'A Day In The Life' of an Antips volunteer in Nepal

COUNTRY: Nepal - Pokhara
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Education
WRITTEN BY: Jo Pidcock

In Nepal every day is different. Being on a volunteer placement however, my days were structured around teaching at a local school.

I would wake up in the morning to the smell of fresh Tibetan flatbread being cooked by my Didi (older sister) and the sound of my Amala (mother) making Tibetan tea. We would sit down and all share breakfast before getting ready to head off to school.

The bus ride to school was always one of the most exciting parts of the day. The bus was a 12-seater minivan, often without a door and carrying up to 30 people. We would try to find a tiny space to stand or otherwise hang off the sides as we zoomed through the streets of Pokhara. Hindi film music would be blaring and occasionally people would be trying to convince the bus driver that their goat should be allowed on. This journey became very familiar but every day the bus ride would be completely different - Nepal is so full of life and chaos and humanity that no two days are the same.

School would start with an assembly where the children were required to sing the national anthem, practice marching and say a prayer before going to class. School here is very different to in Australia. Often you see things that you don’t agree with, like teachers hitting students or girls not being allowed to play sports and at times it’s really hard not to react in a negative way. Often it’s good to tell the teachers how things are done in Australia, without telling them that their way is wrong. The education system is about 50 years behind our system and most of the teachers don’t know any other way to discipline children but they are eager to learn about how education works in Australia and how they could improve their school.

Teaching was the most challenging and yet most rewarding part of the placement. I taught four classes with about 35 students in each. On the first morning, I was introduced to one of my classes and left alone to teach them! I was so overwhelmed that I forgot to tell them to sit down and they were all standing for about 25 minutes before I realised. Throughout my placement I found it difficult to encourage the children to use their imagination and to have confidence in their ideas – often the kids would all copy off one another or be too scared to answer a question.

I taught them lots of English songs and got them outside playing games like ‘Simon Says’ to help them learn words. The kids were so excited to have a volunteer teaching them and at times could be a little noisy and hard to discipline. I found that standing silently at the front of the room and looking angry made them calm down pretty quickly- they hate to see you get upset! Initially teaching was very frustrating but toward the end I’d made some progress. It was very rewarding experience to observe the children hanging on to every word and learning new things. They love learning about Australia and I found that maps and photos were a great teaching aid.

After school we would either catch the bus into Lakeside and have afternoon tea and go shopping or we would go straight back to Tashi Ling and congregate in Sonam’s backyard to use the Internet, enjoy a cup of tea and help each other with lesson planning.

In Nepal you can expect your days to be crazy, funny, frustrating and exhausting all at the same time. It’s an amazing and diverse place and one that makes you see the world in a very different and far more humble way.