Water Wars and Wicket Watching

Well, I'm down to my final two months here in Nepal, and thus the end is starting to come within sight. I'm glad that I've been able to be here as long as I have because up until recently I hadn't been thinking much at all about the time when I'll be leaving. It's allowed me to feel settled here, almost as if this is indeed my own country, and has given me the chance to understand the culture a whole lot more deeply. It seems to me that when I first arrived I thought this place was very different from home. But then after a short time I began thinking maybe it was not all that different after all. Much of the initial shock wore off quickly and I started to think life here was basically very similar. It's only within the last couple months that I've come to realize all the subtle differences that I never could've picked up on in the beginning, but these have been the most interesting to me and seem to give the country it's great uniqueness. Much more so than the obvious initial surface observations. It is indeed a very different place, but not at all because of the reasons that I first thought it was. If I was a better writer, or felt it possible to take up thousands of pages of internet space while still retaining anyone's attention at all, I might attempt to cover off all of these subtle intricacies here. With neither of those being true, I'll have to settle for just as many tidbits as I can manage to describe in not too many words. The rest I'm sure will come out sooner or later once I'm back home and find myself unable to have any normal conversation without excessive use of the phrase "Back in Nepal..." when I'll surely manage to annoy anyone who has to spend much time with me by describing details that will likely be interesting only to myself. Sorry in advance.

Last weekend I discovered my absolute favourite of all festivals. Holi, the festival of colour. People will tell you stories about an ancient miraculous escape of the young Prahlad from one of the Hindu goddesses (or demonesses rather) involving much fire and triumph and that sort of thing. This is the official reason for a day of "worship" on this particular religious holiday. But really when it comes down to it, the whole day seems like just an excuse to attack all your neighbours with as much coloured water as you can muster. It's essentially a nationwide water fight that lasts the entire day. You might think it's only young kids that take part in such an event, but this is not at all the case. The hardest water balloon I took in the face was thrown by a woman who could've been no less than 87 years old. Packs of people of all ages would take to the streets with their pockets full of coloured powder and small plastic baggies to fill with water. At the same time other people will head up to their rooftops with friends and family to launch attacks from above. The people with the tallest roofs have a distinct advantage. Ours is relatively low, so we were easy targets for water bombs from every which way. But, despite being open for attacks from all kinds of unexpected directions, we had strength in numbers and put up a good fight. It was a lot of fun launching water balloons (or sometimes entire buckets of water) at people on other rooftops or down on the street below. Some of the braver boys from the street came running up our stairway at one point to smear the coloured powder all over our faces and hair. Most of the day, we remained united as a household in our pursuit of drenching as many surrounding people as we possibly could. But if there was a lull in streetwalkers for long enough (generally any more than 5 minutes), we quickly turned on each other with our buckets and balloons and thus got soaked to the bone many times over. For the life of me, I can't think why every country doesn't do this at least once a year.

The school year has come to a close now. The students were all happy to be finished their exams and have a couple weeks off to regroup before classes start back up again. They will receive their results this Sunday and in the meantime we've been meeting as teachers to prepare for the start of a new year. We haven't found out yet how class 10 did on their School Leaving Certificate exams (they all went to be graded at the central education office and results will first be published in the newspaper before sent to us directly), but I was proud of the progress many of the students made since their 2nd term exams back in December. The end of the year felt quite successful, and we've got some exciting ideas to lead into the year 2068, so I continue to be very happy working at Vaishnavi School.

In other news, the Cricket World Cup has had any streetside shop with a TV positively overflowing with college kids trying to watch the games. Today's match in particular drew large crowds everywhere (Pakistan vs. India in the semi-finals), but unfortunately the power cut out just at half time so most will have to wait until the morning to hear the result. Being Canadian, of course I knew nothing about the game before coming here. But I find I'm a big fan of any sort of world sporting event where countries are passionately competing against each other, so I've gotten myself right wrapped up in the excitement. I was therefore crushed, but not at all surprised, when Canada was eliminated easily during the round robin, and have already looked up the load-shedding schedule for Saturday's final match so that I can move from our house to a friend's house in another district at the appropriate time to catch almost the entire game. The plan is likely to backfire, as Nepal's electricity providers view their own schedule as no more than mere guidelines and certainly can't be counted on. But, you never know, it might work out. Today's power cut was off by about an hour, which had us all hopefully believing they might've worked in some extra power to keep us going throughout the whole match. Alas, no such luck.

Allowed? Why Not?

The weather is glorious here!!! I'm sorry to start a blog post with such an unexciting topic, but the weather is consistent and predictable here so whenever I mention it the general reaction is, "yea...obviously, why do you feel the need to bring it up?". Being from a place where the weather changes nearly every hour, and is thus a big part of our lives, it's hard for me to go so long without talking about it, so there you have it. The days are bright and sunny, the evenings are warm and pleasant, the skies are always clear. Phew, glad I got that off my chest.

It seems there's almost nothing you can do here that other people will be bothered by. I may have never seen a Nepali person irritated. Sure, there are still all the other emotions. Happy, sad, angry, fearful, surprised, disappointed, indifferent. But annoyed just doesn't seem to happen. It's a very much more live and let live kind of attitude. I used to find myself asking the question, "are you allowed to do that?", quite often. But as with many of my overly Canadian comments, I've stopped. The answer was always essentially the same.

"Are you allowed to just light a fire in the middle of the street like that?" --- "Yea, why not?".

"Are you really allowed to throw litter out of your 2nd floor window?" --- "Yea, why not?".

"They let you drive right along the sidewalk to get to the front of this jammed up mess of vehicles?" --- "Yea, why not? And who is this 'they' you're talking about?".

Nobody's ever stopping anyone from doing anything at all around here. I try to explain who 'they' is that might come in to stop certain behaviours, but quickly realize there is no 'they'. Even at home the chances of an actual authority figure coming along to fine you for any particular transgression is marginal at best. Many perfectly legal activities are prevented just by the threat of irritating our neighbours and fellow society members. For the most part it's frowned upon to walk across a person's lawn, jump to the front of a long line of cars in an exit lane, make excessive noise at any given time (outside of a hockey rink), or heaven forbid be in someone else's way when they're trying to get somewhere in a hurry. In Nepal, I can't even picture someone becoming irritated by any of those things. Thus, "why not?", do what you want to do.

The absence of irritation is particularly apparent when it comes to noises. I believe I've previously mentioned the late night cymbal-clanging that accompanies almost every festival. I've never heard a single complaint against this. Or actually even anyone mention that it kept them awake. Maybe they're just more accustomed to sleeping through noises. In comparison, I know many a person at home who cannot sleep if the faint ticking of a clock is within the room. But there are several other examples as well. Cell phones are the most amusing of these. We sometimes think they're a disturbance at home, but you should see them in a country where disturbances are left entirely unrestricted! When a phone rings, the person will usually slowly take it out, look at it for quite some time (ringing even more loudly, mind you, now that it's been liberated from it's noise-muffling pocket or bag), and then regardless of the situation answer it and start talking away. This happens while in meetings, at training courses, sitting amongst an audience, or even while giving a speech to an audience. I watched with amusement as the head teacher did this a full 3 times while holding a school assembly. All the students and other teachers just sat calmly as he had somewhat lengthy conversations that sounded like they were primarily concerning his dinner plans. I'm just glad none of the students have their own cell phones.

A final example of being allowed to do whatever it is you'd like without anyone minding at all... My nephew has recently become rather obsessed with hockey. When he wakes up, he starts talking about hockey. When he goes to sleep, he's talking about hockey. When we do our special super-secret handshake, it now includes the words "hoooockey game, hooooockey yea!". Weird, I'm not sure where he got it from. But as I was drawing pictures of hockey rinks for him, he decided it would be necessary to paint all those proper lines on our rooftop. Our rooftop, though it used to be a very useful space for preparing vegetables, drying rice, or beheading chickens, has now been devoted entirely to the game. My reaction: "wow, that would be cool, but we'll have to ask your mom". I was expecting the idea to get immediately shut down. Her response: "yea, why not?". Keep in mind, this is the space that's used for all family gatherings, parties, or just anyone who drops by for tea. It would be the equivalent of painting red and blue lines all across your dining room floor at home. I have since convinced Pratik that chalk would be a better idea. You know, things are changing in Nepal. With all these Western ideas flooding in, I could see them 30 years from now, having learned of the 'irritated' emotion, sitting around on the roof and cursing that Canadian who came and painted bright red and blue lines all over the place.

Out With the Cold, In With the New

I’ve become considerably busier over the past few months with more projects building on top of each other. These days I’m working very closely with the head teacher and together we’re discussing new ideas daily for various improvements that can be made. I’m convinced I couldn’t have come at a better time or gotten any luckier with my project placement to find myself at a school under leadership that’s happy to promote drastic and positive change where it makes sense. The carpet has been laid in the library, which I used the winnings of the video contest to pay for, and has made a big difference there to make it a whole lot more welcoming. It makes me abundantly happy to have the many eager students stop by during lunch break every day and ask if they can come in. Their interest caused me to set up a separate storybook section so that they can find the books they want more easily. It’s great to see them so excitedly sit down with books that within the classroom it’d be like pulling teeth to get them to pay any attention to. Aside from the library, my teaching focus has been mostly on class 3, who I’m still with for one period a day, and also class 10, who will have to write their School Leaving Certificate exams after about 3 weeks and need to study hard to get ready for them. And then in less of a teaching role and more of an implementation role, other efforts to make the learning environment more child-friendly have been going exceptionally well. The biggest thing is getting the teachers to make lessons more interactive for the students. The traditional Nepali way is to lecture from the front and have students memorize and recite answers all day long. It was a little astonishing at first to find out how very slight a variation from something they’d memorized would have to be for them to have no idea what the answer was. But some new methods we’ve been getting into place have been doing a lot of good, in my biased opinion, because the students are allowed to think more critically for themselves and be more engaged in their lessons. And best of all they’re becoming noticeably happier. It always makes me smile to see them try out their English speeches in front of the morning assembly or hear them still singing and acting out their new rhymes as they leave school for the day.

On another side of things, the head teacher’s growing compulsion to get me involved in absolutely everything he does has had me working all across the Kathmandu valley lately. He does a fair amount of teacher training, so now I also do a fair amount of teacher training. The first one of these, I was brought along to on the pretense that I would be sitting off to the side and observing / taking some notes / providing feedback after the session. Instead what happened was his love of having me get up and do impromptu public speaking kicked in, and I ended up teaching a bulk of the course. Keep in mind, I’m not at all qualified to be doing such things, so I’m sure it can only be bad news for the future of Nepal’s educators. Since that first one I’ve been more prepared (mentally) for how much involvement will be asked of me, though actual preparation is still limited by usually not knowing 1) when we’re going for the next training session until the day of, and 2) which of many possible topics we’ll be presenting on until we arrive at the destination. Luckily, we’ve fallen easily into a pretty fluid team dynamic presentation style that almost makes it seem like we know what we’re doing and thus far it’s been quite well received. This is good news for me because the invitations out to these and all sorts of other opportunities have kept coming, and I’m very much appreciating the chances to see a great variety of aspects of Nepal’s education system. These have ranged from administering listening and speaking practice questions to class 10 students at one of the best private schools just north of Kathmandu to running an employee orientation session for a publishing company (the one that will be publishing the book we’ve now finished writing and are just going through final edits on). Needless to say, though I guess I will anyway, it’s all keeping me perpetually on my toes and exposing me to a great many things I never would have thought I’d get to see.

Festivals have become significantly sparser since the end of November. As it turns out, my arrival just preceded what could be called “the festival season”, and they’re not quite as common during the rest of the year as they seemed on first impression. But today was Shiva Raatri. A big day for people flocking to the Pashupatinath Temple, many having walked for a month from different parts of India, I’m told. But also the day when packs of small children will block off the roads by holding a long piece of string across it and not allow anyone to pass until some money is given. Fortunately, it only takes a couple rupees for them to happily drop their guard, and when I approached one particular mob that included some students of mine, they dropped it before I even reached them (I think in fear of poor grades on their next pop quiz). And of course, the entire extended family came over to our house for a small feast in the afternoon. Then later in the evening people will gather together in the streets clustered around bonfires and dance the night away. Seems like a great way to close out winter and kick off spring, which has definitely been lingering in the air recently. Nights are warm yet again, lush bright green rice paddies have sprouted right up, and it's possible once more to take an actual shower with the water from the rooftop tanks as long as you wait until afternoon when they've had a chance to absorb enough sunshine.