The First Week

Translated version for all the non-Dutch people

Hello everybody,

Here in Nepal everything is fine. I usually get up at 6.30 am in the morning, have breakfast and help the children with their homework. At 9.15 am I take them to school. School starts at 9.30 am, but before I quickly visit steve, Charles and Michael, our French school volunteers. Every morning at 9.30 am there is a morning ritual, with arm movements, a quiz, reading the news, a prayer and the national hymn whilst standing in a neat queue. Then I usually teach two hours. This differs from gymnastics, English, drawing to keeping the toddlers busy. It’s not that strict here. Around 12 am to 1 pm I go home and have some spare time. I clean my room, do my laundry (yesterday, by hand), I prepare my trekking, go shopping or write my blog, like I am doing now. At four I have to pick up the children again and help them with their homework. Homework is funny here. Everything is reproduced and nothing implemented. The children learn everything by heart but when you ask them things that need understanding instead of a reproductive response, they can’t give the answer. This is the way things are taught here. As I am writing this there is another power cut, this happens about 35 hours a week. At this moment the children take a shower with water heated by the sun boiler on the roof. Now the water is warm because today there was a lot of sunshine which heated up the water. On a cloudy day the water is freezing cold. Every 9 days a big tanker brings us new water supplies. Fortunately we always have water because we always pay at once, therefore we are the first they supply even in times of water shortage. I will be able to put this text on line when there is power again, now I can us the battery of my netbook.

Before I go on I want to tell you some more about Nepal. Nepal is about 3.5 times as big as Holland, with 30 million inhabitants of which 1,5 million live in the capital Kathmandu. More than half of the population has to live of less than 1,25 dollar a day. It’s no wonder that Nepal belongs to the 10 poorest countries of the world. Officially Nepal is a democracy but it is very corrupt. I met a Dutch guy with a visa valid 2,5 years, whereas the maximum here is 6 months. He got it by paying some extra money unofficially. Everything here is controlled by a small elite with power and money. The largest part of the population is Hindu, and the second largest religion is Buddhism, but there are also Muslims, Christians and those that follow nature religions. Most people believe a bit of everything. All the religious holidays of all the different beliefs are celebrated here. This adds up to over 150 free days a year. Saturday is the official day off at school, next week there will be exams. Officially there is no caste system anymore but in real life it is still very important. Januk and Pushpa, the ‘parents’ of the children’s home have married out of love. This means that they come from different castes and married without the permission of their family. As a result Pushpa who comes from a very high caste is excluded and Januks family (who was not poor at all) is not happy with it either. There is only secret contact with Pushpa’s family and at every family meeting of Januk there is quarrel about it.
Until 1990 Nepal was an absolute monarchy, the king had all the power. In 1990 the first parliament was installed, but since then no parliament has ever lasted longer than two years. There was also a civil war between 1996 till 2006 between the Maoists and the monarchist republics. In 2007 the King was peacefully removed and since then all the governments are trying to write a constitution. But no success so far.
Kathmandu itself is very colourful and chaotic as far as I have seen until now. In the touristic centre Thamel, one can buy whatever one wants. Constantly there are beggars and merchants hanging around you. Prices are double what they are in the rest of the city. Kathmandu is formed by a network of little streets and passages of about 4 meters wide. Very colourful and very crowded with pedestrians, little Suzuki’s and motorbikes that hoot every two metres. That’s Thamel.
The Langtang Children’s home is at 300 meters of the mount Swoyembhynath, also known as the Ape mountain. On the mountain there is forest with on the top a temple complex. The apes on the mountain are seen as holy and are fed by all the tourists and believers. They have become very cheeky. I once saw a monkey jump on a beggar girl and cling to her hair. Fortunately he didn’t bite her but he scared her a lot. At night these apes wander around town looking for food. You also see herds of wild dogs in the city. All looking for something to eat. The number of people is only surpassed by the number of dogs, monkeys and cockroaches of course.
Everywhere in the town the garbage is out on the streets and you have to watch were you are walking all the time. This attracts a lot of vermin but also a lot of beautiful animals. For example eagles! I have seen more eagles here in those two weeks than I have seen in my whole life before. They also live from the garbage! You also see whole herds of wild cows walking slowly through the centre of the city. The funny thing is that they wear jewelry. A few weeks ago there was a feast to honour the cows and now you see cows with earrings and necklaces. All the cars stop for the cows, because when you kill a cow you get sentenced for life in jail. As well as when you kill a pheasant. They are holy too.
With the French volunteers I sometimes go out in Thamel and when it gets too late, I sleep at school, because I can’t get in the children’s home after 8.30 pm. Everybody is asleep then. On my first outing on Thursday I ate Momo, a kind of Ravioli, delicious. The only disadvantage was that I got food poisoning out of it. I could only throw up and had diarrhea the next two days. Fortunately Pushpa took good care of me and I was recovered the next day. Sometimes I go out and have a drink with Januk, the father of the children’s home and head of the school. He is very glad I’m here, apparently I am the first male volunteer in the home.
Teaching at school is very nice, although I never know what will come next. One day I’m asked to teach gymnastics. This went very well, I taught them volleyball, football etc. The next day I am told to teach English to class 3 and 5, very nice but tiring. If you ask them to read along, they all read out loud each at their own speed. Like that they don’t understand half of what they just read. But in the end only one read out loud and the others read along in silence.
Today I helped in the kindergarten and a cheeky, angry little boy pulled my beard when I didn’t give him my camera. The teacher calls him ‘naughty Checkie Chen). The other children were very sweet and even Checkie Chen wasn’t so bad in the end.
Going out in Thamel is very nice but also very tiring because of all the beggars you have to say no to, but even worse are the men that get very close to you and whisper: ‘hashies, Marihuana?’ They keep on asking every day although you also answer no.
Next week the exams start for the children, which means that I don’t have to babysit anymore. So I will be going on a trekking in the mountains from November 28 to December 6 to the Himalaya’s and to the national safaripark Chitwan. Let’s hope I won’t be eaten by a Yeti or a tiger!