July 24, 2007
-
Day 3 in Kathmandu
So the past day and half I had been cooped up indoors because I wasn’t feeling very well. I think the combination of unfamiliar(but good!) food, cold showers, and lack of sleep has led to my body going a little haywire on me. Thankfully, one of my teammates, who is a doctor, returned from the hospital with some antibiotics that were intended for one of the relatives of our host family. As it turned out, he also went to a hospital and was given the exact same medicine. After she checked on me and learning a bit of my tendency for respiratory sickness, she concluded that the antibiotics she brought was exactly what I needed. I felt so much gratitude to God for that provision!
I’ve been feeling a bit better today, definitely will take a couple more days for my body to completely adjust to this environment in Kathmandu. One of the monkey wrenches that has been thrown at our group has been the amount of pollution in the city. It’s extremely bad! I don’t think I’ve ever breathed in this much sulfur dioxide my entire life in Boston as I have these last 3 days. This is definitely one of the things that we’re seeing needs to change for the Nepalese in Kathmandu. How that can be done will be something that we’re going to need to think through and explore.
Another interesting note about my time here is the teaching that we’re doing at the local government school. Here in Nepal, English is perceived as an elite language. If one were to learn how to speak in english, according to the local belief, than one is more prone to succeed in school and life. However, the government schools are built more on the principle of repetition and recital. Many of the students in the school live as domestic servants, meaning they work before school, and then work after school. They’re usually from lower caste families or low income families that can not afford a private school education for their children.
It’s been one of the issues that have been weighing on my heart. It’s clear that these kids are eager to learn, but the system they are apart of right now is intuitively not creating a learning culture. Instead, it’s more of an emulation model, where children simply repeat word for word whatever the teacher is teaching. This will definitely be an area that we’ll be focusing on when our team returns to Boston.
All right, gotta head out. Thank you for your emails and encouragements. Hope to see you all when I return to Boston on 8/4.
