Saraswati

The very hungry caterpillar has been a great success with ECD at two schools. The children love the story and all have made a caterpillar segment with their names, weight, favourite things. Its been a brilliant way of getting them to talk individually.

Primary and secondary training programmes have finished, with great celebrations, and we have started workshops for school based training. Some secondary teachers have done some interesting action research projects, with enticing titles like ‘stopping students fleeing after tiffin’. Many children do not reappear after the break, as they often work in the fields. One ingenious solution was setting up a committee to fine students 5 rupees (stick not carrot) – but it worked and over 200 rupees was collected and spent on a rubbish bin and broom to keep the classroom clean. Not very Nepali. I watched a group of 100 on Friday eating their tiffin – samosa, gulab jamon and banana – then tossing the cardboard plate, banana skin and other debris over the balcony, out of the window or onto the grass. This was followed by a hearty bout of throat clearing and spitting.

I have been visiting rural schools on the back of Durga’s motorbike. Several days were foggy and damp and we slid along buffalo tracks through fields of rice stubble to rural schools where teachers muffled up in scarves, jackets and woolly hats taught chilly students with ragged shirts and bare feet as water dripped from the tin roof. Poverty seems so much worse in the cold. On the way back from one school, we went to his parents, who have recently sold their land in the village and have bought land and are in the process of having a new house constructed on the outskirts of the city. The ground floor is completed; we found his elderly parents sitting on a pile of rubble on the roof, watching as women toiled up the rudimentary concrete stairs balancing piles of bricks on their heads, while men with makeshift plumblines assembled the bricks for the upstairs walls. Outside were the 2 family cows and a well planted vegetable garden.

By Friday, the sunshine had returned and we had a glorious day in the countryside. We sped along the highway past silent factories and busy brick kilns. The mustard fields are brilliant yellow, amongst wheat, maize and sugarcane. Kingfishers wait patiently on the bamboo overhanging the river. Oxen are ploughing the rice stubble and. women are threshing rice and drying pulses. Every house has its own Monet-like haystack. Eventually we nearly reached Rangeli, where Durga wanted to show me his old wooden house and former school, but there was a banda, with the road blocked by burning tyres, so we walked the last kilometer. We met many teachers from the training programmes, but no teaching was happening as the students were preparing for Saraswati the goddess of education) puja on Saturday. Brightly coloured flags were being strung across the school compound and a ‘temple’ prepared for a clay statue of the goddess. We had passed many of these on the road, being transported by rickshaw and buffalo.

Saturday morning – misty again as we cycled to Bokhari school with Hanna and the boys for their celebration. All the children and staff were there, with many ex-students and people from the local community. Two village bands were playing and local men had brought 3 goats for ritual slaughter by the Hindu priest in banana yellow robes. A classroom had been made into a Saraswati temple and we paraded through to do puja and receive our tikkas. Huge vats of food were being cooked for a village feast, followed by singing and dancing. Tomorrow we will follow the processions to the river where the stautes will be cast into the water. Lovely for all of us to enjoy the festivals while there is no improvement in the political situation. This week even the smugglers have gone on strike and there is no improvement in the power situation, inspite of the PM’s promises.

Next week to Kathmandu and then to India for a long overdue break in Kerala.

Hell's angels in woolly hats

Excitement at the ETC today as a fleet of motorcycles drove onto the field with blue flags waving. About 30 sturdy men in leather jackets and woolly hats with sprouting tops dismounted and headed towards the classrooms. Not menacing – just a delegation from the Teachers’ Union to announce a special meeting tomorrow. Schools will be closed of course. The government announced that all primary teachers who have finished 10 month training but only completed grade 10 at school (GCSE equivalent) must start grade 11-12 starting on Wednesday at 3 schools in Biratnagar. Sessions will run from 3-8pm. Most of the teachers are in rural schools. There has been no transport for over a week and no sign of an end to the dispute – and of course there is never electricity in the evenings.
Meanwhile, the whole of eastern Nepal has been at a standstill for the last two weeks because of protests by workers from the jute mills. Mill owners are unable to meet their wage demands as the mills have not been working properly for months because there is no electricity and no access to Kathmandu. No transport for days, and the border is also closed so no supplies can come from India. There is now no fuel, no gas and a shortage of food and huge losses in customs revenue. Today, according to the newspaper reports ”Agitators pelted themselves with stones”. Further power cuts have started; we are promised a daily ration of electricity from 10pm – 2am (asleep) and 2 – 4 pm (at work). The government maintain it is nothing to do with them and not their problem. We have friends in Kathmandu who live near a minister and have an uninterrupted power supply!
There are some bright spots. Rosie-the-dog is now encased in a cushion cover to protect her from the cold. We are gradually becoming immune to the gas fumes in the small back room. Work is enjoyable and productive for both of us. One highlight this week was while I was working with primary maths teachers, giving instructions in Nepali which Umapati translated into English. An interesting reversal!
Fog again on Sunday, but the afternoon was pleasant enough to tempt us out on our bikes. I have become adept at cycling wrapped in a blanket. We ventured south to the mills area, where we found a thriving community and silent mills. Wandered home through the villages with their collections of mud houses covered in drying dung patties for fuel, women sorting lentils and coming back from the fields with bundles of fodder for the cows outside every small dwelling clad in sacking to keep out the cold. The children are not so lucky, with ragged clothes and no shoes.
Teaching practice started on Tuesday with 93 teachers in 9 local schools. Several group returned to the ETC as the schools had decided to close ‘for the cold’. I visited 2 schools and sat in the sunshine with the teachers. At Balmandir there were 25 teachers and about 40 children present. No teaching occurred. On Magh 1, the second day of teaching practice we celebrated Maghi Parba, the official end of winter with another holiday and a return to glorious sunshine. We celebrated with our first swim for six weeks. Water very cold, but hot sun to dry off in. At Shankapur on Thursday, there were more goats than children in the classrooms.
On Saturday morning when I turned on my phone, there was a message from Umapati, informing me that I was expected at the primary teachers’ picnic, starting at 8am. I telephoned him; the teachers had been trying to contact me since 5am, knowing that I like advance warning of ‘events’. Plans for the morning put on hold and I arrived at the picnic site soon after 10, to find fires blazing, meat roasting, women chopping many kilos of vegetables and most of the men playing cards. The first round of snacks appeared at 11. Handfuls of beaten rice, puffed rice, spicy snacks, fiery vegetable stew, yogurt with a pile of sticky Indian sweets on the top. I managed a small portion, sitting cross legged on an old sack with the women. Lots of laughter and photographs, singing and dancing before the preparations for the main meal started. I escaped to go to market for Saturday shopping. Another adventure on Sunday as we went out for the day with Hanna, Luca (aged 3) and Uta, a young German eye specialist visiting the hospital here before she starts a one year placement in Lahan, 200 km west. We headed north to Dharan and then up to the hills to climb the observation tower on the hill at Bhedeta, where on a clear day there are fantastic views of the Everest range. It was not a clear day. Descended back to Dharan, where Hanna and family are planning to move in April, to look at some houses. One was on the massive site of the BP Koirala Hospital and Medical School. This was the former British Gorkha Military HQ, with large colonial houses, Capability Brown landscaping, a country club and a golf course. Nirvana Country Club had seen better days, but we had a pleasant lunch sitting in the sunshine behind a barbed wire fence looking over the golf course, where cows grazed on scrubby brown grass and a few stout Indian doctors on their afternoon off swung their clubs. Home via the ‘supermarket’ in Itahari.

Christmas and new year

The festive season has been marked here by another increase in load shedding and a lack of water, apart from a flood through the roof in the spare room. The upstairs door has been securely padlocked by the new landlord, so we had no access to find out what was happening. After a frantic hour trying to contact him, he appeared with our friend Dinesh and a plumber, who mended a burst pipe in the upstairs bathroom. Fortunately, there was little damage and David managed to dry out all his carefully prepared teaching materials that are laid out in ordered piles on the spare bed. This was shortly followed by the demise of our gas ring. Ravi’s brother, who spent an hour sitting on our kitchen floor dismantling and reassembling it, covering the marble with a lethal carbon and kerosene mixture, has repaired it.
Christmas Day started foggy and chilly, but a pale sun came through in time for breakfast on the terrace with our splendid dahlias. Schools were closed but I had a busy day training for primary English. ‘Learning English through activities’ is our theme, not without hazards, as most of the group are stout and in their fifties. Chhabilal pulled a muscle as he was ‘running to the board’ to find his word; Laxmi started to have palpitations and refused to ‘jump and down’ any more because of her heart condition. Manju wants to be my best friend. She is the most colourful, with her scarlet polo-necked sweater under a swirly orange and yellow sari, topped off with a fluorescent pink cardigan and an electric blue bobble hat.
Our best present was an invitation to Hanna and Josef’s for a hot bath / shower. Bliss; I had not had a bath since England and our last hot shower was in Kathmandu almost 3 months ago. After a traditional Austrian Christmas Day supper, we sang carols round the tree and exchanged small presents. An enjoyable evening and very dark cycle ride home. Back to Hanna and Josef’s for new year and games and fireworks with the boys. It is difficult for us to reciprocate their hospitality, as we are now confined to the candlelit small backroom to keep warm. The gas fire is working again, but the fumes are so noxious we have to turn it off before we pass out.
We have just embarked on the BBC War and Peace series from the 1970s. The sound and movement are not synchronised, its in a strange sepia tint and has Dutch subtitles. It is so dated – very stagy and overacted. The wigs are extraordinary and resemble the hairstyles of 70s football players. My hair does too, after 3 months without a visit to a hairdresser. We should manage to make the DVDs last until we go to India, as the laptop battery is very tired so we have to watch half an episode at a time.
Further increases in load shedding have started this week. On a good day we have 6 hours of electricity. Government administrative expenditure has increased 8 times since April – mostly on overseas travel for the new regime. The press has become more critical of the new government, and newspapers were interrupted for a few days this week after Maoists smashed newspaper offices and beat up editors. Headlines now focus on the power crisis and government plans to generate more electricity. The latest features plans for wind farms; however ‘the inaccessibility to identified project areas is a major stumbling block’.
Its now the beginning of the kite flying season. Small boys perch precariously on the rooftops with home made kites on the end of huge spools of string. A consignment of cheap badminton rackets has appeared in the market, so children are lashing ‘shuttlecocks’ made from rubber bands around on pieces of waste ground. More dangerously, they are using the railings of the central reservation on the highway coming from the airport as badminton net!