Mahachaap and Dumre

After the long break for exams and holidays I have now started a busy period which is set to continue as time is rapidly passing by. I am now 2/3 of the way through my placement with only two months to go!

A warm greeting followed by a tough meeting at Mahachaap.

The day after my visit to Bagnas (Wednesday) I visited Mahachaap, not for a days teaching but to have a meeting with the committee about working together in the future. Unfortunately this school has received promises in the past (not by us), that have not been fulfilled. This has left them very wary of outside organisations. It was important for us to meet with them and be clear about what we could do for them. I’m not going to go into the details behind this but after a long meeting which was rather intense at times. I was handed a microphone to answer a number of questions with more than 100 people watching – it felt very much like a press conference and I did not really enjoy the circus it became. However five hours after arriving we set off again, pleased with the outcome that they were happy to work with us in the future. It was certainly one of the hardest days I have had though since I have been out here. 

I was relieved to finally reach a resolution with Mahachaap and hope we can now look forward to a bright future working with them.

Continuing with the busy schedule I caught the bus down to Dumre school the next morning, one of the newest schools we have begun to work with, where I met up with Saran who had come straight from his village nearby. It was my first time back here since Barbara, Alan, Elaine and I visited right at the start of the trip. With only a day and a half here because of the tight schedule I got straight on and did as much as I could with them. 

We started off in Year 1 with the body parts lesson that has proved so popular with other schools. The classroom in Year 1 is probably one of the best I have seen in terms of display work up on the walls and there were pictures the children had done of butterflies hanging around the outside of the room along with a number of different posters and charts. I encouraged the teacher to lead some of the lesson with some ‘show me your nose’, ‘show me your toes’ etc. with the children doing some actions like squeezing their nose or wiggling their toes. Dumre seems to have some good, creative teachers who are always looking to improve and willing to take on new ideas which is great to see. 

Other lessons on my first day included measurement and friction which I have previously taught in other schools and both of these proved popular and the students really got involved. I also had to get information on the school to support us in our aim to get them a UK twinned school. I made sure to compliment the Year 1 classroom for the excellent display work but asked why other classrooms didn’t do the same. The response was that they would like to put up more display work but the other classrooms are not secure and so displays have been previously damaged by people out of school hours.  Perhaps helping to raise funds to make the classrooms secure would be a good fundraising project for a UK school once they get twinned – it is a very sad reason not to be able to display children’s work.

The next morning I worked with the English teacher who was teaching the story of the Horse of Troy. It was basically a read the story and then answer some questions about it – a fairly boring exercise. I suggested to the teacher that the pupils could act out parts of the story but he said they would be too shy. He did have a good point with that and although it would be good to do one day it’s probably too big a step for now! Instead I got the pupils to break the story down into six sections and create a story board with a picture and a sentence for each part of the story. The idea being that this would give them a good understanding of the story and could lead to some good display work. I demonstrated the idea on their new whiteboard and they did produce some good work. A learning point for me is not to do a demonstration drawing – I did one quick picture using stick men and consequently every one of them in the class drew all their pictures with stick figures – it is hard to break their habit of copying things out exactly! 

After that lesson I did the ‘Alien Soup’ exercise again which again worked well. By the end of the lesson which I carried out mostly outside I seemed to have twice as many pupils watching as I had started with (where they were supposed to be I’m not sure!)!  

I also paid a very quick visit to the nursery to demonstrate the number mats. Lots of the children though seemed to be utterly terrified of me though! They are usually a bit shy but normally get over that when their curiosity of the new games / resources overcomes that. Some of them with a little persuasion did start to get involved but a number of others seemed in utter fear and backed themselves into the wall refusing to move. I didn’t think I was that scary looking but maybe so! I’m sure in time they will enjoy the number mats and other resources once the scary foreigner has left!!

After a really busy week where I had visited three different schools I only got Saturday to rest before I was back to Mahachap with for a couple of days before I had to get the bus to meet Rob (my friend from Worcester uni joining me for my final two months) in Kathmandu. For a school that had been rather unsure of us only a few days ago at our meeting, the welcome they gave to Saran and I was phenomenal. There is being tikka’s and then there is being Mahachap tikka’d! They plastered the red powder all over our faces and donned us with countless amounts of garlands.

I was eager to get on with as much teaching as I could and the teachers were very good at coming along to the lessons which was really good to see. Having not taught in this school before they had lots of my usual lessons: labelling body parts, twinning dictionaries, odd and even, measurement and alien soup. I got more display work up as well and got the nursery looking a bit brighter with number friezes and alphabet posters.

The school are very keen to see some use made of land they purchased around the back of the school. This land was originally earmarked for a building project but at this time the funds are just not available and so the land is currently not being utilised. Having had some conversations with people back home I am going to see if they can come up with some kind of a plan to make best use of the land, even if it is just a temporary measure, whilst funding is not available. It is important for us to give the schools a sense of responsibility and not just to rely on hand outs. We want to help them to be self-sustainable and to work with them rather than for them. We hope that if the school can come up with a good proposal this would make a good project for a fundraising drive. I have been given an estimate that to dig out the land so it is flat and usable may only be in the region of a few hundred pounds so hopefully this is achievable. 

The send off I received from the school was also amazing and involved lots more red tikka powder. I am looking forward to visiting again in a few weeks and hopefully to try and make the best of their situation with the additional land they bought.

I am now looking forward to my trip to Kathmandu and meeting up with Rob. In my head I split the six months into three sections where I was with Barbara, Alan and Elaine, then the middle part on my own and finally this last part with Rob. I thought this middle section would be harder without any English company but in actual fact I have met so many people and made so many friends that has not been the case. I have not really had a chance to be lonely either with such a busy schedule and regularly talking with my family at home has been great. That said, it will be great to have Rob out here to help out and to have a conversation without any language barrier!

The next part of the blog will be written along with him as a joint account of the remaining two months out here. I will leave you with a few more photo's of Mahachaap.

Best wishes

Andy. x

Biju's village and Bagnas

Hello again,

There was time for one last trip before schools started again, this time a visit to my friend Biju’s village. Biju has been a good friend to me out here and had been asking for some time that I come and visit her family and her village so I was pleased to finally have some time in which to do this. 

Not too much room to move in the jeep!

It was about a five hour bus journey to Rampur, along some of the scarier roads I have been on with very steep drops falling away from the bumpy tracks. We safely reached there though and had a quick walk around and some lunch before getting on a jeep to take us the remaining two hours, high up to her village. It was incredible the amount of people packed in and on that jeep. I counted 22 of us inside, one sat on the bonnet, and many more either hanging onto the side or on the roof. There must have been at least 35 people on it and possibly more like 40!

We made it though without incident and the welcome from the village was very warm despite the fact I was not there to work with the school. I think that they would be very keen to work with us but it would be difficult given the huge distance and time it takes to make the journey.

Biju and I were given a lovely welcome in her village, Gohrekot.

Biju (right) with her mum (left) and sisters.

The first evening was very quiet and I was all too happy to have an early night after another tiring journey. The next morning we went for a walk up to a village called Anandy (meaning relaxing place), where Biju’s old school used to be. As ever the walk offered great views, though it was rather cloudy. 

In the afternoon I went up to the school which was closed but there were some teachers there who were keen to get some ideas for teaching and so I did a few simple activities with them such as the drawing round the body. After we had done that I organised lots of games for the children to play which they really enjoyed. Having started with about 10 children we ended up with closer to 30! Some of the games worked really well, including ladders and bulldogs but others I had real difficulty explaining such as stuck in the mud where they didn’t seem to understand if they should be tagging others or running away!!!  

It was a really nice afternoon though and the children seemed to love it. We finished with some relay races and a wheelbarrow race which they found very funny!!!

                                      Last two boys left in bulldogs against everyone else - reminded me of the Adidas                                     advert with the caption 'impossible is nothing'!

Kept this picture small!!!

In the evening there was a dance program but unfortunately I was feeling quite ill with a bad stomach – probably due to the amount of meat that had been presented to me which I had politely tried to get through!

Biju was very good though and as a trainee nurse was able to give me some medicines which did help and I joined in with the dancing and merriment as best I could. I didn’t get a very good night’s sleep, feeling rather poorly, but thankfully by the morning I did feel a little better. 

Some of the more 'senior' members of the village.

Some more traditional dancing than my attempted efforts!

It was amazing the amount of people who gathered to wave us off – Nepali hospitality really is second to none. It would have been nice to stay an extra day and unfortunate that I had not felt too well for the last night but I had still had a really good time. 

Way home from Biju's village.

Left to right: Melanie, Regina, Bec and Roisin.

I had a couple of days back in Tansen and enjoyed the company of Roisin, Bec, Melanie, and Regina, an Irish and three Australian girls working on a placement at a hospital near Chitwan. They were staying at home-stay and were good fun. We went for an evening walk along Shrinegar hill, just above Tansen and also the next morning I took them up to see the sunrise (I am becoming quite a tour guide now). In between these times I also started to get ready to go back to school, which after a long time off for exams and holidays, I was quite looking forward to.

Jumping pictures at sunrise!

Two of my home-made clocks!

My first school trip after the holidays was to Bagnas, a short walk from Tansen. I had three days at Bagnas and taught a variety of lessons including the science experiments to test friction and the separating experiment – making alien soup. I also did some English lessons on asking questions about what time it is. I tried to keep the lessons as practical as possible and also incorporated lots of display work. One of the lessons on time the children had to match up cards which asked the question e.g. ‘What time do you have breakfast?’ and the answer ‘I have breakfast at 8:00’. I encouraged the children to do lots of speaking in the lesson which is important though not always easy in Nepali classrooms as the children are just so shy and not used to speaking up. 

'Alien soup' proved to be a really successful lesson (mixing sand, salt, water, rice and paperclips and then separating them using magnets, different seized sieves/ filters and evaporation). The children clearly loved doing such a practical activity of which they are clearly not used to doing. It worked really well and the children could see the salt starting to crystalise on the plate after a couple of hours left out in the sun. Unfortunately someone picked up the plate and cleared it away before all of the water had evaporated!! The children did at least see that it was working though and hopefully the teachers saw how much the practical nature of the exercise benefited the children and enhanced the learning. From the pictures you may think that this is a very colorful school with good resources, whilst this is true of the library, which was built as part of another charity's project, 'room to read', the classrooms in the school require much work. 

This picture and above: 'Alien Soup' activity.

By the end of my trip to Bagnas there was a bit more display work in evidence in the classrooms – there is still much to be done but I was really pleased to see one of the teachers put up some of the times tables on coloured paper I had given them and another teacher using the building blocks we had provided to demonstrate something in maths. It is really encouraging to see things start to happen and whilst they may be small things it is still good progress. 

Making a start at getting more display work up.

It might be small but was great to see one of the teachers put this up off their own back - hopefully the message is getting through that display work is important!!

A lesson on the five human senses.

During my time teaching in Bagnas I had one night where I stayed in the village (the other nights I walked back to Tansen) and had a really nice evening playing games with the children and the next morning walked up to the top of the hill which gave some of the best views I have had so far this trip.

It has been another successful and encouraging trip and whilst there is still much to do – it is good to see some progress being made. I am hoping when I return to Bagnas I will see both the display work I put up, still there and some new things too…we will have to wait and see though! It was another good visit though and good to get back to some teaching!

Thank you to those people who have donated - it is really kind of you. For anyone who would like to make a donation the link is here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charity-web/charity/finalCharityHomepage.action?uniqueVmgCharityUrl=manishachildwelfarefoundationnepaluk 

Andy. X

The lovely children of Bagnas school.

 

Stunning views from Bagnas.