Nepal decided to close all the schools in the country to prevent the spreading of the corona virus. They will be closed for 4 weeks. These pictures were made just before we left the village. We will be going to Pokhara on a 30 hour bus journey, stay there a few days, then go to Chitwan national park and go on a safari. After this we'll go back to Pokhara, meet the other 8month volunteers and then go on the Annapurna (which might not happen, since all the treks got suspended).
We celebrated Holi last Monday. It is a festival where everyone throws colours at each other. First, we celebrated it together with six other volunteers in Chhipridaha, and then we went back to our own village to celebrate it there.
We had a national festival today, so we didn't
have school. We went with our chairman on a tractor to an other village (Giprida) to pick Catriona up (another volunteer). From there we went on a 2 hour jeepjourney to the festival. When we arrived, we got a tika (the red dot on the forehead), a flower necklace, a nepali scarf and a cap. We also got slapped with stinging nettles, which is apparently part of the nepali culture. Nepali stinging nettles are way more horrible than European ones, they hurt like hell.
The festival was called "Visit Nepal 2020" and is meant to promote nepali tourism. We got vip seats, had to watch people dancing, listen to people but also dance ourself in front of the big crowd. We went back to Giprida, but they forgot to plan a way back to our village. Because our village is only reachable by walking down a steep mountain for 1,5 hours, we couldn't get back and we had to spontaneously stay the night in a hotel. They next morning we had get up at 6 to walk down to our village. We were pretty exhausted when our school started at 10.
To wash our clothes and ourselfs, we have to walk up a mountain for 20 minutes to get to the "showers". The showers are just pipes which collect the mountain water so you can stand under them and wash yourself. The water is ofcourse freezing cold, and it is not very pleasant to shower, but I always feel really fresh afterwards. We also wash our clothes at the same place in a little river. It always very hard to carry our full bucket of wet heavy clothes back to the village. We normally wash ourselves and our clothes once every 3 days, because it just takes up a lot of time.
We are living in a mudhouse, like all houses in this area are. Mudhouses are litterally just build out of mud, so it had happened to me a lot of times already that I just accidentally broke of a piece of my own house by stepping wrongly on the floor or even just by putting my pictures on the wall. Our toilet is a squattoilet and is just outside of our house. Since no one uses toilet paper here, we have to wipe ourselves with water and our left hand. To flush you just use a bucket of water and throw it im the hole. There are a lot of big spiders in the toilet, but after a while you will even get used to them.
This is our school. After 2 weeks of teaching we finally got our time schedule, which means that we're not getting pulled into random classes by overenthousiastic children anymore. I have to teach grade 1,2,3 and 4. The children are absolutely adorable, but the teaching is also quite exhausting. The children in my classes dont speak any English, which means that it is not possible to explain anything, so it's necessary to come up with other teaching ideas. There are approximately 700 children at our school, and it's a pretty good school for nepali circumstances. The teachers are very nice, although they almost don't speak any English (not even the English teachers). Some teachers hit children with a stick ( I have actually only seen it in grade 1, because those kids are just the hardest to handle) but they don't hit them hard, it is more like a little tick, so it's not that big of a deal.
Our village is called Pokhara (NOT the big Pokhara, but Pokhara in the Rukum district). The village is quite small, you can walk trough it in ten minutes. It's extremely underdeveloped. It looks like you've gone 1000 years back in time. People live from their own farming, and do nothing else than harvest rice, feed their cows and goats and sit in front of their mudhouse when they have nothing to do (which is 75% of the time). Noone has ever travelled very far in Nepal, let alone outside of the country. They don't speak any English so it's hard to communicate. But they will still talk to you loads even if you don't understand a word. Our village is completely remote. If you want to travel there from Kathmandu, you first have to go on a 30 hour bus journey to Giprida, and the only way down from Giprida to our village is by walking down a very steep mountain for 1,5 hours. And even this is only possible when the weather is dry. When it is raining, the path turns into a river and it is not longer possible to use it.
The next day we had to walk to our village, what took us about 1,5 hours. Our village is called Pokhara (not the big Pokhara) and lies in the district Rukum. It is totally remote, and we can only get to the nearest bus stop by walking 1,5 hours, which is only possible if the weather is dry, because the path turns into a steep muddy river if it rains.
To get to our village, we had to travel 30 hours by bus. We only stopped twice, for dinner and breakfast. Which meant that our driver drove for almost 30 hours straight. All night we had the pleasure to hear beautiful bollywood music in the bus, so it was impossible the sleep. We drove next to huge abysses for hours and I don't understand how we survived since the driver was not too careful. Somehow we managed to arrive alive in RukumKot, the village were another volunteer is teaching and stayed there the night.
I had my farewell dinner yesterday and had to say goodbye to all these lovely people. Today is my last day in the Netherlands, tomorrow I'll be flying to Nepal. I'll stay there for +- 7 months. I will do my best to keep you updated on this blog, but I don't know how good my signal will be. If you sponsored me, thank you so much again. It really means a lot that you made this possible for me.
I have been selected by Project Trust to volunteer in Nepal for 8 months starting January 2020. I'm heading to join a community in the far west of Baglung District which I'll be living in for the following 8 months. While I'm there I will be teaching English and ICT to grades 1-10 (ages 5-18) to GCSE equivalent exams. All the schools really ...
In order to be able to partake in this life-changing experience and find myself living, teaching, learning and contributing to a community in Nepal,
I have to meet a fundraising target of £5500 (± €6500)
Any donations -no matter how big or small- would mean the world to me and help me on my way to this amazing adventure.
If you donate, I will add your mailadress to my mailinglist and every 3-4 weeks you will receive a trip report about my experiences and learnings Nepal.
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