Namaste from Nangi
Trip Start
Aug 03, 2007
1
8
9
Trip End
Oct 15, 2007
Pokhara, Nepal
Sunday, October 7, 2007
After the Dawn Till Dusk bike shop got us all working again, and we survived the heat to Pokhara, we had planned 2 weeks of volunteering with the Nangi school. We hadn't read up enough on the place since making the plan a year (!!) ago, and really didn't know what to expect. We just knew it was "about a 3 hour bus ride to Beni, and then a 7-10 hour walk". So we arranged to meet someone in Beni on Monday morning, and tried to get on the bus Sunday afternoon at 3. The bus went 20 ft, stopped, everyone trickled off, and they explained the road was closed for another strike, the bus might go at 6. We've seen enough buses off the road, on their side, off a cliff, etc. to NOT want to travel at night, so we got tickets for the 6am bus, figured that would be enough time to still do the trip in a day. However, while everyone tells you it's a "3ish hour bus ride", they all know that it's actually a 3+ hour taxi ride, but on the bus, anything between 4:30 and 7 hours is fair game. Our bus trip was 5:30, to cover 90km, which included a mere 15 minutes of fiddling with the transmission, and for some reason the last 15km of paved road was closed, so the driver suddenly swung over the embankment onto the dirt road, which had switchbacks barely a bus-length long. We got there too late to hike up, so kicked around Beni for a day in the rain. Oh well, figured it could rain all it wanted today, and be nice tomorrow, right? Wrong. Tuesday dawned with a grey splash, like Seattle but much much hotter, but off we went anyway. The trail to Nangi is UP, 5000 ft pretty much continuously up out of Beni, before running a ridge and dropping into Nangi. At least the trail was a well used stone staircase; the soil here is clay, and when wet, slicker than snot on a doorknob. At our second stop, there was an umbrella for sale, which I almost bought, but refused on grounds of optimism. I'd spend the next week kicking my wet self for this mistake. Our hiking speed was good at least, and we arrived in Nangi early afternoon to meet the other volunteers, of which there were 6: Jonni and Laura from Finland, Tanya from Vancouver, Danielle from Quebec, and Jesse and Emily from Winnipeg.
The volunteers live, cook, and sleep in two "round houses", built in the traditional way (rock and clay walls, thatch or slate roof), and 8 all in one place is an unusually high population, but that's just due to random overlaps of a number of schedules. On arrival, someone asked if we'd "seen a forecast lately?" A forecast?? The last time I saw a semi-accurate forecast was in Delhi, not to mention the foothills of Annapurna! There wasn't much going on thanks largely to the rain. The school operates in the rain, but some students don't come, especially those with a 1-2 hour walk each way! So we hung out with the other volunteers, in a small space, and watched the rain. Most weather patterns we have encountered in the last few months have been quite short, so we figured a day, maybe two. Hah. Tuesday and Weds it either rained lightly, or rained harder. Thursday we saw the sun twice! but for 10 minutes each time. Then it got back to the raining lightly, or harder for another couple days. The locals called this "post monsoon weather". Post? What's "post" about it?? They did at least agree that the rainy season was especially heavy, and late this year, but, unlike everywhere else we've been they didn't blame this on global warming. And my boots were still wet a week after arrival.
While we're sitting around watching the rain drops drip, I'll describe the village. Nangi is a small village with a big school, grades 1-12. This is quite unusual; anything past level 9 outside of a full city is very unusual, and pulls students from as far as a 6 hour walk in the surrounding area. For those students, there are student huts to live in, small wooden huts with a couple bunks and a cooking area. The kids work amazingly hard, and are also amazingly independent, especially compared to their US counterparts; the older kids cook for, and look after the younger kids, while doing their own laundry by hand at the outdoor water tap, and attending school of course. Try THAT with your lazy-assed American high school kids!! Anyway, back to the general description; a lot of what Nangi is now, is thanks to one very impressive individual named Mahabir Pun. Mahabir had been a locally educated teacher until he unleashed a flood of letters to American Universities asking for assistance in continuing his education so that he could, in turn, improve the quality of education in Nepal. After dozens of such letters, Dr. Skov at the University of Nebraska convinced that institution to provide a full undergraduate education to Mahabir assuming he could get himself there. Must have been one hell of a geographic, not to mention culture shock; from a small village stuck to a steep hillside at 7400ft, to the plains of Nebraska!! Anyway, Mahabir completed undergrad, and came back a few years later to do an education degree and then set about pushing the school at Nangi to be a much improved village school. The village has electricity, although the supply is flakier than a good French pastry, and around year 2000, the Aussies donated a bunch of old computers, and Mahabir started a computer lab. But even more impressive is that Mahabir eventually managed to connect to the Internet by building a series of wireless relays down to an access point. The Internet is even flakier than the electricity since every relay needs to have electricity to work, but that there is Internet at all is very impressive. It's definitely not fast enough that kids are soaking up western culture from web surfing, but they can do email. Speaking of which, now that we're off the road, and the relative income scales are much lower, the access to satellite TV is also much lower - and very obvious in the culture. Satellite TV is everywhere in the more affluent areas, so not only are teens wearing cheap Britney Spears T-Shirts, they actually know who she is. As for us, way too many of the cheap hotels have TV as well - and we're talking the $5/night places! So we've watched a bit too much of the tube lately, from BBC to HBO. Which is a shame, since it detracts from the feeling of being somewhere truly unique and exotic, such as, say, Nepal.
But I digress terribly. One of the many unique things about the Nangi volunteering experience is that it is free to the volunteer; in fact, better than free, as food and lodging are both provided. I have never seen this for any other volunteering opportunity, and quite the opposite, many organizations now view the volunteer as a source of labor and capital, charging outrageous amounts of $$ (up to $2500 per person!!) for the privilege of visiting their cause for two weeks. Being able to offer free room & board encourages long term volunteers, which is better for the volunteer and the school alike (a month should be minimum, 2 weeks were much too short). This system is all supported by donation, so if you're looking for a good cause, you can make a donation on the website! You won't find a more effective use of $$ (the only overhead is the fee to wire the money to Nepal), and you can even specify what you'd like the $$ to go for (school supplies, volunteer support etc.) This is not to say that the stay was perfect; our lovely round house had a thatch roof, and a wicker "ceiling" above our heads, which is perfect breeding grounds for critters. We caught 4 large, and 3 small rats in the 2 weeks we were there, and it's a never ending battle. Cooking for 8, and then 10 was also quite a challenge. In fact cooking at all was a bit of a change since I've gotten rather lazy in this regard in the last 2 months what with very good food very cheap everywhere in India and Nepal. The local produce is also rather limited in the "vegetables" department; lots of Dal (lentils), potatoes, and this time of year, really damn big cucumbers, but greens were limited to the mustard greens growing pretty much for us. Tanya's birthday came up in the second week, and in an amazing fit of creativity with limited resources, Danielle and Jesse scrounged some chocolate, and ghee and managed to make a "chapati plum jam cake" drowned in impromptu chocolate sauce. It was definitely unique!!
Once upon the time there was solar hot water, but alas, that is no longer working. Not a big problem though, a bucket bath in the heat of mid day was plenty satisfying, and we had the advantage of being able to shower inside the round house, which means we can take all clothes off. The kids (and most of the adults) all have to use an outdoor, public water tap, and they have perfected the art of bathing with clothing on. Like I said, the living was quite basic by western standards, but we had the Hilton compared to traditional accommodation. Another problem with the communal living for a week of rain in a small place is that we all got sick with upper respiratory infections; two minor (including Gretchen), four medium sick (including me), and two very sick (fever etc.) Luckily for us, the next 2 volunteers to arrive were doctors!
One issue was finding things to do, especially in the rain. I took on the task of straightening out the library; they actually had a pretty good library all things considered, almost all donated books, and with a lot of them in the wrong place, this took a couple rainy mornings to sort out. We mostly did a lot of substitute teaching. Since we weren't about to be teaching accounting (there was a surprising amount of accounting classes), it was pretty much "teaching English" no matter what we were substituting for. This is OK the first few times, especially since the grade keeps changing, but after a while of talking about biking through Africa and that sort of thing, we tried to come up with more interesting classes, and to get more class participation. This is the tough one; getting the kids to talk is like pulling teeth, especially the girls. They all wear head scarves, and if you start even looking in their direction, the dive under the obscuring safety blanket of fabric ("You there! Yes you! third nose sticking out on the 2nd row! Please guess a vowel for Hang Man!"). Another difficulty is that the classrooms are absolutely devoid of visual aids; they are dark, simple rooms with nary a poster or other bright colorful learning aid. A standard US grade school room would look like a shopping mall Christmas display in comparison. So we played something like Jeopardy (give a definition, get them to guess the word), and Hang Man. I taught slang phrases in English (I mean, who would ever understand the phrase "making a pit stop" if they had to start with a literal translation?), and we explained the most likely phrases they would hear from a tourist ("could you please tell me where the restaurant is?" and that sort of thing). I also got permission to take over a science class for 3 days, and to teach Tai Chi, both in the second week, and this is where I started to feel like a 2 week visit is much too rushed. But first is was time for a weekend trip with Moti.
The school week is Sunday through Friday, and Friday ends a little early so the kids who walk home for the weekend can get home before dark. Note that the Grades 11 and 12 in particular are in class a lot; 10am until 4, a break, and then some of them have night classes from 6-8! Anyway, we had hoped for a mini-trek to Poon Hill on Saturday, but the pouring rain put a damper on that. Sunday Moti, a seemingly harmless older guy who runs the (plant) nursery (re-forestation programme among others), offered to take us on a walk to "see the waterfall and the village of Ramche, just across the valley". So we all figured this to be a good chance for some fresh air after a week of being rained in. Little did we know that Moti is firmly in the "path less traveled by" camp of walking, and when it came time to see the waterfall, we were suddenly plunging down a very steep, wet, slippery slope, grabbing anything that didn't move for balance and trying to keep up with Moti who was cheerfully way down ahead of his, swinging around the little mini-scythe they all use around here! We get to the bottom, where there is one hell of a waterfall given a week's worth of rain all pouring out of the valley! It was on the way back up that the trouble started; Jesse wanted me to pose on a rock. I was stupid and tried to climb up from below, a little rock-climber move on a wet mossy rock, which ended badly with a backwards somersault, and a couple more backwards rolls, carefully protecting the head and the camera before grabbing enough underbrush to stop myself. The only real casualty was the right leg, which I apparently managed to slam into a rock somewhere in the tumbling, and while all the damage was muscle, by the end of the day, I could barely walk. So much for teaching Tai Chi....
Monday finally dawned bright and clear and what a view! We'd had hints, but the actual pure white Himalayan peaks were increadible! So clear, so bright, they look so close, not 20,000 ft higher, and a long walk away. By Tuesday I could sorta walk and after class Krishna (one of the teachers, and main liaison with the volunteers) rounded up as many students as he could find at 4:00 for a Tai Chi demonstration. Gretchen and I performed the Kwon Bup form, and then we held the first impromptu "class", with about 10 reluctant participants whom Krishna pulled out of the crowd. Now, Tai Chi is a "soft" martial art, and should be taught over a period of years, not days, and is very focused on breathing, centering, efficient use of chi (energy) etc. But I had 5 days of teaching teen-age boys, of limited English capability, and who probably would not be interested in spending a half hour on Ton Jon breathing exercises, so I kinda emphasized the martial aspects of the art, and how all those pretty hand motions are actually a block, and a throw to handle an incoming punch, and that sort of thing. After teaching the first few moves of the form, I told them we'd have class from 7-8 tomorrow morning, and figured that was the end of it. Next morning, 6am, I get up so the muscles can warm up. Wander around in the usual stupor, thanks to the usual lousy sleep I'd been getting with rats dancing the polka overhead all night, and eventually made some tea. Gretchen goes for a short walk to warm up, we assume no one will show up, and we'll just go through the form a couple times for fun, and then have breakfast. At 6:40 as I'm standing outside drinking tea, I notice about 8 boys down on the basketball court, and realize with considerable shock, that they are waiting for me. I figure why wait, toss back the rest of the tea, and limp my way down there. By the time we line up 5 minutes later, there's about 30 kids, and by 7am, as we're finishing warm-ups, there's close to 40!! Gretchen about passes out when she gets back from her walk, then grabs the camera. Each morning for the next 4 we progressed steadily through Kwon Bup; a form which typically takes 3-9 months to learn. I'm not saying the kids were Tai Chi experts in 5 days, but some of them did really impressively well copying my movements, and looked actually not bad. I was both surprised and impressed!! The class also made a good impression on the village and the other teachers as well, should we go back, I'd plan on a month, and a much broader offering of the martial arts and Tai Chi.
The other fun class was science. Danielle, another volunteer, had told me that the science curriculum was completely missing any experimental aspect, and I decided to fix this with a very simple experiment, since what I was really interested in teaching was the scientific method, and the fact that experiments don't always go as planned. So I picked an experiment which I knew would fail; We solved F1D1 = F2D2 for a simple lever system, solve to find the fulcrum location, but I picked small masses (1000g, and 500g), and a big piece of wood for the lever. The basic equation neglects the mass of the beam, which for this system, was NOT a good assumption and the resulting experiment was off by about 20% I was teaching 9th grade, where this level of physics was appropriate, and which turned out to be a good thing since the 9th graders were about the best behaved class in the school, and mostly had enough English to understand the teaching (I think.....). Anyway, hopefully it was instructional for them to see that experiments don't always work, and we then went and modified the equations to take into account the mass of the beam, and showed that this makes the math much more complicated, which is another good reason that your standard merchant scale has fixed D1 = D2 so that the simpler equation applies. But this is all still really boring even for attentive, well behaved 9th graders, so we then had a very short lecture on how the longitudinal stability of an airplane is also a lever-balance problem, and how the elevator works, and finished that up with a practical demonstration of building paper airplanes! The kids copy everything I do - copy everything off the board, and, in short order, had copied me making a paper airplane, and suddenly the room was full of paper airplanes! That definitely made me one popular teacher, although my condolences to whomever had the next period!
So that was our teaching experiences. Other volunteers built things (Jonni had built, and was maintaining a sauna. Yes, the Finnish guy), Tanya taught massage, Danielle had kids do short skits, there was always work in the plant nursery and after G and I got tired of falling down the steep embankment to one of the buildings, we built a staircase. Two more volunteers arrived part way through; Deb and Gary Stoner, both doctors from Pennsylvania. Deb is actually part of the US board of directors for Nangi (a very loose organization), and comes for about 6 weeks every 2 years. This time her husband, an OBGYN came as well and spent a while teaching the local nurses who run the clinic most of the time, along with seeing patients. We learned some interesting things about medical health and the area. The most interesting was the that government is providing free Depo Provera (birth control) shots, and even more interesting is that the village women are actually using them. Most women here only have 2, or at most, 3 kids, and they are well spaced apart. Coming from India, and even other parts of Nepal, this is simply astounding. The birth control process does not usually succeed in such a rural setting, where children are the only real retirement pension. Gary also explained that a major problem is a uterine prolapse, a problem where the uterus starts to basically fall out of the body. This is partly due to the nasty ergonomics of carrying very heavy loads on baskets, supported only with a forehead strap, and partly due to number of pregnancies (?). In any case, it's a huge problem in Nepal, and scores of volunteer surgeons arrive every year to spend a week or two doing hundreds of hysterectomies.
On the last Friday we were in the village, there was a "cultural exchange" with Beni, the "city" we had hiked in from. Now Beni is not small; it's a big town, not a village, and it's more or less the end of the road out fo Pokhara, but the idea of a "cultural exchange" with a place only 6 hours walk away seemed a bit of a joke. But no joke, with the Beni kids in one line, adn Nangi kids in the other, the differences could be seen from the other end of the school. Nangi kids wear pretty conservative dress, the girls in particular are very traditional. The Beni kids were wearing tight jeans, black T-Shirts, some were sporting sun glasses and/or ball-caps and visors, and a few were plugged in to the headphones. This is the difference between Nepali teens with and without access to satellite TV. (The internet in Beni is also horrendously slow, we tried it). The main part of the cultural exchange was a series of dances and musical performances. The Beni kids predictably did modern dance, with one or two exceptions, although, to be fair, they had one guy who did very traditional Magyar singing. The Nangi kids did a lot more traditional dancing, with some more modern thrown in at the end, but it was a pretty glaring example of "city slickers" meet the "country bumpkins". And at the end, Krishna pushed us all into the performance area as well. Jesse and Gary are both accomplished guitarists and singers with bands back home, so they performed nicely, and then we ALL got up and sang "Reshem Firiri", a Nepalise traditional favorite, and sang it horribly. But apparently they appreciated the effort anyway.
It was definitely a good experience, and would recommend it to anyone looking to volunteer for a few weeks in the middle of very scenic nowhere. Great way to acclimate before trekking as well! There were a LOT of really cute kids - but we didn't take any home, they have very strict laws about that sort of thing. And it was just bloody fantastic to be 6 hours from the nearest traffic, exhaust, or honking horn for 2 weeks! Our taxi driver on the way home was especially spastic on the horn, and made us appreciate even more the tranquility we had just left.
Next up, we biked back to Kathmandu, the long way through the Terrai, will try to get that blog out tomorrow, but doubt will make it before we head to Japan!
MK
