On Tuesday, after school got out, I was walking with a big group of students and a couple of the staff up to Salleri and I was talking to the principal. He invited me to get some tea at a local teashop, and even bought me a plate of fried momos, and we talked for about half an hour. And then he asked me if I wanted to see his house, and I said sure. On the way, we stopped at Shah's sweet-shop (Shah is teaching now at the school, I don't know if I'd mentioned that before) and the principal bought me another cup of tea, and we talked some more. And then we walked to his house (which he rents with another teacher and houses like 6 or 7 students from the school that live too far away from Nayabazaar to walk to school everyday) and we sat in his room and talked some more. And he brought me another cup of tea (so, that makes three cups of tea).
A couple weeks before, he had told me he was originally from Bhutan but had been forced to leave in the early 90's and had been a refugee since. And since I probably showed how little I knew about Bhutan (I didn't even know Bhutan was a country before coming to Nepal), he had lent me a survey about unregistered Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal, which gave a brief history of the exile of people from Bhutan which started in the late 80's. So, feeling more informed, I was able to ask him more questions about leaving Bhutan and what he's done since. Apparently, as Sonam had told me, the principal used to be one of the most regarded school headmasters in Bhutan before he lost his job and was kicked out of the country. The principal didn't tell me much about this because he said he really didn't like thinking about that period in his life but he did say, briefly, "The government would give you orders to leave the country and if you didn't leave by a certain date that came to your house, bound your hands and feet, and threw you in the back of a truck like a sack of wheat or rice." According to the survey he lent me, there are about 100,000 registered Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal (and the population of Bhutan is only 600,000), and who knows how many unregistered since the Nepali government stopped registering incoming refugees after the flow of people crossing the border dropped a ton after the mid-90's. The principal had lived a long time in India, since his wife is Indian, worked for a number of years as the headmaster at a school in the West Bengal region, but has now worked here in Solukhumbu for a couple years, a long ways away from his wife and two kids who he only gets to see every 4 or 5 months. Apparently, starting in the year 2002, seven countries including the US initiated a plan to take Bhutanese refugees, the US alone agreeing to take 60,000. But, the principal isn't a registered refugee since he arrived in Nepal long after the Nepali government stopped registering people. On the other hand, because he's so well-educated, he's way better off than the tens of thousands of other unregistered Bhutanese refugees that don't receive aid from the Nepali government, which provides schools and health facilities to seven refugee camps that were started in the 90's. Over 1/6 of Bhutanese are in exile because of their cultural heritage. Why had I never heard about any of this before a couple weeks ago?
On Wednesday, there was a total solar eclipse. Apparently, some regions of Nepal were in complete darkness for a couple minutes in the early morning. Here, around 6:45, it started to get a little dark, but nothing close to complete darkness. But, that morning, the Nepali government decided to announce the day was a national holiday (even though the eclipse was over long before people would go to work, or kids would go to school). So, school was cancelled. But I still showed up at school because the vice-principal still needed help typing up the test papers for the exams that start this coming week.
Thursday was the last day of class before exams (cause school was cancelled Friday too, as a "study day") and I spent each class basically telling all the students which topics would appear on their math exams and which wouldn't. To make sure I have work to do next week, besides proctoring exams, I told all the 6th, 7th and 8th graders that I was available anytime if they wanted help in preparation for the exams. I wasn't sure if many of the students would actually take me up on my offer, but that afternoon a group of 6th graders came by my room and led me to one of their houses where we talked about algebraic expression for about an hour and a half. After that, I walked past Salleri to the principal's house, cause he had said I could stop by anytime if I wanted to watch a movie. It had been over two months since I'd seen a movie, and the pickings were slim. He had a couple pirated dvds that had like 8 movies to a disk (cause in Nepal, they lower the video and audio quality of movies so they can cram a ton on a single disk), mostly Hindi movies. The best option was "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," but I didn't really care cause it just felt good to be watching a movie.
Yesterday, since there was no school, I decided to walk to Junbesi, which is a pretty big town a little over three hours away. I had heard there was a really big monastery not far from there. So, I walked about an hour and a half past Junbesi and ended up in Phugmoche, a little town with a monastery and a Buddist school. And then I backtracked and went in another direction towards Thupten Choling, where the super-cool monastery was supposed to be. As I was walking up towards the monastery, past a stream and some really cool water-driven prayer wheels, I passed this really old monk walking really slowly with a cane. And he smiled and motioned for me to follow him. We walked really slowly around the outside of the monastery, which was by far the biggest I'd seen in Nepal, until we reached the main entrance and he motioned for me to go in. I had been told there were about 50 monks at this monastery, but as I entered I saw a couple hundred pairs of shoes sitting outside the main sanctuary ("sanctuary" probably isn't the right word, but I don't know the right word so I'll stick with "sanctuary"). A couple monks were walking around with big pitchers of tea and I kind of motioned towards the sanctuary, as if saying "can I go in?" and they all smiled and nodded. So I walked through a curtain and saw about two hundred monks all sitting cross-legged in lines on the floor, most pointing towards the front of the sanctuary, some chanting from prayer books, others deep in meditation, others not-so focused and kind of looking around. A couple of them looked at me really oddly but I tried to keep my cool and figured if I'd come this far I might as well go in. So, I sat down on one of the few open cushions in the back and smiled at a really young monk who was sitting next to me and giggling. But, just thirty seconds or so after I had sat down, a group of older-looking monks sitting in the center stood up and started filing out. But everyone else remained seated for a couple minutes. Of the monks that were walking out, I noticed that a couple very women and I thought it was really cool that all the monks and annis (that's what lady monks are called, right?) were worshiping together. I then slowly began to realize that most of the monks there were women. And then I realized that ALL the monks were women. You'd think that'd be pretty easy to tell, but when they're all bald and wrapped in thick robes, you'd be surprised. So, then I started to feel pretty awkward cause I realized I'd just crashed a big anni get-together. But everyone was really smiley and welcoming, or at least seemed amused at me showing up and sitting down.
After walking out and awkwardly tying up by big hiking shoes while everyone else just slipped on their flip-flops and slippers, I walked back around the monastery the way I'd come earlier with the older monk. On the way, I passed a bunch of groups of annis that all laughed and said "Namaste." When I had almost reached the edge of the monastery, two stopped me and laughed and said something I didn't understand in Nepali. But then one of them drew a circle clock-wise in the air and I realized that I had failed one of the most basic lessons in monastery etiquette and was walking around the monastery counter clockwise, a no-no. But they laughed and we walked all the way back around the monastery, this time clockwise. I probably should have felt really embarrassed about everything that had happened, but all the monks were super friendly and smiling and, if anything, amused by the silly foreigner that didn't know anything. Even though I'd left Nayabazaar at 5 in the morning, I didn't get back till around 4:30, completely exhausted. A couple 7th graders stopped by and asked for some math help but I told them I was super tired and they agreed to come by the next afternoon.
I don't really have anything going on today, except for helping out the 7th graders later this afternoon. So, I'm probably going to go hang out at the super cool teashop I mentioned in my last post and read "Swann's Way," which is kind of blowing my mind right now.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
beards + leeches = beardleeches
Yesterday, I was sitting at a computer in the vice-principal's office. And I reached up to scratch my chin…(and I haven't shaved since I've arrived in Nepal. At first it was out of laziness, but up here in Nayabazaar, there's not a mirror anywhere in the house, so I just decided to shave when I got back to Kathmandu. And since it's been a long while, I feel I've made the transition from facial hair to beardage.)…and I felt a little clump of something in my beard. And I scratched it and it came off and landed in the palm of my hand. And then it started to squirm around. It was a leech. I've seen a bunch of leeches since I've gotten here, but this was the first time I'd found one on me. It was just a little one though. And I ran my fingers through my hair and I'm pretty sure there aren't any more crawling around and sucking my blood.
I've had a lot more work at the school lately. All of the students have first-term exams starting next week and all of the exams have to be typed up. But, since all of the school staff either can't type or can't type very fast, I've been given the assignment of typing up loads of exam papers, from kindergarten (why do kindergarteners have final exams??) up to 10th grade. So, when I arrive in the morning, I go straight to the vice-principal's office where there are a couple computers, and I start typing. And then I go teach my three classes (for which I've had to write exams), eat lunch, and go back to the office for more typing. It can get pretty boring. But, I've started bringing my ipod and connecting it to the computer speakers and listening to music while working. Sharon Jones kept me company today.
Last week, I gave the 8th graders a math test. So, I wrote the questions on the chalk board, they all copied them, and then they all went out to the volleyball court and spread out and took the test. And I kind of walked around and did my best to make sure nobody cheated, even though most of them tried. When there was just a couple minutes left, one student came towards me with his finished test, and on the way over dropped a piece of paper near a friend of his. It was pretty sneaky, but I saw it. I figured it probably had answers on it, but I gave the kid near it a dirty look, a look of "don't you dare look at that piece of paper," and the kid looked away. I was gonna go pick it up, but the bell rang and all the students swarmed me with their tests. Later, when grading the tests, I realized that I had two absolutely identical test papers, except with different student names on them. One kid had made two copies of his answers and passed one to his friend, who wrote his name on the top. And the copies didn't even look kinda different. They looked ridiculously identical. It was the absolute dumbest example of cheating I had ever seen. I showed the copies to Sonam and he laughed, pointed at each paper and said, "Yeah, this kid is really smart. This kid is really dumb." Since I figured this was a pretty huge case of cheating, the copying of an entire test paper, I took the students to the principle's office after class. Take that, cheaters.
Usually, after school, I walk to Salleri with a big group of the kids and go hang out in this little restaurant in the middle of town. If you walk past the little kitchen in the back, there's some stairs that lead up to this outdoor area where there's a table and some plastic chairs. There are plants and flowers all around and there's usually wet clothes hanging on lines cause that's where the family that owns the restaurant does their laundry. And it's really homey and great. And there's almost never anyone out there. So, I usually get a cup of tea and sit out there and read for a while. And then go back to Nayabazaar in time to catch the Aljazeera 5:45 news.
On Saturday, I walked up to Chialsa and then kept going for another 2 hours or so, just walking up a path not really knowing where I was going. I passed a couple kids that had a couple hundred plums spread out on a blanket by the path and I bought 20 for 5 rupees (so, for the price of about 300/$1). And I just kept walking, eating plums and chewing on the seeds, sometimes passing through little towns in the middle of nowhere. I eventually stopped a one little house and got some tea. A family that had also stopped there was eating lunch and they shared a big piece of flat bread with me. And then I walked back to Nayabazaar, eating plums. It was nice.
I've had a lot more work at the school lately. All of the students have first-term exams starting next week and all of the exams have to be typed up. But, since all of the school staff either can't type or can't type very fast, I've been given the assignment of typing up loads of exam papers, from kindergarten (why do kindergarteners have final exams??) up to 10th grade. So, when I arrive in the morning, I go straight to the vice-principal's office where there are a couple computers, and I start typing. And then I go teach my three classes (for which I've had to write exams), eat lunch, and go back to the office for more typing. It can get pretty boring. But, I've started bringing my ipod and connecting it to the computer speakers and listening to music while working. Sharon Jones kept me company today.
Last week, I gave the 8th graders a math test. So, I wrote the questions on the chalk board, they all copied them, and then they all went out to the volleyball court and spread out and took the test. And I kind of walked around and did my best to make sure nobody cheated, even though most of them tried. When there was just a couple minutes left, one student came towards me with his finished test, and on the way over dropped a piece of paper near a friend of his. It was pretty sneaky, but I saw it. I figured it probably had answers on it, but I gave the kid near it a dirty look, a look of "don't you dare look at that piece of paper," and the kid looked away. I was gonna go pick it up, but the bell rang and all the students swarmed me with their tests. Later, when grading the tests, I realized that I had two absolutely identical test papers, except with different student names on them. One kid had made two copies of his answers and passed one to his friend, who wrote his name on the top. And the copies didn't even look kinda different. They looked ridiculously identical. It was the absolute dumbest example of cheating I had ever seen. I showed the copies to Sonam and he laughed, pointed at each paper and said, "Yeah, this kid is really smart. This kid is really dumb." Since I figured this was a pretty huge case of cheating, the copying of an entire test paper, I took the students to the principle's office after class. Take that, cheaters.
Usually, after school, I walk to Salleri with a big group of the kids and go hang out in this little restaurant in the middle of town. If you walk past the little kitchen in the back, there's some stairs that lead up to this outdoor area where there's a table and some plastic chairs. There are plants and flowers all around and there's usually wet clothes hanging on lines cause that's where the family that owns the restaurant does their laundry. And it's really homey and great. And there's almost never anyone out there. So, I usually get a cup of tea and sit out there and read for a while. And then go back to Nayabazaar in time to catch the Aljazeera 5:45 news.
On Saturday, I walked up to Chialsa and then kept going for another 2 hours or so, just walking up a path not really knowing where I was going. I passed a couple kids that had a couple hundred plums spread out on a blanket by the path and I bought 20 for 5 rupees (so, for the price of about 300/$1). And I just kept walking, eating plums and chewing on the seeds, sometimes passing through little towns in the middle of nowhere. I eventually stopped a one little house and got some tea. A family that had also stopped there was eating lunch and they shared a big piece of flat bread with me. And then I walked back to Nayabazaar, eating plums. It was nice.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. For five or six days, there wasn't any internet. A phone tower was down or something.
Right now, it's raining. It's been raining for the last six or seven hours. I was supposed to give the seventh graders a test today but I couldn’t because of the rain. Usually, the students take tests outside, scattered under the trees. If the 25 of them took the test all cramped together in the classroom, they would just copy each other's papers. Outside is the only place where the classes take tests. But not when it rains. So, we did a "practice test" indoors and I told them the real test would be tomorrow.
I think most of the teachers just accept that almost all of the students at the school cheat and copy off their classmates in tests and homework, and don't really do much about it. So, I think the seventh and eighth graders were really surprised when I brought in some homework I had collected and, with as angry a tone as I could muster, pointed out all the homework that had been copied. These students are the absolute worst cheaters I have ever seen. They're not even good at it. It's so obvious which students have copied from another student because they copy everything EXACTLY as the other student had it. If one student makes a really silly mistake, four or five other students make the exact same silly mistake. For the first homework assignment I gave the eight graders, of which there are over 25, only three did the work and at least didn't make it obvious that they had copied someone else's. I've started a serious crackdown on homework. Take that middle-schoolers.
I'm spending a whole lot more time at the school because I'm not longer going up to the monastery in Chialsa in the afternoons to teach. In the group of six monks I was teaching, I kind of got the impression that three or four of them didn't really want to be there. And I didn't want them to feel like they had to come to classes they really didn't want to come to. Plus, I was beginning to realize that classes were going to start to get really difficult for me. The language barrier makes teaching English really really difficult, and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do after I covered all the really basic stuff. But I'm still going up there every once in a while just to say hey to Namdaal, the Tibetan teacher, and the other monks. So, now I'm at the school from 9:45 to 3:45 every day, either teaching class or sitting in the "staff room" grading homework or reading a book. But I think the principal is going to give me some more work to do in the next couple days, since all grades are getting ready to take end-of-term exams.
Now that I'm at the school the whole day, walking up with the kids in the morning and walking down with them in the afternoons, I'm getting to know a lot of the students and teachers a lot better. Sonam, one of the youngest teachers at the school, invited me over to his house for breakfast Friday morning before school. He has a kind of extra-curricular tutoring program that operates at his house in the mornings from 6-8 with about 30 students from the school, but after they left we had some really good dhalbaat and fish from the river, heads and fins and all.
The school runs Sunday to Friday (even though on Friday they only have three periods and then usually have volleyball tournaments and stuff) so on Saturdays I've started hiking to different places in the area. Last Saturday, I went to Chiwang Monastery, about three hours away from Nayabazzaar. It's atop a huge cliff on a mountainside, a 45 minute hike down to the nearest town, and it's ridiculously beautiful. By the time I got up there, clouds had already covered the mountain, but every once in a while the clouds would part and give just a peek at the view. Yesterday, I walked down by the river to Beni (which is just two houses and a school) and up a mountain on the other side of the river, not really knowing where I was going. After reaching a little town about 4 1/2 hours from Nayabazaar, I got some tea at a little restaurant and turned back. Next Saturday, Sonam told me he's going to take me up to a lookout about two hours up from Phaplu where you can see Everest on a clear day (which you don't really get in the monsoon season, but you never know).
Right now, it's raining. It's been raining for the last six or seven hours. I was supposed to give the seventh graders a test today but I couldn’t because of the rain. Usually, the students take tests outside, scattered under the trees. If the 25 of them took the test all cramped together in the classroom, they would just copy each other's papers. Outside is the only place where the classes take tests. But not when it rains. So, we did a "practice test" indoors and I told them the real test would be tomorrow.
I think most of the teachers just accept that almost all of the students at the school cheat and copy off their classmates in tests and homework, and don't really do much about it. So, I think the seventh and eighth graders were really surprised when I brought in some homework I had collected and, with as angry a tone as I could muster, pointed out all the homework that had been copied. These students are the absolute worst cheaters I have ever seen. They're not even good at it. It's so obvious which students have copied from another student because they copy everything EXACTLY as the other student had it. If one student makes a really silly mistake, four or five other students make the exact same silly mistake. For the first homework assignment I gave the eight graders, of which there are over 25, only three did the work and at least didn't make it obvious that they had copied someone else's. I've started a serious crackdown on homework. Take that middle-schoolers.
I'm spending a whole lot more time at the school because I'm not longer going up to the monastery in Chialsa in the afternoons to teach. In the group of six monks I was teaching, I kind of got the impression that three or four of them didn't really want to be there. And I didn't want them to feel like they had to come to classes they really didn't want to come to. Plus, I was beginning to realize that classes were going to start to get really difficult for me. The language barrier makes teaching English really really difficult, and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do after I covered all the really basic stuff. But I'm still going up there every once in a while just to say hey to Namdaal, the Tibetan teacher, and the other monks. So, now I'm at the school from 9:45 to 3:45 every day, either teaching class or sitting in the "staff room" grading homework or reading a book. But I think the principal is going to give me some more work to do in the next couple days, since all grades are getting ready to take end-of-term exams.
Now that I'm at the school the whole day, walking up with the kids in the morning and walking down with them in the afternoons, I'm getting to know a lot of the students and teachers a lot better. Sonam, one of the youngest teachers at the school, invited me over to his house for breakfast Friday morning before school. He has a kind of extra-curricular tutoring program that operates at his house in the mornings from 6-8 with about 30 students from the school, but after they left we had some really good dhalbaat and fish from the river, heads and fins and all.
The school runs Sunday to Friday (even though on Friday they only have three periods and then usually have volleyball tournaments and stuff) so on Saturdays I've started hiking to different places in the area. Last Saturday, I went to Chiwang Monastery, about three hours away from Nayabazzaar. It's atop a huge cliff on a mountainside, a 45 minute hike down to the nearest town, and it's ridiculously beautiful. By the time I got up there, clouds had already covered the mountain, but every once in a while the clouds would part and give just a peek at the view. Yesterday, I walked down by the river to Beni (which is just two houses and a school) and up a mountain on the other side of the river, not really knowing where I was going. After reaching a little town about 4 1/2 hours from Nayabazaar, I got some tea at a little restaurant and turned back. Next Saturday, Sonam told me he's going to take me up to a lookout about two hours up from Phaplu where you can see Everest on a clear day (which you don't really get in the monsoon season, but you never know).
Friday, July 3, 2009
The monsoon season has finally kicked in. It started a few weeks late this year but now it's raining every day. I've started going to Chialsa monastery in the afternoons because my schedule at the school changed and it's not unusual for it to start raining while I' hiking up or down the mountain. Everything gets really muddy and slippery but so far I've managed only minor slips and falls.
When I got back to the school on Sunday, I was greeted by the daily "GOOD MORNING TO YOU SIR," which is getting slightly less creepy since they seem to be doing it with less enthusiasm each day. I think they realize how much it weirds me out. I always walk into class and kind of turn my back to them while they're doing it, and then I always freak out when I eventually turn around and they're still standing up all staring at me (they won't sit down until you tell them to...). I'm now teaching 6th grade math too, and the 6th graders can get pretty annoying. When I ask a question to the class they all SCREAM out the answer as loudly as they can. So, I'm doing my best to teach them how to answer quietly.
Natalie was supposed to leave Sunday morning but her flight was cancelled because of the weather. Apparently it was the fifth day in a row that flights had been cancelled. When even met two trekkers we had met near Namche (one from the States, one from Paraguay) who had walked all the way to Phaplu because the Luklu airport had shut down because of the weather. But, Monday morning, the weather was nice and Natalie was able to fly out. Later that day, I showed up at the school for class and there was no one to be found. Apparently that morning the principal had received news that a bunch of the 10th graders had gotten high marks in their national exams and had cancelled school. School kids in Nepal get a ridiculous amount of days off. There are a ridiculous number of national holidays, and anytime any group or organization has any type of political or social grievance, they call for a strike and everything shuts down, including schools. A couple weeks ago, a group that had separated from the Maoists held a strike in Salleri and the school in Nayabazaar shut down, even though most people didn't have anything to do with the strike or even know what it was about. It's not a big deal when school is cancelled. It sort of fits in with how relaxed Nepali culture is. Everyone just says "Ke garne?" - "What to do?"
Wednesday morning, one of the VSN Nepali-teachers from Kathmandu showed up at the house (I can't remember his name. I've been trying to figure it out.), told me his brother was getting married and asked me if I wanted to come. As we walked to Durga, which is like a thirty minute walk past Nayabazaar, he told me we weren't on our way to an actual wedding but a kind of ceremony to celebrate the arrival of his brother's bride, and after a lot of questioning I got most of the story. His family and the bride's family had been in talks about arranging a marriage (most weddings in Nepal are arranged), and the previous week his brother had walked nine hours to his perspective bride's town to meet her and talk with her family. This was the first time he had ever met her but, deciding he liked her and she accepting his proposal, they decided to get married. On Tuesday, the bride had made the long trip to Durga. Wednesday, there was a ceremony at a house in Durga (i'm not really sure who's house it was) where everyone present (including me) got a tika on their forehead (I don't really know enough about Hindu culture to properly describe what a tika is, but people seem to get them on many different occasions. Someone basically smudges this red paste mixed with rice kernals and stuff on your forehead). And then there was a big procession of friends and family from Durga to Salleri, with the bride and groom near the front, where the bride was introduced to the rest of the groom's family. I didn't get to stay for the whole thing, but it was really fascinating. Also, I got a free lunch, which was pretty sweet. And I got to eat with my hands for the first time since I've been here. Most people eat with their hands in Nepal, but the family I'm staying with always gives me a spoon. It was kind of fun eating this big, wet, sloppy mess of rice and vegetables with my hands.
In other news, I discovered, much to my surprise, that my host family's tv has a couple English channels. I knew there was a tv in a kind of secret living room on the second floor, but I wouldn't have guessed there were any English channels. Natalie had been here like 8 weeks and hadn't known. So, every afternoon, after I hike down from Chialsa, I get my daily dose of Aljazeera News. I'm starting to really like Aljazeera, even though it doesn't really try to hide its bias most of the time. Most news networks in the US don't really have the international scope that Aljazeera has. And it always seem to be covering things that actually matter, like the US turnover of major cities in Iraq, the coup in Honduras, the Yemenian Airbus crash, the Iranian election aftermath. Yesterday there was a huge special about human rights violations in Nigerian prisons. I feel more well-informed up here in the Nepali mountains than I do in Davidson.
When I got back to the school on Sunday, I was greeted by the daily "GOOD MORNING TO YOU SIR," which is getting slightly less creepy since they seem to be doing it with less enthusiasm each day. I think they realize how much it weirds me out. I always walk into class and kind of turn my back to them while they're doing it, and then I always freak out when I eventually turn around and they're still standing up all staring at me (they won't sit down until you tell them to...). I'm now teaching 6th grade math too, and the 6th graders can get pretty annoying. When I ask a question to the class they all SCREAM out the answer as loudly as they can. So, I'm doing my best to teach them how to answer quietly.
Natalie was supposed to leave Sunday morning but her flight was cancelled because of the weather. Apparently it was the fifth day in a row that flights had been cancelled. When even met two trekkers we had met near Namche (one from the States, one from Paraguay) who had walked all the way to Phaplu because the Luklu airport had shut down because of the weather. But, Monday morning, the weather was nice and Natalie was able to fly out. Later that day, I showed up at the school for class and there was no one to be found. Apparently that morning the principal had received news that a bunch of the 10th graders had gotten high marks in their national exams and had cancelled school. School kids in Nepal get a ridiculous amount of days off. There are a ridiculous number of national holidays, and anytime any group or organization has any type of political or social grievance, they call for a strike and everything shuts down, including schools. A couple weeks ago, a group that had separated from the Maoists held a strike in Salleri and the school in Nayabazaar shut down, even though most people didn't have anything to do with the strike or even know what it was about. It's not a big deal when school is cancelled. It sort of fits in with how relaxed Nepali culture is. Everyone just says "Ke garne?" - "What to do?"
Wednesday morning, one of the VSN Nepali-teachers from Kathmandu showed up at the house (I can't remember his name. I've been trying to figure it out.), told me his brother was getting married and asked me if I wanted to come. As we walked to Durga, which is like a thirty minute walk past Nayabazaar, he told me we weren't on our way to an actual wedding but a kind of ceremony to celebrate the arrival of his brother's bride, and after a lot of questioning I got most of the story. His family and the bride's family had been in talks about arranging a marriage (most weddings in Nepal are arranged), and the previous week his brother had walked nine hours to his perspective bride's town to meet her and talk with her family. This was the first time he had ever met her but, deciding he liked her and she accepting his proposal, they decided to get married. On Tuesday, the bride had made the long trip to Durga. Wednesday, there was a ceremony at a house in Durga (i'm not really sure who's house it was) where everyone present (including me) got a tika on their forehead (I don't really know enough about Hindu culture to properly describe what a tika is, but people seem to get them on many different occasions. Someone basically smudges this red paste mixed with rice kernals and stuff on your forehead). And then there was a big procession of friends and family from Durga to Salleri, with the bride and groom near the front, where the bride was introduced to the rest of the groom's family. I didn't get to stay for the whole thing, but it was really fascinating. Also, I got a free lunch, which was pretty sweet. And I got to eat with my hands for the first time since I've been here. Most people eat with their hands in Nepal, but the family I'm staying with always gives me a spoon. It was kind of fun eating this big, wet, sloppy mess of rice and vegetables with my hands.
In other news, I discovered, much to my surprise, that my host family's tv has a couple English channels. I knew there was a tv in a kind of secret living room on the second floor, but I wouldn't have guessed there were any English channels. Natalie had been here like 8 weeks and hadn't known. So, every afternoon, after I hike down from Chialsa, I get my daily dose of Aljazeera News. I'm starting to really like Aljazeera, even though it doesn't really try to hide its bias most of the time. Most news networks in the US don't really have the international scope that Aljazeera has. And it always seem to be covering things that actually matter, like the US turnover of major cities in Iraq, the coup in Honduras, the Yemenian Airbus crash, the Iranian election aftermath. Yesterday there was a huge special about human rights violations in Nigerian prisons. I feel more well-informed up here in the Nepali mountains than I do in Davidson.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
James vs. Big Mountains
So, the Friday before we left to go to Namche, I got pretty sick. There’s was about a ten hour period in which I didn’t do anything except sleep and throw up, but I felt surprisingly good the next day. But, Sunday night, before we were planning on leaving the next morning, I started throwing up again. Going to Namche probably wasn’t the best idea, but it’s not everyday that I get to travel around Nepal. So, Monday morning, I packed my bag and we set off. I felt kind of terrible and I hadn’t eaten anything cause I was afraid I would just throw it up and I was pretty dehydrated and I hadn’t slept very well the night before. And that’s how I started the following journey:
Day 1: We all met up at Shah’s restaurant. By us, I mean myself, Natalie, Shah (local business man/restaurant owner/best English speaker in town who’s thinking about expanding his restaurant to Lukla – long story), Eunice (a Canadian volunteer who’s been working in a little town about 7 hours south of Nayabazaar) and Pharky (Eunice’s porter). I had decided that if I could make it to the Phaplu airport without puking, I was probably good to go. I made it, so we kept going. After about two hours we stopped for some delicious tea and later on we stopped for a really long time to eat lunch. Basically, we were taking our sweet time, not really conscious of how far we were supposed to walk that day. Eventually, the trail started getting really steep and it wasn’t until about 5:00 that we overcame our first major mountain. By this point, I was even more dehydrated and felt all kinds of terrible. But that wasn’t the end of our day. We still had to walk down another really steep trail about 500m (and at this point it’s starting to rain…) before getting to Nuntelah, where we stopped for the night around 7:30. At this point I was about ready to collapse and was extremely disheartened knowing that we were at a lower altitude than Nayabazaar, since Namche is up up up.
Day 2: I’m still not feeling that great, especially considering we start our day by hiking down for 2 hours. By the time we finally stopped for lunch, I was doing my best to convince Natalie and Eunice that we didn’t need to go as far as Bupsa (our planned destination for the day) since we didn’t need to get to Lukla until Thursday (a friend of Eunice was flying into Lukla and they were going to go trekking past Namche to Gokyo and maybe even Everest Base Camp). So we stopped in Kari Khola around 2:00 and I collapsed again.
Day 3: Maybe it was just because I had been sick the first two days, but our third day seemed like a breeze, even though it was by far the hardest day we’d done so far. We climbed up to Bupsa and kept going up to Khari La at around 3000m and then down a little to Puiyon, where we stopped for lunch (at this little place called the “Apple Pie Lodge” where the food was wonderful) and kept going up a really steep rock ridge and then down down down to Surke, where we arrived around 4:00. At the place we stayed I took my first shower of the trip, with a bucket.
Day 4: The sickness returns. It was a two-hour, really steep hike up to Lukla, which felt endless because I felt pretty sick again. Eunice’s friend’s flight ended up being cancelled so we decided to stay in Lukla for the night, even though we’d only traveled two hours that day. Lukla is the last airport on the way to Namche and Everest so a lot of trekkers choose to fly into Lukla instead of doing the seven day walk from Jiri, the last bus stop from Kathmandu. So, Lukla is just a series of overpriced lodges and restaurants and tea-shops and touristy places. We turned a corner on the main strip and paused for a moment, did a double take, and attempted to figure out what we had seen: a Starbucks. We’re pretty sure it was a knockoff (even though it was really really nice on the inside), but it was still pretty scary to find a Starbucks this far into the mountains (remember that we’re about a weeks walk from a paved road…).
Day 5: Natalie and I kept going, Eunice and Pharky stayed in Lukla to wait for Annie, Eunice’s friend flying in, and Shah stayed to do business things. We made it to Monjo by the end of the day. We did our best to try to find a hot-springs that we’d found on a map that supposedly existed between Benkar and Monjo (we both really wanted to say we’d been to a hot springs in Nepal, just like that monkey in “Baraka”….), but everyone we asked said it didn’t exist.
Day 6: After about an hour leisurely hike from Monjo and a brutal two hour hike straight up, we finally made it to Namche. We stopped at a really sketchy restaurant where the tea was really cheap and then walked around trying to find the cheapest lodge, since we were planning on being there two nights. We ended up staying at the illustrious “Buddha Lodge and Restaurant” which were very pleased to discover had a tv with one English channel: Aljazeera News. I had never watched Aljazeera before, I’m not even sure if you can find it in the States. But it’s basically the antithesis of Fox News, equally biased reporting except anti-US, anti-Iraq War, anti-Israel, pro-the underdog. I hadn’t really seen or read any foreign news since arriving in Nepal so I spent many hours in front of the tv. There was a ton of coverage related to all the protests surrounding the recent Iranian elections.
Day 7: We were planning on hiking up to “the Everest Hotel,” about an hour up from Namche where apparently you can get a pretty amazing view of Everest and the Himalayas. But, we woke up to find Namche drenched in really thick fog. There would have been no way we would have seen anything from the look-out, so we just hung out at the Buddha Lodge with Eunice and Annie who had made it up from Lukla, ate a lot, and watched more Aljazeera News. I was a little bummed that we’d come all that way and not seen Everest, but I couldn’t really complain since the entire way up had been gorgeous.
Day 8: We hike back to Lukla.
Day 9: We make it to Puiyan and stay at a really sketchy lodge. We wake up in the night to the sounds of mice, but we’re too tired to really care.
Day 10: Back to Kari Khola.
Day 11: We left a little after 6:30 and planned to make it to Ringmo, which is just over this huge mountain we knew would probably take four or five hours of crazy uphill to cross, plus a couple hours just to get to the base. We stopped half way up, played a couple games of Estimation (the card game that Natalie and I take very seriously), ate big plates of fried rice, and kept going. When we got to Ringmo around 3:30, most of the lodges were closed because there aren’t many travelers in the monsoon-season, and the ones that were open were kind of expensive. So, we decided to try to make it all the way back to Nayabazaar (we were told in Ringmo that Phaplu was four hours away). We made it to Shah’s restaurant in three hours (which is probably pretty impressive even by Nepali standards…) and collapsed. After a big plate of chow mein and two big cups of cardamom tea, we made it back to Nayabazaar around 8:30. We’d probably hiked around 10 hours that day.
And now I’m back in Nayabazaar and have today to rest. Tomorrow, I get back to work. Natalie leaves Sunday to fly back to Kathmandu and, assuming no other volunteers show up by surprise, I’ll be here alone for the next six or seven weeks.
Day 1: We all met up at Shah’s restaurant. By us, I mean myself, Natalie, Shah (local business man/restaurant owner/best English speaker in town who’s thinking about expanding his restaurant to Lukla – long story), Eunice (a Canadian volunteer who’s been working in a little town about 7 hours south of Nayabazaar) and Pharky (Eunice’s porter). I had decided that if I could make it to the Phaplu airport without puking, I was probably good to go. I made it, so we kept going. After about two hours we stopped for some delicious tea and later on we stopped for a really long time to eat lunch. Basically, we were taking our sweet time, not really conscious of how far we were supposed to walk that day. Eventually, the trail started getting really steep and it wasn’t until about 5:00 that we overcame our first major mountain. By this point, I was even more dehydrated and felt all kinds of terrible. But that wasn’t the end of our day. We still had to walk down another really steep trail about 500m (and at this point it’s starting to rain…) before getting to Nuntelah, where we stopped for the night around 7:30. At this point I was about ready to collapse and was extremely disheartened knowing that we were at a lower altitude than Nayabazaar, since Namche is up up up.
Day 2: I’m still not feeling that great, especially considering we start our day by hiking down for 2 hours. By the time we finally stopped for lunch, I was doing my best to convince Natalie and Eunice that we didn’t need to go as far as Bupsa (our planned destination for the day) since we didn’t need to get to Lukla until Thursday (a friend of Eunice was flying into Lukla and they were going to go trekking past Namche to Gokyo and maybe even Everest Base Camp). So we stopped in Kari Khola around 2:00 and I collapsed again.
Day 3: Maybe it was just because I had been sick the first two days, but our third day seemed like a breeze, even though it was by far the hardest day we’d done so far. We climbed up to Bupsa and kept going up to Khari La at around 3000m and then down a little to Puiyon, where we stopped for lunch (at this little place called the “Apple Pie Lodge” where the food was wonderful) and kept going up a really steep rock ridge and then down down down to Surke, where we arrived around 4:00. At the place we stayed I took my first shower of the trip, with a bucket.
Day 4: The sickness returns. It was a two-hour, really steep hike up to Lukla, which felt endless because I felt pretty sick again. Eunice’s friend’s flight ended up being cancelled so we decided to stay in Lukla for the night, even though we’d only traveled two hours that day. Lukla is the last airport on the way to Namche and Everest so a lot of trekkers choose to fly into Lukla instead of doing the seven day walk from Jiri, the last bus stop from Kathmandu. So, Lukla is just a series of overpriced lodges and restaurants and tea-shops and touristy places. We turned a corner on the main strip and paused for a moment, did a double take, and attempted to figure out what we had seen: a Starbucks. We’re pretty sure it was a knockoff (even though it was really really nice on the inside), but it was still pretty scary to find a Starbucks this far into the mountains (remember that we’re about a weeks walk from a paved road…).
Day 5: Natalie and I kept going, Eunice and Pharky stayed in Lukla to wait for Annie, Eunice’s friend flying in, and Shah stayed to do business things. We made it to Monjo by the end of the day. We did our best to try to find a hot-springs that we’d found on a map that supposedly existed between Benkar and Monjo (we both really wanted to say we’d been to a hot springs in Nepal, just like that monkey in “Baraka”….), but everyone we asked said it didn’t exist.
Day 6: After about an hour leisurely hike from Monjo and a brutal two hour hike straight up, we finally made it to Namche. We stopped at a really sketchy restaurant where the tea was really cheap and then walked around trying to find the cheapest lodge, since we were planning on being there two nights. We ended up staying at the illustrious “Buddha Lodge and Restaurant” which were very pleased to discover had a tv with one English channel: Aljazeera News. I had never watched Aljazeera before, I’m not even sure if you can find it in the States. But it’s basically the antithesis of Fox News, equally biased reporting except anti-US, anti-Iraq War, anti-Israel, pro-the underdog. I hadn’t really seen or read any foreign news since arriving in Nepal so I spent many hours in front of the tv. There was a ton of coverage related to all the protests surrounding the recent Iranian elections.
Day 7: We were planning on hiking up to “the Everest Hotel,” about an hour up from Namche where apparently you can get a pretty amazing view of Everest and the Himalayas. But, we woke up to find Namche drenched in really thick fog. There would have been no way we would have seen anything from the look-out, so we just hung out at the Buddha Lodge with Eunice and Annie who had made it up from Lukla, ate a lot, and watched more Aljazeera News. I was a little bummed that we’d come all that way and not seen Everest, but I couldn’t really complain since the entire way up had been gorgeous.
Day 8: We hike back to Lukla.
Day 9: We make it to Puiyan and stay at a really sketchy lodge. We wake up in the night to the sounds of mice, but we’re too tired to really care.
Day 10: Back to Kari Khola.
Day 11: We left a little after 6:30 and planned to make it to Ringmo, which is just over this huge mountain we knew would probably take four or five hours of crazy uphill to cross, plus a couple hours just to get to the base. We stopped half way up, played a couple games of Estimation (the card game that Natalie and I take very seriously), ate big plates of fried rice, and kept going. When we got to Ringmo around 3:30, most of the lodges were closed because there aren’t many travelers in the monsoon-season, and the ones that were open were kind of expensive. So, we decided to try to make it all the way back to Nayabazaar (we were told in Ringmo that Phaplu was four hours away). We made it to Shah’s restaurant in three hours (which is probably pretty impressive even by Nepali standards…) and collapsed. After a big plate of chow mein and two big cups of cardamom tea, we made it back to Nayabazaar around 8:30. We’d probably hiked around 10 hours that day.
And now I’m back in Nayabazaar and have today to rest. Tomorrow, I get back to work. Natalie leaves Sunday to fly back to Kathmandu and, assuming no other volunteers show up by surprise, I’ll be here alone for the next six or seven weeks.
Friday, June 12, 2009
On Monday, I hiked up to "Mt. Everest Secondary School" and taught my first 8th grade math class. When I walked in, the 25 or so students all stood up and shouted "GOOD MORNING TO YOU SIR," very slowly and very creepily. When class was over, I waited a second for them to leave but nobody moved. And when I started walking towards the door, they all stood up and shouted "THANK YOU FOR TEACHING US SIR" equally creepily. But besides awkward entrances and exits, classes are going really well. I teach the 8th grade class, break for lunch and then teach the 7th grade class. From what I've observed so far at the school, and from what I've been told by Natalie, most of the teachers don't really teach, they just kind of have the students repeat stuff from their books. I don't know if other math classes are like that, but the English classes definitely are. So, the 7th and 8th graders seem pretty pumped when I get volunteers to come up and answer problems on the board.
I've also sorta started teaching English at Chialsa Monastery, a little over an hour's hike from Nayabazaar. Natalie has been teaching this one monk for the last couple weeks, and seeing that there's now two of us, he's having me teach a couple of the younger monks (I don't know how old they are, probably 15-20). So, I just sit around with them for like 30 minutes and we talk.
So, my daily schedule looks something like this: I wake up, read a little (Natalie has lent me this book which is apparently the "yoga bible," so I've been doing yoga in the mornings too. Don't laugh), eat daalbhat, hike an hour to the monastery, teach some monks, hike back down, teach 8th grade math, drink some tea, teach 7th grade math and then have the rest of the day to do whatever.
But, even though everything has just started, I'm not going to be around for the next week or so. Natalie and a friend of hers from Canada and I are going to trek to Luklu and Namche in the North. Luklu is the furthest destination you can fly to before reaching Everest Base Camp (which is still probably a two weeks walk away) and apparently it's a pretty cool place. And supposedly there's a lookout near Namche where, if it's a clear day, you get a pretty spectacular view of the Himalayas. It's probably going to take us 3 days walking to get to Namche and 3 days back, assuming it doesn't rain too much (monsoon season has started even though there hasn't been all that much rain lately).
I've also sorta started teaching English at Chialsa Monastery, a little over an hour's hike from Nayabazaar. Natalie has been teaching this one monk for the last couple weeks, and seeing that there's now two of us, he's having me teach a couple of the younger monks (I don't know how old they are, probably 15-20). So, I just sit around with them for like 30 minutes and we talk.
So, my daily schedule looks something like this: I wake up, read a little (Natalie has lent me this book which is apparently the "yoga bible," so I've been doing yoga in the mornings too. Don't laugh), eat daalbhat, hike an hour to the monastery, teach some monks, hike back down, teach 8th grade math, drink some tea, teach 7th grade math and then have the rest of the day to do whatever.
But, even though everything has just started, I'm not going to be around for the next week or so. Natalie and a friend of hers from Canada and I are going to trek to Luklu and Namche in the North. Luklu is the furthest destination you can fly to before reaching Everest Base Camp (which is still probably a two weeks walk away) and apparently it's a pretty cool place. And supposedly there's a lookout near Namche where, if it's a clear day, you get a pretty spectacular view of the Himalayas. It's probably going to take us 3 days walking to get to Namche and 3 days back, assuming it doesn't rain too much (monsoon season has started even though there hasn't been all that much rain lately).
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Nayabazaar, Solukhumbu
On Thursday morning, I finally made it out of Kathmandu in a little propeller plane headed northeast towards Phaplu. I had never ridden in a propeller plane before, so it was pretty sweet. We flew up to 10,000 ft and didn't come back down. The landscape rose up to meet us. After 45 minutes in the air, the plane headed straight towards a mountain, did a 180 and landed on a really short strip on a mountainside. The guy next to me gave a thumbs up and I gathered that landings weren't usually that smooth. I was told later that a plane crashes on this strip every three years or so, which I was glad I hadn't know beforehand.
Tej had given me some basic directions of where to go once I got there but luckily I met Natalie, the other VSN volunteer working in the area, on the way and she took me to the house I'll be staying at while I'm here (which turns out is where Tej's mom, sister, two nieces and nephew-in-law (?) live). She then took me around to the different places she's been working at. She gives English lessons to a monk that lives about an hours hike away, but also helps out at a nearby monastery and teaches English to 2nd, 3rd and 7th graders the local "Mt. Everest" school.
On Friday, which is the final day of a six-day school week, classes at the school had been cancelled for a girl's volleyball tournament (Volleyball is huge here. Everywhere I go I see people dirt courts and people playing. Even the monks play.) but I got to meet some people around the school and see a little more of the area.
On Saturday, we hiked up past the monastery Natalie works at (stopping briefly because of the rain and eating bananas and green mango we'd bought at the market that morning) and walked around a Tibetan "refugee camp" (people have been living there for over fifty years so I'm not sure what to call it). Everyone spoke Tibetan which made communication really difficult, not that my Nepali is exactly stellar, but we managed to inquire about a "Tibetan cave" we'd heard about. We never actually found "the cave" even though we hiked another couple hours up into the mountains, but it was still a pretty amazing hike. The clouds had disappeared after the rain earlier and we could see for miles, even glimpsing the Himalayas at one point, but now the clouds swept over us making everything really creepy and mysterious. We managed to find our way back to Nayabazaar, where we're staying, just before nightfall and were served huge heaping plates of daalbhat, which I eat two meals a day (basically rice, veggies, lentils, sometimes meat all mixed together).
Today I went to the school and watched Natalie (try to) teach a class of 2nd graders. Since teachers here beat kids with sticks whenever they act up, and the kids know Natalie doesn't, they go completely crazy. They were screaming, throwing stuff, spitting, wiping their snotty noses all over the place. It was painful to watch. All the English classes at the school consist of repetition and memorization of lessons from a textbook, so there's really no focus on comprehension. Most of the teachers themselves have pretty horrible English and sometimes they just have the class read aloud in unison from the book instead of actually giving a lesson. So, after hearing about how hard it was to teach English and sitting in on the 2nd grade classroom from hell, I wasn't that excited about teaching English. But, luckily, I found a way out: Math! I talked to the main math teacher (I was going to talk to the principal but he's away with typhoid at the moment) and he said he would love for me to help out. Right now he has a class every single period so he was pretty excited to dump a couple on me. So, starting tomorrow, I will be teaching 7th and 8th grade math. We'll see how that goes.
I've taken a bunch of really epic photos, and for some reason the internet is pretty fast today, but my camera has just died. Sorry.
Tej had given me some basic directions of where to go once I got there but luckily I met Natalie, the other VSN volunteer working in the area, on the way and she took me to the house I'll be staying at while I'm here (which turns out is where Tej's mom, sister, two nieces and nephew-in-law (?) live). She then took me around to the different places she's been working at. She gives English lessons to a monk that lives about an hours hike away, but also helps out at a nearby monastery and teaches English to 2nd, 3rd and 7th graders the local "Mt. Everest" school.
On Friday, which is the final day of a six-day school week, classes at the school had been cancelled for a girl's volleyball tournament (Volleyball is huge here. Everywhere I go I see people dirt courts and people playing. Even the monks play.) but I got to meet some people around the school and see a little more of the area.
On Saturday, we hiked up past the monastery Natalie works at (stopping briefly because of the rain and eating bananas and green mango we'd bought at the market that morning) and walked around a Tibetan "refugee camp" (people have been living there for over fifty years so I'm not sure what to call it). Everyone spoke Tibetan which made communication really difficult, not that my Nepali is exactly stellar, but we managed to inquire about a "Tibetan cave" we'd heard about. We never actually found "the cave" even though we hiked another couple hours up into the mountains, but it was still a pretty amazing hike. The clouds had disappeared after the rain earlier and we could see for miles, even glimpsing the Himalayas at one point, but now the clouds swept over us making everything really creepy and mysterious. We managed to find our way back to Nayabazaar, where we're staying, just before nightfall and were served huge heaping plates of daalbhat, which I eat two meals a day (basically rice, veggies, lentils, sometimes meat all mixed together).
Today I went to the school and watched Natalie (try to) teach a class of 2nd graders. Since teachers here beat kids with sticks whenever they act up, and the kids know Natalie doesn't, they go completely crazy. They were screaming, throwing stuff, spitting, wiping their snotty noses all over the place. It was painful to watch. All the English classes at the school consist of repetition and memorization of lessons from a textbook, so there's really no focus on comprehension. Most of the teachers themselves have pretty horrible English and sometimes they just have the class read aloud in unison from the book instead of actually giving a lesson. So, after hearing about how hard it was to teach English and sitting in on the 2nd grade classroom from hell, I wasn't that excited about teaching English. But, luckily, I found a way out: Math! I talked to the main math teacher (I was going to talk to the principal but he's away with typhoid at the moment) and he said he would love for me to help out. Right now he has a class every single period so he was pretty excited to dump a couple on me. So, starting tomorrow, I will be teaching 7th and 8th grade math. We'll see how that goes.
I've taken a bunch of really epic photos, and for some reason the internet is pretty fast today, but my camera has just died. Sorry.
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