Sunday 21 April 2013
The school in the mountains
Sunday 21st April
Today we went to see a country school but first I want to add something to yesterday's blog.
One of the temples we visited in Durbar Square was the home of the living goddess, Kumari? Girls are chosen from the highest caste, the goldsmiths, at the age of about 2 years. They must be physically perfect and beautiful. They are taken to the temple and sent into a dark room. Then the priests make a loud noise. If any girls come out crying or afraid, they are sent home but if there is one who is brave, then she is chosen. She goes to live at the temple and is only allowed out 8 times a year when she is paraded through the streets and villages for the people to see and worship. She is educated in the temple but has no friends or other children to play with. At the first sign of puberty she is sent home and usually, she marries and carries on as other young women. It seems hard to me to expect her to slip back into normal life after 10 or more years of very isolated life. Anyway, every day, in the morning, she appears at her window in the courtyard but they have guards there to make sure she is not photographed. We were lucky enough to see her for a couple of minutes. She was about 8 years old, heavily made up with black eyeliner and red lipstick. She was wearing the most gorgeous, exotic red and gold outfit and headdress but she didn't smile or wave and I thought she looked sad or possibly bored, more gawping tourists!
Oh, and the other thing I forgot to tell you about was that at the Anniversary party, they first of all showed us a short film of the hill farmers who once a year go up the mountains to hunt for yarsa. This is a strange herb cum fungus cum insect, very valuable and rare. Dozens of families trek for a couple of weeks to get to the only place it can be found. They live in tents in bitterly cold conditions and all of them men, women and children scrabble and dig into the soil with their fingers to find this yarsa. But if you find enough, say 120 stems, it could feed a family for a year but there is no guarantee of finding any. One woman showed us her frost bitten feet and she had only collected 10 stems. But the purpose of the film was to show us a certain family and there, lo and behold, was little Asmaya, the little girl who was given away to the orphanage with her brother.
Back to today. There was a heavy storm when we got back from the anniversary party and it was made all the worse in the hotel by the arrival of a large coachload of noisy French people. This morning it was still drizzling when our guide collected us to visit a school in the country about 20 km away. It was founded 10 years ago by an English couple who had visited the area and were saddened by the lack of education for the children of the area. Those who can, pay and those who can't, the majority, go free. Because it was up a narrow lane on the terraced slopes of farming country and it was very wet and muddy, not all of the children had turned up today. Sunday is a regular work and school day in Nepal; only Saturday is a day off. The children from the age of three or four upwards can say a few English words and are very confident asking your name. The older ones use work books completely in English and they are not allowed to speak Nepali in the classroom. I was asked if I was a pilot, a student, a farmer etc. also my age but I don't think they could count as high as that! We didn't see any text books and the furniture was rudimentary. Apparently they had 3 computers but we got the impression that only the staff were allowed to use these. At the end of the tour we were taken into the Principal's office; she was a young woman of about 30. The door was closed and our attention was drawn to a big box with "Donations" writ large on the front. She gave us a speech about the poverty of the children and how they could not afford to pay the teachers' wages. We all coughed up but we did feel it was emotional blackmail and felt very uncomfortable.
On the way out, the rain was easing a bit and though there were still pockets of low cloud, we got a glimpse of the foothills of the Himalayas. Had it been clearer we might have seen some of the peaks. Tibet was only 100 or so kilometres away and you could see that the children were more Tibetan looking than some in Katmandu who are more Indian.
Back in Kathmandu, it had stopped raining. We were pleased and put it down to the fact that the rain god, whose festival was yesterday, had been put back in his temple today.
We had a little wander round the Thamel district with lots of shops selling cashmere, jewellery, ethnic bags and purses, trekking equipment and fearsome wooden masks.
Am looking forward to a very civilised G&T tonight.
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