Two sisters, Suvekshya and Ashika walked up the hill with me after school today and their family
asked me to join them for tea. Ashika was only three and the youngest in the school when I was here last year. They are both bright, motivated gentle children as are their parents and extended family. Grandparents, parents and uncles all live together on this small farm. 

 

 

 

The people of Nepal  are very  hospitable and always offer food and drink to visitors.   It is not polite to refuse but I could only manage to eat  one of  the oranges given to me.  They are on the stool next to my rucksack in the picture.   The remaining fruit was put in my bag to bring home.

Ashika, Grandmother, Suvekshya in traditional Nepali top, and their very young mother.

A little further along the path  I was called over to another smallholding  and given yet more oranges.

Further up the hill I heard the screech of monkeys and saw a troop in the trees following me up the track.   Perhaps they were after my oranges!  

 

 

Now they are smiling.    Such happy faces ....

 

 

 

 

 

The article below, taken from Volunteers for Nepal,  gives a very good picture of what the rural schools are like here  at the foot of the Himalayas

Some of the current issues in primary education in Nepal:

Parents are too poor to pay the costs of better education Many parents, although still not all, see the importance of better education. However, they cannot afford to send their children to private schools. At village schools we see many children without books, notebooks or even pencils.

Children do not have access to drinking water at every school Summers are really hot in Nepal. Moreover, many school buildings have a tin roof underneath of which temperatures rise to a maximum. Without drinking water children fail to concentrate. Especially in the nursery and kindergarten classes we often see children simply sleeping with their heads on their desks.

Children are undernourished and thus lack the energy to concentrate for longer periods of time.
 Nepal is now officially the poorest country in Asia and most children do not get enough to eat, let alone enough of the nutrients that they need. At home they usually get a meager portion of vegetables, and they very rarely eat more than one piece of fruit a week, if even that. The lack of vitamins is obvious. Moreover, many children do not bring an adequate lunch to school and we see children having barely a handful of popcorn to get them through a day at school that lasts from 10 am to 4 pm. Let's not forget that some of these children have to walk half an hour or more before to even arrive at school. Additionally, the same goes for teachers. Many teachers only drink water or tea during lunch break and clearly cannot possibly give the students their best during the last 3 or 4 periods of the day.

Children are being beaten in every school in rural Nepal every day Because of their poor concentration-due to the lack of sufficient water and food, as well as the absence of interesting classes-teachers often feel the need to use aggressive methods like a bamboo-stick to keep children's attention in class.

Furniture is very uncomfortable School furniture is usually very old, used, worn and torn. Children sit on straight hard wooden benches, without backrests, at 4 or even 5 students on a 6 foot bench. How can they possibly sit comfortably on this for 7 or 8 class periods a day?

Schools lack materials to teach in creative, interesting ways.Village schools often have only a blackboard and some pieces of chalk as material for a teacher to run the class.

Teachers lack training to teach in new interactive ways that stimulate the children.If a school does not have a large range of diverse materials, it can only compensate for this by a teacher with a range of diverse techniques like having children come to the blackboard and write or draw something, play hangman, do a guessing game with drawn pictures on the board, make groups and do role-plays, having sing-a-longs, etc. But probably not a single teacher in rural Nepal has ever seen any of these techniques being displayed in practice. How, then, can they apply them?

Children are not creativeWhen given a sheet of white paper and some color pencils in class most children will just stare at their blank sheet for many minutes. Then finally one child starts to draw a flower or maybe a Nepali flag. At the end of the class period we surely end up with at least 20 flowers or 20 flags.

 The Government in Nepal now  supplies all full time teachers with a new suit each year.  The contracted teachers are delighted but a considerable number of the staff  have been at Amar Jyoti for many years and do not have contracts,  and they feel that the students do not respect them as much as the 'suited' staff,                     
 Ishwari, the teacher in the centre told me that he would wear his topi, or national hat, and look even smarter tomorrow.   All the suits for our school were made by the same tailor. Mekh Bahadur, on the right, is concerned that his suit is not a good fit

 
Such lovely happy faces!   The girls in Year 5 have learnt how to smile for the camera.

One of the boys wanted to take a photograph of me with his friends inYear 4.  Only one of these boys knows how to smile for the camera!

 

 

 

 

 

After demonstrating what fun we could have with stones it was so heart warming to see the children making patterns and counting of their own accord today.

This old man was sitting near the school gates, deftly making baskets from strips of bamboo.  These are the baskets that the women carry on their backs and are used for transporting such things as cow dung, (used for fuel and house building) fodder for animals, and of course, water.

Saturday at Lakeside

 

 

 
 This wonderful Tibetan lady told me how she was exiled from her country as a child, and remembers well how she had to leave Llhasa when she was five.   Her English is amazing but she has never been educated and cannot read or write.  I offered her money for taking her photograph but she wouldn't take it so I bought a bracelet instead.

The equivalent of McDonald's at Lakeside

Farmers in the UK have problems, but imagine having to plough your land like this.  This farmer has a very small plot of land next to the lake

   

The area around the lake is a hub of activity on a Saturday, the day of rest here.  Children fishing, boat journeys for the locals and for entertainment for the tourists, and wash day for both people and clothes.

The internet connection here is very temperamental at the moment  and sending emails is proving particularly difficult.  Please don't stop writing, and apologies if you don't get a reply!