Hello to all my family and friends across the world. Hard to
believe it’s been over 2 months since I wrote! Since we last spoke, I’ve
celebrated Christmas, New Years, and my birthday, though the latter two
celebrations were a bit dampened by having Typhoid, the diagnosis of which was
my first and worst 23rd birthday present. Not to worry though, 7 days
of IV and oral antibiotics later, I was perfectly healthy again. The main
unfortunate lingering consequence is that I’m still rather out of shape, as during
that 3 weeks I spent as many as 20 hours a day in bed with fever. Just walking
up my stairs can wind me now. Now that I have it back, though, I certainly
appreciate all that good health does for me. And I know my friends appreciate
that I can once again walk at a speed more akin to a fat cat than a snail.
Since my last post I’ve also been to Sri Lanka, where met a
lot of lovely teachers from across South and Central Asia, ate far too much
yummy hotel food, walked by the ocean, and saw a stunning building with
paintings of the life of Buddha, amongst other adventures. Between Christmas
and New Years I also moved out of my home stay and am now living in a nice
little apartment more in the main city. It’s been an interesting transition. I
like my place now, but I must say the combination of the coldest month of the
year, windows that never completely close and shades that constantly blow, no
indoor heating, 6/6 local U.S. friends being out of town, and total 15 days of
constant fever, chills, and nausea did not
color my new lodgings in a pleasant light at first. However, that
confluence of unfortunate situations was combated by a series of lovely things
from loving friends and family, including episodes of M*A*S*H, movies,
chocolate, fuzzy socks, Extra Strength Tylenol, orange juice, a flash drive of
music, soup mixes, peppermints, a small winter teddy bear, and family photos. And
believe it or not, some positive things have come out of having Typhoid. For
example, it’s still a superb excuse for just about anything. It also means that
the weather feels significantly warmer, even though the actual temperature
change has been minimal. And, most serendipitously, my friend who works with
sick Nepali people from remote rural areas who come to Kathmandu to get medical
treatment, told me today that she recently stopped a woman who the doctor’s
thought was fine from returning to her village without treatment, because she
realized that her symptoms sounded suspiciously like mine. The woman has now
been diagnosed with Typhoid and is thankfully being treated.
So Typhoid was certainly an
interesting experience to add to my time in Nepal, but now that I have come out
of the haze that I was in for most of January, I’ve been settling into a more
normal and hectic work schedule. I restarted an extensive to-do list, and
somewhere near the top was a blog update. But I struggled at first with what to
say. I realized that, perhaps as a result of having been here almost 7 months
now, my perspective has shifted. It’s hard for me to know what y’all want to
hear about, as so many things that y’all might consider novel and interesting
are normal to me now. Then I realized that if I just described to you a normal
day for me in a little more detail than I have as of yet, from start to finish,
you might find some of the little details intriguing. So, at the risk of having
this update run long, I’m going to try to give y’all just that, the story of a
day in my life. Sit back and grab a cup of coffee or tea, and take a
Hindi-movie style intermission if need be. ;) Hope you’re all well! And be in
touch! (k80may@gmail.com)
Part 1: 5AM-Tiffin time
I wake up to my third alarm at 5AM,
trying to will myself out of my warm bed into my chilly apartment, which hasn’t
even been hit by the first rays of the rising sun yet. Thinking of the things I
need to finish before school, the responsible side of me is victorious, and I
roll out of bed, slip on my house shoes, and lumber into the kitchen. The
lights are out, as rolling power outages are up to 14-16 hours a day now.
Luckily the inverter isn’t out of juice, so I’ve got one working bulb in the
kitchen. Over a cup of sweet, hot coffee, I check my email and facebook, and for
a moment am lost in the often frivolous business of friends on the other side
of the world. Then I trade the laptop for my pile of school textbooks and my
notebooks, as I have to finish preparing for the day ahead. Teaching 7-8
different grade levels makes extensive lesson planning virtually impossible,
but I know that by at least giving the day’s sections a quick once over, I can
usually think of some creative activity for each. Some activities require
supplies and physical preparation, while others just require a quick note about
what to do that day. Then, without left-overs from the night before, I start
cooking breakfast, my first and main meal of the day, before 7AM. Pasta is an
easy staple, and I throw together some curried vegetables to go with. After
cooking and eating, the latter with hunger sometimes trumping the first, resulting
in slightly undercooked food, I get dressed in a kurta suruwal (tunic top and
flowing ‘aladdin style’ pants) and shawl. Then I put on some ever-so-necessary make-up;
I know that in the day to come, I’ll have 200+ kids, teachers, and various
other people on the street looking at me and commenting on my pimples or lack
thereof, weight, height, etc. so I want to be prepared.
I grab my work back, bus money, and
a water bottle of boiled water and head out the door. I’ve got to walk to the
main street where the bus to my school’s town is. I’m sharing the road with
some students heading to school like me, some women running errands, and a
smattering of motorcyles and taxis. As I walk, I pass my favorite little family
grocery shop, one that carries a convenient mix of Nepali products, like spices
and fresh yogurt, and products that appeal to their foreign clientele, like me,
such as pasta and parmesan cheese, red wine, and cous cous. I pass a local
bakery that makes some delicious wheat bread on the right, and then turn left
at the corner where there’s a little Hindu temple right beside a rare
basketball court. I eye the 3 on 3 match enviously, but don’t stop, as a) I
have to get to school, b) I still am pretty weak from Typhoid, and c) I don’t
know if I have the guts to approach a group of local guys to try to get in on
their game. Such a thing is virtually unheard of, even with all the strange
behavior expected from foreigners. Maybe someday. Continuing down the street, I
pass all different kinds of local shops. There’s a motorcycle repair shop and a
tea shop, both constantly populated by young men, a heavily guarded foreign aid
office, and a private school entrance, constantly populated by a handful of
goats. Near the main road, a line of vegetable stands are already set up and
their vendors in business, selling any vegetable you could possibly need,
potatoes, tomatoes, onions, spinach, pumpkins, bitter gourd, etc. etc. I always
go to the second one from the end, as the little old lady who works it and I
have struck up a friendship. She’s a real sweetheart and gives my free chili
peppers and cilantro, not to mention without fail calls me beautiful and
compliments my Nepali.
Now, I’m at the main road, and take
a right to walk to school. First I’ve got to cross the busy road, a task not
for the faint of heart. People are always paying attention, certainly more than
I can ever assume in the U.S., and aren’t trying to hit you. But without
enforced rules or lanes or crosswalks or lights, you’ve just got to go when you
get the chance and signal for traffic to go behind you, or else you’ll never
get across. After successfully crossing, I head down to the nearest bus stop by
a gas station 5 minutes down the road. Buses usually come pretty frequently,
but with fuel shortages and price hikes, sometimes they don’t come until I’m
already at my destination, a 30 minute walk down the road. Today I’m
particularly lucky though. As I’m passing the Tibetan Refugee Camp and watching
people walk around the Buddhist temple spinning the prayer wheels with their
right hands, a motorcycle cuts me off, stops, and says “basnus,” or “have a
seat.” I realize it’s the husband of a teacher at my school and a friend who I
had given a couple English lessons to a few months back. He gives me a lift to
Bhaisepati Chok, the intersection near my school, saving me at least 10 minutes
and 12 rupees.
I walk down the hill to school, a
gulley of trash on the left, with no infrastructure for trash collection to
remedy it. The school is right at the bottom of the hill. It’s not huge, but
it’s pretty nice compared to others I’ve seen. We have a hall and a library,
white boards in every room, benches and desks in some, tables and floor
cushions in others. No lights or heat though, leaving classrooms particularly
dark on the days where it’s too cold to keep the windows open, no matter how
little you can see when they’re closed. I walk in the gate and greet the woman
who keeps the school clean and serves the teachers tea at break. She’s lived in
the school with her family for as long as it’s been in operation (some fifty
years now). They live on the first floor of the part of the building under
construction, being retro-fitted for earth quake safety measures. (Kathmandu
gets slammed by major earthquakes about once every fifty years). I’m at school
early because these days I teach 3 speaking classes in the morning in groups of
4-5 seventh and eight graders at I time. This is something I’m doing because
the kids struggle with speaking the most, but are so eager to learn. Though the
first group always rolls in late, I’m loving these classes so far, and
relishing the one on one time I get to spend with the kids.
After my last speaking class wraps up, the morning assembly
starts outside. The kids line up by class, Nursery, Kindergarten, 1-9. School
uniform is dark blue pants or skirts and ties with lighter blue collared
shirts. Uniform shoes are clunky black ones, but even in winter at least a
third are usually wearing sandals or flip flops, a particularly popular variety
adorned with spiderman. They sing the national anthem, listen to announcements,
then are dismissed and march back to their classrooms, the little ones belching
out “left, right, left, right.” Downstairs rooms are carpeted, so you can take
attendance by counting all the pairs of shoes outside the doors, some neatly
lined up, others clearly abandoned in the rush to get back to the fun inside.
For, as students stay in the same classes and the different subject teachers
come and go each period, the kids have dominion over their space, and are
constantly playing and wreaking havoc in said rooms. Calm is only restored when
someone serving as look-out shouts “Miss aaunubhayo, Miss aaunubhayo” to say
“Miss is coming, Miss is coming,” and everyone runs to their tables, feigning
innocence. Then they’re ready to stand and greet the teacher with a cacophonous
“Good morrrrnnnnninnnngggg Missssss!!” as you enter the room, or in the case of
the over-eager 2nd and 3rd grades, as you near the room
and work on taking off your shoes.
My morning schedule starts with
Classes 2 and 4. Then, after a 10 minute break, there are classes 7 and 8. Today
during break, I laugh with tears in my eyes as I listen to the story about a
second grade boy I’m rather fond of. Though a bit old for his class and labeled
a troublemaker, I see through his show. Apparently his brother or someone in
the home where he works beats him to make him study in the morning. Then the
brother has to go to work and my second grader to school. Beating could mean a
light slap or something more serious and painful. So, tired of this treatment,
the clever kid waits until his brother is gone, climbs on a chair, and speeds
up the clock so that his brother will leave for work faster.
Every class has it’s own dynamic, depending on class size,
attendance, boy to girl ratio, level of English (not necessarily higher by
grade), and book (grammar or the typical government English book). What can be
said is that it’s always an adventure, and you can never really know what a day
will hold. I recently bought some very simple picture books, written for
native-English speaking kids aged 2-6. I was planning to read them to the lower
grades, 2-4, but ended up reading them to all my classes, even 7 and 8. And I
was more than pleasantly surprised that the older kids loved them as much as
the younger ones. After reading a few short ones, I passed them around, and it
was like something out of magazine or advertisement, 3 or 4 kids crowded around
a book grinning ear to ear. I went back to the store a couple of days later to
buy more, kicking myself that I hadn’t done it sooner.
Part 2: Tiffin time ‘til bed time
After morning classes, there’s a
forty minute “tiffin time” or lunch break. I sit with other teachers, have a
cup of tea, check homework from that morning, and prepare for the classes after
lunch. Once the bell rings (which is a metal plate and hammer hanging from the
second floor walkway) I’ve only got 2 classes left, 3rd and 5th,
with a free period in between. Class 5 is always a challenge, as they get
excited for the impending break. Today though, I get through it relatively
easily, the final bell rings, and I gather my books, notebooks, and homework,
and leave school. I walk across the wide football (soccer) field, muddy from a
night of rain. Passing a cow, I eye it warily, as past adventures with cows
have left me with a dislike of them that my students find hilarious. “Bye Miss”
bids me well from countless directions as the kids head home too. I walk up the
hill to my old home-stay family’s house. The neighbor’s dog sees me and
dutifully escorts me to my destination, past the new four story house that’s
been under construction since before I came. I head up to the third floor of
mine and greet my Aamaa (host mom), and we chat over chiya (milk tea) and a
snack of roti, sweet breads from a Hindu religious ceremony she had done the
day before. Then we head back downstairs with big metal jugs, because at this
house, and most houses around here, drinking water comes from a tap outside,
but only once a day around 4, so you have to carry these huge pitchers down to
fill up for the day.
But it’s already time to go again,
so downstairs I say goodbye, and head back down the hill to the football field,
listening to the clicking of pool balls. The traditional house at the bottom of
the hill makes some extra money by running a tin roofed pool hall from the side
of their home. I take a right, away from the school, and head up another hill
to the home where my Vice Principal and friend lives. I’ve been tutoring him
and another Sir, who I’ve mentioned before, since I started work at Sri Jana
Udaya. Our original goal was to help them pass a challenging entrance exam to a
Masters program at a local private University. The masters program is a
pre-requisite to any PhD program. I’m proud to say that they both passed their
tests mid-January, and will start the program this month! We still meet, though
less frequently, to work on speaking or writing. Today’s a more casual speaking
class, and we talk about Paulo Friere and education in Nepal, curled up under a
blanket on a bed doubling as a couch in Sir’s rented room. His academic passion
would be immediately apparent to any newcomer, for a good quarter of the quaint
room is dedicated to his vast collection of books, in Nepali, Hindi, and English.
But with a clever arrangement of the two beds, bookshelves, and gas stove, the
room is quite homely, and has in fact become much like my second home, and he
and his daughter and friends much like family.
After class today, I’m not headed
home, but rather to see a friend on the other side of the city. Geographically
it’s not that far, but it always takes me a minimum of an hour to get there. Little
do I know that this bus ride will prove to be one of the most entertaining I’ve
had yet. I board the bus to her part of town in the bus park in Lagankhel, and
am thankful to actually get a seat, a little piece of the bench by the bus steps,
shared with 2 other people. The bus fills up quickly, with people packed in
every possible seat and aisle space, even hanging out the door. I offer my seat
to an older woman, but she refuses with a smile, so I take her bag instead. We
start chatting, and it turns out we have a mutual friend. But our conversation
is interrupted when the bus stops at a main intersection, and I hear chanting
about a strike. An unplanned strike is apparently starting up in protest of the
death of someone in a hospital nearby. The police are trying to stop the
blocking of traffic, but with little success. Time is money to the bus driver
and his side kick, the bus boy. Bus boys are usually kids aged 8-18 who collect
fares at the door, call out the bus’s destination to people on the road, and
signal to the driver to stop or go while navigating the insanity that can be
Nepali traffic and roads. So our bus duo, being money-minded, decides not to
wait for the strike to clear, but instead takes a quick left and speeds down
the road in the wrong direction to try to detour around the strike. We soon
find ourselves bumping along an unpaved dirt road with a million pot holes in
the general direction of our original destination. Everyone we pass stares at
our small bus, as it is clearly not where it is supposed to be. We pass rice
fields and little shops, and have to stop at some point and do some tricky
maneuverings to get around a car coming from the opposite direction, with the
road only wide enough for one. Two times, about a third of the passengers have
to get out so that the bus can make it up a steep hill. The second time I get
out, I make a new friend, a man eager to try his English with me. As it turns
out he is also in education, and we chat about Nepal, walking down the road. At
this point, we are near to the town Tikathali, where most people are headed and
the bus takes a few minutes to get up that hill. Some people wander ahead, and
the bus finally comes and scoops my group up and hurtles onwards. The bus
driver yells at the bus boy to be sure and get his fares from everyone,
including the people who had been walking, in case they had wandered off. The bus
boy starts shouting out to everyone we pass about paying their fares, but all
he gets is a bunch of incredulous looks from people who were never on the bus at
all and laughs from those of us who are. The kid can’t be more than 16 or 17,
and the older women sass him a bit about yelling at people he doesn’t
recognize. He tries once more, on a woman in a red shawl walking ahead, but is
mistaken for a third time, and, thoroughly flustered, gives up. Though the trip
took an inordinate amount of time, the humor and good will of everyone kept
things sane and calm.
I finally get off at my stop,
making my way down a small path that’s a short cut to my friend’s place. I pass
more rice fields, a small river, tomato gardens, a house with a new puppy
(which I’m thankful to see has replaced the mean old dog that bites). At long
last I’m at my friend’s, who stays in the Program House where I once studied as
a student in Nepal on the Pitzer Program. I’m thrilled to see her and other old
friends, many Sherpa men from a mountain community I once visited near the
Himalayas. I settle into a wicker chair by the fire they built outside and we
all chat and gossip about the day and the week. I’m thankful at last to be
ending my day. After dinner, I curl up on a mat on the floor, still wearing my
winter jacket because I can’t bear to take off a single layer. But with two
heavy warm blankets and a hand-knit hat one dear Nepali friend had just whipped
out of nowhere for me at dinner, I’m quite cozy, and I sleep deeply and
soundly.
