School Visit

Asia » Nepal » Pokhara
October 9th 2010

Published: October 13th 2010

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KimandMikeinNepal

School

We were lucky enough to be working on a house right next to a school - a rather large one, several buildings and a playground. Every day dozens of children in school uniforms walked by our house. Over the course of the week, several of us took time from building to go visit the classrooms. I first walked into a room of young children, around 5-6, who were being led in songs by their teacher. Their schooling is in English, so the songs were mixed Nepali and English. They sang LOUD....especially when the teacher told me they were singing a song they had all known since they were babies - a song about growing up and being good Nepali citizens. I have to say that when they started singing that one, they were SCREAMING it. Obviously very proud of the song. After listening to 5 or 6 songs, I left and started walking back to the house to work. A boy around 8 came running down the steps, saying "Kim, Kim why aren't you coming into our room?". How could I turn him down. I walked back upstairs, into a room of older children who were sitting in the room, no

Showing...

me the drawing the class made on the board about their school

teacher, but all sitting quietly. As soon as I got into the room, they pointed to the blackboard which had a drawing and some Nepali sayings, all which they had drawn that day to show us about their school. They then were competing with each other to pull out their books and homework to show me what they were working on - science, grammar and math. All of their school books are in English. We have been told that school is very important to the kids, the literacy rate has increased dramatically in the past decade, and most families try to send their kids to private schools if possible b/c public schools are such poor quality. We heard figures of around 700-1000 rupees per month per child ($10-14), most spent on uniforms and books. It is a pretty substantial amount of money for them as the monthly income is around $30-$40.
Anyway, the kids totally made my day. I'm sure they will remember too, as they grow older, when Habitat came to build for the week around their schools.
I just posted a lot of photos of the kids....sad thing is the video is SO darn cute of them singing,