It’s been a frantic few weeks since I last wrote. My friend
Amelia came all the way from Australia to see me, and became a Manisha
volunteer for two weeks, coming on school visits with me, and even loyally helping
to clear out the office! She had the Bashyals in hysterics with her impressions
of people selling water in India and we had some really lovely guests at the
homestay that week too. We even squeezed in a couple of days in Pokhara, eating
our way steadily around town. She’s now currently somewhere in the Annapurna
mountain range, scaling great heights. We miss you!
What else is new in Tansen? Daniel Wichmann (or Dan the man, as Saran affectionately calls him) has arrived! He’s
thrown himself straight into school visits and is measuring up the schools that
need libraries, contacting publishers regarding large scale book orders and
conducting basic reading tests for Class 1, 2 and 3 to determine how many words
the children can read across the schools. So, onto the schools. Amelia and I visited Dumre, Amrit,
Rakama Devi and I went on a solo visit to Devwari, taking Janaki with me as honorary
translator for the day. The most memorable moment from these visits was when at Amrit Amelia
read to the whole junior part of the school, all sat outside under a great big
tree. Saran translated and I capered about pretending to be a mouse, much to
the amusement (or perhaps confusion?) of the children. Sadly, all photos from
these visits are on Amelia’s camera, which is currently making steady progress
around Annapurna.
This week with Dan it’s been back to business, he has been
to nearly every Manisha school (sometimes alone, and as brilliant a driver as
Saran is I think it would be a tight squeeze to get all three of us on his
bike) and I have been to five schools with him – we even did three in one day,
Pipaldanda, Amrit and Rakama Devi. I was walking very gingerly after that day
on the back of the bike. The visits have been very focused on reading tests and
library measurements, but we did get a good day of teaching in at Dumre (Dan
letting me tag along to his lessons to see how he does things) and the most
wonderful morning at Kolkal on Friday.
As it was a half day, there were only thirteen children in
school that day, so Laxman and the other two teachers had taken the children
outdoors and were sitting on rugs on the grass in the sun. They are working
their way through a new government scheme, where lessons are planned out on
flashcards instead of the children focusing wholly on textbooks. After watching the English and Nepali lessons, Laxman pulled out his phone and started playing
music, and three of the more confident boys started dancing and singing for us
and the younger students clapped along. I felt very lucky to be there, watching
these children dancing away, the great jagged shapes of the Himalayas over their shoulders. Their playground is set in the middle of quite a
busy path leading to other villages along the hills, so every so often a herd
of goats would be ushered through, or cows would amble past. One even came and
put his great big head in my lap at one point. I laughed thinking about the
uproar it would cause in an English school if a cow suddenly wandered past, but
the Nepali children don’t even blink.
We also went to a meeting at the university this week, with
regards to potentially linking their faculties with universities in the UK, and
possible future Manisha involvement in the education department. We sat in an office
high in the building (which looks a bit like an English manor house, painted
yellow) and the various heads of departments talked to us and afterwards showed
us the library. The library looks exactly like libraries at home, and to my
glee was stacked full of the classics, Maugham, Austen, Dickens, Fleming, and Eliot
to name a few, books I was so shocked to see in Tansen. They politely offered
that I could take some away with me, but I figured that if I started I wouldn’t
be able to stop, and I’d be leaving with armfuls of books.
So to conclude: Tansen is getting cooler, and a heavy haze
has hung over the hills for past couple of weeks, so thick the hills are just
blue shapes, the Madi Valley below is white with cloud, and the Himalayas are lost from
view, hidden in the mists stretching across Nepal. I’ve been eating
pomegranates all week and ploughing through as many books as I can get my hands
on. I just reread To Kill A Mockingbird and I can
report that I liked it much better than I did at school. Any recommendations
welcome!
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