Here comes the sun....

The sun comes out very suddenly and thoroughly here as if it were being switched on. Every time the mist moves away from the mountain tops we can see a little more snow there and a more stunning view. We have two balconies to our rooms. From the front one can see across the whole Kathmandu Valley and to the mountain regions beyond. There are some great sunsets from the stoop. And at the back ... the Himalayan mountains overlooking views of the village houses.

A little about my school. It is the local government school. The village people are from the Tamang tribe. Tamang is also the name of the language they speak. The official teaching medium is Napali (detecting a problem already?) and, just to confuse matters, English is compulsory. The level of operation of the teaching staff, even with the best of intention, is about grade 9-10.
Girls marry young here. Some leave school from grade 9 to do so. From then on the weight of responsibility for home and children is theirs alone. They feed the animals as well as the household from small plots of land. They earn ruppees where they can and I can hear and see them working all day, every day as long as there is light.

I am adding a couple of photos of some of the students in my classes. These two young girls are Ulima and Krisnala Tamang. The older child is one of my students. Their mother is in the sky along with their younger sister and their father is away with the army. Quite a few of the menfolk seem to be away in the Gulf or earning somewhere else.

I also enclose a photo of Bhaktapur, our local town. I really did manage to find the Nepali equivalent of black sugar paper here. PVA is proving a little more difficult tho'. The student books are made up of paper which is more like Izal. But we are doing our best.

The buses here are quite something. Viv uses them for work and, I am sure, could say more. She has travelled closely packed, along with goats and rice sacks (including one which burst in transit and caused a slight incident) as well as great numbers of people. It is every bit as crowded as the underground except that the crowding continues on the roof of the bus too. On our way back from Bhaktapur Viv did sterling work holding the bus' backdoor closed with a piece of string. Mysteriously someone managed to make the door stay closed with the use of a toothbrush.!!

Bhakta arrived back from Tibet last evening and is arranging a few days away for us. We have a week until the schools open after their holiday break. We are going to Lumbini (birthplace of Buddha) and thence to Chitwan for some jungle stuff.
Love Jill xx