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Published: July 27th 2009
Loading the bus
6:30am in LakesideFriday 24th July
Today was my first "real" day of teaching in a school even though I am only doing one lesson. I walked round to Phil's and he called a taxi. He asked whether there was anything else I needed before we went to the school and I mentioned that I had broken my glasses frame this morning while wiping the lenses so we went via an opticians where he negotitade a price of 1100 rupees to put my lenses in a new frame which I thought was pretty good (that's less than 10 quid).
Some notes on Nepali currency: the current exchange rate is around 122 rupees to one pound sterling. Most money is banknotes going from 5 rupees up to 1000 rupees so the 5 rupee banknote is worth about 5p. I have been given 1 and 2 rupee coins in change on buses but so far those are the only coins I have seen.
After the opticians we went to the school where Phil left me. We had visited the school (it's called Guyan Baba Secondary School) on Tuesday and I had spoken to the english teacher and agreed which chapter of the book
The put-in
Inflating the rafts at the Madi River I was going to introduce and I had spent sometime preparing the lesson on Wednesday. When I got there today though, that had all changed and I was given a completely different chapter with about 15 minutes to prepare it! This chapter was about an 18th century poem (Patriotism) by Sir Walter Scott and the language in it was quite archaic - how they expect Nepalese children to be able to get much from that I don't know (and this was a Nepali goverment standard text book).
Nepali schools meet from 10:00am to 4:00pm from Sunday to Thursday, then 10:00am to 1:00pm on Friday with Saturdays off. This meant I was teaching the very last lesson of the week and like school children everywhere there were some (mainly the girls!) who were very attentive and answering questions, abd others who had clearly had enough for the week. Many secondary schools are called "Secondary+2" which means that they also teach the next two years after the end of secondary, i.e. the equivalent of our A Level. However, because of the shortage of school space, teachers, money etc, the +2 kids come to the school from 6:00am to 10:00am, then they
Me swimming
in the Seti River at lunchtime finish and go home and the normal secondary kids arrive.
After the lesson we had agreed on Tuesday that I would be happy to stay around in case any of the staff wanted to talk to me and ask questions about the contrasts between Nepali and English education. Most of them did and we had a good chat for another hour or so.
Saturday 25th July
This is the school's day off so I had booked a white water rafting trip for the wholoe day. We had to be at the rafting company's premises (in Lakeside so only 5 minutes walk from my hotel) for 6:30am for breakfast. While we were having breakfast the guys were loading up the bus with all the rafting gear on the roof. There were 17 of us paying guests and 5 Nepalese leaders/helpers. We drove for about 2 hours to the "put-in" point where we carried the gear down to the river side and the guys inflated the rafts etc. There were 2 10-seater inflatable rafts and 3 one-man kayaks. Each of the rafts had a Nepali guide and the other 3 guides got in the kayaks - they would
Lunchtime
The guys preparing our lunch act as lookouts to check the rapids ahead of the rafts to let the raft guides know whether certain areas were a bit too hairy etc, and also to act as rescuers to pick up anybody who fell in.
After a riverside instruction session on techniques, emergency procedures etc, we got in and set off. We all had bouyancy jackets and helmets. We started off on the Madi River which then forms a tributary to the main Seti River after about a mile. The Seti is the river which has flowed through Pokhara. It's name means "white" from the colour of it's water which is a milky, cloudy colour. There no photos during the actual rafting because all the important gear had to be locked in waterproof cases - it was totally wet with spray, waves ect continually drenching us. Also, each time we got to a stretch of the river where it was clear of rapids for a few hundred metres we could jump out of the rafts and swim along, or rather just float along with the river flow since the bouyanct aids took care of everything else. This was a fantastic experience, just floating along watching
The rafts
By the Seti River the scenery go by. The river is mostly in a very steep sided valley with almost dense jungle-like vegetation on both sides. Occasionally we would see one or two wooden huts and maybe a couple of kids playing by the side of the river or swimming. On a few occasions we saw fisherman just fishing from the river side. Sometimes there would be one guy with two long poles and a car battery on his back - he would send an electric charge into the water to stun the fish then a couple of other guys with big nets on sticks would scoop up the fish.
After a couple of hours of rafting we stopped for lunch. The rafting company guys unpacked some more water proof barrels which contained lots of frech fruit and veg, bread, tinned baked beans, tinned tuna etc and started to prepare a pretty good lunch. While they were doing that we just lazed around or had a swim. After lunch we had another 3 hours of so more rafting, with the Seti River eventually joing the much dirtier Trisuli River for the last mile or so. The after-lunch section was a lot more hairy with some pretty impressive rapids though we never actually capsized. After the "take out" at about 4:00pm and the re-packing of the gear on the bus, we than faced a 3-hour drive back to Lakeside. All in all a fantastic day out and something I would definitely like to do again.
On Saturday morning I discovered my first cockroach in my bedroom - about 2 inches long and just lying there in the middle of the room when I woke up. It was lying on its back wriggling its legs in the air. This morning (Sunday) I found another in exactly the same place, though this time only about half the size - I wonder what they were doing during the night?
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DozzeeInGhana
Dorothy Appleyard
Rafting
Wow, the rafting sounds like fun, wouldn't mind doing it myself! Did you go in a raft or a kayak? Bet you couldn't do that in the rivers here, none of the ones i've seen have looked powerful enough, and anyway most of the rivers have bilharzia/schistosomiasis diesease so I daren't go in them lol. Got any more adventures planned? The school sounds slightly more organised than the one i've been in - on my first day the tecaher spent most of the morning sleeping on her desk so I had to entertain the kids! Do you think you'll stay in that school then or go in the less priviliged one?x