Teaching English in Nepal - Volunteer Nepal

Added: (Fri Sep 22 2006)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Volunteer in Nepal - Final Report - Clare Apps (England) & Kate Trebuss (Canada) - INFO Nepal Volunteers - Aug - 2006

We woke up in the town of Syabrubensi (the main ‘hub’ of the Langtang region and pretty much as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get) the morning after a 9 hour journey into the mountains and handed our massive packs over to two very slight looking porters – who then began arguing over who would carry the only marginally lighter of the two massive bags. Three hours later – out of breath and amazed that we had somehow scaled a 90 degree cliff face and lived to tell the tale (after months of next to no exercise) – we arrived at our host family’s home in Goljung and settled ourselves in our spacious attic room. We had yet to meet our less-than-friendly roommates – 3 very healthy looking rats and a large army of rather hungry bedbugs…We soon met all the members of our host family living in Goljung (three of their four children go to boarding school in Lumbini): Host Mum, Host Father (Singi) and the angriest toddler ever to crawl across the face of the earth (his screams of “aaaaaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” would become a regular feature of our daily routine in no time…),
Pemba.The next day we wandered through the village gathering children like the Pied Piper with the help of our trusty bubble wands. We led the children to the front of the library to explain that we would be there to open it the next day, but the children seemed only to care about the sudsy bubbles before them as they practically body-checked each other to pop them. This was the first of many crazy encounters with the children of Goljung!For three weeks we ran the library each morning before the children had school and each afternoon after they had finished for the day. Though we struggled to maintain any semblance of order or continuity in the library, we did feel glad that we were able to offer a welcome opportunity for play to these children; most of them spend all day in the fields or watching over smaller siblings. Each day our library was a crazy zoo that rang with the screams of “MISS MISS KALAM KALAM” and mucky feet tearing round the room at high speeds. The kids were OBSESSED with Ludo, one of only a handful of games in the library, and Kate managed to construct a chess board and pieces, which also intrigued many of the older boys for long stretches of time. We tried to divide our days into two parts - lessons in the morning and games, books, and general madness in the afternoon – but this gradually degenerated into full-fledged, constant madness by the end of the second week.It took a bit of time, but we eventually got used to rising and going to bed with the sun; this was made easier by the significant lack of any nightlife of any kind in our sleepy little village (though we could have made it exciting enough with the amount of “raksi” we were continuously being offered). Besides, the early morning views were well worth getting up for! We also became quite comfortable and happy with our host family (though three weeks of rice, potatoes, and chili were a bit of a challenge to the digestive system, as were three weeks of “tea” i.e. hot water filled with giant spoonfuls of sugar)
.One weekend our host father even took us on a mini trekking expedition to a hot spring in the mountains called Tatopani (literally “hot water” in Nepali), which was a welcome break from life in Goljung! We also left our placement a few days early to attend a festival at Gosaikunda with our host family and pretty much the entire village. It was amazing to see all the women of the village decked out in their most elegant finery with their hair painstakingly arranged for this two day trek, while we two looked like sweaty, grubby hillwalkers!! Though we didn’t make it to the festival (we were worried about altitude sickness: a real possibility given we’d be climbing about 2500 vertical metres to an altitude of 4300 m in a single day) we had a marvelous time with the villagers on their first night away when we danced, ate, drank and sang in a circle outside the gumba where they were spending the night.We ended our time in Langtang with a week’s trek, guided by the father of another host family in the Langtang region, who is pretty much the sweetest Nepali alive, which made the trek totally awesome every step of the way, despite illness, cold, and clouds. Perhaps the fates didn’t want us to leave Goljung or the Langtang region when our date of departure arrived, because the night before we were scheduled to leave we were informed that we were virtually stranded in this remote area because of massive landslides, which had wiped out the only road in many places. We formed many a plan, but all seemed to get us nowhere until the bus unexpectedly rolled into town at 10 pm, ready for its early morning departure.
The next morning we boarded this bus along with half of Langtang (one quarter on the roof, one quarter inside), several live chickens being used as cushy seats and multiple large sacks of random produce. We drove for about three hours to the end of the line where we got out for a four hour trek to the town where the next bus was waiting. Luckily there were boys hanging about, eager to carry our bags for a bit of extra cash or we never would have survived the journey!We arrived in time even for dal bhat, only to discover that our seats inside the bus had been double sold; so, we volunteered to ride the rest of the way back to Kathmandu Nepali-style – on the roof! We squashed onboard with a massive youth singing group and held on for dear life as our bodies were hurled about and bruised to new extremes on the metal bars making up the "floor" of the roof rack. Watching the sun set over the Himalayas from atop a bus winding its way through the mountains, surrounded by Nepali people was truly one of the most memorable moments of our trip.It was overwhelming to return to civilization; Kathmandu’s lights, noise, and vehicles were much more than we had grown accustomed to in the hills of Langtang, but we thoroughly enjoyed a good slap-up meal when we rolled into town and could hardly wait to check our email after a month away from the joys of the internet!
Overall, the whole experience was a rollercoaster of ups and downs. We found life in Goljung extremely challenging, on many days extremely frustrating, but we were very proud to get through it and to have had the opportunity to get so close to a Nepali family, whose members were kind enough to take us in and care for us for almost a month’s time. We can hardly believe we’ve had this incredible, unique experience, but we are so thankful to have been granted this one-up opportunity to live life as Nepalis do. We’ll never be able to put it in words and we’ll certainly never forget it