We arrived in Kathmandu without incident on Sunday morning after taking an alternate route on Air China via Chengdu and Lhasa. The usual Thai flights have been booked out for weeks which is a fantastic sign for Nepal, which is absolutely buzzing with tourists. Another bonus for us was flying over the expanse of the Himalayas and directly alongside Mount Everest – a view that always inspires.
It is the middle of the major festival time in Nepal which always adds to the excitement around town. Many Nepalis are wearing their best clothes and racing from house to house to share food with their friends and families. There are often offerings placed on the streets and out the front of people’s homes in the hope of attracting Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, into the home or shop.
On Monday we met with some Nepali friends who invited us to their home for some dal bhat, well I should say it was rather more special than the usual variety. They placed about 15 dishes in front of us containing everything from spicy chicken to goat’s lung and most things in between. It was wonderful to share the festival experience with a local family. We also talked with them about the current political situation in the country and unfortunately it sounds as though things are as up in the air as always.
Tuesday was the first day of ‘work’ and our first task was collecting our friend, Janet, from the airport – always an adventure in its own right! This is Janet’s first visit to Nepal and she is planning to work with us on devising some Journalism training program for women journalists. We will also be showing her some of the sights of Kathmandu as well as some of the projects we have been working on.
In the afternoon we met with Milan and Shanti, directors of CWISH, one of our partner organisations in Kathmandu. We had many projects to discuss with them and are excited to confirm that we will be running our first teacher training program in the model school at the beginning of November. Bec will be conducting a 3 day course for the teachers of the school on different teaching methods encompassing different learning styles. This is the first step in our long term plan to make the model school a resource for this type of work so that we can then expand the program to other teachers and schools thoughout all of Nepal!
On the model school, CWISH have taken over an existing school for this purpose about 1 month ago. We will be visiting the school next week and helping them with plans for decoration and sourcing resources and equipment. The school currently has about 200 students between Nursery and class 10, including 40 students living in the school hostel. We will be looking at a particular scholarship program that will be run through this school in the coming months so stay tuned!
We also discussed the jounalism program with Janet, Milan and Shanti. We are going to conduct an initial session one morning with some young women journalists who are currently working on their own community radio station. We hope to get an idea from speaking with them about exactly what type of things they are most interested in receiving support for and also an idea of what they are most passionate about in pursuing journalism in Nepal. From there we will be able to devise a program targeted to their needs and aspirations, and this can then be run on future visits to Nepal.
So, as you can see it’s full steam ahead for us here! Later in the week we will be visiting Bhaktapur and possibly Phulbari, and also checking in on some of the sponsored girls. As always we love to hear from you if you have any comments or questions – particularly whilst we are here in case it is something related to being in Nepal. That’s all for now but look out for more updates soon…
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