Gorkha

Shree Bhagabati Himalaya Higher Secondary School, Gorkha (twinned with Guston Primary School, is our only school outside of Palpa District and made for a long journey. Saran and I set off early on Sunday morning which meant waking up at 5am! We took the bus to Pokhara where we stayed for the night to break up the journey. In the evening we enjoyed a trip to the well-known Busy Bee Café where we enjoyed a good night meeting some new people and enjoying a few beers. The next morning we set off for Gorkha on the local bus and this seemingly took forever, not helped by punctures along the way!!

It was late afternoon before we got to the town of Gorkha, within Gorkha District but we still had some way to go to get out to the school. It was not possible to get there that evening so we stayed in a rather run down hotel for the night.

The next morning, after breakfast we were picked up on motorbike by the headmaster’s brother (himself a headmaster of another school) and a teacher from Shree Bhagabati Himalaya. As those in the profession will no doubt confirm, primary school teachers do not travel light. I had a mountain of resources in tow so it was a heavily laden motorbike that set off with me clinging to a number of bags, whilst barely holding on and also with a bag on each side of the front wheel, hanging just below the handlebars.

Of course in Nepal there is also no helmet for the passenger owing to the inexplicable law that says a rider must wear a helmet but any passengers (often a woman holding a young child) do not. I did actually later ask about this and the unconfirmed response I received was that if there was a criminal shooting a gun from the pillion position, they could be identified. This seems to ignore the fact that if anyone had such a desire they would surely cover their face anyway!!!

My more immediate concern however was that the bags hanging down by the front wheel were scraping along the road and I was readying myself any second to see the entire contents go spilling out of the bottom and onto the street, no doubt being run over also by the next passing vehicle!

Thankfully we did not have far to go to a shop where I was able to unload some of the items that could be brought by the jeep later on and this significantly lightened our load. I was also able to buy a new bag to replace the one which by now had a decent sized rip in, but which thankfully had not spilled out all of my belongings. 

It was not long before we turned off the road onto a dirt track but the scenery from then on was stunning. We passed through a ford (thankfully I kept my feet dry) before climbing up through sub-tropical forest until we had breath-taking views back to the town of Gorkha and behind the snow-capped Himalayas. The track also passed through numerous orange groves which felt rather exotic, especially when contrasted to the icy mountains.

Looking back towards Gorkha, with the Himalaya's in the background - it was a really amazing bike journey.

View of the school.

After about an hour we arrived at a school, not our school but our headmaster’s brother’s school and had a brief look round and took on some refreshments. We then had a switch of motorbikes and I went with the headmaster of our school, Khun Prasad, who had come to meet us there. We rode for another 20 minutes before we came to Shree Bhagawati Himalaya Higher Secondary School. The school is situated on a ridge with fantastic views all around. There is a large flat area for the playground but after that it drops down quite steeply. 

The school has a large flat playing area with a football pitch.

                                                                         By the time we arrived it was lunchtime so after having a short and low key welcoming ceremony in the staffroom, where introductions were made, Saran and I went for some food at a house, just up from the school, which doubles as a small canteen. 

In the afternoon we were shown round the school by Khun, Prasad the headteacher. He showed us the work they had undertaken with the funds from Guston Primary, which included a concrete walkway and ceiling supports which had replaced the rotting wooden ones which had been in place before. This seemed a sensible use of funds, though unfortunately has not quite been finished, with the rather important omission of any kind of safety barrier for the balcony. Where the new section of balcony from the newer building meets the older section of balcony on the older building there is a chair and (maybe don’t read this part if you are anything to do with health and safety!) they stand on this rickety chair and slide themselves round the corner onto the next section of balcony. I had to do this a few times and am reasonably confident with heights but it definitely felt unsafe!!!

Health and safety disaster! This really does need sorting out as soon as possible.

They have also done some building work with government money, adding another level onto the original building. Unfortunately this too is unfinished and they have now run out of money. The concrete framework, supports and roof are in place but there are no walls at present. It does offer fantastic views but unfortunately that is not the purpose. It seems a shame they didn’t finish off the walkway before embarking on this new project but then this is not always the most logical of countries!!!

Above: The new building project - they wanted this to be a library and computer room and additional storage space. Below: At present though it is only acting as a very expensive viewing platform.

After school a number of the teachers went for some food and refreshments so we joined them before heading to our accommodation for the night. The trees outside the beautiful cottage in which we were staying were heavily laden with orange trees. I had never before eaten an orange straight from the tree and they were delicious.

Beautiful sunrise - picture taken from the 'garden' of the house in which we stayed.

The very sweet granddaughter of the man putting us up - she loved this book!

With her Grandad.

The next morning Saran and I walked back to the school and started with some teaching. I spent the entirety of the morning working with the nursery, classes 1, 2 and 3 (there were many children absent due to a wedding so we combined the classes) who wrote letters to the children at Guston. I had said to them they could write in Nepali as Louise Langley, the teacher from Guston had told me that 85% of their children are actually Nepali (there is a Gorkha regiment situated near to them). However the teachers insisted the pupils could do it in English and they did, though their letters had to be heavily structured for them. Some of the younger ones just drew pictures. 

I also did some number work with them which worked much better than it had at Jheksang, in fairness though many of the children were a little older here. 

Twinning work with Nursery - Class 3

Playtime.

In the afternoon I worked with Class 4 on measurement and with Class 5 on some display work of typical Nepali things. Again I tried to emphasise how important display work is and spent the time when I was not teaching, cutting out their work and sticking it on backing paper. They said that they were afraid things would get damaged if left in the classroom and that they were unable to lock all of the classrooms at night as the locks had broken (something I want to get fixed). There does though seem to be a perception here that it is better to keep things in pristine condition and locked away rather than accepting that things might get a bit ragged but at least they get seen!!

After school we were all invited up to the local wedding (still taking place – Nepali weddings are not short affairs!) and they kindly fed us with goat, pork and buffalo meat!

In the evening we went to the school accountants home, a really friendly young chap, whose name I have unfortunately completely forgotten – I really am quite awful with names (especially difficult to remember Nepali ones!). We were invited to a celebration (a bit like a christening) of a boy of about 10, whom we had to give tikka, throw rice at and give money to. It was really special to be invited to clearly such a special occasion and of course there was plenty of food, roxy and dancing!

Another great evening with lots of dancing!

The next morning we made our way to school, about an hour long walk, and I spent the first part of the morning with Nursery / Year 1, just watching what the teacher did with them. There was a lot of just copying letters and words and many children sat round doing nothing, so eventually I got some of the puzzles I had brought along and we did some of those, reinforcing previous work they had done on animal names. I did some learning too and can now add hahtti (elephant), bhahlu (bear) and bahgh (tiger) to my repertoire of Nepali words.  

I learnt some new words too working with Nursery and Year 1!!!

I then went to Year 3 where we did some display work on different fruits before heading to lunch. In the afternoon I did some work on fractions with Year 7, giving them paper to fold up to make different fractions. Finally I worked with Year 8 on some more twinning letters. Whilst the children in this class are a little older than those at Guston they were able to produce really good letters (as far as I could tell – most were written in Nepali!).

This Year 8 group is normally split into two groups thankfully - it was a bit of a squash!!!

Above: Writing twinning letters, Below: A spectator takes a peek at what's going on!

Morning exercises - this is done every morning to the beat of a madal (drum).

Above: When I left to teach my class some of the teachers were looking inquizitavely at the Duplo blocks.               

Below: When I came back I found this - hopefully the children will get a chance to play with it too!!!

The teachers had been really great and I had always had someone in the classroom with me – they are clearly keen to learn and took a real interest. They even helped me finish off my display work (though this was possibly because they wanted to get home!). 

It was quite sad to say goodbye - they were great to work with.

The next morning we had a long and not overly comfortable motorbike ride up to Manakamana, the site of a famous temple and a very holy place where many Nepali’s make a pilgrimage. We were not there to visit the temple, rather to use the cable car which would take us down to the main road back to Pokhara. Nevertheless it was interesting to see, though the huge crowds and long cues prevented us from taking a closer look. It was also incredible how many orange sellers there were lining the streets, there must have been 30 or 40 of them all in a row!

Above: Manakamana Temple, Right: No shortage of oranges!

 

The cable car trip was quite amazing, though was rather expensive for me – four times as much for me as for Saran!! Coming the other way there was an occasional metal cage rather than the glass capsule we were in. I didn’t realise until we got to the bottom that these were for goats. According to Lonely Planet it only costs 130Rs for a goat – it cost me 1395Rs, however sadly the goats only get a one way ticket as they are sent up for sacrificial purposes, so I doubt they see it as a good deal!

Sadhu's (holy men) on a pilgrimage.

The impressive cable car. It was a steep drop down!!!

Once we were down it was easy to get a minivan to Pokhara and from there I split from Saran as he went to spend some time with his wife’s parents. I had a quiet afternoon in Pokhara and the next day headed back to Tansen. It’s been another really good visit and I really look forward to visiting Gorkha again – it’s a long way to go but it was really great. The teachers and pupils were really friendly and eager to improve the school and the place was really beautiful. They also seem to have a good twinning relationship with Guston, and proudly showed me a book of letters they had previously received from the UK. I hope this continues and Guston…your letters will shortly be on their way!!!

Once again if you would like to make a donation…if you’re not too broke from Christmas, the link to the donation page is:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charity-web/charity/finalCharityHomepage.action?uniqueVmgCharityUrl=manishachildwelfarefoundationnepaluk

Hope everyone is enjoying the run up to Christmas and all the parties!!

Andy. xx