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.

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.

Nepal wrap-up

Even after allowing myself two weeks to digest my time in Nepal, I still feel ill-equipped to justly summarize my experience. Nonetheless, here goes.

Definitely much darker

What I did in broad strokes
With Winnie here for the first 3 weeks, we visited 6 rural schools in 3 different regions, which looking back was pretty darned ambitious. Accustomed to Western standards of eduction, after the initial survey of the schools, I was left feeling quite discouraged.
After Winnie returned to the states, I focused my remaining 2 months on the kids at one rural school, Nurbuling. In the future when I look back to my stay in Nepal, memories of the laughing kids there will surface first. Second to that would be the crisp sunrises and peace I basked in amongst the trees and longtailed birds.

Relaxing on my favorite bed of pines

Winnie and I made new friends and formed a partnership to sponsor qualified young women to enter careers in math and science.

Team (from left to right): Bhola (Phalewas school district director), Satelite (film director), and Rajeev (book publisher and early member of Room to Read)

Cities are more complicated places.

There I stayed mainly with the fabulous Karki family. To say they went out of their way to help me whenever they could would be an understatement.

My coffee habit did not taper, and I ventured over a handful of times to this one cafe that was an hour microbus ride away by the famous Boudhanath stupa. It took some gumption to eventually take the micro everywhere. First micro experience: late 1.5 hours to a meeting!
The city was also where I was shaken by the orphanage business. Miracles do happen though. (More on orphanages later..)
Winnie and I were only able to take a quick break away from school related business, and we couldn’t have asked for a better location than beautiful Pokhara. I never thought this would be the closest I came to trekking in the Himalayas.
I still don’t know what I got myself into, but I willingly surrendered myself in a weeklong Yoga retreat.

And lastly, I went with Rohit, a host family member, to Chitwan and Lumbini, to do jungle safaris and visit the birthplace of Buddha.

On the financial side of things, it cost me a grand total of $1700 (including flight) for 77 days there, which works out to $22/day! Considering my Mountain View rent was $50 a day, this experience was a proper heist! Examples of daily costs are shown below:
Living at school $3 including food.
Hotels in Chitwan and Lumbini $7-$12.
Bus rides (not tourist) 4-8hr ones $2.5-$4.
Typical nice hotel in Thamel, Kathmandu: $30-50. My favorite was Ting’s Tea Lounge.

On the personal side of things, I learned that the following are luxuries:
Running water
Hot water
Showers
Toilets (yes, even squat toilets)
Electricity

What I learned about myself
I wanted to learn Nepali, but I did not learn enough to become conversational. I could negotiate a cab fare without them thinking I was a foreigner though!
I learned to let things unfold and not get so worked up prematurely.
I don’t like being a guest. That was a hard one for me. At the school people had to cater toward me. I was a guest at teachers’ homes and at host family. Luckily there are such things as hotels that I could retire to when I just wanted to be on my own.

Superlatives section
Most familiar culture: Hyolmo.
Most peace: the Helambu hills, gazing out into the valley, at night the groups of lights in distant villages became constellations in an inverted galaxy. In the morning the mist would decorate the valley so artistically.
Best hike: between 2 schools. Pic Nurbuling to Nakote. We would pass by a village every couple hours and see distinct features in each.
Most I spoke with foreigner: Natsumi at the yoga institute. In fact, I spoke so little proper English that I felt a culture shock in Hanoi where there are so many Brits and other Europeans.

My constants
Attending many weddings: 1 Hyolmo and 1 Hindu
Winnie. We are so blessed with technology. Whenever I got imbalanced she was there.
Podcasts. Planet Money, Men in Blazers, Enormocast, The Dirtbag Diaries.
Reading: Best books I read were Wherever You Go, There You Are, Inverting the Pyramid, The Power of One, and Poor Economics.
Writing. In my journals and here 🙂

Vietnam, here I come!

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!

Teacher cruelty

We’ve all had teachers we’ve disliked, or at least the nagging “ones we’ve disagreed with.”
My earliest memory of a teacher being anything less than omnipotent and deserving of reverence was in 10th grade US History. The man had a wry, negative way of teaching. He never showed faith in my ability, and I never warmed to his sarcasm. He was the kind of teacher that incited the reaction of “up yours” when I achieved full marks on the final exam.
Negative teaching crosses cultures. Dorje is my top bunk mate, a great kid and eager learner. But from the questions he asks me before bed, it’s obvious he doesn’t entirely understand the lessons, but he has plenty of “grit.”
At school, term grades are reported publicly during assembly. At this term’s announcements, Dorje clapped enthusiastically for everyone who passed, even when his name wasn’t called. Curiously, a teacher came to me and laughed at Dorje, saying that his actions were ridiculous given his poor marks. Later in the day, this teacher made it a point to call him out publicly, making Dorje cringe and look away at his feet.
I trust from the teacher’s perspective, this public humiliation session was not cruel at all – that it enforced a lesson to work harder next time. Mind you, this teacher also does not respond to a 4 year old’s crying and blames the cuts and scratches on children’s feet as their fault and hence takes little remedial action.
Perhaps I’m just partial to perseverance as I think I’ve displayed that quality. Even as a 29 year old in my last year of foreseeable formal education, I was declared “irresponsible, a failure, a quitter” and that I’d “never get a job.” The negativity doesn’t stop, and why should we expect it to?
As we age, there probably will never cease to be moments of teaching, formal or informal. As we all become teachers, I warm to the idea that we should all be indiscriminately patient. We should encourage, give students time, and try to understand them.
All of us respond to at least some negativity; we should be thankful it exists, for we are all stronger for it.