A piece on transportation

This week my coworker and I went to a local village school to meet with the principal and head teacher to prepare for our child rights and trafficking awareness program next week.  The school is located up on top of the hill surrounding Hetauda and made for an interesting motorcycle experience, my first time on a motorcycle in fact. During attempt 1, we started up a road that was fairly washed out with large divots and boulders.  To ease his navigational difficulties, I offered to walk and meet him at the top.  I took off, moving quickly, laughing at my punishment for skipping my morning walk.  After about 30 sweat dripping minutes I arrived only to receive a phone call confirming the bike was in fact stuck and I needed to head back down.   The rest of the afternoon turned into a team building exercise to escape the hole the bike  was in and ride back down to safety.

The following day went more smoothly.  We made it safely to the school to find the principal, teachers, and other local NGO affiliates were in the middle of a meeting.  Joining them, we were able to directly speak to our program proposal and introduce the idea of child rights.  Although the discussion was in Nepali, I was able to understand bits and pieces before receiving an overview in English afterwards.  We were saddened to find that the school was currently sponsoring a whole list of kids that could not afford to pay for classes, or even a pen, many of the children would arrive unfed slowing their ability to perform in class, and 14 of the children don’t have parents and are either being taken care of by older siblings or neighbors.  How do you teach children about their right to freedom when they can’t afford their basic needs? We hired a professional facilitator to take lead of the session so hopefully he will help me understand as well.

(The school were we will be teaching.)

(The view from the school.  Not too bad!)

(Local home of a student)

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Last week I shared some insight on the implementation of the new constitution.  Quick follow up on that matter – over the last week the two frustrated parties (Tarai and India) have quickly escalated their concerns through border blockades. As a landlocked country, the primary method of bringing in goods is through the Indian border, the alternative is through China which is still blocked as aftermath of the earthquake. The Tarai are responsible for all access in and out of the country from India, so in rebellion, they mutually have caused havoc to Nepal’s ability to import supplies. As a result, this week prices for simple commodities such as spices, fabrics, sugar etc. have increased significantly. The largest concern however is oil.  Nearly all of Nepal’s oil comes from India on tankers, which are currently lined up for miles at the border, very slowly making it past customs.

I read about the lack of oil for a few days and then started noticing trucks parked all along the roads of Hetauda.  Yesterday, I walked past the only gas station that I know of here to find a line as far as the eye could see, hoping for their turn to fill up.  This concerns me as one of the primary means for income in the city is to work as a driver (whether bus, taxi, micro, or transporting goods). Definitely not what an already impoverished stricken country needs to experience.

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On a lighter note, last week we celebrated world heart day at the home by creating paper hearts for each of the children with a fact about your heart, heart disease or how to keep your heart healthy.  It paired as an opportunity to not only teach the children best practices for keeping their heat healthy but also an opportunity to practice English.  Double whammy!  It reminded me of the Jump Rope for Heart Days…

Today I got the chance to Skype with some of my beautiful friends all dressed up in Roman attire in celebration of a 30th birthday.  Cheers to you all.  Thanks for filling my day with a giant smile.