Arrival in Nepal and Settling into Pandavkhani

Hallo from Nepal! I arrived in Kathmandu on the 6th of January with six other volunteers, and Clara (my project partner) and I have now been in our village – Pandavkhani – for two months. The time has flown by and we have settled in to our lives here. The uneasy first few days are a distant memory of what feels like a completely different place.
Our first week in Nepal was spent in Kathmandu. Project Trust’s Nepal coodinater, Shanta Raj (pronounced Santa!), picked us up at the airport the morning we arrived. Stepping out of the airport blearly eyed we were met with the city’s weak smoggy sun. From the sky, Kathmandu is flat and sprawling – reaching into all the corners of its valley and lapping at the edges of the forests that surrounds it. It is circled by green peaks that hint at the rolls of lush wild hills and mountains which lie beyond the city. On the ground, Kathmandu is loud and busy – holding its own despite its precarious position on the globe – sandwiched on the crunch of two contentinental plates between India and China. We were piled into a jeep, and had our first views of Kathmandu from its crazy roads. It is a dry city at this time of year – the trees are a muddy green and the grass on the verges of the roads is brown. The buildings are irregular and colourful and it reminded me of the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. The tired and dreamlike state of the first few hours ended after a shower and sleep, and Shanta took us to find momos (Nepali dumplings). Waking up the next morning, Kathmandu began to morph out of hazy set of impressions, fleeting sights and bewilderment; and into the more coherant form of plans, places to be, and things to do.
We visited Swayambhunath Temple – also known as the monkey temple, which is a Buddhist pilgrimage site. It sits at the top of one of the hills that rise from the city, as if asserting the jungle’s dominance. The temple is a white dome, painted with the eyes and spraying out prayer flags that reach down to the smaller temples which gather around. It was good to be a tourist and we had fun taking pictures of scary looking monkeys. Then it was time for our first dal bhat – rice and dal with curried vegetables and chutney – the national dish of Nepal. We were all glad to find that we enjoyed the food and could eat with our hands!
The week went on with a mix of wandering throught the city, visiting tourist sites, eating lots of dal bhat and momos, watching Kathmandu’s many western cover bands, and being driven to strange places by Shanta. He is a very kind and funny man who gives up much of his time to coodinating the schools that volunteers are sent to with Project Trust, and led us through the city like a mother hen. One day, he drove us to a working crematorium and took us right through empty rooms to show us the metal chamber where the body goes, and we realised that he must have run out of ideas for what to do with us. Throughout the week we also met various people who are from municipalities that we are being sent to, and who happened to be in Kathmandu. From Galkot (my municipalty), we met a very shrunken old man who didn’t speak any English, and was wearing a hat that would look better on Rihanna. Clara and I decided that he was very wise and kind, and that he must be a good omen for Pandavkhani. We also visited the British embassy to meet with the ambassador, who’s husband volunteered in Sri Lanka with Project Trust! The embassy is a big yellow house and feels quite surreal inside, with pristine arm chairs and photos of the queen, and two blonde children on a trampoline.
At the end of the week we began to disperse in our pairs to different our different districts. Evie and Luise were the first to go, followed by Tom and Callum. We dropped them off at the bus park, where they boarded big colourful busses (some of which were streaked with vomit stains), and settled in for their 12+ hr rides – complete with constantly blasting Nepali music and bollywood films. The next day it was time for the long drive to Pandavkhani! Clara and I were luckily driven there by Shanta, as he was coming to look at the new project. It was exciting to drive away from Kathmandu, and get a look at Nepal outside of the city – to feel like the adventure was really beginning! We arrived in Pandavkhani early the next morning, having stopped off in Hatiya for the night.
Pandavkhani is in a kind of bowl valley, surrounded by hills on all sides. From Hatiya (the nearest town), the road is very bad and slow. We were greeted by the headmaster – Nabin, who was standing waiting for us outside the school. He speaks elaborate English with very clear enunciation, wears a grey suit with shiny shoes, and is very proud of his English Parker pen which he displays in his jacket pocket. He has studied and worked in Kathmandu, and is now back in his birthplace on a one man mission to improve the village school. He runs around looking very stressed – trying to battle against the naturally laid-back Nepali attitude. After meeting him, we were introduced to the school committee – made up of important people from the village. We were given garlands and tika on our foreheads. Then we went to Radika Pun’s house for food – rice, dal, nettle stew, chicken, goat’s milk, and potato! She is a formidable old women who has now befriended us. She doesn’t speak any English, but we can now kind of communicate with her in Nepali. She makes us call her Poo Poo, which means aunty. Everything felt very surreal and overwhelming – but I felt excited and it was nice to be out of the cold and smoggy Kathmandu, and into a beautiful green valley! We waved goodbye to Shanta and Fra, and turned to face the big group of Pandavkhanians – unsure of what would happen next.
We were introduced to Rupa, who is our host mother, and Sumana – her 10 year old niece. She was very reserved and it was hard to communicate with her. We were taken to where we are living – on the top floor of a concrete house that has just been built. It is very nice and we were happy to have our own space. We have a bedroom with two wooden plank beds, and bathroom which looks more luxurious than it is (the taps don’t have any running water), and a kitchen room with a wooden table. For the first month, we were not allowed to cook or eat inside the house, because it hadn’t been blessed yet, so that evening we were helped to set up our kichen outside on the covered terrace. The headmaster had appointed us an ‘official friend’ – Pabitra, who we call Pobby. She is a 25 year old teacher at the school who can speak some English. Her and Rupa showed us our food supplies and helped us to cook dinner. It was awkard and we felt guilty that they were doing so much to help us – carrying gas cylinders, sacks of rice, cleaning the floor etc. , and didn’t seem friendly towards us or happy to meet us. Pobby said that they are very busy and don’t have time to help us all the time. We felt frustrated because we couldn’t explain that we didn’t want to cause them trouble and were happy to be left to figure out everything for ourselves. Luckily those awkard first meetings feel very far away now, and Rupa and Pobby are our some of our best friends in the village!
Rupa is a science teacher at school, and lives in a mud house next door to us, but is in the process of moving into the floor beneath us. She is unmarried, and looks after her nephew and niece – Safal and Sumana, whilst her brother and sister-in-law are working at their farm. The house that we are staying in has been built with money from her father’s UK Gurkha pension. She is a lovely lovely woman, and we have gotten to know eachother better as our Nepali and her English has improved. We often go to her house for dinner, and sit on the floor around the fire while she or Tulsi – her sister-in-law, cooks. It is a one-room mudhouse, with lots of blankets and pots and pans, and firewood piled up in the corner. She makes massive pots of rice, which are then saved to be refried; and there are plates of dark roti that sit in the corner to be shared around. We eat Kir – which is like rice pudding made from goat’s milk, with curried saag or potatoes or cauliflower, and ghee. It is delicious! We have learned to say ‘Bayo!’ (which means ENOUGH) very firmly, otherwise more and more and more will be piled onto your plate. Towards the beginning of our time in Pandavkhani, we felt kind of awkard when we went into her house, as we didn’t want to do anything wrong – but now we feel so much affection and friendship for Rupa, and we have become like members of the household rather than visitors. Rupa and Tulsi are the best! The house is mostly women all the time, as Sumana’s father is normally at the farm, so little Safal is the only boy.
School was on holiday for our first few days in the village, so we had a few days to get use to everything and meet people before teaching started. On our first morning in the village, Rupa invited us to her house for breakfast and we helped Sumana with her English homework. In the afternoon we met Pobby, and walked over up the valley to the ‘cultural programme’ that was on to celebrate the first day of the new Nepali month. The gathering was lots of people sitting on the grass, watching volleyball matches and a big tent with lots of chairs and a loud speaker. When we came over the hill everyone was staring at us. No foreigners have ever come to Pandavkhani before, so we are very interesting! We were invited to sit in the tent, and tika was put on our foreheads. There were lots of speeches made through the loud speaker, and delicious food was handed around. – Chiya, curried peas, tel roti, and sweet sugar cane. After the volleyball some boys put on a comedy act, and as it got darker the mood got a lot more informal and the children started running around playing games. Even though it was such a foreign enviroment it felt kind of familiar and comfortable in the sense that it was just like a big family party. Everyone was very kind to us and kept checking that we weren’t cold. A possy of old women sat with us and shooed away any boys who came near us! Once it was dark there was a dancing competition – it was beautiful! And then a singing competition. The singing was groups of 3 men and 3 women, responding to each other.
It was rainy and grim for the next fews days, and we had some depressing experiences following Rupa around through the rain. I found that being in such an unfamiliar place and not being able to speak to anyone was quite insulating and left me very much in my own head – just watching everything and daydreaming but not really interracting much. I sometimes felt frustrated as everyone’s faces seemed so unintelligible – I couldn’t understand them or what they were thinking. After a few days the sun finally came out, and we washed our clothes and hair at the standpipe next to our house. This is where we wash our dishes, and collect water for cooking, washing, and flushing the toilet. After that we felt more normal and started thinking about our first day of teaching which was the next day.
We arrived at school with Rupa, and were introduced to the teachers. We gave our names and said something about ourselves in Nepali. We have also been given Nepali names – Clara is Coppila and I am Mira. The school is made up of one wide two-story concrete building, and some smaller mud buildings. Each school day begins with assembly outside, with the children lined up in their classes. They sing the national anthem and do a general knowledge quiz! At the beginning, we were teaching English and Computer classes. The computer classes proved to be quite impossible, as we were only given textbooks in Nepali, and the school doesn’t have any working computers. We carried on for around 3 weeks, and then spoke to the headmaster and said that we feel we would be more useful teaching only English, as the children’s English is no where near good enough to learn about computers. He was ok with it, and one of the other English teachers left, so we had to cover his lessons anyway.
The first few weeks of teaching was very draining and stressful. There are around 30 children in each class – apart from grades 3 and 4 which are much smaller. I teach grades 11, 7, 5 and 4; and grade 6 with Clara. We also do an after school class a few times a week. Clara teaches grades 3, 4, and 9 English, and science to grade 4. The children are wonderful and find us very interesting and funny. We’ve learnt a lot of names and got to know some of them well. They bring us vegetables! They can be very naughty in class, but I’ve found that as they’ve gotten used to me they’ve calmed down. Grade 5 are very sweet – always shouting ‘very nice!’ as encouragement whilst I’m writing on the board. Some of them are really clever and always pestering me to give them more work and homework, whilst other find it much harder. Grade 11 are the same age as me, or older – which is quite intimidating. At first I was given an English Literature textbook to use with them, so had the difficult task of trying instill a love of Blake and Wordsworth into a classroom of hostile and staring Nepali 18 year olds. We have now moved back to the normal textbook, which is much better, and I’m finding grade 11 to be the most interesting class to teach. They have warmed to me more, and I’m trying to get the girls to be more active in class and participate more. They now come up to write on the board if they ask them, whereas before they would just refuse because they were too shy/scared. Some of the boys have very good English, as they went to different schools at primary level. The timetable is the same every day – 6 days a week. At lunch we go to one of the mud buildings where there is a kitchen and sit with all the teachers to have chiya and food – sometimes roti and dal, sometimes fried rice, or noodles. We’ve made good friends with the teachers, who often unknowingly provide us with a lot of entertainment. Most of them are from the village – but a couple are from other regions and are living here alone.
The school day begins at 10, so I get up at 7.30. Breakfast is normally rice and spinach, and sometimes an egg! We walk to school with the childen who live near us – it is only 5 minutes away. Girls always give us flowers on our way! After school we might go to the shop, visit Rupa, or go straight home. We get rice, oil, dal, flour, spices and vegetables for free. Manzing (the shop owner) is a hilarious man and his face always lights up when he sees us! Whenever we go we are invited upstairs for tea with his wife. Neither of them speak any English, and natter away to us in very quick Nepali. We are getting quite good at communicating with gestures, and just guessing what people are saying to us. Manzing’s children have all left the village, and his wife says that we are like daughters to her now. She gives us lots of sweet tea and biscuits, and sometimes vegetables to take home. For dinner we normally have rice and dal with vegetables – but sometimes roti or potatoes. Our cooking has improved drastically but we are still too scared to invite anyone for dinner.