To the hills

On Friday evening to Koshi campus with Durga where he is doing his MEd teaching practice in Applied Linguistics. I am his audio-visual aid. After a hazardous journey on the back of his motorbike in a high wind, we arrived at the campus – an assortment of tin and bamboo roofed rooms around a courtyard. The students, second year BEd English were delightful; the session was highly interactive, with lots of examples. When I emerged, the third year students had set up chairs under a shady tree ‘for conversation’. They have never had the opportunity to talk with a native speaker before, so we talked until the sun set. I will go again.
I have also been enjoying reading Deepti’s masters thesis on control of snail pests in eastern Nepal. It reminds me of A level projects by diligent girls. We spent a morning together discussing possible improvements, but it’s difficult without knowing the expected standard; she wants me to go and meet her supervisor.
We have developed a new system of rubbish disposal, after several weeks of being woken at an early hour by the boy with the cart who comes daily and rings the bell just in case we have anything to get rid of. Leaving the bags outside is an option we tried, but found that the goats got to the rubbish first and scattered it all over the road. We now hang the bags on the metal spikes on the top of the gate. It resembles the Tower of London after a beheading.
The water situation continues to be dire. Chhatra’a sister has now had the pump removed and taken the motor away. With Karna’s help, we have contacted the plumber who did the original work on the house; he has phoned Chhatra in America and has agreed to do the work. He arrived on Monday at 7am and Tuesday at 8am with workmen, but Chhatra’s sister will not supply the materials. Meanwhile the rain falls steadily and sometimes torrentially as a result of the cyclones in the Bay of Bengal. The weather is pleasantly cool.
May 20 Buddha’s birthday was a public holiday, and the headteachers demanded a day off after an exhausting day of action research with me, enlivened by teaching them the hokey cokey. The primary training continued. A noisy evening with temple music on one side and a rock concert on the waste ground at the end of the road on the other.
At the weekend we managed our long planned visit to Ilam at last; we were invited by two enthusiastic teachers we trained last October, but transport strikes and ‘trouble in the hills’ had made the journey impossible. We met Surya, the head of the ETC, at Tulsi’s son’s wedding and he was very keen for us to visit his training centre. It seemed a good way to combine business and pleasure. On Wednesday, the peace following the election was shattered by storms, strikes, burning tyres and police curfews, but Thursday dawned peacefully and we had seats on a bus heading for Itahari before 7am. East along the Mahendra Highway for 3 hours to Birtamod where we changed onto a microbus heading up to Ilam, another 3 hours away. When it was stuffed to bursting point we began the ear popping climb through spectacular wooded hills, causing the girls in front of us to throw up. The top of the ridge was shrouded in mist with thick bamboo forest, abundant cardamom plants and tea gardens. A rapid descent to cross the mighty Mai River, before the final ascent to Ilam. Ilam has been described as ‘the Darjeeling of Nepal’, but apart from the presence of tea there are few similarities. We checked into the Green View Guest House that overlooks a tea garden, ascending a flight of stone steps to a room with two wooden beds with thin cotton mattresses, warm quilts, some camouflage material over the window and a small bathroom with running water. We decided to attempt to locate the ETC ready for our official visit on Friday. As we walked out of town following directions given to us at the guest house, a young man came hurtling down a precipitous slope shouting “You are Deborah; I have seen your picture; can you help me with my action research?” He had just finished a training day and wanted to share his ideas, so he led us to the ETC across a ditch, followed by an undignified scramble up a muddy cliff, where Surya was delighted to see us. The primary teachers were just finishing their day of PE training with some military looking exercises on a small patch of flat ground, and we contacted our friend Rajendra and arranged to meet later. The primary teachers led us back into town and we wandered north and suddenly bumped into Pankaj, the bright eyed young English teacher from our training who I had tried to contact by e-mail to let him know of our arrival. He was so excited and took us on a tour of the town, where he knows everyone and everyone knows him. He has done extraordinarily well; his family are from a small village 2 hours away, where he attended the village school, achieving high enough marks to study for his BA in English, followed by a MEd in Kathmandu. He now teaches +2 (sixth form), does some training at the ETC, runs a communications shop (photocopy, fax, phone. computer) and is a ‘radio jockey’ on the local FM station. It is a bit more than a one horse town; the main street was busy with trotting ponies carrying milk churns from villages in the surrounding hills to the cooperative dairy. Ilam is the centre of cheese production, as well as tea. The main street is lined with shop houses, many with wooden balconies on which plant pots with a spectacular array of geraniums, hydrangea, foxgloves, and fuschia were balanced precariously. An extraordinary number of shops sell women’s sandals.
Rajendra and Pankaj met us in the evening over our daal bhat to help us plan our visit. On Friday morning we returned to the ETC for the final session of a workshop, and we toured Adarsha, Pankaj’s school and Makendra Campus where Rajendra teaches degree students. Then to the Education Office to meet the new DEO; Hari is a charming man, who studied at the Institute of Education in London and in Denmark and Japan. Prompted by Surya, he organised a trip by DEO jeep to Mai Pokhari, a sacred lake for Hindus and a conservation area on Saturday.
Saturday dawned bright and clear with glorious views over the hills, dotted with tiny villages. Rajendra and Pankaj joined us for breakfast, and by the time the jeep arrived around 11:30 the sky was overcast and the mist was swirling through the trees. We rattled past ponies taking their empty churns home and soon came to the end of the tarmac. The next 8km, only possible in 4WD took a bone shaking hour, the rain pelted down and visibility was reduced to 3m. The driver and Hari assisted the windscreen wipers to help find the way. It was impossible to see the lake when we arrived, so we dashed into a wooden tea shop and sat on benches in semi darkness while the rain pounded on the tin roof and fog crept in through the broken plank walls. Our stay was enlivened by plentiful tea and conversation with a group of very wet female students who had come to the lake to celebrate the end of their exams. After an hour, the mist gradually lifted and the rain stopped, so we ventured out into a dripping green landscape and were eventually rewarded with stunning views over to Darjeeling and a pale glimpse of sun. The lake is beautiful, with splendid water lilies and surrounded by pine forest. There are 9 small bays around the lake, each with religious and ecological significance. While our friends did puja, we searched for warty newts and admired the rhododendrons. A young boy accompanied us so we did not get lost, while his brother stayed to roast maize over a fire and his cheerful granny ground it into corn. On our last evening we were joined in the restaurant for our daal bhat by a young deer, apparently a resident on the third floor, and then by Rajendra and Pankaj with presents of tea and photographs to take home.

Mother's Day

We arrived home on Monday evening to find water pouring from the roof. Predictably none in the taps in our flat. A hose pipe was shooting a healthy jet of clean water across the roof from a feed pipe coming from below. It took some time to work out why this hose going nowhere had suddenly started spouting water. Eventually realisation dawned. The hose used to connect a metal pipe to the outside tap on the roof. The water pipes were the strange pieces of metal we found inside our flat that had been used to force the padlock. Quite why the water supply to the roof seemed to have resumed when there is no water anywhere else is yet to be understood. Tried to call a plumber, but too late in the day. Then the storms that have been pounding Myanmar arrived with torrents of rain and high winds. An eventful evening and night, with the bedroom lit by sheltering fireflies.
It had been a lovely day at the ETC, with some much improved micro-teaching in the morning, and a special presentation for Nepali Mother’s Day in the afternoon. I, of course, am now haamro aama, and was serenaded and festooned with jewellery. The bracelets are so tight I am unable to get them off and swam many lengths of the pool with 16 red and gold bracelets tinkling. I left my bindi stuck to the changing room wall, where I suspect it will stay for several months.
David, having managed to do some team teaching last week, arrived on Monday to find the staff and about 200 children about to set off into the countryside with a huge red and yellow banner to attract more children into school. They roamed the lanes and villages Pied Piper-like, collecting tiny children on the way. Yet more name cards to be made and laminated.
My primary group has been joined by one of Lalmani’s goats – a frisky young kid with a bell round his neck who loves jumping over the chair struts and rubbing against teachers’ legs. He was chased out as he tried to chew through the power cable, thus avoiding roast goat for khaja break. Every day the training gets a little better, with more preparation and more variety. I have a set of alphabet cards and number cards that I use for different simple activities suitable for children that we use every day, similar to the activities that David is trialling in schools with his teachers.
A day out on Friday. Anil (the sophisticated and efficient administrator at the ETC) introduced me to his sister before the election; she and some friends have started a kindergarten in Itahari, and wanted some advice. Although we are not the best people to offer advice on nursery education, we promised to visit. We caught the bus, while Anil, who understandably does not trust Nepali buses, went by motorcycle. His map was easy to follow, and we arrived at the Blooming Kindergarten at 10:30am. We were garlanded and presented with flowers by tiny children in pink checked shirts and chatted to Srijana, Smriti and Manju in the office in a mixture of English and Nepali. They have 50 children aged 2 ½ - 5, and are desperate for more training. We have found training providers and hope they will be able to find some locally. We were really impressed by what they have achieved with bright airy classrooms, beautifully decorated, lots of toys and play space, tiny tables and chairs for more formal work. We were of course given their full repertoire of English and Nepali songs before joining them in a classroom, and best of all, playing on the floor with the little ones. School finishes early on Friday (1pm), so Srijana had arranged transport to local places of interest, a landscaped picnic area in the countryside and a sculpture park – a wild garden where an artist makes and displays Hindu and Buddhist figures. This was followed by lunch at another resort spot and the presentation of gifts. Anil sped back to Birtanagar, while we returned to the centre of Itahari and the Gorkha Department Store – the nearest thing to a proper shop in the eastern Terai. After a bit of retail therapy, we found pineapples, not seen in Birtanagar since September, in the market and caught a speedy but more hazardous microbus, complete with Barbie doll stickers, back to Biratnagar. To our delight, there was water in the flat, so we had a proper shower.
Karna, the charming Dalit boy who used to work for Chhatra and sleep here, has returned; he appeared one evening last week, hoping to find Chhatra and Tara back from America. He has finished his exams (School Leaving Certificate) and is currently working as labourer to save enough money for the next phase of his education (equivalent to sixth form) which starts next month. After a series of daily e-mails back and forth to America, Karna has moved into a small room of the upstairs flat tonight, ‘for security’, and to clean the flat and tidy the garden before Chhatra comes home. Its good to have him back.
Taking advantage of the new transport strike free Nepal, on Sunday we went with Joseph to meet Etienne in Dharan, for our VSO regional meeting. This is our last meeting, as Joseph returns to Uganda in June and Etienne finishes in September. We decided to head up to Bhedetar, at 1500m, where it is cooler and there are spectacular mountain views on a clear day. It was not a clear day, so we continued north to Dhankuta. We ordered lunch at the best hotel in town and walked along the ridge during the one hour wait. Joseph’s roast chicken arrived looking like something rubber from a joke shop, while the rest of us stuck to vegetables. Later we walked through the small town, with some traditional old houses with intricately carved windows, surrounded by excited school children – black and white bideshi were a real novelty.
We arrived back in Dharan after hurtling the 50km downhill, freewheeling most of the way to save fuel, just in time to catch the last bus back to Biratnagar. We were lashed by ferocious winds and joined by market traders at the end of the day. At Itahari, at least 100 women and children boarded the already full bus, with the remains of their day’s produce. Unfortunately most of it was fish, and although the crates were heaved onto the roof, the smell lingered on. David described it as being inside a mobile lunatic asylum. We arrived back in Biratnagar as the first huge drops of rain fell and sheets of lightening flashed across the sky. We sheltered under a shop awning until the shopkeeper decided to pull down the shutters for the night, so set off for home, wading over our ankles in water. My hands were so wet I could not slide the bolt to the gate, then realised that it was padlocked on the inside. How carefully Karna is looking after us! I was about to ring the bell when there was a huge thunderclap and the power went, thus preventing the bell from working. David was about to attempt to heave me over the wall when the power returned and we were able to rouse a very embarrassed Karna.
Work has suddenly become incredibly busy. The schools are still in start stop mode, but David’s grade 1 class that started with 20 students, now has 95. I am much in demand by all the trainers to ‘help’ with their sessions, which usually means planning the activities for the day. Sometimes I am given clues about what might be useful so I can do proper preparation. There are currently 2 primary groups, life skills training and one month headteacher training. Secondary English, Nepali and Social studies starts on June 4.
And on the waterfront, the day after the water supply to the house resumed, Chhatra’s sister arrived with a team of men and a tube well was installed in the back yard. Two days later, her husband came with another group of men and removed all the pipes ….

Nepali wedding

Tulsi was absent most of last week preparing for his son’s wedding. He appeared on Friday, his hair and moustache dyed black to an extraordinary intensity, with piles of wedding invitations for Sunday and Monday. The event started with a band and wedding procession from the bride’s house somewhere in Sunsari, followed by days of partying at the bride’s home and later at his house.
On Monday, we learnt that the wedding had taken place as planned on Sunday, and we were all expected at Tulsi’s house as soon as the training was over for the day. A topical day on the development of community schools, as upstairs a delegation from the Ministry in Kathmandu were running a workshop on the development of community managed schools, which is likely to be a priority for the new government. Meanwhile, Gita and the rest of Lalmani’s extended family were hovering on the field dressed in their best, waiting for a rickshaw to take them to the wedding party. At 4pm the rest of us prepared to leave. We resisted attempts to get us on the back of motorbikes so we could make our own way home, so set off in a cycle procession with elderly Govinda and the peons. Half way there, David got a puncture, so we abandoned him at a cycle stall while I cycled with the others to locate Tulsi’s house, then rode back to collect David. 10 minutes and 10 rupees is enough to repair a tyre. Tulsi lives in a newly built – or partially built – bungalow north of the city. The lane outside was full of motorbikes and cycles, with many people milling about, a splendidly decorated awning over the front porch and a makeshift tent on the patch of waste ground next door. The women were splendid in red saris, dripping with gold jewellery, while most of the men were in food stained shirts, shorts and flipflops. The bride and groom were sitting on overstuffed chairs in the porch looking tired and fed up. We greeted them, and then jumped the ditch into the field where buckets of food were waiting inside the tent. The field is grazed by cows, and one had to be careful where one sat. Rice, daal, various vegetable dishes, a steaming pile of buffalo and greasy cardboard boxes full of pakora and puris were frequently replenished from cauldrons over 2 gas burners by grubby boys in frayed shorts and T shirts. Delicious; washed down with metal beakers full of water. Bones were spat onto the grass with other food debris, to the delight of the neighbourhood dogs that sneaked in to snatch morsels of food before being pelted with stones. As we were attempting to leave, a group of children attached themselves to us “auntie, uncle you must come and dance”. There was no escape and we were forced to provide the evening’s main entertainment.
Trying to perfect our water collection and usage is a challenge; it’s fine when we are at home and can wash clothes and hair at the outside tap when the supply comes on at midday. During the working week it is more difficult; we sometimes have a trickle in the morning to start to fill the buckets, and if we are lucky we can complete the task when we get home, avoiding the mosquitoes that swarm round the tap at the end of the day. The swimming pool, although increasingly green and murky, is a welcome relief. A violent storm on Thursday evening filled the flat with dust and bits of tree. David’s cleaning routine is severely compromised.
At last Bal Rani has started teaching lessons, so David is busy making name cards for all the new children. I have been training primary teachers with Bishnu, a retired secondary head, very open to new ideas and doing things differently, so we and the teachers have had a lot of fun and they have done some much improved micro-teaching.