dial up capacity), and
elaborate colors of clothing and bedding, not all to our taste.
.
We have the daily challenge of four hours of electricity
“load shedding”, different times each day; some activities are worked around
this blackout as necessary. Sometimes, we just give up and go to bedrooms at
7PM since the house is black, except for our flashlights and head lamps. Other
nights we extend our day till 8:30 or 9:00PM if the power is on, giving us few
electric lights to sit and talk or read by!
We are planning our teaching schedule- four classes each of
grades 1-7 between us (45 min/day), six days per week! Our goal is to get
children excited about English and their teachers to expand their teaching
strategies and English usage. We have also been charged with preparing the
students for a Building Dedication celebration-performance for the Swiss
donors. We are a bit daunted by the challenge!
Our hosts have been warm and welcoming, upbeat, and eager
for our input. They will do what ever they can manage our ideas! We are working
very hard to keep ourselves in check, so as not to overwhelm them. Our
neighbors are all curious and friendly, babbling incessantly to us in Nepalese!
Our blank stares coupled with a grin and lots of gesturing seems to be good
entertainment for them. The whole village knows us!
School Life
We began our school introduction with a field trip with
those students who have been sponsored for their schooling. It was a whirlwind
tour of the road to China, with a goal to expanding their very limited
horizons. We began at 4:30 am walking up the hill to school to join 17 students and 3 adults to
walk the remaining 2.5 miles out of the region in the pouring rain, on the
washed out road, complete with umbrellas, flipflops, and dreary darkness. We
loaded a bus and headed out on the remainder of our red clay, mud trenched,
road- to merge to the only main road leading to China in all of Nepal. Our trip
included harrowing climbs up and down mountain passes, temples and dams, hot
springs, chalk mines and simple villages, swinging bridges over class 5-6
raging river, waterfalls and massive wasp hives. We were in absolute terror as
we sped through villages and down steep passes and curves. Our second day was our first glimpse of sun,
and all in the villages were out doing laundry, likely their first chance since
monsoon began. The Chinese border was loaded with trucks, in queue, waiting to
load and carry Chinese goods to all of Nepal. The road they traveled was not
much better than our own, with one lane, wash-outs, pot holes and mud slides,
and perilous terrain.
The children were reserved to begin with, but by journey’s
end, were singing, dancing, drumming, and teaching us Nepalese and laughing at
us relentlessly.
September 8, 2013
Today was Teez Festival. Ladies dress elegantly in their
finest red saris and jewels, they fast with no food and water for 24 hours,
travel to their mother’s home, dance and
sing at the Temple all day, and then return home for bathing in the river or
well, and feasting the following day. We at school celebrated for a long
afternoon, with speeches by all the teachers, essays by students, and dancing traditional Nepalese dances in the broiling
sun of the day, dressed in beautiful red saris and fully bejeweled. . The girls
danced in solo and small groups followed by older women, and male teachers.
There was not a dry brow or back in the place. Joining the school community of
faculty, children and yours-truly were past students, mothers, grandmothers,
and village onlookers. Of course, we were pulled in to the dancing before all,
trying to copy all the intricate steps and motions of the dancers. How
embarrassing was that! At least we were dressed in our finest kurtha suruwaal and jewels bestowed upon us for the occasion!
The crowning blow was being asked on the spot to give a speech before the
crowd, which we attempted in our pigeon Nepalese! Yikes! You would not be
proud!
September 9, 2013
Greetings friends and family. We surface! As we sit outside
our small abode writing and sketching, we look out onto lovely steep hills and
valleys with a large river below. Traffic is not the usual: two motor bikes
have passed the house in 7 days- but the intermittent flow of neighbors passing to the surrounding fields, laden with
huge baskets filled with corn cobs for
drying or grass for the goats and water buffalo is a regular occurrence. Each
family has at least one buffalo, several goats and a chicken or three. Some
have oxen for the field plowing.
We have had many lessons of all types and are settling in
nicely. Rajman, our host and school principal,
must endure our endless questions about school, culture, families
(branches, leaves, trunks, and seedlings!!), language, and basic household life
questions right down to the toilet paper! We managed to lure his wife, Maya, to
the dinner table one evening, but that was short lived as that is not proper.
Guests are treated like gods, we are told by Rajman. (we could do with more of
this at home!).
Our daily walks have been invigorating, complete with
drenching sweat and spectacular views on our way to school each day. Our most
serious hike was on the Teez holiday to the swift and mighty river 2 hours
below us, meeting all the family and community members along the way down and
back - mostly Tamang (this local cultural group haling originally from Mongolia
) with their own unique language, clothing, and traditions. (There are over 92
of these different groups around this small country the size of Arkansaw, we
are told.) Once we crossed the rice paddies, passed through the small temple,
we wade into the river- we so much wanted to jump into the river and drench our
sticky bodies but two naked “venuses” would shock the valley for good!
Our first day of school was yesterday- still less than full
house due to the Teez Holiday. A number of classrooms lacked teachers (off
celebrating with families in other villages). We “wung it, jumping in to three
classes throughout the day, having a blast. The children speak and write
English at least as well as their teachers, we are discovering, as confidence
and accuracy is not their concern. The school is scarcely equipped. Constant
electric “load shedding” and intermittent internet make computing nearly impossible.
Each classroom has a white board and a few random posters. Most, but not all
children have a small pencil, notebook for writing and a couple of paperback
texts translated into “English”.
Shree Ram is a school full of laughter and good will. The
children are eager to have us- and just like children all around the world. The
children run the morning meetings” national anthem, exercise drills, and drum
roll before exiting to class. No wonder they have a public presence and
self-confidence. They have little English language skill, however, probably as
Rajman is the only person at all conversant.
Carolyn and I are a damn good team. We do lots of laughing
along with problem solving, brainstorming, planning, and filtering. Our first
effort, after a day of teaching, was to clean and organize the shelves in the
faculty /temporary library room, only later to discover that each of the dusty,
disorganized and seemingly unused article-strewn shelves were assigned to each teacher. Oops! Be
careful of two intense, hyperactive, overly enthusiastic, eager
teacher-mothers!
Enough rambling. Surely,
we will have new appreciation for hot water, sit and flush toilets, and
abounding resources when we return. Also
know that we are better people for doing this incredible thing.
J and C
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