Morang Part 2

After the debacle of the lesson on “How to teach using films,” I was quite demoralized. But the majority of the group was as pragmatic and philosophical as one needs to be working in such conditions, and didn’t seem to either mind or hold it against me that I had gone so far astray.

A handsome woman in her forties named Bindu was particularly friendly. She brought me fruit, and dish of soybeans called chana, and tea, and sat with me at break asking me about my children. When I said I needed someone to translate so I could get hot water to wash my hair, she invited me to her house where she had hot water. When the sessions were over for the day, we got on her motorcycle and tootled back to Itahari.

We turned down a paved street, drove past what she told me was a police camp, and we jounced down a path to a two-story house. She introduced me to her two sons, and led the way to the rooftop. It was early December, but still warm and pleasant. The rooftop was where the family obviously did most of their living. The kitchen was a three-sided concrete structure, open to the south, with a corrugated iron roof, a small table against one wall, a gas cook stove, a long counter and a sink.

She told me to sit down while she heated the water, so I sat on a picnic bench overlooking the village, and relaxed, going over the defeats of the day and trying to figure out what to do next.

Across the path was a house made of bamboo and thatch. This was where the cow lived. Twice a day the owner would milk it and Bindu would go across and buy a quart of milk. Next door was an empty field and beyond a house that was in various stages of completion. The front seemed finished, but a stairs outside led to nowhere. In the back, a man was standing on a bamboo scaffold, laying bricks. Below him a young man would put a few bricks in a pail, the mason would haul them up and lay them. He was building around a concrete window. The young man sent up water, he sloshed it on a pile of concrete, slopped some on and stuck the brick on. He seemed to be using an inordinate amount of masonry to even the bricks out. I wondered how long that wall would last.

After a while, Bindu brought me hard boiled eggs. Oh dear, not one but two NLTs. I forced one down as she straddled the bench and peeled the other. I swallowed the yolk of the second, cupped my hand around the white and held it against my side. When she went to check on the water, I eased my arm over the rim of the wall and let a piece drop. Then I slid a little farther along and let another chunk go. I hoped no one was watching.

A goat had gotten itself tangled in its rope and bleated irritably, then resignedly knelt where it was and cropped the grass within reach. Two small children had a rooster tied by one leg. They whacked it with a long stick and pulled the poor thing off its feet and dragged it around. Their mother came out and scolded them from the balcony, so they let it be.

The air hummed with voices and activity. I peeked over the edge of the wall to make sure my egg had disappeared in the field. There was a ledge running around the roof, and there it sat, glistening, shining like the moon, incriminating evidence of my subterfuge. I eased onto the closest bench; it was rickety and swayed, nearly collapsing under me. I grabbed the egg and chunked it into the field, then slid along and grabbed the other piece, hucking it surreptitiously in the other direction, hoping a crow would come along and swoop it up before someone saw it.

The sun set and a large bird flew overhead. No it wasn’t, it was…what? Another flew by, silent and purposeful, its wings beating in steady rhythm. It was a bat, the size of an owl, setting off for the night. More emerged from the woods around the police camp, until hundreds filled the air

“The water is ready,” said Bindu. She had heated it in one of the formidable Nepali pressure cookers. Their shower/bath was a faucet in one corner of the terrace, with a concrete basin. I sat in a chair and bent of the basin while she mixed water from the pot with tap water in a huge iron wok. She poured the water over my head, handed me the shampoo, I soaped, she rinsed, I conditioned, and then she stroked oil into the ends to tame them. No one had washed my hair for me since I was a toddler, and it was the most loving, intimate ritual imaginable. I dried it in her kitchen.

She was working on her master’s degree in English, she told me as we ate dinner. Her thesis was “Double Marginalization of Women in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” It was an ambitious thesis, and my heart went out to her. She had no computer, no access to the Internet. The nearest “American Corners,” an American funded library, was 45 minutes away in Biratnagar. How she was to do a literature search and find materials for her research was anyone’s guess.

Nepal east to west

Morang is in the far southeastern corner of Nepal in the flat fertile land called The Terai.

NELTA was in charge of coordinating my visits to the outer districts and relay to me what their needs were so I could prepare. Morang decided they wanted to learn how to teach using films. I was dubious. One of the chief complaints from teachers is lack of resources, including and especially equipment. I had recently prepared a speech for the Phonetics and Phonology classes at TU, and had the power go out just in time for my presentation, so my Powerpoint went down the tube. If the main campus of the university in Kathmandu stumbles under the weight of power cuts, how much more so in a remote corner of the country? But I had just picked up The Blind Side for all of 75¢ on the street, so I obligingly put together a lesson plan not only using the movie, but how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy for asking questions. I was quite proud of it.

Jai Raj Awasthi flew with me this time. He was the founder of NELTA in 1993, and a more decent, honorable man has never crossed me path. He had chosen me for the position of ELF because we were both alumna of Michigan State.

Jai had booked us rooms at The Hahari Hotel in a little town called Itahari. The building was a hideous concrete affair, only partially finished, with large sacks of concrete mix lying in the long corridor on the ground floor that disappeared into darkness. The “lobby” was a tea shop with three wooden tables, a counter and a large television that continuously blared Indian soap operas and the Indian versions of “American Idol” and “Jersey Shore.” The room I was shown was up a set of  steps that appeared about to collapse; but surprisingly the room itself looked almost Mediterranean—quite cheery. But Jai didn’t think it suitable, so I was moved to another larger room. The walls were a drab green, the carpet smelled musty. And there were noodles in the bathroom drain.

The hotel faced the main road, and it turned out that this particular spot was the bus station. The night buses from Kathmandu arrive at 4 in the morning and discharge or take on passengers, with a great deal of shouting and honking and engines roaring. The window facing the street had a large hole in it.

In the morning, Jai ordered us all omelets. I hate eggs. Ever since a close encounter with a sulfur spring in Yellowstone at the age of twelve, I could only stomach them when there were no other options. In college, there were few. We called them NLTs: Nauseous Little Things, and as much as I loathed them, they were one of the few things I could afford at that time of my life. But Nepalis don’t eat their main meal of the day – dal bhaat — until 10 a.m. and Jai was afraid I would get hungry. As it was only 7:00 and I had learned not to count on meals, but to eat whenever and whatever was available, I shuddered it down, and washed down with milk tea.

Two NELTA members arrived and whisked us away to Morang. It was a bright, lovely morning. This area of the Terai is flat, fragrant, with more trees, brilliant with green and yellow mustard fields, banana and coconut trees. A huge river with multiple tributaries that were mostly dry meandered over the landscape. We bumped over an unpaved road to the Sukuna Multiple campus, a friendly compound of yellow stucco. It reminded me of Maui, with the same sun and trees, the same soft quality of light.

The workshop was to be held in a large room, with a stage at the front, tables set up in a U-shape, and a huge pile of chairs in a heap at the back of the room. A large banner announced “An ELT Workshop Facilitated by Dr. Barbara Law.” Although the temperature was rising into the 70s, everyone wore knitted caps and scarves wrapped around their necks. The windows were open and the smell of the toilet drifted in.

After the usual round of introductions and speeches, I gave a workshop on teaching reading. Then Laxman the current NELTA Central Chair, who had arrived sometime during the night, conducted a workshop and the day ended on an upbeat note.

When I returned to my hotel room, the carpet had been swept. The noodles were still in the bathroom drain.

The next morning, Laxman conducted a session on the importance of reading. It transpired that of 50 teachers, only 11 taught in schools that had libraries. Why? The reasons (excuses?) they gave were: there are no resources, no policy, no energy and NO time for reading.

After lunch we began the workshop on teaching using movies. The teachers were entranced with the movie, and filled with questions and comments. Then came the bomb: We don’t have electricity. No one has a DVD player or a projector.

I was floored. Why did they ask me to do this then? I had stood up there and made a fool of myself and wasted their time presenting something totally irrelevant to their needs. Careful questioning revealed that when the Morang branch was asked by NELTA Central for topics for workshops, one teacher, whose college curriculum includes one minor paragraph concerning teaching with films, didn’t know the meaning of “fade-in,” “fade-out,” “cut to,” etc. So he put in the suggestion, and it was passed along without comment or consideration to me.

So now what?

On returning to my room, I ducked into the bathroom to check. The noodles were still in the drain.

Mike and the Hostel

Nick decided to go home. He was lonely, he had a girlfriend back home, the iffy internet connections made online classes dicey, and it was difficult to make friends here in Kathmandu (all Westerners seem to have a chip on their shoulder the size of Annapurna and walk by you on the street with that fixed stare meant to convey that they haven’t noticed your presence, or, worse yet, see you coming and deliberately turn their backs and continue talking (I ask you!). They’re important, they’re working in Nepal, after all, they’re much too cool to acknowledge someone who might turn out to only be a tourist.) And getting anywhere in Kathmandu takes so much effort it’s often just easier to stay home.

I was forlorn. His wacky sense of humor was a constant source of delight, and the loss of a traveling companion who sees the humor in the challenge and the mishaps was something I felt deeply.

The day he left I took him to lunch at the Little Home Restaurant down the street from our house. We ordered the now familiar Nepali set: dal bhaat — rice and lentils and a green vegetable called “saag,” a dish that is maddeningly monotonous at first, but becomes an essential part of the day all too quickly. The day was sunny and warm We sat on battered benches, a boy swept the floor, kicking up dust everywhere, and the waiter and cook stopped occasionally to pay attention to a violent television program was playing in the next room. “Ahh,” Nick said, “Lunch, a soda and someone dying in the next room. What more could you ask for?”

Nick’s departure left me with another challenge: what to do with Mike while I was on the road. Mike is and always has been a strong-willed and hard-headed child. Negotiation was always an option with the others; with Mike I absolutely had to win every battle and not give an inch or risk losing the war.

I was scheduled to give workshops in the Terai for 12 days in early December. Leaving Mike with a friend was not an option: he was too self-directed, independent and outspoken for any Nepali family to be able to handle him. I tried to locate a “didi,” Nepali for “older sister,” who might come in. But again, this idea had to be nixed. That left taking him out of school for 12 days, during which he would be languishing at some hotel on his own, or to board him at the hostel.

With trepidation, I discussed the idea with Mr. Shreshta, who agreed. By this point I had already had two calls from the school. Mike had been in a fight, which was bad enough, but worse, he had written a note to a girl that he liked her. To declare one’s feelings to a girl is absolutely not done in Nepal. “The girl wept bitterly,” the secretary told me. If Mike didn’t learn the rules fast, I might find him married off at ten to a Nepali girl. Luckily, this girl was Japanese, so we escaped.

Then I broached the subject with Mike. He adamantly refused. He was not going to stay in some hostel. He was not going to be denied his hours at the cyber café every afternoon.

Reasoning, bribery, extortion didn’t work. Finally, I resorted to the Hammer of Doom: “If I hear one word of your misbehavior, I will get on the next plane home, go absolutely berserk, and take the next plane back. And guess what? Nothing will have changed! You’ll still be there!” Harsh words, empty threats. I crossed my fingers and hoped he believed it. After that, the issue was not open for further discussion.

But as the day drew near, my level of anxiety ratcheted upward. What if he misbehaved? What if he ran away?  What if they called me and I had to fly back in the middle of my training schedule? What if? What if? What if?

The morning of my departure, he was still pleading to be allowed to stay home on his own. I sent him off to school, and an hour later, trudged over to the school carrying a heavy duffle and his quilt. He was called down, I held him while he cried, and with a heavy heart, took a taxi to the airport.

Ideal Model

Nepal has a three-tier education system. At the top are the international private schools for kids of embassy and NGO personnel. Tuition is monumental, but embassies, companies, and wealthy nationals regularly shell out the tuition without a second thought. The next tier are the private schools, for which parents with the money, or the willingness to sacrifice, pay tuition. At the bottom are the government schools: overcrowded, bare, often with dirt floors and leaky roofs, with dreadful textbooks, staffed by poorly or untrained teachers who start teaching at sixteen when they graduate from high school. English teachers often cannot put a sentence together in English.
I timed the boys’ arrival for two weeks after my own. When we moved to Syria, the boys flew in at the same time. Finding a place to live, finding a school for them, learning how to get around in an environment where we couldn’t read even one letter of the language, was a nightmare. This time I wanted to get my feet on the ground first.
Finding a school for Mike proved to be a problem. The British School was less than a hundred yards away but tuition was a monumental $350 per week. The other premier school, the Lincoln School was even more expensive. A third, the KISC school, was less, but all the teachers were volunteer, so I was slightly leery about the quality of teaching. And I wanted Mike to be in a local school where he could make friends with the local kids, and learn Nepali on the street. Finding one proved to be a big challenge. My colleagues gave me suggestions which I followed up on. I called the Little Angels school. “I’m sorry, we have no openings.” I called Raato Bangala (keeping in mind how much Mike would be made fun of when he got back to America.) Same answer. Time and time again, I received the same disappointing response from every school, even from KISC. It was beginning to look as if the default would be the British School.
I confided my frustration to my friend Jai. “Oh, you need an introduction,” he said. Ahh. Phone calls and visits from strangers never open doors or classrooms in this country. At the Little Angels School in Hattiban, an immense structure complete with two swimming pools, and fountains and a giant auditorium, constructed so that it could be converted into a luxury hotel, should the private school business see a downturn, Jai brought me to see the owner. With Jai’s endorsement, I had my foot in the door. Except I still had to get past the principal of Mike’s school.
Nepal’s biggest holiday, Dasain, is held during the month of October. Schools were closed for the entire month, leaving Mike sitting at home. The first day we found the doors open at Little Angel’s sister school Ideal Model, I went to visit the principal.
The campus is a large compound, with a walled courtyard, a four-story classroom building, and a separate building for the pre-primary grades. It took me a while to find an unlocked door in the ten foot wall topped by broken glass and nails.
I was ushered into a large room that was bare except for a couch, three chairs and a map of Nepal showing the altitudes of the mountains. Presently, Mr. Shreshta, the principal entered. He was a handsome, charismatic man in his thirties. I explained why I was in Nepal and why I needed a school.
He was dubious. “Why would you send your son to a local school when the British school is down the street?” he asked.
“Why would I want to send my son to the British school?” I countered. “He’d be speaking English to English-speaking kids all day long. I want him to learn Nepali. Why even come to a foreign country if you’re going to cut your kids off from the local culture?”
He started the next day.

An article in the Himalayan Times reported that teachers in the district of Gorkha were attacked and beaten up by teachers from a neighboring school. The victims were members of the Nepali-Congress political group, while the attackers were Maoists. Imagine Republican teachers assaulting Democrats. Or, dumber yet, teachers from the American Federation of Teachers beating up members of the National Education Association.  Impossible in America? Not quite. What strikes me as a similar situation in America is the anti-union websites dedicated to destroying teachers’ unions, singling out the few cases of stupidity on the part of unions protecting molesters and other miscreants, and portraying that as the norm. Not all violence is physical.

Ho Ho Ho

In Nepali, the word for “is” is “ho.” The 3^rd person singular form is “huncha.” The word also functions in conversations as an affirmative. So when people are talking, they sound like Santa Claus: ho ho ho. In the Terai region, the pronunciation is “ha,” so when they speak it comes out ha ha ha.

The word “haas” also functions as an affirmative.

I love listening to my friends end their telephone conversations. The formula never varies. They never say goodbye.

Ho ho ho

Huncha huncha huncha

Haas haas haas

*Click*

Bandha Hoina

I should have been paying attention. As I walked up the street toward Saleways, the grocery store I frequent, I noticed that some of the shops were closed, their garage door-like barricades firmly locked. I wondered about it briefly, but the fact didn’t register until I got to Saleways and found it closed. For Heaven sake! I walked a mile for nothing. Another blasted strike!  It hadn’t been in the paper so it caught me by surprise. As I walked down the main road a huge cavalcade of motorcycles and cars in defiance of the bandha roared up, carrying signs that read Bandha Hoina (Bandha No!).

It’s bandha season and it’s crippling the country. A bandha was called in the Terai last week and no one knew who called it. Kind of like the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school just to enjoy the disruption. Everything was shut that day for fear of reprisal. Tourists and travellers were stranded.  Day laborers were denied the chance to earn wages. Schools and universities were closed yet again.

The whole country grinds to a halt during a bandha. “Enforcers” (read thugs) roam the city and the countryside, punishing those who dare to ride a motorcycle or a car. During the bandha on Sunday, a gang stopped a bus carrying doctors and nurses to the hospital, shattered the windshield and pulled all the passengers out, terrorizing them.

That day I had a meeting that was due to start at 9 a.m., two hours after the bandha began. My friend Padam who was also attending, gave me a ride on his motorcycle. But he was so terrified of being attacked, he insisted on leaving at 5:30. We rode through deserted streets and arrived at the venue 3 hours early. I needed to be home by 4:30, and since Padam would not leave until the strike was over,  I had to leave early and walk the entire six miles home in the heat.

People are sick of the strikes. They accomplish nothing. They are just an excuse for what we like to call “disaffected youth” and disgruntled organizations to rampage around torching vehicles, businesses, homes, even public works projects like dams. An article in the Himalayan Times estimated that a single day strike costs the industrial sector 346 million rupees. It’s also hurting tourism. Tourists are understandably frightened when they come to a country and face torch wielding crowds. They don’t want to spend their days sitting in their hotel rooms, or stuck in traffic.

When called upon to justify their actions, the organizers of Sunday’s strike said, in so many words, “Don’t blame us. Blame the government. It’s our right to hold protests when we’re dissatisfied.”

Same old story. Rights without responsibilities.  The government blames everyone else for the fact that we’re three days away from the deadline for the Constitution to be written and we’re no closer than we were a year ago. Meanwhile, we’re all held for ransom.