Lesson 6:  I'm with the Bandh

The past two weeks have seen a number of national bandhs (strikes).  During these bandhs, mobs roam the streets, or gather in a specific area to ensure businesses remain closed and roads remain clear, which has meant that our school has had to close on Thursday and Friday of the previous two weeks.  We are also likely to be closed the whole of this week.  However it also means the air's alot cleaner.

The clean streets of Kathmandu

                                                       

These bandhs have been declared to make demands on the politicians during the constitution writing process.  As the constitution is set to be complete by the 27th May, leaving less than 1 week; it is expected that bandhs will be declared for each day from now on and possibly beyond the deadline, there has even been talk of an enforced curfew.

The main discussion point these bandhs have been called for is whether the federal regions which Nepal will be split into, should be defined by the ethnic castes that are local to those regions (ie Gurkha, Sherpa, etc).  Two weeks ago it was agreed in parliament that this should be the case, however this seemed to worry the Hindi (non-ethnic) castes.

Thamel - the tourist centre during bandh

                                                      


The ethnic castes have always been viewed as second rate in the caste system, although not at the bottom, as this is reserved for Dalits (untouchables) and a couple of other castes.  In contrast the Brahmin (priest caste) and Chetri (political/military caste) have always lorded it over all others.  Therefore, when this decision was reached the Brahmin and Chetris called on other Hindi castes (including the Dalits) and declared Bandhs on the Thursday and Friday of two consecutive weeks, to demand that they are recognised as ethnic castes.

Whilst Bandhs can be very damaging and effect the people more than the government, they are an effective form of protest and therefore I generally support them.  However, I could not find reason to support the idea that the Hindi castes should be listed as ethnic castes, simply because the Brahmins were scared of loosing some of their privilages.  Unfortunately most of the ministers in office are either Brahmin or Chetri and unsurprisingly gave into this movement.  They were not stupid enough to claim Hindi castes were ethnic, but they shelved the idea of giving Nepals new regions an identity based on the ethnic groups that stem from those areas.

  Kids make a game out of blockading the roads

                                       


This in turn has angered the Ethnic castes, who since Sunday have run a Bandh demanding the original state model is kept to, as they have been promised this for so long (A demand which the Maoists agree with).  This has caused a stalemate situation in the constitution writing and is likely to prevent it from being completed, so this situation may continue for sometime.

The Hindi caste Bandhs involved large mobs roaming the streets and attacking any businesses they found to be open, I even witnessed them stealing the stock from a street vender, who was merely selling water, which is a pretty important service to keep running here (however, none of their violence seems to have been reported).  In contrast to this; the Ethnic caste bandhs have involved gatherings at important intersections with just a few mobs roaming, this is partially due to the fact most traders seem to support them and remain closed even if no bandh supporters are in sight. However, on Sunday it was reported that one group had stopped an ambulance from passing and a number of groups had blocked and even attacked journalists, also 50 vehicles were set alight across the country that day.

Damaged vehicles held in local police yard

                                                   



Despite the violence on the first day, this bandh has allowed rubbish collection, water transportation and distribution to continue, pharmacies are allowed to run and with the exception of the one incident; ambulances have been let through the blockades.  The bandh mobs have even transported pottable water to areas where they have held the bandhs, distributing it freely to locals.

Water distribution at Swayanbu

                                        

However, today saw the end of that 3 day Bandh, but also saw the first day of another 3 day bandh from different group (as yet I dont know what their demands are).  This group blocked the intersection of the ring road close to where I am staying and I went to see what they were doing, they had a stage set up and had a series of speakers addressing the crowd.  I do not know much Nepali, but could make out a few words, especially one, which one speaker must have said about 20 or so times... Andolan (= War).

Sorry for the lecture, but hey...  I am a teacher.

Lesson 5:  ABC's (getting started)

Things have picked up after a somewhat slow start, due to their hestitance to talk with one another in pairs, groups or simply as a class to me; I asked my first class what it was they most wanted to practice, of course their reply was 'speaking'.  At the start of my second week I broke this pattern, by getting them to 'role-play' a little.  Most had not fully understood the task and over the weekend whilst they were meant to put together a character for them to pretend being, many just wrote down details of themselves.  However, whilst everyone enjoyed it; Choe (the Korean) who has been up until now my quitest student, seemed to really get into it.

As the others started asking him questions, he spontaneously made more and more details up about his character, yet the rest of the class thought he was just talking about himself, as many of them were.  They were quite shocked to hear that 20 year old choe had a beautifull wife and 2 school age children.  Its probably a case that you had to be there to appreciiate it, but it was very funny when he realised what was happening and had to point out that this was all make believe.

I am currently teaching 3 classes, however I am only standing in for one of those, and will most likely loose that after Wednesday.  3 lessons is really all I need to maintain my living out here, and it really does seem like it would be easy to live here if I were working fulltime. 

Since I last blogged I have seen through International Workers Day and Buddha's Birthday.  Each of which are a little different I guess, however they do both involve a lot of flags.

Personnaly I prefered the first of the two, not only cause it meant marching through the streets amongst a bunch of people who want to improve the social situation here, but also because it did not turn the quiet little area that I have settled in; into some manic,crowded hell hole, just like Thamel the tourist centre.  How dare these day tripper Nepalese interupt my solitude by the monkey temple, they even scared off all the monkeys for the day, although I like to think that the monkeys merely went to their neighbourhoods and raided any food they could find through any open windows.  Like the communists here, they are more organised than you would think....

(The Unified Monkey Leninists [UML] sit down to discuss agitation tactics).

Lesson 4:  Crime and Punishment

Last weekend I visited the Agroforestry project that I worked on a few years ago.  I was a little upset to see the state of the project offices and model farm had improved little over the few years, however there have been some developments, for example a fish farm has been established in one of the members farms.

However, what was more upsetting was to hear that whilst I was there, a group of youths had broken into the government school and broken 'equipment'.  (This was the school that I had hoped to raise funds for).  I am not sure what was most surprising; to hear vandals had attacked this impoverished school (when there is a wealthy private school just several hundred metres away), or that this school had anything it could term 'equipment'.






It turned out that this equipment was simply the desks and chairs (which is just about all the school owns), the vandals had been caught during the act and had been held at the police station.  This was actually how I heard about it, whilst passing the station / jail, the teenagers' parents were there; begging for their childrens' release.  I do not know if the parents, or teenagers were made to pay for the damage caused, (but have heard since that the 'equipment' has been repaired) however later that day the Police had obviously gotten bored of holding the youths and deccided to punish and then release them.

If you can not make it out, the offenders were made to hold onto each others ears, whilst doing squats.  This went on for about 40 minutes and must of been very painfull for whoever was the slowest.


Aside from this I was recently speaking to an English friend here, once someone had tried to pick his pocket but the crowd around him had noticed this and starting shouting 'CHOR' (theif).  Then  they turned on the theif, apparently about a dozen people punching and kicking this guy on the ground.  Eventually the police turned up and broke up the fight, seeing that the theif was so badly beaten, the police decided not to press any charges and let everyone go.  I am sure Amnesty would be up in arms if they saw such things, but personally I think this works very well.  After all, petty crime is rare here and even peacefull burgulries can make the national press.



Observation:  Buddhist monks seem to be the equivalent to students in Nepal, I spent an hour eating at a bar / restuarant last night and throughout that time there were 5 monks sat at the table beside mine; all huddled around a single cup of tea.

Lesson 3:   On Contradiction

 

Well I have arrived in Kathmandu and met with many good people.  After spending New Years Eve drinking and dancing stupidly with a local hotel owner and his friends, I have stayed with my friend Badri and his family and met with some new friends, all of which 'may' have contacts to arrange teaching work for me, although offering what you don't have is fairly common here.

New years eve here is much like it is in the UK, a time for families to get together and for those rich enough to afford it; to go drinking and listen to live music in bars.

I have met with NELTA but they do not have as many options for me as they had made out, also I feel that like many organisations here; they are not as big, or organised as they make out.  They can place me in a village school, in return for food and boarding, but they do not seem to have relations with schools inside Kathmandu.  It is a common thing in Nepal for people to make out they are much better than they are, especially with supposed NGO's.  Well at least it is good to see where all the UN international aid money goes to.  The guy who I met with was not even able to talk to me over the phone as he could not understand native english speakers, however he runs the International TEFL School in Kathmandu.  It shows how desperate this nation is for decent education.

Before I met with NELTA, I had gone to a cafe for a coffee, the waiter there has a friend who, has a friend that works at a Language Institute.  Apparently they were looking for an English teacher and if they have not found one he will be contacting me about that sometime. Also his girlfriend is trying to learn English to get into an Australian Uni, so I have said if she can find a few friends who wish to study, then I will give them all private lessons and they can split the hourly rate between them to make it affordable for them.  So no thanks too the language professional, but thanks to a waiter, this was not a complete waste.  I guess the English proverb 'its not what you know, but who you know', works very well here too, although in this case the richer man was not the one to know.

Hopefully I will also be meeting a friend from Rolpa shortly, she is now a central committee member of the Maoist Party and I hope to write an article on her involvement and the current situation here.  Whilst all the papers are taking of Nepal finally being on the brink of peace, it is quite possible that the opposite is true.  For example as part of this peace transition; Nepal now has direct military censorship over its newspapers, just yesterday I saw one of their major newspaper offices closed off by armed police, whilst Military officials inspected what was to be printed today. Similarly a radio station that a friend of mine has worked with, was raided and had equipment 'seized' by supporters of a politician that has set up a rival station, aptly named 'nice radio'.  Ban Ki Moon keeps claiming things here are good in the eyes of the UN, whilst they claim to support freedom of press (lets just hope he's not on my blog... else he may practise his idea of freedom on me).

Lesson 2:   Art.

Below are a few photos of mine from Nepal.

Lesson 1:  History.

I first visited Nepal in 2006, at which time the country was going through the end of a civil war.  I had been interested in this nation for several years and travelled there to help build roads in a region called Rolpa. After being bitten by a mystery spider (which left me covered in lumps), shot at by the Nepalese Royal Army (who luckily were not great marksmen) and beaten by the Armed Police (don’t take photos of foreign protests); you'd think that I would have had enough of this country.

Contrary to the above, I had fallen in love with Nepal and its people..... well most of them anyway.  

Two days before I left Nepal I was pleased to discover that a ‘peace accord’ had been signed; better still in 2008 it was announced that the autocratic ‘God’ King Gyanendra had been overthrown...  ‘He’s not Vishnu; he’s a very naughty boy!!’  (Perhaps Michael Palin should get back to his roots). 

My memories and experiences from this short month-long trip have always stuck with me and in 2009 I returned to Nepal for 5 months.  During this time I travelled back to Rolpa to see how things had changed after the war, things are better, but that’s not to say ‘great’.  Whilst there I came across some charity workers from an NGO called Merlin, they provide drugs and treatment across this region and others.  I personally discovered the importance of this work when I needed an operation there and the hospital had no anaesthetics.  Aside from this, I spent most of my time working on an agricultural project called Kaule ev situated a couple of hours from Kathmandu.  Whilst working on this project, I was asked to run English Language classes for the local farmers and their families.

Having never taught before I was a little hesitant to run classes, especially for people who I shared little common language with.  However, the farmers and project manager persisted in asking me, so after a few days I decided to give it a go.  I would not say that I was a perfect and natural teacher, but I certainly discovered a natural love for teaching, which when combined with the community’s desire to learn; made for a great experience.

Since then, with the support of family and a number of part-time and temporary jobs I have been studying a variety of TEFL courses, both in-class and online.  

Armed with 3 TEFL certificates (that’s 2 more than you need), a 2:1 degree (an Ord is enough) and a small amount of savings, I am again headed out to Nepal to volunteer with NELTA and teach in government schools.  Let’s hope I don’t meet that spider again.