Frustration

29th October

Just spent last 40 minutes updating this, with photographs and then it all disappeared..... oh well, more ginger tea and I will start again!

Diwali celebrations in Pokhara



Not a very clear photograph but his little girl was an amazing dancer

Making diwali patterns on the doorstep

Just loved the idea of this being the sausage centre of Pokhara

Walking along the ridge

A preying mantis on guide Hari's shoulder

27th October

Went for a walk along the ridge this morning but even that has lots of gradient.   Saw large kestrels and buzzards and enormous beautiful butterflies, but only managed to get a picture of a rather boringly coloured one.   The more colourful variety didn’t want to pose.   Dry leaves keep dropping from the trees and make me jump as I think it is some sort of wild life – perhaps it is – disguised as a dried leaf!

A very large Nepali house

Some of my pupils, brothers, playing hide and seek on the roof of their house on their day off

This village community is very spread out and some of the children have to walk about 5 miles to school each day.  I saw one of my pupils playing hide and seek with his brother on the roof of his house.   Millet, maize and rice are the main crops, with lentils and some green vegetables and these provide the basic diet.  There is a barter system between the locals with any surplus. Millet is used to make dhido- I have been told it is like Japanese Sake, but not much alcohol is drunk, as strictly speaking it is not allowed by the local Brahmins.

25^th October

As it is a festival  tomorrow the primary school children had a fun day today with little formal school work.   I was given a tika mark by one of the locals on my walk, but I was so hot and sticky that it started running down my face.

I was asked again to go to years 4 and 5 but said no firmly this time.

  Instead I stayed with 2 Primary teachers and we had 3 classes together in one room. 

 The discipline is not good.  The children have not been taught to put up their hands or sit quietly.  I showed them  my  puppet and said that he wouldn’t come out to see them if it was noisy, and it worked!   For a few minutes you could have heard a pin drop.   Hopefully the teachers might pick up on the idea.

There is now no school for 4 days so I hope to go to Pokhara and find an internet café so that I can post this.   The next time I will have an opportunity will probably be Saturday.

It has just started raining – very heavily and the noise on the roof of my bedroom is deafening.   I am looking at a small ghekko and a large spider having a race up the wall opposite me.   I am not very keen on either of them. 

26^th October

Have had a very relaxing morning walking along a small track looking at grasshoppers of various sizes, and a preying mantis or two.  The herbs and wild plants smell wonderful and have picked a handful to scent my room.  Even though I am wearing socks trainers and trousers something has managed to bit my ankles and anthisan is now a necessary part of my kit.   I have managed to get a lift to Pokhara this afternoon – hopefully and also asked a local guide to buy a cheap mobile for me then I can go walking without fear of getting totally lost.  

Had a brief moment of panic when the netbook wouldn’t start up and got jammed on some sort of repair.   Luckily when I removed the battery and started again all was well.  

Diwali

25^th October

Giant webs with spiders as big as my netbook gave me a bit of a shock this morning and all sorts of ants appeared from nowhere when I ate my packed lunch.   I started walking to school at 9am and was pleased to not have got lost  I spent an hour or so in Year 1 who were learning words starting with k.  Their  teacher Tara has a reasonable grasp of English with a very strong accent, consequently all the children are learning that we cook in a ‘keeshin,’ but spelt properly.   I sat under a tree at break and showed them some photos on the computer and one of the children pointed out the stream of large yellow ants crawling all over my shoulder. 

Two 9 year olds came to take me to the secondary school.  I was handed a pen by a Nepali who didn’t speak English, led into a classroom and he then disappeared leaving me with three classes. 

 After a few games I decided to talk about rectangles squares and triangles, corners, etc. An hour later I began to wonder how long to continue.  The children told me they finished at 1pm and it was 1.15.   There were no staff to be seen and certainly no lesson plans so eventually I let the children go home. The staf have been told not to leave volunteers to teach but to learn teaching methods from them. 

I got lost coming home as I used the wrong tethered buffalo as a marker and all the rice fields look the same.   I wear a local Nepali straw hat to school and use a bamboo stick to help me up the hill.  I would like to get some local clothes to wear as they are cheap, comfortable practical and beautiful.

It is still very hot in the daytime – particularly the walk back up the hill from school but children walk with me some of the way talking constantly even though they know I haven’t a clue what they are saying.   When the sun goes down at about 6pm it suddenly gets quite cold.

Celebrating Diwali

beautiful dancing

These two walked with me to school this morning

Sophiya from Year 1

My daily walk to school

The walk to school is stunning, past local dwellings (photo) with buffalo and goats and tiny little rice plantations with children coming to join me en route. It takes about 45 minutes down but it is quite a steep climb back at the end of the day. All the dwellings have some goats, with lots of kids.Surprisingly they don’t milk the goats.That comes from the buffalo. The children carry the kids like pet kittens

   Going past women sorting the wheat from the chaff in the morning  so that they can eat, or carrying really  vast bags of rice from a strap around their head is thought provoking.

 There are harvested white radishes outside all the dwellings which are as big as  baseball bats and twice the size of the many cucumbers.

 

First Day at School

23^rd October 2011

Just after taking this I saw that I was covered in little yellow ants

Assembly and Year 1 gewtting ready to saing their National Anthem

The brightest child in Year 1

The staffroom

 
One 5/6 year old came to me to read his work.    He spelt out the word ‘surroundings’, not phonically but very quicly and then read it back…..almost properly.   Mind blowing!  Perhaps the look and say method is the right one out here?   

It is going to take  a few days to work out the best way to help.  

The second teacher I saw this morning fell asleep whilst he gave children work to copy from the board.   They all came to me and we played number games on our fingers.

 The school needs so much help and this is a challenging project.    Discipline is poor and most of the  little ones haven’t got a clue what they are learning.   On the other hand, some 6 year olds can copy well from the board and the bright ones can read it back.   The school is so much more basic than I had been led to believe.

There are no posters, pictures or stimulating materials to be seen.  The children each have a pencil less than an inch long and they share a minute piece of rubber.   Just as well I brought some with me – not enough for all, so prioritising will be essential.

The plan at the moment is that from Sunday to Thursday I will

 try and guide the teachers in the primary school and on Friday morning the secondary school teachers  want help to teach in English.   Friday afternoons and Saturdays will be free time for me.


Running out of battery time so please excuse typos!

The IT room (very basic!) at school was locked this morning as the headmaster is away but it is supposed to have an internet connection so who knows what will happen tomorrow!