I'm sitting in 37 degree heat in an internet cafe in the main drag of Sauraha, which is the village that travelers stay in if they can't afford the up-market resorts inside Chitwan National Park. We're all still damp from the bathing sess. we just had with our resorts' elephant, Pinkie. She's only a teenager (16) and so is still learning all the commands from her life-log trainer, who we all think looks exactly like Moglie from the Jungle Book.
We paid under $2 Australian dollars to swim with, ride and get thrown around by an teen elephant for 30 minutes. We're all going to write to Taronga Zoo to tell them that their $200 elephant ride is waaaayy overpriced.
It's just four of us in Chitwan this weekend as Mim decided to go to Pokhara and Lumbini (Buddha's birthplace) with her mother.
Yes, her mother - who gave us all a massive surprise by rocking up at our village at 7am Tuesday morning with lamingtons, chocolate cake, Vegemite, nutella and peanut butter to celebrate Mim's 18th with her IN NEPAL!
Turned out that us and our host families were the only ones not in on the surprise, which had been planned ever since January.
Mim and Soph's host father, Ragu, was ecstatic and felt the need constantly remind us throughout the day that he was 'very very happy.'
Teaching has been a little harder for Ash and I this past week and a half... For a few days I only had two kids in my class (out of the four i usually have). It was good one-on one time with them, but unfortunately, the Nepali teachers have started asking us to teach out of the English exercise books that are administered by the government. The books are ridiculous, as they are written by Nepali people who can't seem to grasp basic English grammar, and seem to have no idea how to make any of the activities exciting. Ash successfully ignored the teacher's request, partly because the children in her class are so young, but i got myself into the trap of agreeing to the change, and now cant seem to get out of it. My kids's allocated books were WAY too hard for their ability - Rajesh can barely answer the question "Where do you live?' and the first activity in his textbook was to READ (which he cant, he can barely talk in English) the text and answer the question: "What do you say to your teacher when you meet her in the morning?"
Frustration levels are mounting...
Despite that hiccup, Ash and I have managed to establish a schedule for every day, which involves a game after the last hour of teaching. So far we've taught them Captain Ball, stuck in the mud, musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, hangman, what's the time Mr Wolf and, wait for it (parps, block your ears) the Hokey Fucky Fucky. It was unintentional... one minute they were singing the Hokey Pokey, and the next they were running around with their hands under their chins yelling English expletives... After trying (and failing) to explain the difference between the two words, we just had to sit and wait until they got bored of it.
On the Friday and Monday just gone, we painted Soph, Andrew and Mim's school. A team from KEEP came down with what they assured us was white paint to paint an undercoat in the ten classrooms at the school. A smooth-running, non-hectic, charitable undertaking? Not in Nepal (that last written with affection). The 'white paint' turned out to be cement, which we mixed with large volumes of water, and spread on the walls using 'rollers' that we made by nailing blackboard dusters to bamboo sticks. After an hour of painting, all classes seemed to have stopped, the number of cement buckets and rollers had doubled (no doubt using up the school's entire supply of dusters) and nearly all 300 children of the school were running around slapping cement on walls, emptying classrooms of desks and chairs or simply standing in doorways watching the westerners paint. I don't know how, but all the classrooms were painted and ready for colour by Monday.
We introduced Nepal to the art of splatter painting and paint bombing! Ragu, the principle was mortified at the 'splattered' wall, which we thought was a work of art. He put his thumb and his forefinger on the bridge of his nose and said, "no, no no. This is..." he searched for the appropriate word, "...dirty!"
Ravi (Mine and Ash's host brother) loved it- he even splattered some himself.
We're going to hopefully paint all the other classrooms this coming week. One down, nine to go.
The agenda for the rest of the weekend involves an Elephant safari in the evening, followed by a trip to the elephant breeding center to see the twin male calfs, a canoe and possibly a jeep safari tomorrow. The sunsets here are beautiful and we eat by the river every night and morning.
Everyone's health is fine - as good as it gets in Nepal anyway.
We're all looking forward to Lucy's visit - someone to share the madness.
Lovin' Nepal!!!!!
Jess and the team.
No comments:
Post a Comment