Have a nice day!

Someone who visited BDS here last week has just e-mailed from London that it is rainy and miserable there so I thought I would have a quick gloat. It is a gorgeous Goldilocks day here - not too hot, not too cold. Although Sheila may disagree because I imagine her bus ride back from Bhaktapur will be a bit sweaty. I can't even whinge about load shedding, our power should have gone off 50 mins ago but we still have it.

 

Cheers

Roshan

Shimmering peaks

We did make it to Pokhara last weekend so I will bore you with the holiday snaps.

We caught a pretty comfortable tourist bus which took about 6 hours – would be quicker without the 2 (3 on the way back) stops for drinks/lunch which I could happily have done without but I guess they have to make allowance for tourists with weak bladders (sorry Ma) or Delhi belly – to meet up with Sheila's sister and brother-in-law who had arrived there the day before having come directly from Chitwan.. After being hijacked by a tout on arrival at the bus park who tried to take us to his hotel, we managed to get to ours albeit at a rip-off fare. Following a friend's recommendation we had booked at the Hotel Fewa which is run by the same management as Mike's Breakfast, a legendary Kathmandu restaurant that dates back to the hippy days. It has a beautiful lakeside position with a tranquil garden and waterfront restaurant that makes you forget the road full of garish tourist shops and restaurants that is only a short walk away. Most tourists go to Pokhara for the trekking but as we only had one full day and I am not convinced that the pain of trekking is worth it (I imagine it to be like offshore racing – good when conditions are perfect but most of the time you wonder why the hell you want to go through so much physical discomfort in the name of fun), we only did a short walk along the lakeside. There were some great views of the mountains although these pictures may not do them credit.

All along our bit of lakeside were canoes for hire and directly in front of the hotel some sailing boats. I suppose I should have hired one to remind myself how to sail but the wind looked flukey and the boats flakey. I think the rigs must have been designed by the same person that does the plastic sailing boats that kids play with in the bath. It was fun at breakfast on Sunday watching the kids, some very young, paddling across from their homes on the other side of the lake to go to school our side. They were very skilled at getting ashore without stepping in the mud.

You might have seen news from Nepal that violence has returned in the south with 28 people killed and many injured at a rally. There were some demonstrations about this in Kathmandu last week which fortunately were peaceful. In other districts, Maoist soldiers left their camps to hold protest rallies which as the UN Representative pointed out is a breach of the Peace Agreement and gives people an excuse to claim that they are not playing by the rules. There seems to be no political resolution to these factional disputes which makes it increasingly doubtful that it will be possible to hold a proper election in less than 3 months time – the question is which will be worse, the backlash that will come from postponing the election or the arguments that will follow if there is a botched election. Also last week we had a business strike for a couple of days in protest against a Kathmandu hotel owner being beaten up. The Maoists were blamed for this and they did expel a couple of members for their involvement but they also claimed provocation because the owner mistreated his staff and pro-monarchy agitators stirred things up. This claim is no more unlikely than the business organisations saying that he was a saint who was subjected to an unprovoked attack.

Enough rambling, time to get the photos uploaded.

Cheers

Roshan

P.S. Happy sailing to those starting a new sailing season at Felpham SC – looks nice brisk weather for the first race!

Happy Birthday Dr Matt!

Can't find your e-mail address so it has to be by blog. Have a great party, I hear the DJs are really good.

 

Cheers

Roshan

Learning to learn (Sheila style!)

I’ve just finished being part of a training course for ECD facilitators in Bhaktapur district - after a fairly easy time in past month it was a bit of a shock to work for 12 days in a row, which were only broken by a day of bus strikes and a day hiding indoors during Holi!

Several days were also lengthened by some very long bus journeys home including one when I was on the wrong side of a complete nakajam, a blockade of buses and other vehicles across the main road back into KTM. I got off and walked around it with another bideshi (foreign) female, before finally picking up another bus the other side…eventually!

Some of the trainees have already centres/classes up and running whilst others are about to set them up. The schedule was to include both theory and practical sessions for making resources as these are very limited in Nepal. As I understand it facilitators get 1000rps (about £8.50) to resource their new centres. So these 24 girls and I man (mostly just school leavers) were very earnest about their new role and listen carefully to my colleagues who are giving them the theory (from the new curriculum manual which appears to be really good but of course I can not read the Nepali script and only pick up the technical words that are in English, social and emotional development, thematic approach etc).

After watching some rather subdued trainees on the first day we, Richard (another vol usually based down south in Birgunj who joined us for a couple of days) and I, established that training should be fun and practical so we demonstrated some of the more entertaining and practical parts that is so important for young children - singing and playing, lots of noise and fun. I think they were all are a bit surprised that this short bideshi woman and the towering 6ft4 man can be so enthusiastic, loud and busy encouraging them to play and think themselves in the place of a small child!

Luck for us the experienced trainer was really great, with good knowledge and skills. She even produced ink and string for folding pictures, symmetry etc and some flour so we could make play dough!

And here they are playing a clapping and singing game. The class is in a scout hut - it is bizarre to have a picture of Baden Powell staring down from the wall! It seems that Nepal has a big scout programme and their room in Bhaktapur makes a good place for training and even has electricity between the power cuts, a real luxury!

We really encouraged the trainees through providing coloured card and pens for book making and cloth and scraps for puppets, beanbags and other bags to make books. On the final day they displayed all they’d done - I now expect to see washing lines and string with things hanging across their centres!

It was also great as they seemed to be really empowered through the training and became increasingly able to speak with visitors from the DEO and Bhaktapur municipality about what they were doing. One of the best bits for me was seeing one trainee, who was so quiet when I first met her (in her new ECD centre in the bamboo hut on top of the hill) and on the first day of the training hardly spoke at all, telling the head of the DEO why it was important for very young children to play and how low cost materials like beans, lentils, and other small things could encourage sorting, classifying, extending fine motor control etc. Result!

Of course I can't do any of this in Nepali but luckily for me when talking child development words such as social, emotional etc all are English…

Following this training I have agreed to go and visit these facilitators in their own classes/centres and will be able to do some on-site individual support and coaching. I am really looking forward to this (unless they are very far out and like the class that Geraldine and I walked UP the hill for 3 hours to reach!). It will certainly take me to villages and schools in the district that I have not yet seen and of course it is always great to see any creative learning in practice – with any luck I might get to sharer one or two of these trips with my sister too whilst she is out here (as a tag-a-long ex-Primary teacher it will also be right up her street!).

And I hope this success session will encourage some refresher courses for other teachers and I shall continue collecting ideas for low cost/no cost resources (thanks for the coffee in foil wrapping Ben, perfect for cutting and sticking!).

More news and pix soon – second time lucky and we’re hopefully off to Pokhara this weekend to rendezvous with Gill and Reg who have spent the last few days seeing some other parts of Nepal whilst Roshan and I continue to work.

Best wishes, Sheila x

Will I be able to watch England v France?

Sitting here waiting for the power to come back on at 8:30pm and hoping that the cable TV station does not lose theirs then because TV5 Monde is showing the match live! In case you get the wrong idea I should mention that cable TV for us is on a shared line with at least 3 of the landlord's family's houses and is a very fuzzy picture on my laptop. I could go round to watch it at the Hotel Manaslu where Sheila's sister is staying but if the picture is any good here I'd prefer to watch it in the comfort of home.

 

Gill and Reg are off to Chitwan tomorrow followed by Pokhara on Friday. If our plans work out, we'll join them in Pokhara on Saturday for a short stay before returning on Monday. I discovered this morning that in between I've got to go to Lucknow in India for work – leave Tuesday, return Friday so hopefully all the travel arrangements will go smoothly. Almost 10 years since I've been to India, although Delhi must have changed a lot I'm not expecting Lucknow to much different.

 

OK, power's on, we've got a TV signal and the match starts in 10 mins.

 

Cheers

Roshan

What gas shortage?

I've been worrying for the last week or so that we were getting low on gas and there is a shortage here due to the strikes in the south which have disrupted supplies from India. A friend of ours ran out and found she was No 147 in the waiting list so had a week or more with no gas and only occasional electricity. I went to the shop a couple of times and the shutters were done so I thought the worst. But today the shop was open, I thought I understood the bloke to say that they had gas so I took the empty spare cylinder down only to discover that no they didn't but expected some this afternoon. Now being an eternal pessimist I took this to mean sometime/never only to get a pleasant surprise when Sheila rang to say there was a gas cylinder waiting on the doorstep when she got home – fantastic! Continuing my cynical thinking I expected to be charged a rip-off price but no, the delivery man called round just after I got home and only asked the proper price. Thank you Sunil at the Nepal Gas depot in our chowk, I hope your reward is India winning the cricket World Cup.

 

Other news today – Sheila's sister and brother-in-law arrived a couple of hours ago and we have just left them to settle in at the Hotel Manaslu round the corner from us before we take them down the road to eat. They have seen a bit of Kathmandu traffic on the way in from the airport and already Reg has asked whether there is such a thing as no-claims discount here. I explained that insurance is a rarity and I doubt whether anyone would qualify for NCD.

 

Cheers

Roshan  

Holi

Had my night in a nice hotel for the VSO Partner Conference on Thursday, the long soak in the bath was wonderful! Got back on Friday night and before a volunteer forum today (getting a bit fed up with these 6 day weeks) we had a day off yesterday for Holi. This traditional festival originally involved just being daubed in bright colours but has turned into a mass waterfight so we planned to stay in and keep dry. Good plan - Sheila had even declined our landlady's kind offer of participating in their family's celebration - then I was stupid enough to go out to get the newspapers. I thought the front way would be safe and so it was until I got to the main road. Just shops and no kids, should be OK – forgot about the Upstairs Bar (it’s a bar that's upstairs) directly above the paper shop, where the staff and regulars, including some supposed friends, were chucking buckets of water from the roof. Then a self inflicted wound when I went up to see them and was greeted with handfuls of coloured powder.

From Nepal - March...

Sheila's still doing her training in Bhaktapur which has turned from 8 into 10 days and we've got the UN auditors in at Blue Diamond so another busy week coming up. And much excitement because Sheila's sister and brother-in-law arrive for a visit on Tuesday. Apart from thinking that they might have some goodies for us in their bags, it will be great to see them and show them our little world.

A quick update on load shedding. The timetable has gone a bit awry the last couple of days, we don’t seem to be getting all our scheduled power cuts or like the other day when it went off at the designated time and came back on 5 mins later. We suspect that the man in charge of pulling the plug may have decided to ignore his higher-ups and reduce the inconvenience of 6 hours per day load shedding. Maybe we were right in our original thinking (based on experience from Delhi) that living at this end of town where there are VIPs and lots of hotels would reduce the power cuts. Whatever the reason, as I sit here with the lights on when they should be off, thank you Mr Electricity Man. Of course this selfish attitude does not help the power shortage so we'll suffer for it in a month or 2. Or maybe others will.

Cheers
Roshan

P.S. If anyone has a cheap job lot of 6' fence panels going, please deliver to Culver Road which is missing a load after the recent gales. Special thanks to Guy who is sorting this out for me.