Sick Bed, Flowers and Snakes.... Nepal Adventure Continues

Nepal Trip - Day 15 - Last Day in the Rural Countryside

Last night was rough. Enough said. 

So, needless to say I'm worthless today. All I can do is sleep, read, sleep, roll over and sleep. It takes me until noon before I can get anything fluid down me.

The kids and Randall go out for another school visit and I spend my time drifting in and out of the sounds of the rural life. The sounds of the farm animals, cuckoo birds, babies crying and dishes being washed on the side of the hill in the heat of the morning sun.

My spot for the day... Luckily my favorite travel author is keeping me company.... Thank you Michael Palin!

The family comes back late in the afternoon with stories of visiting another school, painting flowers and bumblebees. And heaps of drama. I nod and go back to sleep.

While I have been sleeping, the day seems to have been a strange one, with the stars not quite aligning around us. The family's adventure started with the car getting stuck in a ditch, next to a cliff. Of course I am out of order, the power doesn't come on all day (well that's not too unusual), and on the way home Durga and Gyan saw a car crash on the road and stayed to help. No one knows when they will be back. And to top it all off at dinner Jaimie stepped on a snake and the whole place erupts in frantic screaming (mainly from Sumi) while the village women go after it with sticks, creating utter chaos. I am so glad that I didn't know about the snakes while I was laying in the outdoor loo all night! Soon the poor wee snake is dead and everyone is laughing around the table again under the stars, enjoying a final dal baht meal together.

It's been a fabulous time spent in this rural environment, but our time here is done. It's time to move on tomorrow. Our lessons have been learned, friends made and many a story to use along the way.

Hopefully I will be upright enough to make the journey to the Tibetan border tomorrow morning. Another bus ride through the Nepali landscape. I am always happiest when I'm on the move.

For now I enjoy the sounds of the night and watch a brush fire move it's way slowly up a hill on the far side of the valley.

Namaste....

Nepal Trip - Philosophical Musings, Mothers Day and Thunder...

Day Fourteen - Another Day of Village Life

What a good night of sleep I had. Being "off the grid" certain appeals to my sleep patterns!

After our hearty breakfast we pile into Durga's long suffering car and head off down the valley to the village school of Durga's home town. It's a little village much further down the dirt road from Gyan's house but we make our way, past many corn field, water buffalo and protective dog.

This is a much more progressive school than the ones we visited yesterday. The feeling is immediate! Gyan is one of the head teachers, which probably explains it. His dealings with the guests from First Steps Himalaya would have opened his eyes to more modern teaching practices. The children here in the Mulkarka village school are all engaged and learning. Fionna is very excited as apparently it is is quite the turn around from the last time they visited. FSH is planning to open a year three classroom at this school this year. The ideas of learning are trickling up from their early childhood educational concepts. It's a process, and here it is very noticeably working. There isn't one classroom without a teacher or books and no one is shouting!

We get busy doing a bit of fun beautifying. Clara paints a hopscotch and spends hours teaching the children how to play the game. What an absolute hit! The other kids do murals. Liam is particularly proud of his abc snake for the little ones.

Clara's hopscotch is a huge hit!

Liam's ABC Snake mural for the preschoolers

I have one question that is burning through my mind on this trip. How do we debrief our children after this experience? It is always a tricky question, especially as I am not sure how I feel about rural Nepal yet myself, so how do I explain the things we are seeing to the kids. 
I mean, we are living with people who live more or less like our ancestors did thousands of years ago. Is it right to put modern day values on such a culture? To expect them to grasp our modern values? Or does it simply push them into a situation that they are not ready for? Or are they completely ready for it, and just need to be shown how? But I suppose, just like with most humans around the world there will be the bright sparks that take the ideas and run, and the traditionalists who don't embrace change.

Again, what to tell the kids? I think it is very much individual what each one will take out of it. For one thing they will certainly realize that kids are fun to be with, regardless of nationality. And that the world is not such a scary place. That it is just as possible to have happiness without all the trappings of modern stuff. But also that where we, the Douglas family, come from has changed more rapidly than this landlocked, uplifted nation surrounded by the worlds tallest mountains. And also that globalization is here to stay...

Should we feel guilt over the fact that Nepali don't have what we have? Not at all. They are just in a different stage of their journey. Also, should we help? That's always a big one for me to get my head around. One side of me feels that if someone is below me then it is my duty to lend a hand to pull them up. Of course that is my own westernized judgemental-ism about hierarchy, but I'm trying to be honest with myself about this subject so that I can figure it out. 

The other side of me has a bit more common sense. Help when appropriate, when possible, but it is not a duty. The people in Nepal are beautiful strong people who are on their own journey. Yes, their journey is linked to mine in the sense that we are all humans on the planet earth. We are all brothers in a way. But to suddenly advance a journey faster than it's meant to be on isn't right either. To every thing there is a time and a purpose. So our children hopefully will come away with a more global view on the world. With an appreciation for all those people who went before us to create the modern reality of the western world that we live in, but also for the journey of other people. And to respect that.

The projects that First Steps Himalaya are certainly something that I can get behind. It's about teaching the people to teach themselves. Teach the teachers to teach (not shout or beat) and the Nepali youth will find their own way. That way the future is placed in their own capable hands to mold it the way that fits them, not recreating something from another land.

Our children will always remember painting a classroom and teaching the local kids to play hopscotch. The big kids will remember the shouting of the non-progressive teacher and the time wasting of all the children sitting in classes with no teachers or books. If it inspires them to be a bit more thankful for what they have, then great. It will give us many a great dinnertime conversation that may not sink in, or may only percolate to come up later in life. But for me it has filled in a gap in the part of the world that I needed to see. And maybe that is all I need to say on the matter.

Enough of these philosophical wanderings.... back to the story. After all it is Nepali Mother's Day!

 

After finishing with the hopscotch we are invited to Durga's family's house to partake in a Mother's Day celebration. It's a spontaneous festival spirit. Durga only comes back to his village to visit his family a couple times a year. These people live in a little cluster of houses in the village, just down the hill from the school that we were just at. The houses are surrounded by their fields of corn, beans and onions. Next to their houses are shelters for their water buffalo, goats and chickens. 

His family, aunties, cousins, nieces are dressed beautifully in their traditional dress - happy bright red and green outfits dressed with smiling faces. There are no men here, they are all off working in the city or over seas. Many Nepali men leave Nepal for the Persian gulf taking the grunt jobs that no body else wants. Sweating on the tarmac in Kuwait to send home a few extra rupees, leaving the women to tend the fields, raise the kids and carry on with life.

We are invited into one of Durga's aunties houses. They sit us down and are so pleased to share their special feast day foods with us, treating us like visiting royalty. I am given a tikka, or blessing, for being a mother, complete with special red dot on my third eye. They serve us a mixture of baked sweat breads, sugar crystals and to drink, coca cola. Earthen floors with animals braying outside, it is a surreal experience!

One of Durga's nieces demonstrates how they grind rice into flour for cooking.

But soon we are off home to where our hosts have left us a lunch of vegetable soup and deep fried rice bread. Jin Kari, our hostess has gone to visit her mother to honor her for mothers day, one of only two days a year she will be able to see her. Sumi, the daughter of the house, plays hostess and the girls spend hours with her visiting friends, playing in the bushes and even getting their own Tikka's. Juliet gets so dirty that everyone jokes she has become Nepali!

Sadly for me this was my last meal for awhile....

Clara and Juliet receive Tikka's from Sumi, our host's daughter

Sisters

The Buddha's revenge that has plagued Randall on this trip hits me sudden and hard. Within an hour from when I was happily playing with the village kids to suddenly rushing to the out door toilet/shower where I make myself a home. Ugh. I'm a wreck. This would be one situation where it would be very nice to have a toilet in the room. Oh well, my reality morphs from fetal position on the bed, to the sound of the world coming in through the the cement walls and tin roof of the outdoor dunnie. As it gets dark I am only vaguely aware of the raging lightning storm in the hills around us, while the stars burn brightly above us. 

It's going to be a long night. Hello reality!

Nepal Adventure - Purple Paint, Children and Flowers

Nepal Adventure Day 13 - Purple Paint, a Trip to the Stone Age and Flowers

The sun seems to beam into the room straight from the mountains this morning. Bright and early. That's one thing this trip, we are certainly living with the sunlight. Early to bed and early to rise. Not a lot of distractions to keep you from listening to your rhythms.

After breaking our fast with fried eggs and roti bread the kids and I squeeze into Durga's truck, grown ups in the front and kids in the back. Randall is going to spend the day alone recovering. We are off to help out in the First Steps Himalaya classrooms.

I've mentioned before the school system in Nepal is really a new concept here, only starting in the 1950's, so you can imagine it is in it's infancy. The first school that we stop at briefly is a state school and recently the  Germans have built some sturdy classroom blocks. They have provided a big clean school building for the students to attend, but as with all the schools in Nepal the teachers are either lacking or inept. 

First Steps Himalaya, Fionna and Durga's grassroots charity, is all about the teacher education. As with most of the schools that they have approached they have started in this school by starting up a preschool classroom. The deal with the school is that FSH provide the trained teacher, the materials and in some cases clean up and paint the school rooms and the school takes on board the more modern teaching practices. (Standard practice is still the cane, shouting and rote learning.)

               

We don't stay long here as there are a few children who are quite scared of the blue eyed blond people, with one hiding and crying over these scary monsters suddenly appearing in her life. 

                              

So we are off to stop in the larger town nearby to buy paint for the classroom that FSH is opening up at one of the other schools. Our mission for the day is to clean the room up and get it ready for the class to move in to. 

The town is busy with the people getting ready for their day. The paint shop is dead in middle of the town. We park and haggle for a while about what color to get. In the end the girls talk us into purple.
                                      

As we wait for the paint to get mixed we wander around the town. Gone are the touristy shops selling singing bowls and souvenirs. Here is the nitty gritty of life. An alleyway blocked up with chicken wire and filled with white chickens, stalls selling fly covered sweets, some shops with clothing and fabric, and a couple of jack of all trade shops. The staring is intense. We are well off the beaten tourist track so the paint shop gets quite full with the bolder curios by-passers.

Armed with our cans of purple paint we throw the kids into the back of the truck and head off to the school. We are greeted by the headmaster and the new preschool teacher. And straight into it we get. First it's a matter of taking out the old matts, we find a scorpion and heaps of spiders. Luckily my manly son saves me from any of the creepy crawlies. The filth is appalling. 

As the day goes on we get the classroom cleaned up and ready to go. And it's time to get the paint ready and let the kids go for it. They do a fabulous job painting the walls. Rolling out the purple walls certainly takes this cement block from dingy into somewhere you'd be happy to have a child come into. I'm so proud of our kids just rolling up their sleeves and getting straight into it. I hope that someday they will look at the things they have, and the resources of their own schools and not just take it for granted. 

Some of the materials that we brought with us from Kathmandu, and that our friends back in New Zealand sponsored, will be sorted out and used to get this classroom up and running. I'm sure the little people going in here will feel the love, rather than feel as though they are just small inmates being shouted at. 

Pretty soon there is nothing left to do and we leave as the school children stream out of the school and head home for their lunchtime meals.

We stop at a little hole in the wall family place - I hesitate to say restaurant - for lunch. They provide us with several big plates of momo's - the traditional dumpling-like food that many families eat here. These particular ones are filled with a super spicy onion mix that gags us all! Luckily I spy a couple of cokes and buy those to keep the troops going. The kids think that I've grown two heads allowing them to share a coke. But at least it's not spicy and it's safer than anything that might have come into contact with the water here! 

Hiking into the countryside in search of our next school

And we are on to the next project. This one is in a dramatically rural area. We drive down a one laned dirt road and through rice fields for ages before finally stopping at a mud house. This house belongs to an elderly lady in the village who has taken a couple of orphan children into her care. These children are sponsored by FSH and Fiona and Durga are here to bring school clothes and books for these children. The lady who lives as basically as the poorest of our ancient ancestors live invites us in to see her house. The ground floor is a large room that houses her animals in the cold of the winter and up the dark wooden ladder to the earthen floored upper story where the family live. It's striking that she is living like the Vikings would have lived 2,000 years ago.

Mainstream students trying to make the most of their school time, even without a teacher.

Liana creating a little fun in the FSH preschool classroom

From her house we walk down through the rice fields to finally reach the village school. This, being a poor village and in the remotest part of Nepal as well has a hard time finding teachers, let alone quality teachers. When we arrive there are eight classrooms filled up with grubby children. Only two teachers total can be found in attendance. At the far end of the block is a little FSH classroom that has been started recently. We let the kids decorate their room and Juliet has a ball entertaining some of these small children teaching them how to put together a puzzle that we have brought with us from a friend in New Zealand. Liana  in particular gets very involved in the painting. While Jaimie and Liam roam about the school checking it out. I follow suit (my artistic skills are pretty minimal to say the least) and am really quite shocked at the state of the school. What is the point of these older children attending so called school if there are no books, no teachers with ridiculously poor hygiene? 

I do get that it is a culture in transition, leaving it's basic traditional life behind and wanting to start keeping up on a more global scale. Education is the natural step, but for us, watching from the outside it can be frustrating to watch the baby steps.

And finally it's time to head back to our lodgings and our awaiting dinner of Dal Baht. It takes us quite a few hours of winding single lane roads to get back to Gyan's house, but we are welcomed with Sumi's smiling happy face! The girls race off with her to play with the baby goats and pick berries. They arrive home with tales of Sumi's grandmother, goat stories and covered in dirt. It's all good. They have been adopted as members of the family.

Back at Gyan's House resting after a long day at the schools....

During dinner a large group of army officers stop by. At first Randall and I exchange worried looks. Not too ago Nepal was gripped in a bloody and awful civil war between the Maoists and the Government for ten years. The peace is now kept by the military and these road gangs of military men are common. But it's our first encounter with them. They soon settle in and are drinking tea with us as if nothing was amiss. It turns out that one of them is related to Gyan's wife and this is a fairly regular occurrence. Sigh of relief.

So, it's been a busy and enlightening day. I've enjoyed every moment of it (apart from the spicy momo's) and look forward to what tomorrow will bring. I'm so very happy to know that my wonderful husband is upright and on the mend. 

With the taste of Dal in my mouth I'm writing this in the dark (no electricity of course) listening to the night sounds. Far in the distance I can see the lighting playing along the mountain tops. I feel a million miles from my snug home in New Zealand, but also feel very much at home burrowed into my sleeping bag in this little throw back to the way the world used to be.

Goodnight!