The Nepalese Adventure: Proper Day 7 + Days 8 & 9

Day 7 - Saturday

• Saturday so school is closed. If only I could have had a lie in but the alarm was wandering around under my window. I'm sure he's targeting me specifically since I told him politely yesterday to "go away"!

• Power still off since yesterday.

• Picked up all the litter outside my room door. Sweet wrappers mainly but several old shoes, tin cans etc. There is no concept of environmental care here. There is no refuse collection and no bins anywhere. Properties might have a cardboard box outside for the rubbish which is then burnt at the side of the road occasionally.

Water tanks  - first scale the rubble!

• Hindou was ill so I went to the school and started painting the empty classroom by myself. Now, I’ve done a fair bit of painting in my time, but the last time I used powdered paint I was 5 years old!  First you must get the water…: This involved climbing up a pile of rocks in the school yard (no easy feat in flip flops) and filling a battered old urn with water from one of the water tanks that had been filled at some point from “The Source”. Then you mix the water and powder in a bucket using an old stick until you have a watery substance that should resemble paint; but doesn’t. Let’s just say, it’s no Farrow & Ball! Oh, and before you start painting, you have to roller the walls with water 5 times in preparation for receiving the paint. shouldnt have taken more than a day to paint this room. Took me 2.

• NB: “The Source” is the point at which water arrives in the village and from where it is run, by hose pipe, to a few key properties. This hose gets to its destination by whatever route possible. It arrives at the school through the trees and can only be used to fill the tanks before 6am.

The classroom before painting

• Went back for lunch around 2pm. I was in trouble. Lunch had been ready for 12:00 and was still sitting there on the plate. I ate it cold. There are no microwaves!

• Back to the school and painted till too dark to see. Villagers regularly come to look at who I am and what I’m doing; both adults and children. I offer them all a friendly “Nameste” and a spare paintbrush. It scares most of them away (the paintbrush offer that is) but one lad (appx age 20) accepted and helped for a half an hour and then sneaked off as soon as my back was turned. Maybe it was my music! J

• At 7pm, tired but extremely satisfied to have done something productive, I collected my stuff and went for a shower. The simplest way to get the paint out of my clothes was to shower in them first and then strip to my shorts and scrub the clothes on the rocks until they were sort of clean. Looked ok by my torch (iphone) light anyway! Still no hot water.

Job half done!

• Sat in the cafe in candlelight and taught the homestay mum and dad to play UNO with an old pack of playing cards. Hindou was already familiar with the game so that made it easier.

• Dinner at 8. Dahl Bhat. And then bed about 9.

Day 8 - Sunday

Housemaid!

• Woke up at 4:45 courtesy of some cock! Still no power!

• Sunday is a working day and I know I have computer classes to teach today so hoping that the power will be back on by then.

• Cleaned my room before breakfast. Took everything out and swept the floor. A dustpan or even a broom would have been useful. Instead had to make do with a home made “sweeping implement” made of bound twigs. surprisingly it was extremely effective, if only you didn’t have to stoop the whole time!

• Went over to the school for 10:00 and with no teaching until the afternoon, changed into painting clothes and continued with painting the classroom.

• Took a bag of goodies into the school today. A load of stickers, coloured A4 paper, pens, pencils, colouring pencils, sharpener, rubbers, skipping ropes, colourful pipe cleaners and balsa airoplanes, some puzzle books and a load of learning and reading books that Jacquie (NYC) sent to me. These were really really appreciated. The reading books will go in the library which will be available to kids and adults alike. What was interesting was that no one has any qualms about just looking into your bag to see what you've got in there (or looking over your should to see what your doing on your laptop). in the restaurant, a customer literally started just taking stuff out of the bag to have a look! There is very little concept of privacy!

• I had to teach 2 computer lessons today at 14:00 and 15:20. Despite no power (and therefore no computers) it was very successful. Took the class through basic computer acronyms on the board (VDU, CPU, HDD, USB, CD, BIOS – had to look that one up myself -  ROM & RAM). Bryan you know all those yet? Then discussed what were input and output devices. I had prepared an old broken computer by unscrewing the components and then took them out one by one for the class to recognise them against the things they had learnt. HDD, RAM, CD Drive etc. Final lesson was to show them a mouse and take them through the 3 buttons, learning left and right and middle. They had never used one before and the concept was totally alien. A few came to the front and tried and I called left, right, left, right, right, right, left for them to click the appropriate button. After last person had a go class was over and I marched them out of the classroom to left, right, left, right which they thought very funny. So satisfying!

• After the lessons it was end of school day and when everyone left I changed out of my teachers clothes back into my painting ones and carried on painting. 

My "Ladder"

• Before he left I asked the teacher if there was a ladder for me to reach the top of the gabled wall. He didn’t actually laugh but it was a clear no and I was left to improvise. Used an old computer desk frame. Found some old doors to use as a step and a trestle treble, then got an old school bench and balanced it on top. Hey presto! About as compliant with health and safety as everything else in the country so that was fine too! And you notice the common use of the adjective "old".

4 of My Little Helpers

• Around 5 small kids (they’re all pretty small so very hard to work out the age) wandered back to the school and were brave enough to come into the classroom and watch me.  I offered one a brush and she dipped it in water and started to “pretend paint” the wall. Before long, all of the kids were rolling and painting the walls with water. This was perfect as exactly what needed to be done! What is strange is sometimes a kid as young as 3 will wander in. I look up for the parent but the child is alone. Just having a wander! 

• One lad, Neelie  (about 13) stayed after the others had left and I showed him how to use a spirit level - that I brought with me – (part of my 44Kgs Sabine!) to mark a straight line right around the room. I was painting white above the line and red below. He then helped me to paint the red until it was too dark to see.

That's the Spirit. Level.

• Went for a shower. On the way down the road I saw 3 small children, appx age 6, lighting a fire with some rubbish. No adults in sight.

• Forget my shower gel so it was more of a cold rinse!

• On the way back, the three were dancing around the fire having great fun. At least it helped light my way home. Battery resource too precious to waste on torchlight! 

 
Day 9 - Monday

• Today was another public holiday – May Day – so school closed again.

• Torrential rain and thunderstorms so managed to go back to sleep and drifted in and out till 9 o’clock. Amazing! I put it down to a long hard day’s work yesterday and a couple of beers before bedtime. (I’ve decided to treat myself to a beer or two with my dinner each evening .To hell with the expense! I’ll worry about justifying the 30 pence a pint when I get home!)

• Still no power! Just about surviving with my solar powered USB power pack. (Thanks Karen & Jonathon.) Downside is that the Solar Powered USB power pack needs only one thing: Solar. No sun to be seen anywhere!

A self satisfied smile

• Had breakfast around 10 o’clock then sat and read my kindle with my jumper on in the café (which actually they call the restaurant so I will do from now on). Around 11:00 changed in to my “still damp” painting clothes to go over to the school to do some more painting. Theresa (homestay mother) was most distressed as dinner (lunch) was to be ready at 12:00. As it was already 11:35 I delayed my departure till after food. Dahl Bhat (Rice and Dhal curry). Note: I haven’t worked out how to spell Dahl yet!

• Went to the school and completed all the painting. Then, with the help of Hindou, we cleared away all the old bricks and corrugated iron and pieces of wood littering the school yard and strung up some empty sacks for schoolyard dustbins. That’s our next project – a no littering campaign.    

• Power came back on around 4pm so we headed home to start all our charging!

• Errrrr- no power at the house. So back to the school. Armed with my kindle, laptop, 2 x iphones, ipad and USB power pack. Caught up on 3 days of Blog (sorry if it’s becoming more like a diary).

• Abandoned blog as more and more kids turned up in the computer room. They’re starting to get more confident having seen me around for a while so we played various games: Musical statues, Musical chairs, Simon Says and then some simple counting games in English. Did this for about an hour. Kids loved it, as did the string of parents who, by the time we were finished, were lined up outside staring through the glassless windows. Kids started to get a bit rowdy with all the excitement so I kicked them out and they all disappeared off home!

• Just heard that the power is back on at home but telly has stopped working due to a mouse eating through the cable! That’ll explain the suspicious looking currants I noticed on the stairway this morning. Lots of them. I’ll clean them up when I get back!

• Was getting cold and dark so had decided to skip a shower tonight until, as I was getting changed, I noticed that I was a bit smelly so headed down the road.

• Got back to find a mouse in my room. Darted from behind my suitcase when I turned the light on (Light!! Hurray!!!!). I chased it, but lost it when it ran straight up the wall and into a gap in the brickwork.  

• Dinner (& beer) at 8. Dahl Bhat with buffalo meat. A bit more chewy than beef (which isn't served as it's 80% Hindu county - that said, i did manage to get a Chateaubriand before i left Kathmandu 😁) -  and bed by 9. 

• On the one hand I feel I’ve been robbed of my weekend. On the other, I’ve been doing exactly what I would have done at home at a weekend – decorating and DIY! But here there is no one pulling me up for paint drips!J