Friday, 5 March 2010
Life in Nepal is basic to say the least. Food was plentiful but water was horrendously hazardous. My host claimed that the water was very good. And I agree to a certain extent because their house was built on a water line, thus they had running water for 2 hours a day. However, I would not drink that water though because it does not take much crap to contaminate the water. I had my treatment filter which was really good. I didn’t fancy the living stuff nor the dead stuff in the water.
Initially deep in the dry season (March) Electricity was available for 8 out of the 24 hours. 2 hours in the morning, afternoon, evening and late night. This was called load sharing where different regions in Kathmandu would share the power. Nepal relied on hydro power, and the dry season did not provide enough water for the power plants to work.
Everyday I wake up at about 7am and get up at about 7:30am where I will have my morning tea and biscuits. Normally Nepali only have tea. Then I sort out my laundry if it was the weekend, or I read my book and listening to music on my Ipod. My Ipod always had charge because it was cool and I go to an office which has generator power to charge it. On the remote chance when there is electricity, I go to a cyber for internet. In late May, the power was pretty reliable.
At 0900, I have my morning Dhal Bhat, with lots of rice otherwise I run low on power at about 3pm. Nepalis have 2 meals a day, one Dhal Bhat at 9am and one at 6pm. I struggled at first due to the vegetarian nature and also used to have 3 meals a day. Vegetarian meant I had to each much more.
At 0930 was my health check time. My host family had a western toilet which was cool, but I also ‘practised’ on the squatter in preparation for the trek. So I am cool with either now.
I go to school in time for the 10am assembly time. where all the children gather in the courtyard for the morning assembly. I take three science classes and then 1 year 6 maths class. Year 6 was about my level. Teaching them was very fun. School finishes at 3pm then I head back home for a break before heading to the hostel at about 4. I spend about 2 hours there going through some maths question particularly with some of the older girls because their maths are hard. They were looking at trigonometry identities. I return home at about 6pm and dinner is at about 630. Dhal Bhat again but it’s all good. It would become dark then and without electricity everything was dark. I lent my head-torch to Prem so he can study through the night, and so I pretty much go to sleep at about 8pm. I had lots of sleep which was good.
The food that my host family gave me was excellent, there was still variety in the Dhal Bhat. The main problem was actually the limited amount herbs hence the flavours were pretty much the same. When I cooked for them, I added sugar which shocked them. I went for a chilli and salt flavour. I still did the usual Dhal Bhat just in case my food was not to their liking. I think they genuine liked it, obviously since I am a pretty good cook.
The kids in this school were great. They were generally willing and keen to learn. In one class, a little girl lost her tooth!!!! Ahhhh.. It caught me completely by surprise. She put her hand up and I said ‘yes?’ but she did not say anything because she had her hand over her mouth. It took her friends to explain the situation. My voice went a little bit high when I panicked. She went to the toilet to sort herself out. I was relieved that I didn’t really need to do anything, phew…. I would be a bad teacher.
This school in my opinion was relatively representative in the relatively well off villages around the Kathmandu Valley. The fee for this school was about £6-7 or 10USD a month, which was actually quite high. However to put this into perspective, it was the same as just the school bus fare for a city school. However, expats would not even touch those city schools, the British School had western rates, however, everything about it was a western school. There were locals rich enough to afford that school.
Adventures of Delboy 