COUNTRY: Nepal
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Breana Macpherson-Rice
Topai lai khosto cha? How are you?
Hopefully as well as us here in Nepal! We have settled back into village life after our wild adventures, but life has been anything but routine. The unpredictable moods of class two, some incredible festivals and a surprise earthquake have kept us on our toes!
Going back to teaching after a ten day break was a bit daunting, as trying to discipline a Nepali class is hard at the best of times, let alone when they've forgotten your name, but our worries proved fruitless as we settled back in with no troubles. We are teaching at three local schools - Jitpur Primary and Secondary school just five minutes (or six, on a bad day) down the road, Saraswati Primary which lies ten minutes in the opposite direction, and Durbar Primary which demands a half hour mini-trek to and from each day. Between the thirteen of us, we teach almost every subject bar Nepali, including English, maths, science and social, to a variety of classes ranging from the ever-energetic kindergartens to the cheeky class fives.
Our preconceived notions of how to teach were thrown out the window (along with a paper aeroplane or two, much to our dismay) as we were confronted with classes of real life, living and breathing and talking-over-the-top-of-you Nepali kids. Our experiences have varied, but we can safely say that none of us realised how hard it would be to tell a class what to do when their English is about as scarce as our Nepali. We've learnt a few of the classroom commands - chup lagnu being the most common (be quiet) - but it seems as soon as we say something in Nepali, the kids assume we are fluent and burst forth with what is evidently a relevant question and stare at us expectantly, while we stare at them blankly. This simply has meant that we have had to be extremely inventive, each day a challenge in making reading, grammar and cell structures seem fun. A favourite technique is adapting the game 'duck, duck, goose' to the science lesson of the day, resulting in variations such as 'herbivore, herbivore, CARNIVORE!' and 'shrub, shrub, TREE!'. We find ourselves thinking back to our own primary school days (now fully appreciating the work our teachers did) in an effort to find fun ways of getting information across, or even just fun games. Milly's grade two class for example love 'find the drink bottle', and Jess' grade four love relay races.
We have found these opportunities for fun are a necessity in the classroom, where the curriculum is unfortunately focused almost entirely on rote learning and the students still struggle to get the information to stick. Every time a student shouts out an answer, hands in their neat and carefully printed homework, or simply cracks a smile is reward enough for us, though they prefer rewards in the form of stickers, ticks and stamps. We've come to realise that the kids here are just like any other kids, their eagerness for learning dependent on the day, and their ability to pick things up varying from child to child. They are interested in the same things that we liked in primary school (which in the case of Durbar Primary is colored pencils) and are bored just as easily. Every day we are learning something new and having an incredible amount of fun at the same time; the weeks are flying past.
As well as teaching we're also occupying our thoughts with plans for our fundraising money. Between the 13 of us we managed to raise a whopping $10 000, and the question of where to put it all wisely was a big one. After consulting with our teachers and using our own brains, we came up with a number of projects specific to each school which will hopefully, when complete, help create a better and safer learning environment. Jitpur, being a primary and secondary school, has the highest enrollment of all the schools and is also the most economically sound, so it was decided the best improvement would be a projector for one of the classroom, a photocopier and some new cupboards. Saraswati is a much smaller school, the enrollment falling at around 30 students (one third of which are in nursery). The main request of the teachers was for a school gate, as it is a rare day that a lesson will be seen through without a goat, dog, or the odd villager wandering in. The one-building school will receive some much needed repairs and painting, as well as a new garden to assist with science lessons. Durbar is only slightly bigger than Saraswati, in terms of students, and extremely poor. We've decided that the best way to spend our funds would be to fix the leaking roof over classrooms two and three, replaced the falling off window shutters and give the outside a much needed paint. It's been a difficult task as there seems so much that we could do and so little time to do it in, but we hope that the changes we make will help the schools in their day to day functioning and keep them operating for years to come.
However, it hasn't all been teaching and planning since we've been back, as rarely a week goes by without a Nepali festival! The biggest one we've had in the last two weeks was Krishna Janmashtami, to celebrate Krishna's birthday. In the morning we were all invited to the house of Saraswati's principal, where we were treated to a feast of traditional Nepali food including delicious kheer (rice pudding) and kwati, a curry comprised of nine different types of beans. That night at 8pm, we made a trek up to the local bamboo temple where we were confronted with a room packed full of Nepali locals wearing their brightest clothes, singing and clapping along to a number of holy songs and mantras in celebration of Krishna's birth. The story has it that Krishna was born at midnight, and so we all squeezed in the temple for the next few hours, experiencing the amazing electric energy of the songs and even joining in for a final dance. We were all incredibly tired when the night culminated with cries of Hare Krishna, and scowling in thought of the walk home, but were pleasantly surprised as we found out that the reward for staying up all night was another massive Nepali feast prepared by the locals for all who had come to the temple. Tibetan bread, multiple curries and delicious desserts aplenty were eaten, and thus it was with smiling faces and very full tummies that we headed home in the wee hours of the morning.
We also got a little more excitement than we bargained for on Friday night as we were woken by the undeniable violent shakes of an earthquake late in the night. Some thought it was simply their roommate kicking their bed, and others thought it was a dream, but in the morning it was confirmed that the whole country had experienced a significant tremor. It seems impossible to think that Nepal must hold even more surprises for us - it has already pulled out so many - but no doubt this beautiful country will continue to astound us to the very last.
Right now we're all preparing for a live national soccer match this afternoon, and all eagerly looking forward to Teej, the ladies festival, which falls in a few days. Hopefully we will find time to write again soon, with plenty more stories to tell!
Bre and Ellie
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