A Post From Volunteer Chris Fitzpatrick
I am now
halfway through my assignment in Nepal. It has been a fortnight of
''love it, hate it', with ''What the....am I doing here in another third world
country, to OMG I can't believe I'm here, doing this, being with these people,
surrounded by these beautiful mountains on the lake''. The weather has been
almost perfect with temperatures around the mid-20's during the day, falling to
about 10 at night with beautiful balmy evenings.
Now, how
to describe Pokhara.....squalor amid beauty? The
people so poor, the surrounds so beautiful; the people so beautiful, the
surrounds breathtaking.
I have
been going on the Little Daffodils English Boarding School's bus every day to
Pame (pron. par-may). It's about a 40 minute drive over rocks and in potholes
basically, with a few teachers, 2 volunteers and 70-100 children. It's actually quite good fun. We go around the beautiful
Phewa Lake's edge, with forested mountains around it, rice paddies on the lake
side, and rice and wheat on the land side going up the mountains. There are beautiful lotus plants on the edge of the lake
and some fishing 'farms'. As we pass through each little
'hamlet' we pick up beautifully turned out children who come out of very poor
shacks....''good morning miss'', ''good morning, sir'' as they get on the bus.
Some are so little they have to be lifted up the big step from the
road.....they're sooooo cute. And now they are used to us,
they quite like to sit next to us. One fell asleep on my lap last
week......sooooo gorgeous. I carried him right into the
classroom, and he still didn't wake up when I put him in a chair. We even pick up some children who have crossed the lake in the
school's rowboat.
The work
through GVI at the school only started the week before I arrived, so I'm in at
the ground level, and we're still sorting out how we can best help. Unfortunately, they go on two weeks holiday tomorrow for
the Dashain Festival when they venerate the goddess Durga, and sacrifice lots
of goats and some bullocks at the temples, or just in their yards, or on the
streets, then eat them. It is primarily a family celebration.
Apart
from teaching I also help with the 'Street Kids'. There are ten children cared
for by their beautiful Amar in a house on the outskirts of
town. Her 12yo daughter also lives
with them. We spend the mornings with
them doing homework and/or other fun activities. On
Fridays we also take them for a 'jungle shower' which sounds far more exotic
than it is, but we do walk them to a place in the jungle where there are two
pipes from which clean water flows. They have a good time getting
their weekly shampoo and rubbing themselves clean - and of course we get wet
too.
My third
task is Conversation Club every day from 430 for an hour in a local restaurant.
We have had from 2 - 12 kids turn up. It's still in its infancy too,
so GVI are hoping it will grow. Other volunteers also work in two Childcare
centres.
On
arrival, for our first three days the volunteers are taken for a walk around
Pokhara, and have several orientation and initiation sessions, including two
1.5 hour Nepali language lessons, which have come in very handy....I didn't
think we'd really use it. A cooking class is also
included. A magic day with another Amar
who must think we all need fattening up....the serves are huge. Great fun trying to reproduce her delicious Momos which are
similar to curry puffs, but twisted in a circle and steamed.
Pokhara
loses power indiscriminately for several hours a day. In fact, I'm presently in a restaurant/bar and the peace
has been shattered about ten minutes ago with the generator going! I'm having a mojito. It's soooo cheap here (abt $4), they
may be my downfall. At night in our room, which I
share with three gorgeous young German-speaking women, I sometimes feel as
though we're down a mine, with all of us wearing out little headlamps!! But the
room looks better in the dark. As there is no storage or
shelving at all in the room, it usually looks like a teenage boys'.
I've
spent today with our Nepali teacher Chet and 4 volunteers. We went by taxi to 'old town' where he met us and we then
walked to his house where he gave us lunch (at 10.45 - fortunately I suspected
this might happen, so only had a coffee for breakfast). It was a simple lunch of the traditional Nepali dish, Dal
Bhat which consists of boiled white rice, lentil dhal and biled vegetables such
as beans and carrots. We managed to convince him
that there was 'no way' we could eat the huge amount he had dished up for us,
and scraped it off our plates before we started. After this we went for a walk,
up the side of the mountain on rocky steps, in the midday heat!! We stopped at two houses on the way. The first was with an old widow and her bulllock, and his
stink. She asked if we would like a
suspicious-looking, curdled white drink, to which we said ''no thank you so
much, but we've just finished a huge delicious meal''.....it was bullock's
yoghurt. More steep rock steps in the
midday sun, then we visited another family. The
view from their very large house and grounds was gorgeous, overlooking Pokhara.
We were then shown their three adult and one baby goat, which were to
sacrificed on Wednesday for Dashain!!.....nice.....
We headed
off again to a Buddhist monastery. The path to get to this
included a three metre vertical mud slip. You had to hang on to plant
roots and branches to pull yourself up, with Cher's help. I declined and said ''I wouldn't do it thanks very
much" (and surely everyone who goes to the monastery doesn't have to do it
this way, I muttered under my breath) "I'll meet you when you
come out/down somewhere'." We had a young assistant with
us, so he walked ahead with me. About 40 meters further, he
found some good steps and joined the others easily. We walked around spinning
the prayer cylinders in the gardens before heading up more steps (of course) to
the beautifully, and elaborately decorated, clean and peaceful monastery set in
the lovely jungle, with lots of prayer books, beads, ribbons, robes, cushions,
etc placed throughout, as though the monks had just disappeared in the middle of
praying. The monks here wear dark
burgundy robes.
Yesterday
I paraglided from Mt Sarangkot, but that's another story for another day, as is
the experience of Kathmandu airport! And I haven't mentioned the cold showers!
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