Winter

Back to work. Glorious weather – sunny and dry with gentle breezes; the mud has dried and turned to all pervasive dust. The rice is being harvested. Colleagues are wearing socks, shoes and long sleeved shirts in recognition of the winter season. It’s a cool 30 - 32oC during the day. I’ve planted lettuces and herbs in a box on the terrace; they have germinated in 3 days. We’ve started working ‘winter hours’, as it starts it get dark soon after 5pm. The neighbours are shinning up their coconut palms to thin them, reinforcing one of the messages from the security conference that Terai volunteers are in more danger from falling coconuts than Maoist insurgency. There was an earthquake in Kathmandu on Monday, causing the temporary evacuation of parliament and the VSO offices.
Over the Dashain holiday, Durga has purchased a motorbike, Govind has acquired an unfortunate moustache, Tulsi has new trainers. A huge marquee has been erected on the school field for an international medical conference that will start ke samaya pacchi. The goats are missing – victims of Dashain. One of our new rooms is being used for some training for technical instructors by some ‘experts’ from Kathmandu. I was invited to watch their presentations and give feedback on Tuesday, with topics ranging from jam making and snake bite to castration and family planning (not related). On Wednesday I cycled with David through the countryside to Bokhari primary school so ‘his’ teachers could demonstrate their new skills. A lovely day, squashed on benches with grubby children desperate for us to mark their books. Outside the newly painted classrooms, women harvested rice while boys (who should have been in school) watched the grazing buffalo. The medical conference did start on Thursday, causing the PM to leave crucial talks to try and resolve the political stalemate to come and open it. I had to weave my way through many check points and armed police to get to work. During the day, the police use one of our training rooms to rest, parking their guns, taking off belt, shoes and shirt before turning on the fans and lying down on the tables to sleep.
Laura, our friend from the programme office in Kathmandu arrived on Friday for the weekend, so we could start to plan VSO’s project on action research. David had managed to find a reasonably priced mattress in town that arrived several hours after she did. It was good to have a visitor at last, and we had an enjoyable time introducing her to the delights of Biratnagar (not too time consuming), as well as producing a substantial proposal for VSO.
At last Bhakta has returned from his holiday so the rest of the books have been moved into the ‘library’. On Monday I was faced with 50 locked shelves and over 200 apparently identical keys entwined in string. I managed to unlock 46 shelves by the end of the first day. With Anil’s help, I completed it by day 3, and have now finished most of the sorting, reshelving and labelling. My attempts to relegate out of date curriculum books, broken books, books with covers missing, books of no relevance to anyone or anything to the store have thwarted, but I did manage to sneak some Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets into the cardboard rubbish box. I have now bought a bin. After my days of physical exertion, Tulsi decided I was looking very thin, so organised a weigh in for all the staff, followed by him taking our blood pressure with an ancient sphygmomanometer he found in the science store.
On November 5, after a late meeting at the ETC to discuss the Training for Trainers of English and Science that does not start for another 10 days (is this progress?), we cycled home through the acrid smoke and alarming bangs of firecrackers – not a Guy Fawkes memorial, but some of the many loud and enthusiastic preparations for Tihar that starts on Friday. Noisy nights all week with ferocious firecrackers. We have also been without water for 2 days, but the shower at the pool is functional and our almost buckets full.