My stay in Chaturali was not at all what I expected it would be, but like most things in Nepal that don't turn out the way I expect, I'm still really glad it happened. I went to Chaturali, a village one hour by bus out of Kathmandu and a 2-3 hour walk from the bus road with Sarah, a volunteer from North Carolina and Peta, a volunteer from Australia.Even though it didn't take long to get there, it's distance from the main road made it feel very remote. We were surrounded by spread out houses among tiers and tiers of rice crops. The village center, where our house was, consisted of a few shops, a little temple, and a communal water tap. We stayed with the Panday family which included a grandmother and grandfather, a father and mother, and two boys and a girl all 13 or 14 years old. They were a wonderful family, and although they spoke very little English, which made communicating difficult at times, they treated us very well. Perhaps a little too well in fact.
Our original plan was for Sarah and Peta to work at the free clinic (they're both considering going into medicine) and for me to spend my time at the home, working on chores with the family and learning what life for people in the hill villages is really like. Unfortunately, the family wasn't comfortable with letting me help with everything. They may have thought I would hurt myself (quite possible with the amount of time they spend cutting things) or I would get in the way (learning how to do new chores is quite difficult with a language barrier) or I think the most likely reason is I had the role of a guest and in the culture guests aren't supposed to work at all. Whatever the reasons, I soon decided that doing solely a home stay wouldn't really keep me occupied. By the end of the two weeks I was able to cajole them into letting me cut up spinach for dinner and I got to try milking the cow and I could even wash my own dishes most of the time. But I needed something else to do. And I decided since I couldn't do the homestay, I would just go back after 2 weeks with Sarah who needed to meet her mom, instead of staying 3 like I originally planned, and Peta decided 2 weeks would be enough too.
Sarah and Peta were having a good time at the medical clinic- the doctor would explain everything to them in English and let them try to take the names and histories of the patients and even let them take blood pressures and give a shot on occasion. I spent some time at the health clinic with them and saw some pretty amazing things like many cases of typhoid and one of cholera, and a pre-natal examination when an ultrasound is not available. However, the clinic was only open from 10-2 and the flow of patients was usually fairly low. I still needed something to occupy my time, especially since medicine isn't my main interest.
Luckily, there was a government school that the kids in the family attended only about a ten-minute walk down the road, and I had been planning to do a teaching placement later. I went to the teacher's lounge one morning and the principal made up a schedule for me that included four 40-minute classes- 7th grade, 6th grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade. I figured I could watch a class or two, make up some lesson plans that night, and start teaching the next day. Unfortunately I wasn't able to communicate this to the principal so he gave me a box of chalk and an eraser and pointed me in the direction of my first class. I arrived in class seven, hoping that a permanent teacher was already there, and around 50 or 60 kids stood up and said in unison, "Good morning, Miss!" I had no school-setting teaching experience, no lesson plan, and the 7th graders just looked at me expectantly, waiting to learn English. So I made up a lesson that involved teaching them the Itsy Bitsy Spider, including the hand motions, and practicing an introductory conversation. It soon became apparent that the kids didn't really understand much English. They understood a little and they could write and copy well, but giving directions was nearly impossible. Most of them were also very shy and wouldn't do much besides sit and copy down things I wrote on the board. Nonetheless I got them to sing most of the Itsy Bitsy Spider and copy down and recite most of a basic conversation. I finally filled up the time and moved on to class six. Having thought of nothing better to do, I repeated this procedure. I tried again with class four, but they spoke such little English and were so badly behaved at the end of the period I felt I hadn't taught them much of anything. They actually shot spit-balls onto the blackboard. As I was walking among them, trying to get them to sing the song, my hand moved toward a kid's head and he flinched. I guess that's how the teacher usually keeps them in line, but I could never hit a kid no matter how badly behaved. That's too big of a cultural divide to overcome. Class five went a little better, but not by much. At the end of the day I was so exhausted and overwhelmed I couldn't even speak. I acquired a whole new respect for all of my teachers.
The next day I decided it was best to teach just two classes, to the older kids so I wouldn't get so burned out and so they would learn more. That way I could also go the last two hours of the clinic. I discovered that having a lesson plan helped tremendously. I taught family relations, parts of the body, and reading comprehension and vocab with a little story. The only minor mishap was when I was giving stickers to kid in class six who had done their family relations homework. They were so excited to receive stickers for their homework, and the class was so big, that as I went around checking, kids I had already checked would copy their homework and show it to me again to get another sticker. I eventually caught on. That took me through Sunday, the end of the first week, since The kids got Friday off for Nuagi, the rice cutting festival, and Saturday is always a holiday.
On Monday Sarah and I went with the doctor to do home visits and dispense vitamin A capsules. We walked to a lower-caste village an hour or two walk away, gave the children at the school the vitamin A capsules, and visited different homes to diagnose and treat patients who couldn't come to the clinic. Many of them had typhoid, something I'd heard about but never thought I would see face to face. The families were all very grateful and gave us fruit off their trees or tea and biscuts. I didn't feel I was much help besides keeping people entertained with my attempts at speaking Nepali, but I learned and saw so much. It sort of made me want to become a doctor, just so I could come to a place like Nepal and really do some good.
I came down with a little cold after that, luckily nothing as bad as typhoid, but my voice wasn't well enough to teach and control a class on my own so Sarah and Peta started coming down to the school after the clinic and helping me to joint-teach lessons. We taught grammar, punctuation, and animals and animal noises for our last class. The last class was absolutely crazy. Animal noises was perhaps a bad idea.
Even with the school and the clinic, we still had abundant free time from 4:30 pm onward and before 10:00 am. Fortunately beautiful walks were in every direction and often yielded fun surprises. We found a little waterfall once, encountered a CRAZY group of children another time who wanted nothing more than to have their pictures taken and to give us every flower they could find and pick along the side of the path, and we discovered a couple beautiful buddhist monuments on a hill with an amazing view on yet another walk. We saw sunsets on the snow-capped mountains quite often, and found an abandoned house. Perhaps my favorite walk was one we took on the Saturday before we left, down to the river at the bottom of the valley. There were big rocks to sunbathe and read on, and the only noise was the rushing of the river. It was slow moving enough at some places to wade in and surrounded by hills of tiered rice. We spent a couple of hours down there, just soaking up Nepal.
We ended up really bonding with our family, especially the grandmother who asked us to call her "Amma" (meaning mother in Nepali). She spoke no English, but she was always laughing and giving us more to eat and would occasionally be able to communicate a thought or two, like 'I want to go back to America with you!' or 'would you like more dahl baat?' When she gave us more food we would always say "Thank you!" and she would repeat "Tankoo!' and burst into laughter. Sometimes she would come into our room where we were reading or doing other things and just sit on the bed and stare at us lovingly. I haven't gotten comfortable with being stared at to the degree I am stared at constantly in Nepal, but for some reason with Amma it didn't bother me at all. Three days before we left she started crying after giving us our tiffin of tea and biscuits and we all ended up in a group hug- three tall foreigners around a tiny Nepalese woman, try to comfort her while she said "Don't go" again and again in Nepali. It was perhaps the most strange and touching moment of my life.
The kids also wrote some poems and notes for us. My favorite was one by Sushila, the girl:
Life is mathematics
We can solve it
Life is a river
We can cross word
It turns out I really wouldn't have minded staying the full three weeks, but other placements are calling. I just arrived in Banepa to do a placement at a children's hospital. http://www.hrdcnepal.org/main.shtml It does really good work and I'm excited to help by playing with the children who stay there for months and months at a time, undergoing various major surgeries and rehabilitation. It should be good.
