Media

Here are two videos we've enjoyed recently, to do with our life here, kind of...

KISC - "This Is Us" is a selection of photos taken around school by a professional photographer on her recent visit and put together with music.

KISC - This Is Us from kisc school on Vimeo.

This video has been put together by a good friend of ours and the voice over is from another good friend. We thought it was quite funny, not that we are advertising the organisation (International Nepal Fellowship) or suggesting that these gifts would make excellent Christmas presents, although of course they would.


The KISC website has also been updated and relaunched recently. To take a look go to www.kisc.co. There is loads of information about KISC on here, which wouldn't be interesting to most of our readers, but some of it might, particularly the galleries page. You may also want to look at the vacancies page, just in case you know anyone you might be interested in working at KISC.

Festivals

“In honour of the auspicious occasion of Dashain Festival and Tihar Festival 2010 we are happy to present this offer of buy one BrandName Cup a Soup, get one free”

Monsoon is finished. The weather is cooling. The fields are green and the rivers are full. School is on holiday. The first kites are being flown over the housetops. The nights are drawing in. Festival season is upon us.

I saw the above offer in a local shop yesterday, and felt it was almost too good to turn down, but turn it down I did. However all the shops have banners of various sizes wishing us a Happy Dashain 2010 (or 2067 depending on how Nepali they are) and there are many billboards expressing similar wishes.

Dashain is the biggest Hindu festival here in Nepal and consists of 10 days of festivities where various things are celebrated and worshiped (including cars!) and is followed by a week of visiting family etc, a bit like the week between Christmas and New Year in the UK. So in total about 17 days of worship and festivities. It starts tomorrow but the first few days are usually quite quiet and schools and work continues until the bigger celebrations next week.

Tihar then follows at the end of the first week of November. Better known as Diwali this is the festival of light, and we blogged about it last year.

Although Nepal is now officially a secular country, Hinduism is obviously still the de facto religion. It can be a difficult time for Nepali Christians who don’t wish to partake in the celebrations and festivities as there can be pressure from family and community to join in.

We’re spending the holiday by heading of to Pokhara for a 5 days of rest and relaxation, and 3 days of trekking. Thought we’d give trekking a go with Samuel, to see how he, and his porter Dad, find it. We’ve not been to Pokhara since before Samuel was born, so it will be nice to go back, and spend some time away from the hustle, bustle and pollution of Kathmandu.

The photos on this blog were taken on a recent walk (and we confess none by us but by our skilled photographer friend, Catherine).

One Year On

This week we passed the one year anniversary of our return to Nepal as a Family. Looking back over that year it has been an interesting time with some good times and plenty of challenges. We thought for this update we might highlight some of the more significant ones.

Vice Principal

Our return a year ago signalled the start of Dan’s work as the Vice Principal of the Secondary School. Although a lot of the main parts of his job description he was already doing before, such as the timetable, assessment and being a member of the SMT, it’s amazing how just having a title placed on you increases the amount of what we like to call “dukkha” that comes your way. (I’m sure no translation is needed).

We’ve already mentioned in other blogs and letters about the biggest challenge in that time has been being without the Secondary Principal for 6 months, however she is now back and Dan is enjoying being part of a principaled team!

Dan would say he’s enjoyed so much of the work that he has done over the last year and taking on the challenges of the role. It helps that he’s working in an great school that has some fantastic students, and really great staff too.

Motherhood

While Parenthood began a little longer than a year ago, it was the return to Nepal that saw Dan go back to work full time and Becky become a full time house mum. This brings with it extra challenges living in a city like Kathmandu with it’s lack of green space and activities specially designed for one year olds. However, it also brings with it a great community. Becky has built up a strong relationship with another first time mother of a baby just a couple of months younger than Samuel. She’s also been able to join a mothers prayer group, a singing group and frequented at least two other mums and tots groups from time to time.

Becoming One

Samuel has faced all the normal challenges of a 3 month old to a 15 month old and taken them in his stride. He has learnt to sit up, walk, start to talk and have lots of fun in the process. He has a good friend in William, the son of Becky’s close friend, and managed to see more of the world than the average one year old. As you can see from the photo above he's adapting well to the culture. Next month he’s off on his first trek!

Transient Community

The mission community is always changing and during this year we have said goodbye to some great friends with whom we built up good friendships during our first, Samuel-less, stint here. There are always people leaving Nepal, and of course arriving, but saying goodbye always seems much harder than the joys of the Hello’s. Also, the longer we are the harder it seems to build good new friendships, as in the back of your mind there is always the thought, we’ll just have to say goodbye to these guys soon. However, we do try to fight that and invest in new relationships and are thankful for the new people that are always arriving. The photo is from a get together with two other familes we had, one of which left Nepal last week.

New School Year

Tomorrow is the start of the new school year. We’ve had a lovely five week summer break, of which nearly four we spent in the UK. It was great to see loads of family, the photos on this blog are of Samuel and his Grandparents, and quite a few friends while we were there, sorry if we didn’t get to see you.

Regular readers will know that a key issue is always staff. As my role in the Secondary is managing the timetable and allocating all the staff; working out exactly how many we need and to do which jobs is one of my main concerns. Well we are delighted to be fully staffed for the start of this year, thanks to a number of new staff that are joining us for this year.

In the secondary we have a new Art teacher from Holland, and a teacher of junior Science who had joined us from India. We have a guy from Switzerland on his gap year here for 8 weeks to work as a teaching assistant. We also have a couple from the US who’ve come out with their 3 children. He’ll be helping teach some of the music and she will be one of the Primary class teachers. We’ve actually got 2 other new Primary class teachers, one in her 20’s and another who’s a bit later on in her career who’ve come from the States. The primary are also blessed with quite a few gap year students this year who are coming for one or two terms, including one I met on Friday who’s come out from Northern Ireland to do some PE and Art. But best of all (from my point of view) we have the returning Secondary Principal who’s back after 6 months home leave in Australia.

I was talking with her and the Head of the whole School on Friday about our staffing and while we are extremely pleased to have so many good new staff coming we also realised that we were the only 3 Mission members of staff who are committed for longer than the next two years. This is part of the nature of the school. So many staff come and go during each year it does make some things hard.

However, so many of the staff have a huge impact even in just a short space of time. One that springs to mind is a Northern Irish girl that came out to help with PE for 6 months at the end of 2008, but had to leave early due to a knee injury. Many of the students remember her well and are looking forward to her return in January 2011. Another is a couple who came from Australia in January, she is now taking on the role of Head of the English Faculty and he is about to run the school play this term. They are due to return to Australia at Christmas, but they will leave a significant legacy from just one year’s service.

Update

Opps. Forgot to mention one new member of staff in the secondary. A certain former KISC Geography teacher who is returning this term to teach some of the A-Level. Goes by the name of Becky!

Deadlines

As you may have heard, the deadline for the constitution passed peacefully on the 28th May with a last minute agreement being made between the main parties to extend the Constitutional Assembly for one year.

There were three points to the agreement; compromises that the parties agreed to make in the coming days. However, nearly a month later we have not seen any move on these three points and so no unifying government has been created.

The main issue of contention seems to be that one party want the Prime Minister to step down. He has said he will do that once it has been decided who will take his place and how things will be handed over so as not to leave a power vacuum. He also wants the other parts of the agreement to be meet, but the other parties want him to go first.

So it seems to be at a deadlock at the moment, as the various parties discuss who might go forward for the post when it becomes available.

However, whoever the candidates are, a majority need to agree on who should take the post and there is no party with a majority and no coalition seems to be forming between any parties.

So all still seems a little unsure here at the moment and the constitution is still not moving forward.

In other news:
Samuel celebrated his first birthday a couple of weeks ago, and you can see he enjoyed the cake in the photo.

We’re still waiting for the monsoon to start. We’ve had a little rain over the past week or so which has temporarily relieved the oppressive heat, but nothing regular or heavy enough to make a real difference. A heavy monsoon has been predicted for this year which is needed to build up the water supplies in the reservoirs and for crops to grow so hopefully it won’t be long.

We’ll be in England for most of July for a short holiday and so are looking forward to escaping the heat for a bit, as well as seeing family and friends of course!

Noises of Nepal

Sat having breakfast this morning I could hear a man walking up the street blowing a loud blast on his whistle at short intervals and it really hit home to me what a noisy country Nepal is. Every noise has its meaning and purpose and only a few bother you after a while, but it’s never quiet.

The guy with the whistle is the garbage man and his little cart, letting people know he’s coming to collect their rubbish. Accompanying him in the streets are the fruit and vegetable sellers, who call out the produce they have with them on their bikes as they wonder the streets, the mattress stuffers who have a very primitive box guitar which they twang to inform you they are coming and the plumber who wonders along rattling a all his metal work on a big ring.

As I'm typing this I can hear the flock of pigeons who live in our neighbours roof and the carpentry factory just down our lane with its electric saw. When I say factory I mean shack propped up against the side of another building on a small strip of land. We’ve never worked out how you get in their to order your furniture as there is a wall separating the lane from the land, which is also about a 6ft drop down from the lane. Deliveries pass the wood over the wall and down to a guy below. I also heard a minute ago the elaborate sounding horn of a truck out on the ringroad which is about 400 metres from our house.

When you are out on the roads your ears are dominated by the sound of horns. I know this isn’t unique to Nepal, but it took some getting used to when coming from England. The horn is used to let people know you are there, all the time. When going round corners, overtaking cyclists or pedestrians, coming to a junction, letting your chowkhidar know you have arrived home and can he come and open the gate or just because you like the sound of it, the horn must be used.

Power makes a noise here too as so the din of generators can be heard counteracting the 12 powerless hours faced by business. Then at home when the power returns we here the noise of the fridge turning on, which is greeted with the cry of “bhatti aayo” (power has come).

In the evenings when we are watching a DVD we usually have to pause it at some point as all conversation is drowned out as a jumbo jet takes off over our house. Then we go to bed and the noise doesn’t stop. Dogs bark throughout the night, regularly setting each other off, and the cats from the house behind us were screeching at 4 yesterday morning. Then at 6 we are woken (if Sam hasn’t done so already) by the noise of the bells, trumpets and choruses from the Catholic Church behind us as they start their morning worship and the Hindu temples all around as people raise their gods by ringing bells.

Teachers Needed

Dan has returned to school this week having finished the Easter break. We had a fantastic 2 week break in Thailand. We got to go to Thailand as BMS organised a retreat for all the mission workers in Asia. We also had Dan’s sister with us for the last week of term and the first week of the holidays.

At the retreat there were about 40 mission workers who serve with BMS across 5 different countries in Asia. They do a wide variety of jobs, mostly focused around development work. There was a guy who is the administrator for an eye hospital and a lady who is training women in basic business skills. Plenty of people from Nepal who work in different projects such as one guy who is working with conflict resolution and his wife who is teaching young adults about sexual health and reproduction. A lady from Thailand who runs a foster home for disabled children and another lady who works with sexually trafficked women in Bangkok.

There were 5 families with school aged children and another 6 of us who teach the children of mission workers in different countries. And one message came from all of them. The need for more teachers. So much work is enabled by a handful of teachers who come and serve in these countries making it possible for the families to stay. At KISC we have around 160 students and the vast majority of these come from families of mission workers. Many of these workers would not be in Nepal without KISC, stopping much of the great development work going on in this country.

So if you know of anyone who is a teacher and fancies a challenge, suggest working overseas in a mission school. It’s not for everyone, but for us it has been such a privilege and we have learnt and grown so much from it. Doesn’t have to be at KISC or in Nepal, there are plenty of places around the world and plenty of missions that support this work. (But while we’re here, KISC is in urgent need of Primary Grade Teachers, a head of English, an Art teacher and a music teacher for August)