Back in Nepal

My whirlwind month trip back to Nepal was indescribably amazing. Without sufficient vocabulary to express my gratitude and good fortune, I resort here to pictures.

In Phalewas:

Rural students my friends and I are sponsoring for their science education for the next 2 years. Thanks Will, Jamie, Patrice, and Winnie!

My FM radio interview broadcasted across several communities. We didn't have enough material, so I sang the US national anthem!

In Nurbuling school:

The students I taught 8 months ago! During the morning assembly they gave me a warm welcome 🙂

Village hospitality. Nima on the left welcomed me to her home and 7 more over the course of a day! What a wonderful way to get to know the Hyolmo culture. I can't thank them enough. Thanks for 5 types of local wine and endless tea!

Love the village life

Oh and I carried this 3 week old bugger up and down many hills to his new home. You don't want to know what happened to my tshirt.

In Tinpiple:

The only dump site that collects the trash from Kathmandu and neighboring cities. Many families live and work here to earn about $1-2 a day. It was absolutely humbling to experience a few hours with them.

On a dump truck back to town. Here is one of the single mothers that works at the site. She was so gracious and friendly! I met her children who were thankfully taken away from working at the site and are now receiving good education and housing, thanks to a great organization that I'll describe later. Again, a humbling experience.

So much more! But alas, photos don’t even do it justice.

Thank you, Nepal! Coming twice this year wasn’t enough. You’ve been a great teacher to me, and I’ll come back to learn and contribute as best I can.

Finding volunteer work

Several people have asked me how to find volunteer work while traveling. In selecting an organization, legitimacy is the first criterion, as not all are legitimate.

I worked in Nepal for NEIO. I had gotten to know the founder back in San Francisco and the focus was on quality (helping one school) and not quantity (becoming a big organization). NEIO is not without its share of shortcomings, but is at least legitimate.

In Cambodia, I joined CESHE by finding them on Workaway. The key utility of this site is the reviews. Many past volunteers positively reviewed CESHE over a long period of time. Sketchy organizations would not hold up to such scrutiny. (Well unless it’s all a premeditated scam.. When you start volunteering you could start getting cautious and almost paranoid, but that’s a rant for another day…)

Relying on social advice, you’ll be on a well-worn track, but at least you’ll have a degree of quality control. You’ll gain a constructive experience.

You may start discovering a lot of imperfections amidst the good work. With luck, you’ll learn to juggle them and move forward.

And a last point about what I got out of the experiences so far:
I’ve liked how I was in the position to push change as far as I wanted to take it. Compared to other enterprises that I’ve officially engaged in (startup company and graduate researcher), the intensity of independent learning and action was greater when volunteering. The weight of responsibility and failure was greater. The immediacy of lives affected by my actions was greater. And I won’t even mention the emotional toll. I was in positions to enforce positive change as I saw fit. It’s something that will indelibly shape my career decisions in the future.

Hope that helps!

School farewell

I taught various age groups in 2 different rural schools near Siem Reap, Cambodia. Each class had its own way of saying farewell. I’ll sure miss these guys!

Youngest class (4-11 year olds): energetic way 

We went out onto the field and played a violent version of tag. The students jumped all over us.

Middle class (11-16 year olds): symbolic way

The girls in the class made me a bracelet on my first day of teaching. On the final day they saw that it was still on my wrist and then tightened the strings, making sure it stayed there.

Older class (16-20 year olds): written way

This class has good command of the English language and thoughtfully gave me a photocard.

Teaching isn’t a walk in the park, but the rewards sure are great!

 

At school again

I’m at school again!

Ritsa and Him are posing behind my hammock, with fellow volunteer Sven dozing off in the background.

Girl sponsorship

Dear friends,

I’m happy to report that the girl sponsorship program is on! We will start funding these girls in July for their new school year.

We want to see creative and intelligent young women take the lead in Nepal. We’ve created a scholarship for deserving girls in the 10th grade interested in furthering their education in math and science but are unable to due to financial and social reasons. Our goal is to enable them to complete their higher secondary schooling (11th and 12th grade) and break out of their typical path to domestic life, which usually occurs at this age (15 years old).

The girls are from the Phalewas district, a beautiful rural community located west of Pokhara. The girls are performing well at school – their marks compare well with girls from major cities. We hope to continue giving them a quality education to enable them to compete nationally and even internationally.

Your scholarship will go directly to the school to provide for their education ($300 per year for 2 years) and you will be in touch with your student via email or Skype to help cheer them on.

Our team is spearheaded by the tireless and no nonsense Mr. Bhola Sharma who after 43 years of governmental service has returned to his birthplace to help develop schools in his district. He has worked with Room to Read and others to establish 170 libraries in the district. Rajeev was one of the early members of Room to Read and is a book publisher. We also have film director Hari who inspired the project. And finally, yours truly, who hasn’t felt more strongly about a project than this one. Together we have established the criteria for selection and will soon pair you up with one of the deserving girls.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a girl, please contact me at chenronald at gmail dot com or leave a comment. I will provide more details.

You’ll make a big difference in their lives.

Thanks for reading!
Ron

Interview with Ram

This goes way back to Nepal.

I did this interview with the intention of introducing the kids at Nurbuling school to a wider audience and to secure funding for the organization that I was volunteering with (NEIO). I wanted to edit the video (to cut out my antics) but I haven’t found a way to do it on my phone. I find the unedited version more charming anyway 🙂

Meet Ram. He’s a great kid, as you’ll see, and he’s a student leader.

Saying goodbye

Another turning point a fork stuck in the road. Time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go. So make the best of this test and don’t ask why. It’s not a question but a lesson learned in time. It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you have the time of your life.

When I left school, I played Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day to Grade 5, reminiscing, however cornily, that this was the song we sang when I was their age and leaving school. Scrolling the lyrics on my phone, they entertainingly sang along too.
To the most participatory class, Grade 7, I told them a Barry Hearn life lesson ripped off of the Men in Blazers podcast: All of us are limited in the same way – there are only 24 hrs in a day. You can compete with anybody if you work harder. I felt incredibly cheesy, but with kids you never know what works.

This is the farewell assembly in which the students each said “Namaste” and some gave me the sash called “Kada.” A proper sendoff fit for kings!

We kicked off the last day with a football game, in which my team won 6-2, and the wager on the game was a rooster for dinner, so I bought a rooster (I was spared the sight of the slaughtering) for dinner, which was the first time they had eaten meat at school in the last 6 months.

All together a mighty wonderful day.

Things that worked at school

At Nurbuling school, 70 of the 100 students live in the dorms, most of them boys. Here are some of the things I introduced that worked for them.

Twister. Thanks, Tiff. Fun, but violent rendition of the game.

Hand slapping game. They loved this one. Hand-eye coordination training.

Hand pushing game. Balance training.

Chess. My record = 1 loss, 1 stalemate. Not bad 🙂

Checkers. My record = 1 stalemate. They had never seen this game before.

No blinking game. They already knew this one. I lost quiet a lot. Dry eyes to blame.

Korean drinking/animal game. Thank you, Catherine, for teaching us at WashU. Who knew this would become the game of choice here!
Japanese and Taiwanese drinking/predicting the number of jointly raised fingers games. Math practice.

Improvised computer class to do my personal work. They had seen computers, but not often.

Printing Wikipedia entries. No internet, so I printed Pele’s entry back in Kathmandu.

Guitar. Good thing I donated 2. A single one would have been difficult to teach with. The teacher that knows how to play has the stern manner not conducive to teaching. Students asked me specifically to teach them as I’m a mechanism to bend the arbitrary rules. Too bad I’m not much of a player. Overall it was difficult to teach games due to the highly regulated nature of dorms. For example, one teacher prohibited playing cards.

Science class. At least I think this worked. We were learning about solar and lunar eclipses and we made this out of the plywood for the bunk beds, cricket and basketballs, and our own ingenuity! Guess if this was a solar or lunar eclipse when we shown the light on the hanging cricket ball.
Things showed that they’ve never seen before, even the teachers.

Kindle. Amazon, you’ve got work to do.

Camping stove and gas. This was my awkward attempt to make coffee.

Water filter. Sawyer filter based off Fred’s recommendation. Grade 5 and above had learned about water filters in their books, so this was a live demo of a real life one.

Celebrating my 30th at school

No children were harmed in the making of this video, despite the violence you see!

Pay for a girl’s schooling

“If you teach a girl you teach a family.” – Nepali saying

I’m asking for a show of hands.

Picture an unassuming, rural girl entering college, training to become a teacher, engineer, doctor, or researcher.

Now imagine you were the one who gave her the boost.

Do you want to help fund a girl through 2 years of high school?

I was fortunate to meet an energetic school headmaster who envisions supporting qualified but economically disadvantaged girls through science and math schooling. Education in the sciences costs more than the humanities due to laboratory and specialized teaching costs.

Girls in Nepal face enormous disadvantages due to expectations of getting married young and taking care of the household. Paying directly for their funding may ameliorate their situation.

It costs $600 to put a girl through 2 years of schooling.

All that we’ll ask from you is to be in 1-on-1 correspondence to your sponsored girl. And that you be an infinite source of inspiration. (The latter optional.)

Now this isn’t through an established non-profit organization (it’s not through any organization at all), and your donation won’t be tax-deductible, but what’s appealing to me, at least, is it’s directness.

As a bonus, I’m going to speak in person to the scholarship candidates and will also announce it on the local radio station!

Winnie, the headmaster, another organizer, and I have committed to sponsor a girl each. We just need a few more. If this is at all appealing to you, or if you need more information, please let me know by email or comment directly to me.