The Nepalese Adventure: Day 12

Day 12 - Thursday

• Relatively uneventful day today. Breakfast (9:30) was a hard-boiled egg and curried/spicy chick peas (“Chana” in Nepali). All cold.

• We have water.

• No lessons till the afternoon so spent the morning painting. I’m so dissatisfied with finish of the painting and the walls clearly need several coats. Mentioned this to the teacher who disagreed and said it was at a very high standard. For Nepal. Was he just placating me? Not sure, but I’ll assume he was being honest and not just polite. Now I feel betterJ

• Lunch: Daal Bhat!

Class 6. 2nd lesson and no computer hands on yet. :(

• 30 minutes before computer lesson: No power! I’ve started to prepare backup lessons now. Just in case, so I wasn’t totally at a loss.

• Thunder storms are rolling around the hills, intermittent heavy rain and thunder/lightning. That seems to be the time at which most power failures occur.

• I heard that the last power outage that lasted two days was resolved by four of the local village men who went in search of the outage and found a power pole that had come down in the storm. They somehow got it back up and fixed the cable themselves. No involvement from the power company!

• Tomorrow there is no computer class so I will go to Battar. This is the nearest town and where I changed buses on my treck from Kathmandu to Gorsyang village. Hindou is coming too. We were going to go by motorbike - 150cc (which has been made available to me by Bhim (Homestay Father) whilst I’m here. However, now Theresa will go to Kathmandu for the day to visit her 6 year old son who has recently been sent there for schooling (just before I arrived). The bus journey is 6 hours each way so he needs the bike.

• Tomorrow night we will stay at the home of the teacher – Parshuram. I’m told this is definite but in Nepal that can mean anything from 0 – 100%. The wi-fi guy, who I said on Day 6 (no idea what actual day that was) he would be coming tomorrow… has still not been. Every day he is coming tomorrow! Definitely!

The Restaurant

• When in Battar we will visit the factory to get pricing for steel supports to strengthen the old school building that didn’t collapse during the earthquake. Hindou is just finishing her structural engineering degree and is doing her Internship here in Nepal so has been working on this project. The final challenge has been finding a masonry hammer drill that can be used to drill through the school wall. I was told this didn’t exist in Nepal. Unlikely! I wrote to Bosch and HimalHydro, who appear to rent drilling equipment in Kathmandu, (though the latter on a more industrial scale than we need). Neither replied yet though we heard today that the factory who will produce the building steels may be able to source one. Perhaps. And for sure that will be a probability less than 100%!

• The teacher has also been desperate to get some carpet for the Computer Lab as this is a major factor in keeping dust at bay. Already there a 3 mats to wipe your feet on prior to entry! The challenge is getting approval for the funding of the carpet. All of the improvement works for the school are funded through money raised by Vol Nepal. (These are the people I paid to come here.) Of course expenditure has to be prioritised against the available funds so all requests for funds have to be accompanied with itemised quotes. We measured up the Computer Lab (a little under 20 square meters.) The cost will be about 325 Nepalese Rupees per meter. After conversion that’s about £65. I said I’d buy it myself tomorrow! The gratitude was unbelievable. So appreciative. I should have added “maybe” on the end!

• I couldn’t follow whole conversation but I think school is closed for a week next week so it’s a good week to get work done on the school. The reason I couldn’t follow conversation is because the teacher was then telling me that school is closed from 25^th. When I was explaining that I will already have left to go home by then, it became apparent that the dates for Nepal are totally different. I was already aware that this year in Nepal it is 2074. What I didn’t know was that today (4^th May) is the 21^st of the month in Nepal. Which month? I hear you ask across the ether. The month of Chaitra. That’s half of April and half of May. So when is the school closing? I haven’t got a clue!

The House (From the Rear)
Top Floor is at street level

• Getting up for the toilet in the night is not a quiet affair. There are two steel doors to open: My bedroom door and the door into main house (just one door for Hindou). It seems that both of us need to go during the night. Separately! Isn’t that just like camping? The further you are from toilet block, the more you need to go. With camping it’s the tent zip that is magnified a thousand times by the silence. Here it’s the screeching from the hinges that reverberates around the village. (Well, the house at least). I mentioned that I intended to buy some oil in Battar when we go. Hindou produced some afro hair oil (contains olive oil and a load of other special ingredients that girls need…). I liberally oiled the hinges with it. And the sliding bolts (needed to keep her out of my room). Problem solved.

• Watched some boys play on "Carrom Board". Competition was fierce so I didn’t interrupt them but I’ll try it later. Idea is to flick the main “cue” puck to hit one of your own pucks to get it down one of the corner pockets/holes. Board is covered in flour or powdered chalk or something to aid sliding. Bit of a cross between air hockey and pool. You come away filthy (if you weren’t already of course J

• Probably no laptop tomorrow night so may have to skip Blog. We’ll see.

• Still waiting to hear on the Scandinavian girls....