Winter approaches

The festival season has been replaced by the wedding season. Temple music starts at 4am, well before the imam at 5, often followed by a strident wedding band of drums and trumpets waking the bridegroom in a neighbouring house. The weather is beautiful, with warm sunny days and cool nights. Because it is officially winter, woolly hats, scarves and cardigans are worn by the men and blankets by the women. The air is full of dust; a combination of no rain since we returned in August and the beginnings of road repairs. Huge piles of sand and gravel have been dumped at the sides of the roads, so they now resemble a slalom course. There is room to manoeuvre a bicycle down the road to the ETC, but frequent diversions have to be made for motorcycles and rickshaws.
My month with secondary English teachers has just ended. The group is only 13, so I have got to know them well. Balkumari and Yasoda, the two women have become my special friends; their English is limited to grade 7 level, so they rattle on in Nepali. They are both in their mid thirties; Balkumari has two sons, and Yasoda one daughter. While Yasoda is slim and elegant Balkumari is large and jolly. I have been treated to several views of her Caesarean scars (horrendous). Last week she told me I had very nice teeth and asked me where I had got them! Rama, a retired head who has studied in Leeds and at the Bell language school in Saffron Walden worked with me for a week, which we all enjoyed. She now does community work, watches TV and eats!
Secondary training finished on Monday, with the usual examination, written in incomprehensible English. The paper featured multiple choice questions, very short answer questions, short answer questions and long answer questions. The following question only works for Hindus. ‘How do you convince people who say that English is cow slaughters’ [sic] language?’
I have spent the rest of the week doing primary English with Durga. He has surpassed himself, and we have run an activity based week. Having watched the groups sitting writing for the first 3 weeks, it’s a delight to watch them running around (they are mostly stout and elderly) and giggling. The ‘make a hat for your friend’ activity which teaches reading writing speaking AND listening skills in English reduced me to hysteria, as they wore their new hats over their already eccentric headgear.
The most dramatic incident of the week occurred at tiffin time on Thursday. I was standing on the school field in the sun eating an apple. Gita came over for a chat, leading her young heifer. As we were talking, the heifer mounted her shoulders, cannoning her into me and pinning us both against the wall. We were helpless with laughter and were stuck fast until some excited young schoolboys came to drag the cow off.
Two enjoyable evenings with the Schneiders. The first time we were welcomed by Josef and the boys standing in the road shining torches so we could find the house in the inevitable power cut. Having spent 2 years in a large house with pool in Zimbabwe, they are used to a more typical expat lifestyle, with ‘staff’. Hanna has taught Apsara to make European food as a change from dal bhat, so much to the boys’ delight we had an Austrian meal. They have decided to move to Dharan, near to the hills and forest, where there is a larger expat community, a better school for the boys and Hanna can start an MSc at the medical school. They expect to stay here until March. We were invited again for St Nikolaus Eve, which coincided with my birthday. St Nikolaus arrived laden with presents for the boys, a beautiful winter kurta for me and a chocolate cake from David. The latter caused some problems; he ordered it from the bakery early in the week. On Friday there was fighting between YCL and the youth group of the Marxists, so the whole town was closed. Karna phoned the bakery and David crawled in under the shutters to retrieve the cake.
We are still swimming in the afternoons at weekends, and have started cycle rides out into the countryside on Sundays. Last weekend we discovered a wonderful old Shiva temple in a village near to the Indian border. The entire village assembled to find out who we were and what we were doing; boys stopped flying their kites, girls with smaller siblings on their hips hovered shyly and the women brought their new baby goats to show us. The priest and the head man told us about the temple which is reputedly 2000 years old and the oldest in the area. There is a huge Nandi (Shiva’s bull) and several smaller Nandi shrines, where women were burning incense and anointing him with milk and marigold petals. There’s a large pond in front of the temple for ritual bathing and fishing, as well as for children to play. A gentle pace of rural life, with animals grazing, rice straw being brought in for the winter, new rice being threshed, and all the family working together. We spoke to several young people who dream of getting away for a better education and a different way of life.