School’s out for the summer - our final months

This last term has been packed with teaching and visitors, and I’m so proud that I’ve made it to the end of the teaching year. There’s been two lots of past volunteers coming to visit as well as one of my friends from the UK. We’ve also had countless good times with the volunteers from Arnakot and Jhimpa; Alix, Freya, Kieran and Oscar as well as some visits from Eli in Pyuthan. There have been four Project Trust volunteer birthdays, as well as at least five weddings or births or first rice eating ceremonies. 

This term began with big motivation to make learning fun, since there were no upcoming exams so we felt like we had a lot more freedom with teaching. That meant that we’ve been able to do some great work with library club, and I’ve tried to stray more from the textbook and focus more on games and creative ways to teach (the Nepali textbooks are very random and sometimes have little indicator of what is actually trying to be achieved with the activities written). There have been some particularly beautiful moments with library club, where I feel like I really managed to teach the students how to read with phonics and could really see them beginning to develop. My lessons on phonics from the term before seemed to get through to the students, and I’ve noticeably been able to see some of them using my phonics method to sound out words; a big problem with reading for Nepalis is that they are only taught the abc, so therefore try to read like this. Hence, teaching phonics has been really useful for some of them, and I’ve written out English phonics sounds with the equivalent sound in the Nepali script for several students (it’s been pretty useful being able to read and write the Nepali script in English lessons). There have been some great moments with some of my students in class 3, like Bardan, who is very quick to pick up reading. He started off with no reading ability, and can now quite easily conquer the Level 3 Biff and Chip books. It’s been very satisfying helping some of my less able class 4 students too (since most of class 4 can read) and the way their faces lit up after teaching the phonics method was very cool, although this was quite late in the year and they preferred to play football in the mornings so I only managed to get them in the library a few times. The library has been very open this last term which I’m really happy about, there’s no use in a locked library. I did have to push for library club several times with the teachers, since they thought that things were getting stolen and library books were getting lost, but in the end we managed to win them over. I’m really grateful to my dad’s friend Anna and her daughter Phoebe, who sent out a load of Biff and Chip books which have been invaluable to teaching how to read. They are levelled, the lowest being appropriate for even class 2, and they have great pictures with simple words. I actually remember learning myself off the Biff and Chip series of books, so it seems appropriate that I have now taught young Nepali students with the same method. The family also sent out phonics flashcards which have also been beneficial for group learning and teaching how to sound out words - thank you so much Phoebe if you’re reading this!

There have been some really beautiful moments with Anna and our Nepali family as well as satisfying moments at school. The week after getting back from Pokhara and seeing Eli’s family we had a random day of holiday or maybe a few - I don’t remember - there have been so many random days off this term. The students all say that Nepal is “banda gareko”, meaning closed, so shops don’t open, buses don’t run and no-one goes to school. This can be because an important person has died, or I think one day there was a terrorist attack where some people died in Kathmandu. On this random day off at the beginning of term we went to carry wood with Anna. We carried the big baskets on our heads and walked in our flip-flops to the place she gets grass for the buffalo from. The wind was crazy, it felt like it was being summoned from above. Ashvi, Anna and I were standing on the grassy slope with the wind almost knocking us over, the wood on our backs and the rain splattering our clothes, and it was really beautiful. This was a very productive day; in the morning I went to get beans from a lovely student in class 4 called Amita, which I helped to pick from her aunts garden and then after the wood carrying we went to a wedding down in Lamela and after that we even managed to get some of our painting done in class 5 (which is now done - I’m so thankful - it took almost four months to complete!). In the first few weeks back after the big holiday there were so many weddings and festivals; I think maybe that it’s the ideal time of year because it was beginning to get warm, but it wasn’t too hot, and it was before the rainy season had begun. There were two weddings in Devisthan as well as the one in Lamela (which is just down the road past bus park) in the first week or two, as well as two ceremonies to celebrate 6 month year olds eating their first bhat. The two weddings in Devisthan were slightly bigger and more expensive looking than other weddings we had been to before in Harpe, which meant that there was better or more varied food. One of the first rice ceremonies I went to on my own, which at first I was quite hesitant about since going to events you’d think wouldn’t be as fun by yourself, but I ended up dancing for a good hour or even more and eating some good food too. I really got lost in the dancing, and was sweaty to the point where a lovely old Nepali ama got her shawl and was wiping my face and washing my feet and taking care of me. It’s so lovely when old Nepali amas’ treat you like their child and make sure that you’re okay, There are so many funny older female characters in Harpe who I wouldn’t change for the world. The second first rice eating ceremony we went to with Anna, and she gave us each a lungi to wear, which is a long wrap skirt that is worn by lots of Nepali women in the village, when they are working, or just around the house. We had a good dance with some of our students, ate some good food (the classic selroti, achar and dal bhat which you get served at every wedding - meat too, but only Ashvi eats it) and then returned back with Anna. 

During one of the first few weeks after the holidays when we went to the first wedding in Devisthan we noticed some of the students doing martial arts after school with an instructor. We thought it looked very cool, and we’d heard about Kieran and Oscar trying out the Taekwondo at the school in Jhimpa so we asked if we could try out Kung Fu in Devisthan. It proved pretty tryicky getting there after school, since it takes half an hour to get down to Devisthan, but the first few tries at it were fun. We thought we might go with Deryn and Rosa but we never got the time. The club runs every day, so the students got good very quickly. Once I went by myself and I hadn’t learned any of the routines and decided it wasn’t worth going again but it was great to see that these kind of after school activities are available. Making school fun is really important, and with the way the subjects are taught and the monotony of the lessons sometimes, it’s good to have other activities available. It was also nice to see one of our old class 7 students Niruta again, since she now studies in Devisthan. She is a forward looking, fiery student, who wants to get a job and finish school. She tells us she’s interested in studying and not boys, and at fourteen in a Nepali village, this is a great attitude to have. Her doing kung fu definitely suits her personality. She’s very dramatic with her actions and facial expressions; she could definitely act well in a TV drama. It was amusing being told by her what to do in the first kung fu lesson, when she’d only been a few times more than us. 

After the busy week of weddings and events (the week after I was in Pokhara) we had a lovely weekend with Eli, Kieran, Oscar, Alix and Freya. Eli turned up early Friday and joined in with school which is what he usually does when he’s over - our teachers love him because he’s always dancing and chatting and he’s now been to Harpe so many times. We ran a fun Friday programme after lessons finished at 1.15 which was balloon dance - the students dance in a pair with a balloon between each of their heads and they’re out If they drop the balloon. After school, Eli, Ashvi and I shared a lovely time with Archan and Anna. Anna is also always very happy to see Eli, and I brought up some hot chocolate and we sat together bashing and shredding corn. This then turned into throwing corn on each other and being silly. The warm yellow light from the afternoon sun was filtering into the upstairs balcony where we were sitting, and this was a really beautiful moment with some of the people that have come to mean the most to me in Nepal. Archan was giggling away (he has such a great laugh) and his giggling fit only increased when we decided to take some photos on photo booth with the strange effects. This kept us all amused for quite some time, until our friends arrived at 7 or 8 in the evening. The plan was to go to Takura (a great spot to gumna to near Harpe, where we went for Holi and my birthday), which is now lush and green after all the recent rain that we’ve had. It was a bit of a point to debate, since it was pretty late when everyone arrived, but the plan had been to camp and sleep outside so we headed off about 10, much to the questions of the Nepali villagers, arrived a few hours later, and set up camp with a fire to sit around. We cooked up some chow chow for dinner with the fire. It was a pretty warm and dry night so we slept only in sleeping bags outside, surrounded by pine trees and under the stars. Ashvi took some amazing photos of the sky, which I will share at some point. It was lovely to wake up in the open air with the morning sun shining onto the grassy plain. I love that my friends like adventuring and sleeping outside, making fires, because it has made this year so much fun. Weekends have been something to look forward to, because there are guaranteed great times, chats and fires with good Belaiti food on many an occasion, when parents have sent out chocolate or brought it out with them, or we’ve had a trip to Burtibang to stock up. It’s always good to have a change from the long teaching week, have a laugh and share our experiences of naughty Nepali kids. 

Although they are often not listening, and instead fighting, crying, or leaving the classroom, there have been some great moments with our students this term, and I’ve enjoyed incorporating fun games into our lessons. I’ll list some memorable moments this term to allow for easy reading.

1. On stickers: There have been many times when giving out stickers has made me laugh. You often have students crowding around you, reaching out desperately, and then coming back for another sticker when they already have one. Even the older kids will get angry if they think that you are being selective about sticker giving, up to ages of 16 years old. At the end of term I was going to give out my stickers one by one to the students, but as soon as they were in my hand, sheets and sheets of them were grabbed off me straight away, which meant the other students kept asking me why they didn’t get them. With Class 3, I began giving out stickers every lesson because this made the students listen. I would make a smiley face list for the students that were behaving and a sad face list for those that weren’t. The problem with this was that I would get a constant stream of “Mero nam lek dini”, meaning “write my name on the board” every single lesson, until I told them that if they kept asking I wouldn’t give them out.
2. Class 1: In the final term I taught Class 1 last period every day, which has been a very cute, but also exhausting babysitting experience. I taught this class with Himala, the young English teacher who is now very pregnant with a baby. Every day this term I had them in this lesson telling me “Miiiiisssssss, tapaiko kapal dherai ramro cha” meaning “your hair is very nice” followed by them pulling at and touching my hair. It amused me that this never got old, and I was greeted by this pretty consistently, and although having your hair pulled and stroked isn’t always fun, I have to admit that this class is very cute. There was one lesson where we were teaching them hello and goodbye, and they were standing in a line ready to be greeted and they were very adorable. They can’t really pronounce English very well so they just copy the sounds of what you’re saying so even saying “My name is..” can be quite funny. Himala has been great and it’s fantastic when she really gets into the teaching when we both aren’t too tired. This has happened a few times, and from my lesson plan idea she will explain it a bit better to the class 1s (they really don’t understand much and can barely say “my name is..”). There was a particularly great lesson near the start of term where I brought some basic flashcards that I’d been sent from Phoebe and she was asking the class “yo ke ho” meaning “what is this” and I just remember smiling a lot at the way she was asking the questions and the kids enthusiastic response. Although, it was funny when the students decided that eating/biting the flashcards was a good idea. There have also been a lot of knowing looks shared between us, one time when I tried to teach the Hokey Cokey and once I got to the eyyyyyyy part where you run into the middle the circle, the students didn’t stop screaming excitedly for a good five minutes (safe to say Himala sent them home pretty quickly after that). I think maybe the best lesson with Himala was when we were teaching actions; running, walking, jumping and we got them to run around the circle. She got really into the lesson and the students were demonstrating to the rest, jumping over the tables and having a lot of fun. My running game where “big” or any word is one wall and “small” or the opposite word the other wall also deemed simple enough for these students to understand, and with the motivation of stickers the game was a big win. 
3. Acting: I had a good few lessons doing some acting out of stories inspired by Eli telling me about his fun lesson on “Babbu”, a story in the class 5 textbook. Babbu is a story about a man in prison who says that he buried the people he murdered in the potato garden and he tells his father not to dig up the potato patch and so the story goes (Nepali textbooks can be very strange). We had a good laugh getting the students to act out different characters and some of class 5 actually listened which is a rare case with class 5 (they are probably the most naughty class of all the classes we teach). Another good acting lesson we did was based on a class 6 text about Temba Tshiri, the youngest person ever to climb Mount Everest. I got them to climb on the desks and climb up with the team up to the top and I felt so much joy getting the students to pretend to be climbers or guides or Temba getting frostbite. I realised how great acting things out was quite late into the year, so if any future volunteers are reading this I would recommend doing some acting. It also means they have a lot more fun answering the true or false questions and the question answers in the textbook, which can often be quite boring. 
4. Games: I think the most fun part of this term was the amount of games we played and thought of, and I would look up ESL lesson plans and ideas online for inspiration. Some of the most fun the students had were dressing up in our clothes and racing to be the first team to dress up in the right clothes (we did this with class 3, 5 and 6) to which the teachers would come to have a look because all the students were laughing so much. When I was playing a clothes vocabulary game with class 3 I really felt the extent of the joy that Nepali children can exude and the excitement on their faces was so great. It’s obvious to see the joy of this class when they begin to dance and you can see that they have so much energy. Another good game that class 3 enjoyed was the blindfold direction game, where a student is blindfolded and they have to make it through the obstacle course with the help of their partner/everyone else saying turn left, turn right. We also played some good games that involved using questions from the textbook or made up questions which involved team 1, team 2 and throwing a ball into a bucket and when you got the question right you would get to throw the ball in the bucket. This did bring out some high levels of competitiveness within the class, particularly in class 6. Towards the end we played hot potato a few times too, where you pass around the ball to music and when the music stops you have to answer a question. This is how the class 3 lesson before lunch one time turned into a dance rave, and it almost felt like the classroom had turned into a wild club or gig with all the students moshing and jumping around.
5. Teachers: I feel like we got a lot closer to the teachers this term. This term I’ve just felt a lot more at ease, and more like I know them. All the teachers at are school are loving and kind, and it’s a really nice environment to be a part of. They’re also incredibly strong people, often doing a lot of other work outside of school, some of them even attempting degrees, teaching themselves the course at home. Dinu has also been an amazing headteacher this year for us, always checking if Ashvi are fine and that there are “no problems”. She has also had us over many a time for food or tea. During Deryn and Rosa’s visit to Harpe (last years volunteers) we went to a lot of teachers houses, since the teachers wanted to host Deryn and Rosa for food every morning we were also invited for some of the days. After their visit, we also had a lovely morning where we were invited to Mina Malla’s (the nursery teacher) house for some khana before school. It’s always nice to see the teachers with their families and you always get to know a bit more about their home lives; where their families live, how long they’ve been teaching etc. This last term Ashvi and I have been helping out Sushila Miss, who lives down in Devisthan and walks up the steps from Devisthan every day. Sushila has a wide smile, and we have had some jokes with her, one being how she wanted to get a septum piercing, traditional and lots of gold, Nepali style, and we  joked about how Eli could buy one each for both of us. It’s funny how jokes can continue with Nepali friends, and this joke went on for quite a while. She is attempting a year one Batchelor degree, but is teaching it all to herself just by reading the books. She is studying several different subjects, but is finding English the hardest since she hasn’t studied it in years, since she became a teacher. However, it has surprised me that her vocabulary is still so wide given this, since you really can’t tell in her spoken language. Since so many Nepali’s learn only from books and from reading and writing, it is often the case that their spoken English is much poorer. I can’t believe what Sushila has to achieve with this degree with the book that she’s studying from; she is trying to study from a book with summaries and comments on the texts that she’s meant to be studying, except she doesn’t even have the texts because they’re not available. This book is also incredibly dry, with texts on completely random subjects like teeth. This book along with the Nepali textbooks makes me think that there needs to be a complete reform on which textbooks that are used in Nepal. The crazy thing is that Sushila also has a family which she has to care for; she has two daughters who are twelve and fifteen years old and she has to cook and do the housework as well as teach six days a week. I have no idea how she is managing all this whilst trying to study a degree too. It feels nice to be helping out a teacher and also productive, since she’s much keener to listen. I helped her to write an essay on journeys, and wrote about the trip that all the teachers went on to Dhorpatan. Many of the teachers do not have time to go to university, so are stuck trying to teach themselves the course, without the help of any university professors or resources. The teachers all have such busy lives outside of their teaching lives; one time Himala went off to visit her husband’s family with her sister, who is a student at the school and her husband’s family live on the way to Dhorpatan. She walked 5 hours there and 5 hours back, whilst being 6 months pregnant. 
6. Painting: We managed to finally finish off our painting in Class 4, which I was very happy about since it took us so much time. Deryn and Rosa (last years volunteers) helped us with the final details. A funny moment when doing this and another moment that will make Ashvi laugh if you mention it was when I painted the banana purple thinking that monkey was catching a butterfly instead of eating a banana. Ashvi and I also painted a small mural for World Environment Day which we celebrated at school, after having a year of experiencing students just chucking plastic onto the floor and in rivers. We painted an earth in the shape of a tree with flowers dotted here and there. I will include a photo of it in this blog, along with the animal mural. Now most of the classrooms in Harpe are painted by volunteers, and it’s lovely to see the dingy looking classrooms brightened up with a bit of paint and colour. There’s now a solar system in Class 5, a world map in Class 7, a Nepal map in Class 6, a clock in Class 3 and our animal mural in Class 4, so hopefully with the help of next years volunteers, the painting of the school classrooms can get finished.
7. The older classes: I’m really glad that we’ve been able to teach some of the older classes this year, because there’s much less of trying to get the students unwilling attention, and much more communication. The younger classes can feel like you’re running a childminding session, whereas it’s so satisfying when you see the spark in the eyes of a student when they know the answer. An interesting lesson that I enjoyed with Class 7 was a lesson I was teaching on development in the village. It was actually a passage from the textbook, which was about a village which received electricity, better water etc. The students were on the ball for this lesson and found it interesting to think about the changes in their village too. One lesson with Class 6, teaching them the present tense, was also great - I got inspiration to try and teach some of the verbs on the top 100 verb list - an idea it would’ve been good to think of earlier on in the year. It’s sometimes difficult to teach the older classes because they often have to babysit their younger siblings during the lessons when their parents are busy (out grass cutting or doing housework) and the toddlers end up making a racket and disrupting both them and the lesson.
8. Nepali school snacks: all year we’ve been given snacks and food to eat from the pockets of the students clothes, but one very funny moment that happened with class 7 was when Anjita brought in a snack that was maybe a mixture of millet flour and sugar, or something else, ground into a powder. She gave this to us, then all the students laughed as we couldn’t speak or when we spoke the flour would puff out of our mouths. 
9. Celebrating International days: One of the requirements for the award that we receive from Project Trust at the end of the year (which is the equivalent to an AS level) is that we should celebrate an international day. We ended up celebrating a few, with our big International Day being World Environment Day. We tried to dance at the end of every lesson with International Day of Dance, and with International Day of Families, we did some work on family members with the younger classes and got the older classes to write letters to their families to say thank you. World Environment Day involved different activities for each class. We started of the day with doing some leaf rubbings with Class 2; the students love doing creative things. We made posters on how you can help the environment (save water, reuse etc) with Class 5 and with Class 6 we went through how long materials take to biodegrade, and then played the throwing rubbish in the bin game with them. The most fun lesson was when Ashvi joined her Class 4 with my Class 3 and we played the target game with two bins. The nearest bin was worth 20 and the further 50, and the students got so excited about getting our homemade rubbish ball in the bin. They were chanting a lot, and when one student got it in the 50 both times it was like they had one the football World Cup. The expression on this students face was incredible. With no rubbish collection and not much education on the environment, the litter problem in the village is pretty bad. It either gets burned in a pit, chucked in a river, or just thrown on the floor, by almost everyone in the community. 
10. Art club: we didn’t have time to run many but we did a few creative painting sessions, the first being painting with ochre and making prints. We got the students to paint some Nepali soupas too, as well as painting necklaces and pine cones. The students had good fun with all of this, since there isn’t really much access to paint or any kind of colours in the village. The only consequence of this is that the doors, taps and various other walls of the school get some student paintings on them. 
11. The last full day of school was great. Sophie (the volunteer from a few years back) came in for part of the day and we played some really fun games. We played outdoor games of duck duck goose and the Hokey Cokey in the morning, and I played Class 2’s favourite game with prepositions in the morning (on the table, next to the table - effectively a version of simon says). I felt really blessed when we had pomegranate and coffee for lunch. Ashvi, Sophie and I sat in our room and relaxed after a tiring morning, and it was really nice to be with them both. In the afternoon, the games with Class 7 topped ones we’d played before and I wish I’d thought of them earlier. We did team tongue twister races and the game where you say a word and the next person has to think of a word with the last letter of the previous word, as well as countdown and splat. Afterwards, Sophie and I went to Class 1 and played sleeping lions which was very cute.
12. Giving vegetables: one of the conditions that we teach at the school is that the students give us vegetables to cook, since you can’t buy them in the village and we don’t have our own farm. One day that I felt a lot of warmth was when we’d mentioned to Dinu that we had run out of vegetables, and the next day the Class 2 students brought in so many bags of Nepali Dal, coriander, spinach, beans among other Nepali foods. They were so excited to give us these bags and I was given this massive stick with all these plastic bags hanging off it and all the students were telling Dinu and I which bags that they’d brought. This made me feel warm inside; our students, although they can be hard work, are so so loving and kind.

At the beginning of term, before Rosa and Deryn came to Harpe it was wheat cutting season so all the women were out very early every morning cutting wheat and putting it into bunches. Women call out to their friends to help them with this, and they all take it in turns going to each others fields to lend a helping hand. Anna would ask people walking by if they could help that morning, then you would see a row of Nepali women working for hours and hours cutting and sorting the wheat. The person whose field it was would host all the helpers for nasta and midday snacks, which were needed after so much physical work. There is such a sense of community particularly between the women of Harpe. Ashvi and I wanted to try out cutting wheat, so one morning before school we helped Anna with her field, just below the house. I only cut wheat for two hours, and this was hard work. Nepali women are so strong, and this hard work in the strong sun particularly highlighted their power. One afternoon was particularly lovely, and we sat with Anna and her friends and helped out a little in the field. The afternoon light was golden, and once we got tired we were told to go and eat the mulberries that were growing just by the field. We then found the bigger tree of mulberries just beside the postman’s house and a Nepali man shook the tree as we stood under and caught the fruit. Mulberries are so sweet and tasty, but also so messy, so we ended up with purple teeth and purple all over our hands. Ashvi decided to write some things in purple juice on my face, which was funny because the students thought I’d done it myself to look nice. That afternoon it really felt like we’d got closer to the villagers, and Postman’s wife, Emkumari. She gave us some roti made from her own wheat grain with tea, which was delicious. One thing I love about Nepal is eating different wild fruits as well as fruits from villagers own trees in different seasons, and this last term has been the best so far for this. Nepalis have such good knowledge of what’s good to eat, and children will hand you flowers to suck the nectar out of or show you which berries to eat. This term there were lots of mulberries which ended up getting squished on pathways. There were golden raspberries, which we ate with Anna when we went to carry wood with her. A little later on there were plums and suddenly all the students would bring loads into school and you’d eat so many. With these kind of fruits, Nepalis have a habit of picking the fruit before it’s ripe, so then when it’s ripe there are little left. This happened with peaches; although they’re tasty unripe, I’m not sure I had one peach that was actually ripe. The plums however I did get to eat ripe, and they were sold in the village too - two for one rupee. One day I think I ate over twenty plums, which I thought would be a problem but my stomach was actually fine. This term there have been lots of kafal too, which is a small red fruit, reminiscent of strawberries. I’m not sure you can get these in the UK, but students would bring them to school in their pockets, and also go and search for them on days off to bring back to their families, so we got plenty of these handed to us at school every day. They’re very small and have a seed in, and are quite sour but also tasty. Nepalis also know which vegetables can be picked, and vegetables are taken from the wild and cooked. I’ve eaten mushrooms which have been found in the forest and have been cooked and also ferns are a recent vegetable that I hadn’t eaten before. Nepali people from the village really know the way of the land which is something we just don’t get in the UK, buying vegetables from the market or the supermarket. 

After these few weeks of cutting wheat and putting it into bunches came the work of bashing the wheat and separating the grains for eating from the stalks which were food for the buffaloes. It’s been amazing to see all the seasons arrive and with the seasons see the change in produce and work. We have watched a complete cycle of growth in the village from beginning to end. At the beginning we saw the huge rows of corn everywhere, looking like a jungle. We helped Himala on her field one day and cut parts of the plant for the buffalo to eat. We also shredded a lot of corn which was later roasted in the cold months and eaten as a snack. After that came the pumpkins and after the pumpkins we helped to weed the crops so the ground could be ready for wheat. Between the growing of these big crops have been other plants like beans and spinach, garlic, potatoes, onions, among other things. I've really loved eating vegetables seasonally; it's just so different to be able to see the things that you eat growing around you.

A big part of the last few months have been having Deryn, Rosa and Sophie to visit, the former two being last years volunteers and the latter being the first to come to Harpe to teach. There was so much to relate and discuss, in terms of thoughts on specific people in the village who we had all come to know as well as thoughts on general life, women, and teaching. The thing we all have in common is our love for Harpe and the people here, but particularly Anna who we have all come to love as a best friend. Without her, our experiences in Nepal just wouldn’t have been the same. She and Archan have been with us with their beautiful smiles and laughs the whole time, cheering us up after a difficult day at school with chats full of joy and laughter. She’s taught us so much, and she is an amazing woman who I’m going to miss a lot. Anna was very happy when Deryn and Rosa arrived, and we spent time all sitting together cooking and eating in Anna’s kitchen room. 

Anna has had a hard time recently because of the recent developments I mentioned in the last blog with Nathan, and sitting down with Deryn and Rosa one evening she told us a bit more about her life and her marriage that I hadn’t previously known. here is a lot to be praised about the traditional Nepali way of life; the culture of dancing for example: at any festival people of all ages, even the teenagers with a much more modernised outset on life, will enjoy wearing traditional Nepali dress and dancing the way that their parents danced and generations beyond that.  However, a more negative aspect of this society is that women, traditionally, and therefore in a society still full of tradition, have less power and free reign than their male counterparts. Within the households in Harpe the women tend to be head of the house due to their husbands working abroad to earn money, but in reality these men have the financial control and power, since agriculture and farming earns women next to no money. The women hence are financially reliant on their husbands to send out money so they can enjoy a better quality of life. Once a woman gets married in Nepal, she (in most situations) must move in with her husband in-laws and must begin doing housework and farm work for this family. If a woman gets married very young, this means she cannot finish her education and therefore is bound to working for her husband’s family for the rest of her life.

In Anna’s case, she was top of her class in school every year up to class 7, until she got married to Nathan, who she met while she was in school. Once she married him, she moved from Jiwokola to Harpe, where she began working for the family. This massively compromised her education, and although she was able to continue going to school in Devisthan, she had to get up every day at 3am so she could do the housework before heading off to school. Meanwhile, Nathan was able to continue going to school and also tuition after school in the lead up to exams. This caused a lot of stress for Anna, and once she got pregnant with Archan she wasn’t able to continue to go to school, and so the last class that she passed was class 9. Hearing this I wanted so badly for Anna to be able to continue with education so she could have more financial control. Another thing to mention on village life is there is so much borrowing and lending of money in the village. There will be a long chain of money that people owe to each other because of previously needing financial help. This is where the sense of community spirit really shows in the village. We really tried to be there for Anna in these few months, because you could tell that she wasn’t her usual smiley self. She’s back to that now, now that Nathan has returned to the village and things have been sorted out which I’m very happy about. 

Other than conversations with Anna, Deryn, Rosa and Ashvi we went on some early morning gumnas (walks) around Harpe. Rosa and Deryn were telling us about places they used to go and what they used to do in the village and we were inspired by their morning exploration walks. It was really nice to spend time with people who also know Harpe so well and being like all the other Nepal Project Trust volunteers we got on with them really well. We all went to some of the teachers houses together for dal bhat breakfasts or dinners too, and we actually hadn’t been to eat at some of the teachers’ houses before so it was nice to see their home lives. We went to Mina Gurung’s house who is married to a teacher who works in Devisthan. Their two sons both go to our school and are very bright. It was interesting to visit a family house where both the parents are doing work which requires finishing education and because of this, their sons get a lot of help with their education too. Most parents and family members in Harpe are uneducated (so cannot read or write very much), so they rely on the school system (which isn’t always very good) to educate their children, without having studied much themselves. In future generations, now schools are improving and more children are finishing their education, the whole village will be more educated, and parents will be able to help their children out more easily. It’s amazing to see the changes that have clearly happened only in one generation; parents who couldn’t read or write have children who have finished school. Girls are also encouraged to have aspirations in school, and we continually tell the students that studying a lot is good, and that getting married later in life is also good. We also went to Subash’s house one morning for breakfast - Subash is the youngest male teacher - only a few years older than us - and it was very different to see him with his wife and young child in their own house. He seems our age, yet he has a child and a family outside his school life. Subash is cool because he is very content with village life; he has his job at the school in Harpe and a beautiful wife and child. He married very young, but also comes across as really fun and happy. 

One of the highlights of Deryn and Rosa coming to visit was our trip to Dhorpatan, which was very unplanned but an amazing experience nonetheless. The teachers had all been mentioning for some time that they wanted to go on a trip altogether in the holidays, but this never happened in the end. The first Friday morning after Deryn and Rosa had arrived, it was suggested in the staffroom that we all do a trip to Dhorpatan for the first new moon of the Nepali month Baisakh; Baisakh purnima. This was celebrated in Dhorpatan and we were told that people from all around went to Dhorpatan to see this. As usual with Nepali happenings, we were told in the morning about the idea for all the teachers to go to Dhorpatan that day (which is a pretty lengthy trip involving going to Burtibang and then taking an expensive jeep for four hours or so). It was posed that we would go that afternoon, but when we kept asking the teachers what the plan was they didn’t know anything for certain. We were going to meet our friends from Jhimpa and Arnakot that day and the plan was to go to Liwang and go for a wander and then stay in the hotel, but we let them know of the maybe plan to go to Dhorpatan with the teachers, Rosa and Deryn. All the teachers ended up discussing this in the staffroom for most the morning (rather than going to lessons), meanwhile we were getting excited at the possibility of Dhorpatan again (and we’d been told we would get Sunday of school too because the teachers had to do housework or something along those lines). By the end of the half school day (it was a Friday), the teachers decided that we would meet at the school gates at 4 and walk to Burtibang to get the jeep. We made sure there was space in the jeep for our friends too before heading off with the teachers that live up in Harpe (we were to meet the other teachers later). It was a lovely afternoon and we walked and talked with the teachers, Deryn and Rosa. It was really nice to see all the teachers outside of school, relaxed and in their own clothes. They felt more like friends than colleagues and this was the first time we’d spent time with all the teachers together outside of school. The trip was all very last minute, and after meeting our friends when the path to Burtibang meets the road and after buying some food to take with us, we headed up in the jeep with all the volunteers sitting outside in the back. It was one of the most beautiful jeep rides I’ve been on. We got to see the sun setting over the hills that were now green from monsoon season, and after the sun set the stars were really bright because there wasn’t any light pollution and the new moon was going to be the next day. We bumped up the hill into the late evening, with the cool air around us and the gentle sound of our chatter. Alix then brought out some chocolates from the chocolate shop she used to work in in France before she came to Nepal, so we also enjoyed, although slightly melted, top chocolate cuisine. As is always with Dhorpatan, the air begins to feel very cold as you climb up in altitude to the 3000m flat plane, so outside we all got on our jumpers on. We weren’t quite prepared for how cold it actually was when we reached Dhorpatan (I hadn’t even brought a sleeping bag with me since we thought we were staying in a hotel, so when we reached the plane and started looking for food and a place to sleep we were all shivering. I had also given my blanket away to a teacher with a small child, so all I had was a jumper. It was so strange turning up at Dhorpatan and it being so full, since the time before there were almost no people and it felt like it was the volunteers alone in a beautiful wild landscape. We walked along the road, and went from hotel to hotel (we also hadn’t realised before that there were so many Nepali hotels on one side of the plane) freezing cold, trying to find a place to sleep. By then it was about 10pm and they had long been full. We were led into a small room with some floor space and some plastic and it seemed like the plan was to sleep there, but since not all of us had blankets or a sleeping bag this seemed like an impossible idea. There were also about seventeen of us, so there was no way we would’ve all fit onto that small floor (I pondered the idea of just getting into a bed that already had someone sleeping in). At this point my tummy didn’t feel good (and the toilet was also a tiny hut quite away away), and I felt really cold (I wished I had my favourite bobble hat that I adopted years ago from my grandmother that I wore all through the Nepali winter in bed) and a bit fed up - I just wanted to go to sleep. It was decided we needed food at that point, so we evacuated the tiny room which was deemed not fit for all of us, and found a buzzing warmer Nepali place where people had been drinking roxy but still had food cooking. All of the volunteers were told to go to the picnic style table and wait for food. We spent a while in there, got down a good dal bhat, then had the mango that had been brought from Burtibang, and some amazing stroup waffles (again, they’d stuck together but we ate them like a sandwich) that Alix had brought with her (I think Alix’s package of food saved us that day). The feeding process for all the staff took quite a while, and it was maybe almost 12pm when we left the cosy shack to go and find somewhere to sleep. There was no space at all in any of the hotels, even after asking several times (particularly for how many there were of us) so it was decided that we would sleep in one of the parked buses in the grass field bit for all the parked vehicles. I think this was probably one of the most uncomfortable nights I’ve spent the whole time I’ve been in Nepal (amongst two other times - when we slept outside when we were doing the Annapurna Circuit and when we wild camped in Nange - all seem to be at high altitude where it is unexpectedly cold) but these times always seem to be some of the best and most memorable. We arrived at this field and there were teepee like tents dotted around, with small fires here and there that people were sitting near for warmth. It reminded me so much of the scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the Quidditch World Cup, and there was such a story like feeling to this dark, flat area full of mystery and small balls of light. We were directed to a parked bus (and Alix, Freya, Oscar and Kieran ended up finding a jeep) and Ashvi and I were pointed to two seats near the front (and near the door). All we had were the layers we were wearing (I’d brought some thermals thinking it would be colder than we thought but not expecting to sleep in a bus) and on the top of Ashvi and I was only a thin blanket, not even enough for me for some of the better Harpe nights. It was incredibly uncomfortable not being able to lie down and also being so cold, but it was a night where I felt a strong connection with the teachers, since we were all in the same boat, struggling through the cold night on the bus. The other volunteers described the next morning their experience, and it didn’t sound much better; the seats being tiny and the ignition being turned on early in the morning for a while, they woke up to the intense fumes of the jeep circling around in the air. 

Waking up in the bus that morning felt very strange, after so little sleep and after being so cold, we all woke up as the sky began to lighten. Some of the teachers announced that they were going for a wash at the tap, but at that point I didn’t really feel like moving. I was still very cold, and at that stage where you feel to cold and stiff to bother to move but also fine sitting in the same spot, because it feels like getting up will make you more cold. Everyone on the bus looked bleary eyed, and like they hadn’t had good sleep. It felt quite crazy to be in Dhorpatan with the teachers that morning, and the night before seemed kind of dreamy too. We eventually got up to have a wash and go and see the puja that was going on a short walk away. Waking up and seeing the tents selling nasta (chowmein, tea etc) it felt like we were at some British festival, but with such different surroundings and people. There were so many jeeps parked up and we could see so many people dressed in bright colours of red and pink. Everything looked very different in the light. Apparently the queue for the tap was very long, but we decided to go anyway, feeling like we needed to freshen up and get off the bus. Some of the teachers had already gone of to the puja, to wash in the taps and see the sacrificing of the goats. The washing is some sort of worship and there are a row of taps in which you can wash, maybe for cleansing. We went to the same restaurant we went to the night before to use the toilet and the tap (there wasn’t actually much of a queue) and then went to the area where all the Nepalis were gathered. We were with Mankumari and Sushila originally, but they both went of quite quickly to the puja. The day started to heat up because of the warm sunshine as we walked. There were so many goats and people and it felt so busy. People were carrying dead goats with no heads, or alive goats about to be slaughtered. The little stream running down the middle of the grassy centre point was a stream of blood, in which people were also washing bits of their dead goats. One dead goat actually ended up falling on Alix’s foot. Trying to step over the blood and over the goats and between the people, we managed to get to the row of taps. I put my hands in the water, but decided to not wash fully because of all the goats and people. There was so much bustle and so much going on in this area, contrasting with the usual peacefulness of Dhorpatan. We recognised quite a few people who had come from various villages including our own - we saw our good friend Sanjita with other Harpe villagers. After feeling like we had seen there was all to see, we headed back to the bus and had a good breakfast of tea, boiled egg and chowmein from one of the teepee like tents nearby. It was very cool to feel like we were at a Nepali style festival, from which people had come from all over. We sat with the teachers, waited for everyone to accumulate from various places before heading off in the jeep to the more touristy hotel near the helicopter landing area which we stayed in before. We sat in the back of the jeep as we drove across the flat plane through the river, and I felt such a nice sense of camaraderie with Sushila and Mankumari, two of the teachers. We had a good laugh, I can’t remember about what, but sat with Rosa and Deryn too and enjoyed each others company. The teachers had decided to go and have dal bhat and then go on a gumna, but since Ashvi and I had the Sunday off, we wanted to stay another day and explore a bit more of Dhorpatan. It’s very Nepali to go somewhere that is far away for a very short period of time, take photos and then return, or stay for only one night. The teachers told us that Dinu would be angry if we stayed another day and that it wasn’t safe, but we managed to convince them in the end that it was our decision and we wanted to stay. The teachers with Deryn and Rosa headed off to the Tibetan school that we’d been to on our previous visit, and us, feeling very lazy and tired from the little sleep that we’d had, walked a short way and then returned to the hotel for a lunch of dal bhat (which took well over an hour to come even though we kept seeing new customers coming in and getting served). We were all knackered after the rough night, and Ashvi and I had also slept little the night before, staying up to chat with Deryn and Rosa, so we fell asleep around 2 to 3pm and didn’t wake up for another three or four hours, just before sunset. It was so strange napping for so long in the afternoon, because it felt like it was almost a new day. We went off for a short walk with a light rainy drizzle, and enjoyed the pure beauty of the green mountains surrounding and the little streams again. 

That evening was an interesting one, meeting some different Nepalis from Kathmandu, who were very different to the villagers we’ve been living and sharing our lives this year. We sat round the fire with these Nepalis from Kathmandu, who were the families of members of the Nepali Supreme Court. They were all clearly very high up people in Nepal, with much more money than the Nepalis in the village. Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve is a popular destination for Nepalis who are exploring Nepal, therefore there are a lot of Nepali tourists you see there who are quite different (last time we met a lovely group of Nepalis who were studying medicine). It was really interesting to see the differences with these Nepali people from the city; they were all very lovely and could speak very good English. They, however, didn’t know things like the Nepali calendar, after going to English speaking private school. They told us that they weren’t allowed to speak Nepali at school, even with their friends, apart from in Nepali lessons, hence their English was so good. The adults had also been abroad to study, and all of them were well versed in travel. We did get the benefits of the snacks that were brought to them by the hotel; there was fried chicken for the meat eaters, popcorn, cucumber and carrot brought out on plates every so often. There was also guava juice and drinks for whoever wanted. It was interesting to hear the differences in attitudes towards drinking too; in the village it is unheard of for particularly female students to drink alcohol, but these Nepali teenagers had all tried alcohol and it seemed very normal for them. The traditional life in the village is not adopted the same way at all in the city, particularly with worldly, richer Nepalis it seems. However, they still knew the traditional Nepali songs like Salko Pat (definitely our most sung and requested Nepali song that we know) which we found out where we played the game where you sing a song in a team and the last sound of the last word of that song is the beginning of the next song. It was a good evening with the Nepalis, and we had a good dance with one of the girls who was a very good dancer (both Nepali and other styles) who taught us some moves. It turned out that Ramesh, the son of Alix and Freya’s host was staying nearby so came to the hotel with his friends. We ended up playing some funny dares on them like stroking their heads which was quite funny (probably slightly annoying) before heading to bed - the beds are so comfy at this hotel and in the room we like the beds take up the whole room, so it is a very cosy haven. The next day in Dhorpatan was also great, including walking up a mountain (not reaching the top because it got rainy), dancing on a cliff or hilly overhang, and then walking a few hours down from the plane to a village to get the jeep in the early afternoon. It was so lovely to feel the atmosphere of the houses and people in Dhorpatan; it feels quite magical and different, since as I mentioned in an earlier post, it is a place where many Tibetans migrated to. I was a quite surprised at the sheer amount of litter in the river and the path we walked down, the plastic and rubbish affecting the beauty of the walk down a little. I know that lots of people in Nepal just chuck their litter on the floor, but here there was a lot, between rocks and around the path down. We waited a long time at the village a few hours down, drinking tea, before the jeep finally came late in the evening (around 9pm - we kept calling and they kept telling us they were on their way). Despite the tiredness and effort of having to get from Burtibang to school the next Monday morning, it was well worth staying the extra day and paying for the new jeep. The only little hitch of the whole trip was me leaving my passport and cards which were in my purse in Sneha, but thinking I’d left them all in Dhorpatan. The Monday we got back I was in a bit of a worry, and then told the teachers which worried them much more, but after calling several people it turned up and everything was good.

The week following Dhorpatan was when we went to the teachers houses for breakfast and spent a lot of time with Deryn and Rosa. They told us a lot about their experience in Harpe and their years volunteers in Nepal. Hearing about their experience with Pulmati gave me more insight into the family too. Pulmati and Anna didn’t get on at all, but it was Pulmati’s house (Nathan’s mother) so she had all the power. She also gets the money that Project Trust give for our lodging. Pulmati enjoys a drink and I'm not sure that improves her mothering skills so Anna has effectively been their mother too; cooking for them and working for them. Pulmati also doesn’t really do any house work, so Anna has had a really tough time. She and Anna used to cook in the same room apparently, until they had a huge argument near the end of Deryn and Rosa’s year and then they started to cook separately. Rosa and Deryn were saying that although Pulmati isn’t a very good mother, she also is clearly very sad and maybe depressed, but in Nepal no-one really gets help for these kind of things. Lots of the year they were in Harpe she would be crying or dancing, all the time very drunk. We saw a little of this when we came to Harpe, but after only a few months she and Milan went off to Burtibang so Milan could study at the private school. Every time Milan comes back to Harpe he seems really sad, and I think he wants to stay in Harpe because he has friends and Anna here, but in Burtibang he has to live with Pulmati. 

The final Saturday we spent with Rosa and Deryn was a great one, and they showed us a village that we’d never seen before. We walked up to Halfway Hill or Dakar early in the morning, and walked all the way round to a village called Dabang. Seeing more near Harpe that we hadn’t seen before was nice, particularly being shown by friends that had also lived there for a year. We went out for most of the morning and early afternoon, and got some mesmerising views of the mountains when we sat down for biscuits and snacks. It was a very hot morning, but also so clear; now you can’t see the mountains at all because we are in the middle of monsoon and it is so misty and rainy - Harpe sits in clouds most mornings now. Being four Harpe volunteers and Anna was definitely a high point of the year; it made Anna so happy too. On the Sunday, Rosa and Deryn’s last day, Eli turned up randomly in Harpe, after coming over from Neta through the jungle. He had gone for a massive walk, and ended up in Baglung. It sounded like he had had quite the journey, sliding down through some steep bits of jungle with a plank of wood because it was too steep to walk. It was a nice surprise when a student said “sir ayeko” and after wondering which sir, Ishor sir turned up on our doorstep. That afternoon, Rosa and Deryn cooked lots of tea and bought biscuits for all the teachers and then in the evening we sat in Anna’s room and chatted about our families, divorce or whatever came to our minds. With all four of us being there there was a real sense of togetherness with the school and Anna. Eli wanted to reach school the next day so left around the same time as Deryn and Rosa; at half four in the morning. I walked with Eli to Rajkut but he was pretty exhausted and ill, so we ended up just crashing once we’d reached Dinu’s house; she let us sleep there for a few hours, until Eli left and I arrived back and it turned out there was no school anyway. Eli has now done that journey over ten times, there and back, and after only three I feel like it’s an exhausting journey - eight hours but with huge hills. 

Having many random days off school, inspired by Deryn and Rosa, we decided to do a bit more exploration of the village in these last few months. One of these days was quite memorable. This day made me a bit more aware of disabilities in the village and how they are treated differently and dealt with differently in rural Nepal. There is a deaf, mute man who started coming to our house this day. He turned up after we had cooked food, and was gesturing that he wanted some food so I gave him some on a plate. He walks round the village asking for food from various houses, although apparently he has a house and a family who also give him food. He is quite a strange man and has kept coming back ever since, even though we can’t always give him food - and apparently he gets food anyway so we’re not always sure what to do. Good medical help is not available, so people with disabilities must live like other Nepalis. One of our teachers has a missing arm due to falling out of a tree when he was younger (I think he had to get it amputated) and he lives his life like any other Nepali - he is a very fun teacher and we’ve had some good laughs with him. Equally there is a man with a learning disability who lives above bus park, and he cuts grass and has a wide smile, whenever you see him. The other day I saw a girl who studies in Devisthan with deformed feet, making it harder for her to walk. People here are so strong, and can overcome problems because it is required of them. People don’t tend to look at people with physical disabilities differently like people do in the UK; there is not so much judgement and much more acceptance. A missing arm or deformed feet won’t even turn heads. Mental illness here is treated differently, however. Nepali people don’t understand mental health problems, like people I know back home, maybe because they just aren’t as accustomed to it. If someone had a severe mental health problem, they could be treated as crazy in the village, and because (from what it seems like) there is next to no support for mental health in rural villages in Nepal, life becomes difficult. The hospital in Burtibang isn’t even very good for physical problems (they misdiagnosed Bethany’s broken arm after looking at an x-ray) so with this in mind, there isn’t the money available to give good support and medication for mental health. Saying this, most Nepalis I know here seem so happy and content with their lives, and are so joyful. They have such tough physical challenges, freezing winters, lots of physical work, but do all of this with a smile on their faces and love in their hearts. I will now talk about this one day that made me reflect more on mental health in the village. 

After we had eaten food, Ashvi and I decided to go “oooh mathi”, up the motor road. Along the way we met some of our students who were out picking kafal for their families. Apsara (from class 5), Ashok and Dipendra (both from class 4) followed us along, having nothing else to do that day. They gave us some fruit and we continued up the hill. From that morning there had been a huge forest fire on the other side of the valley, on the same side as Arnakot. From when I woke up at half four, it continued raging all day. Weather and landscape are so dramatic here, and watching and also being able to hear the fire roaring even from the other side of the valley made it seem so intense. From the morning it had spread massively, and you could see the smoke rolling up to Alix and Freya’s village. Previously we had only been to Dakar, so we decided this time to veer off the motor road onto a small path that going to the right of halfway hill. We also took this path to shake off the students so we could have a more relaxing time, but they ended up following us up anyway. We continued up and up, past trees and fields of crops, whilst being given golden raspberries and other wild fruits picked for us by the students. We kept climbing until we got to maybe the farthermost house from Harpe, right up near the jungle. Here, the students said that they would get us some vegetables to cook that evening. The house where we sat for a little while was tiny, a one room house right up in the hills, and without a toilet too. A man lives with his one daughter there, and he told us that his wife had left when his daughter was really young. When we reached the house the students said that they would go and pick us some spinach, and we were invited to sit on the mat outside. His daughter was pacing around outside the house, seeming distressed. She was picking plants and moving around, and when we asked what her name was she didn’t respond. It was clear she was lost in her own thoughts. Her father told us that she had a different mind, and her mother left when she realised that her daughter was like this. It was really upsetting to see a girl only a few years older than us in this state, living so high up and away from society. I hadn’t realised before that there were people living so high up, and such difficult lives. They also live a good walk from the tap too, so water also isn’t easily available. I felt quite tearful when I saw this girl, knowing that she doesn’t get the same kind of support that we get in the UK. The students came back with spinach and said that this girl was strange and didn’t go to school. I think this girl is treated more as crazy than in need of support, but maybe that’s just because the support isn’t available in these villages therefore the knowledge is also not there. I felt like this day really opened my eyes to hardship and difficulties that some Nepalis live. After going to this house we walked back to halfway hill, then walked back down and had roti and delicious curry at Apsara’s house, one of the students who walked with us. I was so exhausted after the week of little sleep with Deryn, Rosa, Ashvi and then Eli that I lay on my bed at half six, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the next morning.

Lots of past volunteers have returned this year to visit Nepal, and we not only met the past Harpe volunteers but past volunteers from Jhimpa and Okhereni (Okhereni is half an hour walk up from Jhimpa on the opposite side of the valley). It was really interesting meeting Catherine who was one of the two twelve month volunteers in Nepal who came four years ago as well as the two eight month Okhereni volunteers briefly. It was kind of like seeing us in a few years time, after university. We all want to return to Nepal like these guys after we’ve finished our degree, or during our third year (I will be doing a year abroad at this time). They all agreed that they found the teaching really difficult, and it was nice to be able to relate on our different experiences. Catherine and her partner Becky when they first arrived were the only Nepal volunteers until the eight month volunteers turned up. At this time the electricity was pretty bad and didn’t even work in their house, so to charge their phones they had to go somewhere else. There was also no internet, so Catherine told us that she used to phone her parents once a month and that was it. They used to go to bed really early, having no good light source. Catherine said that at first it was really difficult and they didn’t know how they were going to live like that for a year, but picking up the language and being the only volunteers meant that they got really immersed into the culture and Nepali lifestyle. It’s incredible how three years on there’s so much more connection in Nepal. Now, the electricity in all of our projects has been pretty consistent, going off and on at the same times every day (although we often get a random few days of no electricity when there’s bad weather, or it goes down). Our internet connection (Ncell or Namaste) is often faster than at home and so cheap - under ten pounds for 16GB of data for a month. Catherine also described the infrequency of the buses (only a few times a day, and in monsoon season even less) on the road to Jhimpa, which is called the mid-hill highway. It is the main road going West, and now, only three years later there are taxis going up and down the road all day as well as several cheap buses. They always walked to Burtibang when they had to get things which is a good three and a half hour walk. Not only this, but there are now roads up to most of the hillside villages so jeeps can go up and if the road is okay buses too. Even from Deryn and Rosa we were told that there were roads in Harpe and Rajkut, going up to halfway hill and takura. Development is happening astoundingly fast, and in Nepal it’s so noticeable. Women will be doing the traditional farmwork they have done for years and years at the same time as listening to music on their smartphones. The road going to Jhimpa is also much faster and so much better than it was even at the start of the year. The only problem with this kind of development is that the monsoon season and the difficult weather changes mean there are often landslides and road blockages. Jeeps often stop whilst the drivers friend gets out to physically move the rocks out of the road. Apparently making new roads up the hillsides also contributes to landslides; it’s difficult to figure out how to modernise and better the transportation in an extreme landscape. Monsoon season has always been a problem and it has been for us too in our last few months here. However, Nepali people, jeep and bus drivers are very knowledgeable about how to deal with this, since the monsoon comes every year without fail.

Speaking of development, there are also changes happening in way of life and families. This term we had a good few afternoons with the teacher called Smirti who works in Devisthan, and lives a little bit down the hill from us. We’ve been to her house a few times for dinner, and she’s always very welcoming. They’re quite an unusual family, since it’s only Smirti and her husband who live in the house. Although, we did hear from Deryn and Rosa that Smirti wanted to get pregnant but she couldn’t and was sad about it. Apparently she put a lizard in a jar to try and get pregnant. Smirti married her husband when she was sixteen and he was in his twenties. However, they do actually seem like a happy couple, still in love. She’s also the one earning the money in her household, since her husband at the moment doesn’t have a job. We’ve had some good laughs with her, and being similar age to Anna, she’s easy to get along with.  Her husband, as I mentioned before, is going abroad, but didn’t make it to Poland. According to him, Nepalis can’t get into Poland to work anymore because the government has banned Nepalis from working there. This isn’t good for the pair, since it cost them a lot of money to get the visa and the papers (I think they said one thousand euros, which is a lot of money for Nepalis), and they also won’t be able to get any of that money back. He’s now trying to get a visa and a job in the Czech Republic. It’s interesting that he wants to go to Europe, since most Nepalis I’ve met in the village end up going to the Middle East - places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai. They often go to India too, since it’s so near and easy for Nepalis in terms of the language - most Nepali people can understand Hindi TV, because the languages are so similar. After going to work abroad and raising money, they have a plot of land in Butwal (a bigger city in Kathmandu) where they want to build a house. Often Nepali people actually want to stay in Nepal, but in the village the facilities aren’t very good and access to medical support and education are also of low quality, but Kathmandu and big cities are much more expensive, so they can’t afford to move straight from the village into a big city. Therefore, people go abroad then later move into the city when they have enough money.

This last term we got even closer to Anna, and she told us a lot more about Nathan and what happened to make her so upset during Holi. One evening we sat down after dinner and she told us the whole story about his betrayal and disloyalty to her. It made me quite angry and gave me quite a negative opinion of Nathan. The main problem is that Anna has no say over the money that Nathan earns, and he thinks that all the money belongs to him, even though Anna works much harder, day in, day out, doing work for his family and looking after their own child. Ashvi and I were upset and angered by this story, and we tried to do our best to spend time with Anna and cheer her up a little. 

The same week that Anna told us this (when she’d been having a hard time), her buffalo gave birth. We were excited by this buffalo birth because we’d seen the goat giving birth before and it’s quite a special experience. In the morning we went over and Anna told us that it had given birth, but she didn’t seem very happy. The buffalo had given birth to a baby with a damaged ear, and it also wasn’t a male or female buffalo - it had two sets of genitals. This caused a lot of stress for her in the following weeks because all the villagers were coming to have a look. She also had to phone a doctor to look at the baby buffalo, who gave her some expensive medicine. When you spend every day cutting grass for a buffalo, it is a huge disappointment when something goes wrong, because a buffalo provides money (when you sell it for meat) and also milk, which is unavailable otherwise, and with milk you can then cook with more variety. Therefore, the whole problem with the baby buffalo made Anna quite stressed, and when the baby buffalo died a few weeks later she was quite upset. The buffalo kept producing milk, however, so we still got to eat rice pudding and have milky tea as well as ghee. 

Not only did the buffalo die around this time, but in the village a very well loved man from the village died. The man who died was Sagar’s father (who lives in bus park) and the family owns a shop - we’ve been invited to all of the kids birthday parties throughout the year. We teach the younger son Sagar who is in Class 4 and we’re also friends with his two older sisters who are also lovely, but study in Devisthan in the older classes. The whole village was incredibly sad after the death of this man, and we were told that he helped everyone out so much. The man died whilst abroad in Qatar, and he died of a heart attack. After the village found out about his death, there were so many people who came up to the house to pay their respects and say sorry. Apparently he built our cement toilet and floor in our kitchen when he was around. Before this, I’d never seen so much sadness about a death. For days people were going up to the house and staying the night, then during the holidays when we were away the body was brought back and there was a ceremony. In Nepal, the dead are burnt with fire or cremated, and then the families of the dead upheld traditions of not celebrating festivals and eating things like salt in food for one year after a death. I arrived back in the village almost a week after the body was brought back for the ceremony for my final few weeks in the village and went to the final goodbye, where there was selroti, achar and fruit for all the attendees. I think this was the final closure for the death of this man, and everyone turned up, talked to each other and asked Sagar’s mother if she was “sanchai” meaning okay. In the village, everyone finds out about everything, and everyone knows everyone, so this news was upsetting for many. It also made Anna stressed because she had lent her gold necklace to Sagar’s mother when she was having some financial difficulty, so she could pawn it for some money (as I mentioned before, there’s a lot of money lending that happens within the village) and Anna was worried that she wouldn’t get it back for a while because of this death. Nathan (her husband) was coming to the village soon after his time abroad in Dubai, and this was a wedding gift from him, and she hadn’t told him that she’d lent the necklace out, so she was worried he’d notice when he came back and he’d be angry. She got it back before he came back, however, so everything turned out okay in that respect. 

After all these negative occurrences, Anna decided to go to Burtibang to go to a psychic, to see what was wrong and why things were like this. Apparently in Nepal many people when they are born get a horoscope made. There is a lot of superstition in the village, and Anna told us that the person in Burtibang told her that the Gods weren’t pleased with the family and one of the reasons was because when a lot of our friends came to the village back in the April holiday, they went past a certain point in Pulmati’s house which they weren’t meant to pass (I’m not actually sure why) but our friends didn’t realise that they weren’t meant to. 

After all this sadness in the village and after Anna's tough few weeks or so, there was an entertaining first rice ceremony in the village, down in Lamela, which is on the road down to Devisthan and there is a set of some really aesthetic houses with great views. There’s also some really fun villagers in that area of Harpe. Ashvi and I decided that if we could’ve lived anywhere in Harpe (providing Anna still lived nearby) we would live there, because it’s a nice distance from the school and a commute to school would’ve been nice (instead of loads of kids sitting on the doorstep every morning). The sky was so clear that day, and Ashvi and I dressed in our Kurta’s and walked in the beaming sunshine with our colourful scarves following us. It’s always nice to go to events happening in the village, because everyone convenes in one place to chat, dance and have a good time. We met Anna there at the mela, and ate the usual tasty selroti, Pepsi and achar. This first rice eating ceremony was the first time we properly met a woman called Lalmati who is a Nepali grandmother of one of our students. Old Nepali women are so amazing, and they always have so much character, and have lived in the hills their whole lives doing farm work and living traditionally. At this particular ceremony, we sat and then danced with Lalmati. She was wearing these incredible massive gold earrings (I’ll attach some photos) which she gave me to try on. She’s so so warmhearted, and after meeting her there, we made sure to go to her house a few times. I felt a true sense of connection with this woman; it will be sad not to have Nepali hajuramas like her around when I get back home. 

There were so many events from the middle to the end of June as well as this rice ceremony. We celebrated four birthdays in the space of about three weeks, and went off to other villages to celebrate with our friends from Project Trust. For each birthday, Ashvi and I made some handmade cards and did some painting for presents, and I really enjoyed doing some art. The first birthday was Alix’s, and we went off to Burtibang to meet the Jhimpa boys and get the cake for the party. As is always with Nepali transport, the jeep was super late from Burtibang, but we got up to Arnakot eventually and surprised Alix at the temple at the top of the hill by the tower. We camped the night along the ridge in tents and had a campfire and cooked pasta on the fire, then in the morning gave Alix her presents (from Ashvi and I a sickle with a painted handle and a lungi). The next day we had classic Arnakot pancakes, which involve amazing toppings that have been sent out (caramel, chocolate spread, peanut butter) and sat in the sitting area near the homestays. Oscar had made a piñata for the occasion, so we all got turns at that, before having an amazing party at the homestays in the evening. They made us some delicious dal bhat, as well as a starter of stuffed potatoes and then we danced and had cake. One of Alix and Freya’s friends Bimala is so smiley and both her and her daughter are fantastic dancers; it inspired me to learn new Nepali moves or maybe in the UK join some sort of Nepali society. All the Arnakot kids came to have cake an dance, and we were all in high spirits as we danced around in a circle, Nepali style. The only problem with staying up late and staying until Sunday is the walk back to school on Sunday morning. After exciting weekends we are always super exhausted by the time we get up to Harpe. I have to confess of having a few day naps in the library in the afternoon, not being able to keep my eyes open any longer.

The next birthday trip was our trip to Rukumkot for Ren and Emer’s birthdays. This was really near the end of term, and we’d been told that it was nearing monsoon so it might be difficult to go, but we really felt like we needed a short recovery break from teaching and everyone (Project Trust volunteers) from Baglung was going to be going to the birthday events, so we asked Dinu if we could take a few days off school to visit Rukumkot. We also really wanted to see the projects in Rukumkot and see how they differed from Harpe and also just visit another district in Nepal, further out West. We headed off to Burtibang after school on a Wednesday and stayed for the first time in the Durbar Hotel, which is the posh new hotel that has been built recently for tourists or anyone passing on the way to Dhorpatan or anywhere else. It was so strange being in such luxury in the middle of Burtibang, and the hotel really sticks out from everywhere else; it is a huge glass windowed tower, with really fancy rooms with amazing showers coming from the ceiling. It wasn’t actually open yet but we wanted to trial it out so we asked if six of us could all pile into one room with two double beds. After some long awaited roti and tarkari late in the evening (when everything else was shut) we arrived back at the hotel late and woke up again late the next morning to get the midday bus to Rukumkot. The bus journey goes all the way up the Nishikhola valley, so it was good to see where our valley leads up to. You end up climbing pretty high before descending into the next valley which began the journey to our friends’ projects. We stopped at a strange cafe at the top of the hill where we were shown into a tiny dark room with a small window that gave off strange yellow light from the plastic outside and we sat, feeling pretty cold (because we were so high up) with coffee and biscuits. The descent into the new valley was so scenic, and the hills seemed to stretch further and seem so much more empty and green than in Baglung. The views were gorgeous, and the sun was setting like gold on the rolling steep hillsides around us. We were very lucky to be able to get a jeep from just after Lukum and this may have been because there was a massive long distance running event on earlier that day, so there were lots of people who wanted to get back home afterwards. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that many people just sat on the top of a bus before; there were so many people at this event. We were very lucky to make it to Rukumkot by the evening, and even managed to go for a midnight skinny dip in the lake, despite feeling pretty tired, before crashing at the hotel in Chittprada.

Ren and Bethany live in Chittprada, which is about half an hour down from the lake, and they live on a street where only the Brahmins (which is the highest caste) live. The whole village felt really different to Harpe, and much more wealthy. The village isn’t arranged on a hillside like Harpe, and there are lots of different roads around the village, unlike Harpe where the houses are stacked on the hillside, amidst trees and farming plots. There is only really one main road in Harpe which is the road running down to Devisthan which also goes to Rajkut. Ren and Bethany also live in a cement house, which is the same for all the Rukumkot and Jarjakot volunteers, which feels quite different to living in a mud hut. Rukumkot has some really amazing views, and people actually travel from quite far away to visit the lake, where there is a Hindu temple - one of our friends Rita went there and back in a day this holiday. The whole trip consisted of celebrating Ren and Emer’s birthdays (Ashvi and I gave them both painted Nepali sickles), swimming in the lake a lot, eating cake at the school and dancing. We also got to see Iona and Emer’s house which is near the lake, and they have a lovely little room with a desk and which gets quite a lot of light. Their host family seemed really nice too, and the mum in their family is a tailor. The whole atmosphere of Rukumkot feels quite different; like a mix between Burtibang and Jhimpa. It’s a lot bigger than our villages, and seems more wealthy, with more education and resources available. One highlight of this trip was meeting a guy who has painted all the shop entrances in Rukumkot. He does painting for a living (which I thought sounded very cool) and works with his friend, painting schools and signs among other things. He worked in a room at the hotel where we stayed the first two nights and after having a long chat in Nepali with him about his artwork, he offered to give me his painting of Buddha as a gift. He painted my Nepali name Urmila on the painting before giving to me. It’s unusual to see painters or paintings in villages, so it was great to talk to this man and to be shown all his paintings that he stored in the workroom. The whole time in Rukumkot, albeit being exceptionally bitten by mosquitoes and the last night therefore barely sleeping, was very fun and It was lovely to see everyone again and have some good laughs and a catch up.

After our trip to Rukumkot, we had only a few weeks left before the final holiday would begin. In those weeks there was a lot of things to be done and things to be organised. I had told our Harpe postman that I would paint his house green with the leftover paint from the school, so after having been told we had the day off (the day after Rukumkot) because the chairman had died, I started painting. It took that morning and another afternoon to paint the wood on the newly built part of their house green, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve definitely done way more painting than ever before in my life this year and I was very happy doing this extension painting because it made Dharam and his wife so happy. They were so grateful and afterwards kept giving us vegetables and inviting us round to their house. It’s so nice helping people out and it made me feel closer to them too. The day I began the painting, we also managed to finish painting our Earth on the school wall for World Environment Day, which I’ve mentioned before.

The last few weeks of teaching were also a bit crazy because my friend from the UK had organised to visit the village and I had arranged it that she would come with Sophie, who was a volunteer who stayed in Harpe two years ago. They were both to arrive by bus on Thursday 27th June and Ashvi’s birthday was the following day. On the Thursday I had prepared a shopping list for the big party on Friday. I had wanted to host a big party for Ashvi in the village and invite everyone and make it really special, so I spent that week preparing and thinking of how to make it work. Ashvi and I went around the village giving invites out, which turned out to be really fun because we got food at each place we went to and had some good chats with the villagers too. I skipped school on the Thursday and went to Burtibang to buy all the things we needed including six kilograms of chicken as well as five kilograms of bhuja (like plain rice crispies to go with the other food), lots of fruit, lots of chocolate, presents and prizes for the big school game of pass the parcel, amongst other things. Since we’d invited so many people, we needed a lot of food to be able to cater for everyone. The teachers had also said that they would help, since if Anna had cooked or helped to cook (because she is a BK and lower caste), people we’d invited from higher castes wouldn’t have eaten the food, as is the tradition in Nepal. I’d also ordered a cake that I could bring back from Burtibang, to be shared traditional Nepali birthday party style (feeding the birthday girl/boy as well as wiping cake on their face). 

I met Sophie and my friend Zosia in Burtibang, after walking in the morning with someone from Harpe (she caught up with me and we were going the same way), who gave me some peaches to munch on along the way. It was so great to see Zosia again, and also meet Sophie, who is so nice and there were, like with Deryn and Rosa, so many things to talk about in terms of the village and our respective years in Nepal. Sophie had come back to do some research for her dissertation; her university (Cambridge) had given her the money to return to Nepal, so she had booked flights so she could stay for a month to carry out this research and ask questions and take surveys. Her dissertation is going to be on male out migration and the effect this has on women in the village and in general. It was so intriguing to hear about all the things she’d found out, and we also all got along really well too - we’ve decided that all the past Harpe volunteers (Sophie, Xanthe, Rosa, Deryn, Ashvi and I) will all meet up in the UK at some point, and maybe even do some fundraising or send some things back to Nepal for the villagers of Harpe and the school. Sophie recounted to us stories of Harpe, and one that struck me was when one of the girls in her class 7 got married when she was only sixteen or seventeen. Apparently she’s really intelligent and was one of the best students in the class. Sophie said that it was an arranged marriage, and that she and Xanthe were really upset when it happened. I will go into this issue into more detail in a community report I'm working on, having been so influenced by the women in our village. 

I was so happy that I’d managed to organise for Sophie and Zosia to meet in Kathmandu, because it’s quite a tough journey from Kathmandu to Burtibang, particularly if you haven’t made it before. It’s also monsoon season so the roads are a lot rougher, and the buses stop more often and there are in general a lot more problems. After meeting Sophie and Zosia, we had a good chat, then went to buy things for the party. Anna surprised Sophie in Burtibang and it was so nice seeing them reunite, after these few years. After buying everything, we put it all on some jeeps and headed up by foot to Harpe. Eli turned up that evening in Rajkut, having left midmorning from Puja so he could join in with the celebrations. The whole of the next day was really fun, and it was really cool to be able to introduce Zosia to all the students and villagers all at once (although school was so crazy and I think Zosia got the idea it was like this every day - she was surprised when she turned up on a normal school day after the weekend). Eli and I got up and made some porridge and coffee, then danced all morning in school and gave out sweets and tikkas. We had a massive pass the parcel for the Friday programme (although the teachers questioned why there weren’t presents for everyone, and we expressed that that was how the game worked) which was followed by lots of food preparation and decoration. The weather was really warm in June, so I asked our student’s mum who runs the shop next to the postman’s house if I could put the cake and the chicken in the fridge so it wouldn’t go off. The teachers helped out so much; after school they got straight to the cooking in massive pots that I’d borrowed, with both fire and gas. They cooked a really tasty vegetable curry, as well as a massive pot of chicken and then cut up loads of fruit and cucumbers that I’d got in Burtibang - I really feel so much love for the teachers because of this. The whole day turned out really successfully in the end - at first I was a bit worried because only the students had turned up, but then Will and Josh turned up on time (after having had to pay loads for a private taxi from Rukumkot - love you guys) followed by the rest of our usual Baglung group. We ate food and then when more people had arrived we cut cake and danced a lot. I had a lot of fun dancing with Bikram from Class 5 (he dances with so much energy) and the other students, and when Lalmati (the hajurama who has amazing earrings) turned up I was so happy. I got her and Rita’s mum to dance with me towards the end of the evening. When everything was winding down, I sat with Anna, Eli, Sophie and Archan on my lap just outside Anna's bedroom, which was very lovely, just before we gave Ashvi her presents. Anna said that three of our Class 6 students had done all the washing and cleaning up, so we gave them some Pepsi as a thank you; one of the things I’ve taken from this year is how helpful and caring the students are towards everyone and how they form such a strong community. 

The week after Ashvi’s birthday was our final week of school, and I showed Zosia the school and gave her some tours of the village. We also went to see Lalmati for dinner where we at a great dal bhat and danced. Nathan turned up at the beginning of that week, which we’d known for about a month, but it definitely changed the atmosphere around the house and naturally, my preconceptions of him weren’t great so I found it difficult to warm to him. Nathan, in person, is quite a serious man and doesn’t smile very much, and is therefore very different to Anna, who is always laughing and having a good time. Given all the problems from before, I think at first Anna found it pretty difficult that Nathan was back. He does do a lot of work, however, and is a massive help with grass cutting and the work that Anna has had to do alone. Nathan also gets Mohindra (who is Nathan’s brother) to go grass cutting too, so Anna has a lot of hard work taken off her hands as a result of his being there. In the first week he was there I missed Anna a lot though, because we didn’t eat together all the time like we did before. Anna also just seemed less happy, which made me feel sad; she missed our evenings together too. I found it quite funny when she told me that she set Nathan housework to do (the house became so much cleaner when he arrived) because she said she had more fun when he wasn’t around. One interesting thing about Nathan coming back, in terms of the village, was that people were coming to the house to ask for money because they knew that he’d been abroad. They turned them away, but Anna said that this was quite stressful. I was really glad Zosia and Sophie were visiting, because I think Ashvi and I wouldn’t have known what to do with ourselves without sharing food with Anna. 

We dropped Zosia off in Burtibang on the Wednesday and then spent the Thursday with Sophie for our last full day of school (which I mentioned earlier), before all our friends arrived on Friday evening ready to start our holiday, first stop Pyuthan. Ashvi, Sophie and I all went for a morning walk to halfway hill that Friday morning, before getting back to make some food. Everyone ended up arriving very late that Friday evening (or morning - I think some of them walked in at 2am from Burtibang), Kieran, Oscar Will and Josh coming from Kathmandu with Kieran’s friends Issy and Alice and Freya and Alix lugging a months worth of holiday stuff down the Arnakot hill. It absolutely poured it down with rain the next morning, so after giving everyone some early morning coffee and boiled egg, we decided to have a day in and head off to Pyuthan the day after. It would’ve been miserable walking in the monsoon, and although everything cleared up pretty quickly, it was still worth having a rest day. We went for a group gumna and then afterwards down to get Freya and Alix’s last parcels from Devisthan, which turned out to be amazing for dinner, and we made eleven plates of tomato pasta with parmesan and oregano from Freya and Alix’s families respectively. We said our goodbyes to Sophie that day, who was heading off to a students house before going back to Pokhara then Kathmandu. 

Feel free to skip these moments, but I had some thoughts that I couldn’t fit anywhere else, listed below:

Miscellaneous:

• One night we awoke at two in the morning to a rumble and the earth shook a little. I asked Ashvi if she felt it, and we decided that it was a landslide. The monsoon rains cause for lots of landslides and problems. Ashvi went to the toilet and I didn’t go back to sleep until she got back, because there were accompanying flashes of lightning and I wanted us both to be safe in our room before I went back to sleep. The next morning we asked Anna and she said that it was an small earthquake. 

• My mobile broke in the last few months of my time in Nepal, and it wasn’t worth getting a new one so Eli lent me his iPod which was so nice of him. Music and having a speaker really increased my enjoyment of the last few months. I didn’t have a working charger, however, so one day I ran down to Burtibang after school (about five) and managed to get back before dark, which I felt quite proud of, considering I made it there and back in less time than the way to Harpe the first time we arrived. My hill climbing ability has definitely improved.

• In the last few months I didn’t go for so many runs, because the weather was really warm and muggy, meaning it wasn’t as fun, but I did go on some morning walks before school. I tried to get up at six and go for some exploration around Harpe. Going for a morning walk and getting out of the village feels good, and it means your head is a bit clearer for the rest of the day. I loved being productive and getting a walk in, then household chores in the morning. I think I will miss getting the washing up done and all the manual labour that you get to do in the village, like clothes washing, cleaning rooms, mudding. It feels so productive and useful to get these things done. A lot of time is spent on these things, but the time spent just feels like living to the full. 

• There have been so many bugs during monsoon season; massive spiders and big floppy flying insects as well as so many mosquitoes. I’m now very neutral to strange bugs, although I often went to sleep early rather than reading or writing at night when it was dark because a small light attracted so many bugs, and you could also see so many at night.  

After we finished school, it really felt like the year was almost over, but I had a crazy last month, spending it in Pyuthan, Harpe and Pokhara. I’m now back at home and it’s got a lot harder to find the time to finish this but I still want to inform you all. This blog is also now nearing 20,000 words so I’m going to summarise the last month quite briefly - if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Pyuthan

1. On the way to Pyuthan it got so wet that the river got super fast so we couldn’t go past it in the jeep from Arkha, and we got so wet that we didn’t even care anymore and we all ran through the rain joyfully, absolutely soaked all the way up to Puja. 
2. We went to Eli and Liam’s last few days of school and loads of the class 5 kids gave me love letters with Isor and Urmila written on them - very cute.
3. We went to Allanah’s village Khung for her leaving ceremony, and it tipped it down with rain and my flip-flops broke, but Eli, Josh, Ashvi and I turned up ragged looking but very happy to see Alannah’s village. She gave us amazing egg fried rice.
4. I stayed with Eli in Puja after that for a just under a week longer and it was so much fun. It was also interesting to see the differences between Harpe and Puja - Puja is more rural, and therefore less developed and arranged marriages and caste based traditions seem much more common.
5. I met all the people that Eli had become close to and we spent some good evenings eating at his host family’s house - Laxmi and Ganesh are great. His students Dilip and Santosh are also amazing - we watched Santosh finish making a knife at their forge and Dilip made me a flute out of bamboo. 
6. I realised how beautiful Puja and the surroundings are - Eli and I went for a great swim in the river that had a really strong current and hence a super fast waterfall. The mist was otherworldly - the monsoon makes for scenes almost out of a film - Nepalis appearing and disappearing through the mist followed by the goats they’re herding. We explored the copper mines (where there were so many bats and bat poo - I fell down two metres into the darkness and it felt kind of scary) and then when we came out of the cave the mist covered everything and it was like we were alone in the world. 
7. Eli’s last day was great - we went round the village giving out teddies to the best student’s families, went to school to say goodbyes and I had fun playing flute with Bishnu. He said some great lines and advice.

To Harpe and beyond

1. We took Dilip and Santosh to Baglung for a final gumna. It was great being the four of us and Santosh is so good at learning and such a hard worker, I am excited for his future - I hope he goes far. The walk involved teaching, laughing, singing Nepali songs, lots of leeches and me sliding down a slope on my bum because it was so steep and slippery. 
2. I got really ill and had a bad fever when I got to Harpe but was so happy to see Anna and the villagers - I was so excited that people thought I was drunk. I taught Santosh some piano and wished I had more time to teach him properly - I taught him the Nepali national anthem on the melodica with numbers written with whiteboard pen. I tried a bit of teaching him music - I want him to learn so he can play the hymns from the music in his church - maybe the new volunteers can teach him.
3. Eli, Santosh and Dilip all went off to Dhorpatan but I was really ill so I was quite sad and therefore left to see everyone in Jhimpa before I was planning to, even though we only had a night in Jhimpa. It was cool to meet Kieran’s friends, James and Kabir, and also strange to hear and feel more about UK culture again.
4. I had a really bad tummy and sat on the bus the next morning going off to Burtibang to go to Pokhara and I was vomited on my one of my students who was sitting on my lap. Eli got a hernia and we got an ambulance to Pokhara with Dilip and Santosh too and almost got a helicopter, but the weather was too bad for one to be sent - the insurance company wanted to. Eli felt better then I got worse and had to use the toilet in the main Police headquarters of Baglung - they all looked at me very strangely. The jeep was so bumpy and I felt so sick but we made it to Pokhara and sent off Dilip and Santosh the following day back to Pyuthan after meeting Ashvi, Will and Josh who had been in Jarjakot. 
5. Pokhara we did some very Pokhara activities like the movie garden, bid Eli happy birthday and goodbye because he was going home to the UK. We ate western food but I had no appetite or energy so it wasn’t too fun. For Eli’s birthday we watched Interstellar and Kieran and Alix had made a lovely powerpoint with pictures of the year and happy birthday which was played after the film. (After the second time watching it I still didn’t really understand interstellar but loved it anyway).
6. Pokhara Lakeside is the sort of place where you end up spending too much money and sitting around not doing much, so after Eli left we booked a a three day rafting trip. It all felt quite strangely touristy but it was fun anyway and I felt like my appetite was coming back a bit. It was good fun spending time with everyone and the rafting was fun for the first day.
7. The second day of rafting was really misty and rainy - you could barely see five metres into the distance at some points. The river was really fast flowing and it got so cold. We got to this really massive rapid and our raft apparently tipped to ninety degrees. Almost all of us fell in the water and I got trapped under the boat and couldn’t breathe. Then, when I came out for air, I couldn’t take a breath then got sucked under again. It was pretty scary and I think it made me feel like the rafting was more dangerous than I had originally thought - even the instructors seemed a bit worried. I’m not sure if it was the shock, I don’t know, but the next morning I couldn’t remember the previous day and couldn’t figure out where I was. It was all very strange, but I felt fine a few hours later. After the whole experience with the rafting, I decided that I needed to go back to the village so I could rest a little and prepare for leaving so I went back on the bus on the final day of rafting. 

The final stay in Harpe

1. The final bus journey to Harpe was a tough one; I ended up in the middle seat at the back, squeezed in between four Nepali men, one of whom was very drunk and wet himself, which ended up going on my foot. I ended up being talked at nonstop by another guy, when I was really tired, and then eventually deciding to sleep on the floor. As is usual in monsoon season, the road conditions were very poor and we ended up almost falling into a huge hole at the side of the road. We stopped for two or so hours at about one in the morning, whilst some of the passengers worked on filling the hole in. I tried to sleep on the floor outside but it was drizzling, so in the end after being told it was okay I went back to the bus to catch up on some sleep. I made it to Burtibang pretty late, but I ended up getting a lot of sleep from that stop until the morning, so I felt revived by the time I’d had a kitkat and coffee upon arriving to Buritbang.
2. My life during the first few days in the village featured visiting friends houses, going on some walks, getting Nepalis to go through my hair and get rid of my nits (I had loads in my hair, and this removal took a long time), a birth ceremony, some great conversations with Anna about topics we hadn’t spoken about before (rape, safety in Nepal versus other countries, the LGBTQ+ community) and spending time with Archan who was being very cute.
3. I went on a big trip for two days with Rita and Sanjita to visit Rita’s two sisters, one of whom lives in Kanchi Bazaar and is a Christian and one who lives two hours walk up from there. Both of them are very young and have young children too. The younger of the two older sisters is slightly younger than me and her house is very isolated in the hills (not accessible by road although they are building one soon apparently) and she has a one year old baby. It seemed like she spent a lot of time just sitting looking after her baby. We walked up there the morning after staying in Kanchi Bazaar which took a few hours and went on some wanders. We didn’t arrive back until late afternoon in Harpe. It was very tiring and I managed it all in flipflops, and on the final hill up to Harpe when the monsoon rains began, I slipped and fell down a paddy field ledge and scarped my tummy and cut my little toe. It got infected and took ages to heal; it’s only got better after antibiotics from the UK.
4. Archan and his friends were being very funny and one of them said (unless I misheard) “Bibekko goo kasto auncha” (what’s Bibek’s poo like) - I told Anna and we had a good laugh.
5. I finished Purple Hibiscus, which is a book that Sophie lent me - I won’t go into details but I would highly recommend.
6. Ashvi arrived in the village and Anna and I were both very happy - Anna, Sanjita, Ashvi, Archan, Emkumari (the postman’s wife) and I all went on a trip to kotha to play on the swings. 
7. Our final trip to Arnakot was on Freya’s birthday, and although the jeep ride was terrible (maybe the worst ever) and the cake got squished, we got there and had a good time with their best friend Junu and then the Jhimpa boys too.
8. Our final day in Harpe felt very strange, since we hadn’t been at school in over a month but we had our goodbye ceremony that day. We gave gifts out and made speeches and said goodbye to our lovely colleagues who we have spent this year getting to know. It was a beautiful beautiful day, and my wish of seeing a clear view of Dhaulagiri on our last day came true, and I felt blessed. We got some great handmade bags as gifts from the school, Anna and Emkumari and said our goodbyes. I felt so happy because Lalmati said goodbye to us, who has a massive heart. We had a big cleaning session and gave lots of things away. 
9. Our final morning was a tough one, particularly saying goodbye to Anna and Archan. We know we will meet them again, but I will miss them and their beautiful smiles. After saying goodbye, we had a final big walk, because there had been a big landslide just after Burtibang (classic monsoon). We carried all our bags to Rajkut (they were so heavy) and then Dinu got us a porter to help us the rest of the way. Dinu gave us a second goodbye, with tikka and scarves, so we were glad we went that way in the end. The morning was lovely and clear and it was nice to leave Harpe a different way than we had come a year earlier. The walk was really hard with my infected feet and took about three hours, but we arrived in Bingiti eventually, exhausted both emotionally and physically.

We left Kathmandu on the 11th August, after a great few days spending time with our Project Trust friends. I fulfilled my dream of going to a flute making session in Kathmandu, and learning a bit more about the bamboo flute, which I hope to pursue. 

I am now back in the UK adjusting back to my life here. I will be beginning my course at the University of Manchester in September studying Spanish and Chinese, and hope to keep my Nepali up meanwhile. I want to say thank you to all of those who supported me this year, and also everyone who read all my blog posts. I have had the most incredible, life-changing year, and I've learned so much. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me on Facebook or email me (orlafawcett@gmail.com). I will make a photo album of my year very soon; there are a lot of photos to source and sort through (the photos below are in a bit of a random order). If anyone is interested in a presentation, I am also happy to come and present about my year and talk about my experiences. Also, best of luck to next years volunteers if any of you are reading this! 

A particular thank you goes to my grandfather Andrew Fawcett, who passed away just a few weeks before I came home. He has supported me so much throughout my life, and has followed my journey from the very beginning. Although he never got to read this last post, this is dedicated to him. Thank you. xxx

This blog is a personal blog written by Orla Fawcett, therefore the views expressed in this blog are those of Orla Fawcett and NOT those of Project Trust.