The Current Situation in Nepal

As always seems to be the case, Nepal is not having a great time overall these days. I'll save myself the trouble of writing an entire essay by including this excellent article summarizing what has been happening at a national level (just skip the contrived title).

Here in Khandbari, few people are still visibly reeling from the effects of the earthquakes, as the epicenters were quite far away from here and the damage was not as serious. This town is growing at such a fast rate that it's difficult to tell which construction projects are new and which are earthquake repairs.

However, the shortage of gasoline, caused by protesters in the Tarai region, and probably also by the Indian government, has had a markedly negative effect on Khandbari. In the past month, I'm aware of just two deliveries of gas, 500 liters each, of which motorists could only purchase two liter increments, and which was quickly exhausted. I've heard that some people have been able to buy smuggled gas for a whopping $5 per liter. Cylinders of cooking gas are also very scarce. It's a very strange situation; there's so little fuel that people are cooking with fires and riding their motorcycles downhill with the engines off, but somehow there's enough for two private helicopters to land here this week (probably heading toward Mount Makalu to rescue overzealous tourists).

Also in short supply here are construction materials and various foods - onions, potatoes, rice (though the next harvest is coming shortly), and lentils, among others. This district does not produce enough food to sustain itself indefinitely; instead, it imports foodstuffs from other districts, paid for by exporting cash crops (primarily cardamom and rudraksha). There's plenty of other food for now, and the things which are running out are still obtainable at outrageous prices, but as anyone who has been to Nepal knows, having no cheap rice and lentils greatly interferes with the typical Nepali diet. In a sad irony, the shortages do not seem to extend to the surrounding villages, because they had no choice but to be mostly self-sufficient even before these current problems began.

Village scene

Every day there is some story in the news about gas convoys coming from China or a number of tankers making it through the Indian blockade, but none of it is coming here as of yet. In the meantime, school continues, everyone is eating overpriced daal bhat, and we're making tea over a wood fire, in the old way.

Devitar

Two weeks ago I had the sort of adventure that made me fall in love with this country three years ago, and it was too great not to share.

I recently met a lovely woman named Sunita through a mutual friend in the States. She works for the Himalayan Education Center, an NGO that promotes rural education. They run a hostel in Khandbari where they host women from rural villages and subsidize the cost of their higher studies, and they also create libraries for government schools in rural areas. They happened to be working on such a library last weekend and Sunita invited me to join them, so I happily bumbled along, as is the way of my people.

My impression of what was going to happen was that we would walk for a few hours to a village and assess their resources and needs, or something like that. What actually happened is that we took a five hour drive in a truck packed with five people, boxes full of maps, charts, and about three hundred books, and one very heavy bookshelf. We drove past Chainkuti Danda, a pass from where one has a panoramic view of the not-so-distant high Himalaya on a sunny day, and the farthest point down the road that I had previously seen. Continuing on, the road condition quickly declined from "Rural Maine" to "I'm Pleasantly Surprised That We Didn't Tip Over," though the scenery was, of course, gorgeous. We wound through terraced rice paddies wafting the divine scent of the coming harvest, rocky switchbacks ravaged by monsoon downpours, forests of thick bamboo, and villages of increasingly rustic appearance. We drove all the way across a valley, down one side and back up the other - no small task when in the vicinity of the Arun Valley, the deepest valley in the world - and finally came to our destination.

On the Doorstep

The village of Devitar (here...?) is way out there - thatched roofs, little evidence of packaged foods, and only solar panels for electricity. Their school, though, seemed to be fairly new. After we unloaded all of the supplies and ate lunch, the faculty of the school held a big ceremony to celebrate the new library. Nepali people love having such ceremonies, but this one was over-the-top even by their standards. I've received a lot of tika in my day, but never so much as this. The principal, some teachers, and Sunita all gave speeches, and some students sang and performed traditional dances of their castes. Nobody there knew that I was coming, but they asked that I give a talk to the students, because most of them had never heard a native English speaker before. After all the fanfare had ended we promptly made our departure, since we wanted to get home at a reasonable hour.

This is where things get interesting. About a minute up the road from the school, our truck got stuck on a section of "I'm Pleasantly Surprised That We Didn't Tip Over"-type road. So we called 'Triple A'... but once we walked up to where the truck had stopped, we noticed that it had one less wheel than before. Bummer.

Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire

Our driver tried to figure out if he could fix the problem, and after a few minutes a local guy came down the road and invited us to hang out at his house while we waited. He had a lovely home composed of two buildings with a stone courtyard in between, a common old-school Nepali layout.

A Short Rest

After a while we learned that our driver had called a mechanic who wouldn't arrive for several hours and that there was no way we'd make it home that evening. Upon hearing this, another local who was there invited us to sleep at her home that night, and we gladly agreed to. We took a very picturesque walk through banana groves and rice fields perfectly lit by the setting sun, and came to another beautiful village home.

Queer Lodgings

Our host's father came out to greet us and showed us a great time. He was a real character - probably about sixty or sixty-five and wearing a vest that would make any hipster bartender jealous. He also smiled when I took his photo, which isn't so common among rural folks.

An Unexpected Party

He talked almost non-stop from when we arrived until when we went to sleep four hours later. He told stories about everything from politics to his memories of countless Tibetan monks walking past his house during the diaspora in 1959 (the Dalai Lama himself came through Taplejung, the next district east of here). I wish I could've understood more of what he said, because he had everyone else in stitches.

We were given a great abundance of food, including tongba - a very taste home-brewed beer, shishnu - a soup of nettle, and a really fantastic curry of iskus (this one is ubiquitous here at this time of year - apparently it's called 'chayote' in English), string beans, and guava. There was also a rice dish, a specialty of the Rai ethnic community, which is somehow made with chicken feathers (!) and which, after facing the ethical conundrum of whether such a thing is vegetarian, I decided against trying.

Not at Home

We slept that night on the porch with a delightfully warm blanket (if there's one way that Nepal totally outperforms the US, it's in the field of blanket development). I slept more soundly than I have in a long time and woke in briskly cold morning air, just like the air back home this time of year. After tea we said our thankful goodbyes, walked back to the truck to find it almost back in working order, and departed shortly thereafter.

This is where things get interesting again. About a minute up the road from where the truck had stopped, we ran into another impassable uphill section of "I'm Pleasantly Surprised That We Didn't Tip Over"-type road. This time we didn't bother with 'Triple A', and instead got some shovels and started fixing the road. We ended up doing this in a few different places, but despite our best efforts the troubled wheel sustained additional damage. This time, the driver got out, briefly inspected the wheel, unscrewed the outermost piece, threw it in the ditch, and said, "Okay, let's go!"

We did make it back to Khandbari eventually, about five minutes before I was supposed to proctor an exam at school. It was a fine excursion, through and through. If you happen to be in the area I highly recommend visiting Devitar. But take a motorcycle, not a truck.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
-Bilbo Baggins

The Nepali Education System

In the last few weeks I've had something of a crash-course in the Nepali education system, and I'd like to share a bit of what I've learned in order to give some context for future posts about Surya Boarding School.

Firstly, public, government-run schools are (in theory) free, including the cost of textbooks in lower grades, and are available to students throughout the country, but attendance is not universally enforced. Most people place a high value on good education, but in rural areas some students are compelled to quit and work at home. These schools use the Nepali language as their teaching medium, except, of course, in English, which is a required subject for all students. The quality of these schools is generally thought to be inferior to that of private schools, and in my limited experience I have found this to be true.

The heavily earthquake-afflicted Himalaya Higher Secondary School

Private schools, on the other hand, are run by many different organizations, ranging from Cambridge University, to religious charities, to some person with extra money and a kind heart. They obviously vary in quality, but are regarded as being the preferred option for those who can afford them. At my school, which typically ranks second or third in this district by student exam scores, fees for first-time enrollment and one year's tuition for a kindergartner total less than $100, but unfortunately this is prohibitive for many families. Many/most private schools use English as a teaching medium. This is problematic, because students are limited in their ability to understand new materials by their level of English fluency. However, English-medium schools tend to yield better results than those of Nepali-medium schools.

A typical Nepali classroom

The division of levels within schools is a bit different than the American system. Grades 1-5 are Primary, 6-8 are Lower Secondary, 9-10 are Secondary, 11-12 are Higher Secondary (sometimes referred to as "+2"), and beyond this the same university levels apply. At the secondary level, the compulsory subjects are: Nepali language, English language, social studies, math, science, and "Health, Population, and the Environment." Optional additional subjects include economics, management/accounting, computer science, geography, history, and agriculture, but not all of these are widely offered.

Nepali textbooks

At the end of secondary school, students take the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exam, which is a lot like the SAT/ACT but covering every subject. The results of this test are of central importance for students who continue their education. Starting in higher secondary school, students take a concentration according in large part to their SLC scores.

Bachelor's and Master's programs are available in larger towns throughout the country, as is the case in the US. In Khandbari, which is the relatively small headquarter of Sankhuwasabha District, I know of two colleges. Unlike in the US, however, this presents a great obstacle to students from rural places. Given the condition of Nepal's roads (or, in so many places, lack of a condition), university students from rural areas are obliged to either rent a room in town or live there with relatives if they can, but, unfortunately, many can't make the financial cut. A decent price for a small rented room in town is $20 per month, while the common practice of renters taking two daily meals with some other family costs about $60 per month. I think it'd be difficult to spend less without having some help. That cost alone, not including tuition and other expenses, exceeds the per capita income in this district.

College-level classrooms at Himalaya Higher Secondary School

Definitely not James Watt

I've mostly been studying the materials for English and social studies classes, but in these two subjects, at least, I've been impressed by the rigor of the curricula. Although some textbooks have frequent and, occasionally, hilarious mistakes, the overall quality is not bad, considering that they were created entirely by non-native speakers. The courses are designed such that students cover more-or-less the same topics each year, but with increasing depth and complexity, like how we all learned math - first algebra, then trigonometry, then calculus, and so on. Eighth graders study all the major rules of English grammar and must answer straightforward questions, while tenth graders study the same rules in greater depth and must answer nasty trick questions like those we might find in the SAT. My only complaint about it all is that some discriminatory biases, which are addressed in the social studies curriculum, find their way into the books.

I'm not sure if this is a mistake...

...or just sexist

The toughest thing for me to see in the Nepali school system is how discipline is enforced. Students are held to a much higher standard of behavior than in American schools. Indeed, I think many American students couldn't handle it. They are expected to stand whenever they speak, to always show great respect toward teachers, and to be paying attention at all times in class. To a an extent I think this is really beneficial, but my problem is that if they are found to be misbehaving they are usually given either a threat or a beating. This last bit, I think, warrants more discussion at another time.

Unrelated clouds

That's all for now. Lately the days have been sunny and quite hot, and the nights have brought extremely heavy rain. The clouds are slowly receding though, and the long-awaited end of the monsoon will come in a few weeks. I think everyone is looking forward to it.

Silent in the dark

The old man sits, watching me

Spill half of my cup