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Volunteer in Nepal - UK
Added: (Thu May 11 2006)
This was my second placement with INFO Nepal, and it just gets better. I arrived into the local ‘town’ of Syrabrubensi, tired and sore after the11hr bus journey, during which I calmly endured Tyler’s persistent vomiting and an old man trying to sit on my lap. Oh joy of joys!
I think I may have been lost for words on seeing my new placement. Stunning, Spectacular, Amazing….Wow they just don’t come near.
Each morning we got to see the snowcapped peaks of Langtang, Ganesh and Tibet Himal…I was like a pig in..
My host family were hilarious, from the insistent father Singhi trying to throw Raksi down our throats, the screaming “AAMMMMAAAAAAAAA” of little Pemba, to the crazy little mother Jhelm Jelmo who, although didn’t speak English became one of my loveliest friends and I will never forget her loving way of getting Pemba to sleep by scaring him half to death!! Those funny old Tamang ways!
DAILY LIFE….
Imagine this….. beautiful mosaic tiled bathroom, steaming hot showers and fluffy white towels… are you there? Cause I wasn’t. The closest thing to that in Goljung was a trip down the mountain to the local tap, where after waiting for the plates, clothes and bodies of the villagers to be washed I might be able to throw myself under it for an average of 4 seconds before I lost all feeling in my body…. Cold doesn’t even cover it. But it was ok, I had a good audience.
So obviously there was no electricity…. Actually that’s a bit of a lie, perhaps once or twice a week we might get some. Which meant bed time was when I was likely to fall down the stairs on a visit to the charpi outside at nighttime and then fall in cow shit… ha ha do these things only happen to me??
As the Bandh was on, the school wasn’t, so days were spent sitting outside with Jhelm Jelmo, taking corn off the husks or picking bits out of the rice we were to eat for dinner. Happy Days..
LIBRARY…
Our first introduction to the library was complete carnage, there may have been around 30 children all desperate to get inside and abuse, whoops, I mean meet the new volunteers…. We had to have a previous volunteer (Tyler) as doorman….
It started to settle down after the first week and we would have our regulars…. I say regulars in the loosest possible sense, it was always a bit like a lottery. They might come orrr they might just not… unfortunately when they didn’t it wasn’t due to laziness but that they had to go to work in the fields with their parents. I cant imagine many children in the UK being able to drag themselves away from there playstations, during their holiday, long enough to help their parents feed them..
The kids were filthy, completely and utterly filthy, so it was our job to get them to at least wash their hands before the library ended up being covered in ……. …..
The level of understanding was again completely varied due to the fact English is their third language, Tamang being their first. So we had SUCH fun trying to communicate and I may be wrong but I suspect when they didn’t want to do something their English suddenly deteriorated….. What cunning creatures they are
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Submitted by:
Julia Handreson