Tihar

Tihar

Barbara arrived a day or two before Thiar started; the start day is open to some speculation. She is a trustee for ManishaUk and a retired secondary school teacher, although she does do supply work to fund her trips here, she has been three times so far. It is good to have her here, as I have someone English to talk to and another teacher with a lot of experience. Also, she brought a hell of a lot of resources for schools and I am doing some teacher training next week, so we are planning it and delivering it together.

Tishar, or divali, or the festival of lights, is similar to Christmas in many ways. All the buildings are covered in fairy lights (some here are still up a week later), family and friends get together to eat and drink a lot!, there is also a fair bit of waiting around for people in the mornings, and there is also a form of carollers. They have these groups, normally 30-40 strong, who travel from home to home (with their own sound system), singing songs and dancing for 1-3 hours and get money at the end. I also did some more Nepali guitar playing, the Sorangee guy came only with a drummer friend and sang some songs, which i joined in with. If you’re interested, all that is needed for Nepali guitar playing is G, A, Am, D, F and occasionally E. Well the food, on the main day there was a lot of food, I had 7 different roties here (different breads ranging from doughnut like things, to flaky pastry, to what can only be described as a crumpet topped with a handful of baked sugar), then went to another home two hours later and was presented with 16 roties and plates of veg and seeds. I managed 6 of them before I was almost sick, I couldn’t even drink I was so full. However, after an hour motorbike ride in the dark I felt a lot better.

So, Tihar is generally agreed to be four days, but can last up to seven. The first is about worshiping crows, then it’s all about dogs and the god Luxmi, the third day is worshiping cows and yourself and the last day is celebrating brothers and sisters (the sisters give the brother some tika and the brothers give them a fancy present, a bit one sided I think).

Also during the festival I bought a crispy looking triangle thing, it was battered curry paste sandwich. If you see any nice looking triangle things avoid them. Get a somosa or pakora instead.

Okhaldunga

Okhaldunga

I eventually got down to Okhaldunga, as before the roads were flooded and they have a lot of leaches so the trip was delayed a few weeks. Turns out I was the first visitor they ever had. Now this school is far away, it took around three hours to get there, mainly driving along mountain roads. After that there was a four-five minute walk down the hill to the village. I’ve heard a lot about the Nepali people walking very fast though the mountains but I kept getting told to slow down, I think I was just enjoying being able to have a proper walk somewhere. The village is really isolated, the closest village is a two hour walk and the closet town is a forty-five minute walk then an hour drive. However, it is easily the best place I have been so far. It’s beautiful, it is completely surrounded by mountains which are great for trekking (more on that later).

The school is a split campus and even though it only takes five minutes to traverse the path way, it is a very dangerous path, well not a path, a mountain side which is prone to small rivers when it rains. However, there is a longer route which is safer but takes three times as long. It is a big higher secondary school with a nursery. The children are really excitable and love to learn, I ended up with teaching four classes at once because all the children, from year 2, 3 and 5, were watching from the door and windows while I was trying to teach year 4. So we just did body songs in the end. Saying that, from year 7 and up the children are rather subdued and reluctant to be involved in the lessons, from what I remember during my high school, this is pretty much the case in England but not normally in Nepal. They are normally really eager. Most of the classrooms are very big and light for Nepali standards, apart from nursery, year 1, 2 and 3. These four classrooms are really small and really dark. However, they have just built two new rooms here, so I managed to convince them to move the nursery and another primary class into these and I also suggested they knock down the walls to make bigger classrooms so the primary school.

The teachers are really friendly here and are involved in the community in a big way: running sports clubs, spending time chatting to the villagers and even doing a little childcare. They really tried to make me feel welcome, perhaps a little too much on the food front. When I first got there I told them I did eat meat so they have me an omelette and a few roties, which was really good and I told them that. After this I have omelette and three/four roties for breakfast, dinner and tea. For six days. I was a bit sick of it by the end.

On the Friday I asked to go trekking in the mountains on the Saturday (no school) but they said there was a village volleyball tournament starting in the morning so we would go there first. Therefore, when we set of at 7 a.m., after going sleep at 2 a.m. I thought we were going for a hour walk to the volleyball competition area. I was wrong we went on an eight hour trek first. It was amazing we went up three different mountains, through some jungle land, had a picnic (omelette and roti) on a plateau at the top of a mountain and even managed a bit of pot-holing.  However, there were two bad points. One, from 12-2 it was so hot I could only walk 15 mins before resting and, two, there was only two bottles of drink for five people, one was water and the other was very strong roksi, and you cannot get more water on the mountain side as there are no streams. To say I was parched is an understatement. We did get to the volleyball game at about 5 p.m. just as the village team was starting to play, the game was about twenty mins long. They lost and we went home straight away, they didn’t say much on the way back.

Also, after school one day we took a walk up to the big stone, after which the village is named. It was only about a hour walk though some woodland. It was really nice up there and I asked to stay for a bit longer until sunset. On the way down though the woodland one of the teachers said, rather casually, that they get tigers and poisonous snakes after sunset in the woods. I wish they’d told me before as I was of got of sharpish from the hill in that case. A number of people had been killed by them.

Photos from Balazs Varga

Photos from Balazs Varga

Here are some photographs that Balazs let me use for my blog.

I mentioned him on another post; he is a Hungarian photographer living in Norway. If you like his work you can find him on face book by searching ‘Balazs Varga’

 I must stress that the copyright still belongs to Balazs for these pictures.

I would also like to say that for all other photographs the copyright belongs to me. So no pilfering my pictures without my permission. However, if they are used for educational purposes you do not need permission.