back to teaching, more strikes and Pokhara

Namaste from a Katmandu were the monsoon still holds its breath, making it a hot and dusty place. I might have mentioned it before, but due to circumstances, our volunteers at the airport school decided that they had to stop teaching. This was a big loss for this school, that is positioned just outside Katmandu, existing out of a few tiny classrooms. Here, children from the surrounding area that have no possibility of going to another school can join for little or no money. This also means that there is little to no money for maintainance or hiring extra staff. When the volunteers left, it was decided that we should still conitnue for some time each week teaching there, a nice opportunity for me to get away from my number stuffed computer for a couple of hours a week to see if teaching was still rock and roll.

After some preparation with one volunteer who also has the time to help out there, we arrived at the school. First there was class one, I had explained a little about teaching in Nepal and what level we could expect in this class, the latter part needing quick revision: "Hello class, today we are going to make words with the first five letters of the alphabet" around 30 little faces, of which 5 seemed to be asleep, 7 focussed on doing something else, another 7 on what those 7 were doing, 6 smiling in delight at those two strange persons in front of the class while something green was trying to connect their nose with their mouth, and the rest looking at me with a big frown, showing vague recollection. My mistake, let's first start with the base: "the letters of the alphabet, who knows the first one?" Thios question pushed a few of them from one category to the other: "What comes after A?" Aah, at last the red button, the class straightened their backs and started firing of mthe letters in the correct order towards where we were standing, except from one little boy, staying asleep. Walking by I gently lifted his head without paying further attention, the soft bumb I heard when I moved on told me he was not ready yet to leave dreamland.
We are alreday coming to the school for a few weeks now and things are going relatively really well, occasionally you will find the word mango under the question 'write down five names of animals' but there's still time untill the next exam.

This time last year, the king was forced to end his dicatorship by massive protests, connecting all the indigenous parties. Tens of thousands of people marched the streets and paralysed the public life, leaving the king no choice but to give in and reinstall the parlement (who stripped the royal of all his duties the day after). This movement became known as the '2nd andola'. Now, exactly one year later, things are still shaky with everybody waiting for the elections, which are supposed to make Nepal a real democracy, their date being exponed already twice since nobody can garantee a fair and transparent election. This leaved a country without a real government at the moment. The interim government trying to keep the good peace between the political parties (the maoist being one of them now), indigenous parties, and anybody else who feels his rights are endangered. Whereas the 2nd andola probably has been good in the way that it started the process of dethroning a dictator, the organisers behind it decided that all should remember this day by organising another strike. For me it is a riddle how not allowing the children of your country to go to school for yet another day, or people to make business in order to buy food for their families is 'a huge success', as the head of the organization behind the strike called it the next day in the newspaper.

Luckily, the strike only lasted a day, enabling us to leave for Pokhara with the group of new volunteers, which will be the topic of next weeks blog. A big goodbye to everybody from an ever more hot Pokhara were fortunately, it does rain every once in a while,

Jimi