More strikes

David started the early shift at Bokhari on Monday, leaving home at 5:30am. The staff and children were delighted to see him and he enjoyed his day helping to plan teaching and learning for the next two weeks. My primary trainees started their teaching practice; I visited two of the three training schools, and found them excited and working hard on timetables and lesson plans.
Tuesday: David home by 7am as a bandha called for 15 days to protest at the lack of textbooks in schools. There were a number of incidents at the end of last week, with students protesting and the DEO office closed. It seems that the Ministry has called the current action, presumably to divert attention from the fact that they are responsible for the production and distribution of textbooks. Ironically, David has seen his best teaching since the teachers were relieved of the constraints of the textbook. I went to school at 10 to see what was happening in the training schools. All the trainees were at Shankapur with about 30 children, and mothers were bringing new little ones. Most of the regular teachers were there, so we sat in the porch on plastic chairs and chatted about what we might be able to do. My friend Rekha arrived and was delighted to see me as she is timetabled for grade 4 and 5 English this year, and needs help. Some girls who I taught in grade 4 came to chat, and I was dismayed to discover that Sony, the brightest girl in the class has got married (age 12) and will not return to school. Tragic. We spent the morning looking at lessons plans and teaching materials and I returned to the ETC to help sort out a contingency plan.
The government then announced a three day public holiday to coincide with the first session of the new parliament. Training continued at the ETC, while David spent the day converting his alphabet charts from Q is for queen to Q is for queue in recognition of the new republic.
Wednesday Jestha 15 (May 28). The new parliament met and the end of the monarchy and beginning of the Democratic Republic of Nepal was passed by 560 votes to 4. The start of the meeting was delayed by many hours, a few bombs and fears of a military coup. It is likely that Koirala, the 83year old PM, will become a constitutional head of state, and that Prachanda, the Maoist leader, will become PM when they meet again next week.
On the home front, the water problem seems to be resolved at last. A reserve tank with a motor has been installed downstairs so we can pump water to the roof. The non-functional taps in the house have been replaced and the kitchen tap now has proper water flow after the drip drip drip of the last year. Several leaks have appeared in the pipework, but are being fixed. Karna and his brother Durna are living happily upstairs and working hard during the day and studying in the evening. They have been a great help in sorting out the plumbing work, and Karna’s English improves every day.
MoE U turn on Monday when they declared all schools must reopen. Half the staff, 3 trainees, one small child and a dog were at Balmandir across the road from the ETC where I checked first before deciding it was not worth ‘doing the rounds’ on my bicycle. At last I got my ‘training of trainers’ underway, only 90 minutes late. 5 each of English, Nepali and Social Studies part timers arrived on Monday afternoon for allocation of the one month training that starts on Wednesday. The ETC staff also took part; we’ll see if there is any difference. Pandit Guru, the Hindu priest who teaches Nepali has had a makeover. Formally only wearing white – white trousers, kurta, shoes, socks, cap, topped off with a bobble cap on cold days, covering his white hair. Today he was in saffron robes and saffron topi covering bright orange hair.
Teaching resumed in schools in a half hearted way on Wednesday, but few lessons were actually completed and teachers and students didn’t manage to last the whole day. I was delighted to find that the nursery at Balmandir now has some toys and I played happily on the floor with tiny grubby children while waiting for the trainees to go and teach. Sadly at Shankapur, the tinies are put into the grade 1 classroom and there is no provision for them. Helped Kalpana organise a game on Friday, before helping Gita with what turned out to be a really good English lesson with grade 3, once she abandoned her lesson plan. Teaching finished after period 2, when the male trainees decided to take all the students outside for musical chairs. I arrived back at the ETC to find that Durga had taken my suggestions about more variety of activities to heart and had prepared a very good role play activity for the English teachers in the afternoon. On Friday evening, a surprise call from Dinesh, back from 2 months in Qatar, where he worked in tourism, taking Americans and Europeans out into the Arabian Sea on a dhow and organising watersports activities. A huge culture shock for a young man who had never seen the sea. He loved it. The biggest challenge was coping with watching people eat beef at the beach barbecues. He will be sent a work visa and will decide if he is prepared to go for 2 years. There are currently 2m Nepalis working in Qatar – making up more than 20% of the population.
New democratic Nepal is still non-functional, as no agreement can be made and all parties are now threatening to pull out of non-existent government. The king has left the palace, and Koirala continues to make all decisions.