NEPAL

Last November I took my first trip outside of Australia. With my daughter, Amanda I travelled to Nepal and for seven weeks did volunteer work at the Everest Children's Home and then a monastery. From the moment we stepped off the plane it was confronting. The area around the airport looked like a bomb had demolished everything. Not a house looked complete or livable. People were dressed in dirty clothes and beggars knocked on the cab window. As we spent time there we realised that although there was poverty everywhere in Nepal that area was probably the worst. We saw people living on the street or in houses made from sticks and hessian. They ekked out a living any way that they could. However I also noticed something else: people were always smiling and laughing and happy.

The experience in Nepal was life changing. I am not sure how yet, but I know it was. I had two important thoughts. Firstly, how could countries which purport to be world leaders, and caring, christian nations let fellow human beings live in conditions such as this. The second, how resolute the human spirit is. Many Nepalese people live in poverty but they don't complain. They get on with life and smile and joke and laugh.

Nepal is one of the world's smallest and poorest countries. It is 853km long and 225kms wide at its widest (average 160kms wide). It starts at 91metres above sea-level and rises to 8,882 metres. It contains 9 of the world's highest 14 mountains over 7,925 metres, including Everest and Annapurna. Less than a third of the country is suitable for farming.By 2020 the population is expected to be about 34 million. In the 1960s 1 in 3 babies died and the life expectancy was just 29, today life expectancy is over 56.

It was a medieval feudal country up until the ruling Rana government was ousted in 1951. Before this time it wasn't open to tourists or outside visitors. In fact between 1796 and 1950 there are only 130 official visitors to the country recorded. The first group of tourists were in 1955. The country was really opened up in the 1960s by hippies who came for the free drugs and the easy lifestyle. Many lived in Kathmandu in tents, on what is known as Freak Street.

Prithvi Naraya Shah, a king of the House of Gorkha united the country in the second half of the 1700s. There are still older hill people who still do not realise their country is called Nepal.....they think Nepal is a small valley near Kathmandu. Only about 1/5 of the country gets electricity, and these suffer from regulkar blackouts, as we have found out. There is no centralised medical system or public works. However there is very little crime. There is pollution and smog....this comes from cement works, marble quarries and cheap petroland diesel....and causes a lot over dust over everything each day.

Nepal is also the world's only Hindu Kingdom. Hindu, Buddhism and to a lesser extent Christianity all blend together, but religion is very important and seems to permeate through everyday life.

If I had been asked 12 months ago to make a list of the countries i like to visit overseas Nepal would probably not have featured, now it probably heads the list. I think of it as a truly wonderful country, full of contrasts and wonderful people. If you would like to see more about Nepal, or about our adventures there then go to our blog: sevenweeksinnepal.blogspot.com

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

When I first began teaching I would attend professional development activities and inevitably you would be asked to write down why you were a teacher. Or to put it another way, what was your philosophy of teaching. You were usually given half an hour or so to do this at the start of the day..... which was coincidentally, convenient because it gave the presenter half an hour to get organised. You would sit there for half an hour trying to think of some answer so you could appear brilliant if called upon to read it out. I would wonder whether I was game enough to tell them I finished school and didn't know what to do when someone suggested teaching and mentioned you could get a scholarship to go to university. I would look around and see how the serious people were furiously filling their papers with their views on 'truth, justice and the department of education way'. Then I would revert to doodling or drawing cartoons. See I was keen, very keen but I just didn't have a philosophical vision or a star to steer myself by. I expected to develop this as I learnt my trade.

I began as a History and Special Education teacher. 'Special Education'! This was because I didn't want to teach English. My first practical session was at a high school in Sydney. I taught some History and hang around with the Special Education class. The star pupil was Stephen. He was 14 years old and had not spoken until he was about 9. The high school had a program where he would take messages around the school and this would encourage him to interact with staff and students. This program had been running for over a year so when Stephen appeared at the staffroom door with a note I opened it and read:

This note is of no consequence whatsoever. Just sign the bloody thing and send Stephen on his way.

During the two weeks I was there the class were learning how to cook peas and eat them. They had been doing this for nearly a term. They had coloured-in stencils of peas, grown peas, written stories about peas, and even made little felt pencil cases which looked like a pea pod.... complete with smiling little peas inside when you opened the zipper. During one lesson they had discussed how to cook peas and they had written out the method and had a look at the equipment needed. Now was the big day. A double lesson in which they got to cook and eat their peas. I had a history class during the first period and so at the break went down to the kitchen. Most of the kids were sitting eating their peas. But Stephen was in the corner huddled over the sink. I went over to him and found he was stuffing peas down the plug. "No, Stephen" I said "You are allowed to eat them". He paused long enough to turn and tell me in no uncertain terms "I don't even like spinach".

But Stephen was an expert in other things. He probably knew more about dinosaurs then all the teachers there put together. He could pronounce the names of dinosaurs that we had never heard of. He could tell you when they lived, what they ate, what size they were and how much they weighed. He was so good that the teachers would get him to give a talk to the year 7 classes when they were studying dinosaurs. This also built up Stephen's confidence.

Teaching Special Education taught me a lot. A lot which shaped the way I taught and also transferred over into mainstream classes. It also shaped my 'philosophy' of why I teach. It can best be summed up by a story I once heard:

A famous American writer/philosopher was walking along a huge beach and there were millions of star fish washed up on the beach by a storm. As he walked along he saw a young man pick up a star fish and throw it back into the ocean. He watched for a while as the man picked up another and threw it into the ocean also. He walked up to the man and said "there are millions of them you can't make a difference". The young man paused, but then bent down, pick up another and walked to the water's edge and threw it into the ocean. He came back to the writer and said "it made a difference to that one".

I have already mentioned the Everest Children's Home in Nepal where my daughter, Amanda and I were doing volunteer work. When I returned home she stayed and did an extra month with the kids. In Nepal she spent all the money she possessed on the kids, including hiring them a tutor to try bring their grades up at school. She has also been trying to raise the money to send all of the children to private school as this will help them get a better start in life (there is a big difference in a government and a private school in Nepal). It cost so little to send these kids to school, around $400 a year per child. Amanda has done a fantastic job and there are only 6 kids left to find money for. Of course this won't solve the orphan problem in Nepal....but like the starfish.....it will make a difference to them. The pictures on this post are the children from the Everest Children's Home.