And at the End of the Day...

Fridays are half days here at Kopila Valley School, and today we did some really awesome crafts! Not only were they fun, but they are also super functional :) Since the desks in the classrooms are all slightly slanted toward the students, their pencils roll off very easily and they also always have their erasers and pencil sharpeners scattered around their tabletops. How ever will we fix this?! Well, we have found the answer to this, and most problems of the world - Paper Mache. (According to one paper mache fanatic's website, it can even be strong enough to build a house! haha) There will be no house building going on here, but we are having the kids make their own pencil holders made from used water and soda bottles which, after they are dry and painted, we will nail along the tops of the tables. We will also be having them make small containers for the ends of each row of desks to catch their pencil shavings in. This will help to keep all the kids at their desks instead of getting up to go to the dustbin every 5 seconds, and Lisa and I have found some cool crafts that use the pencil shavings to make feathers and scales on pictures of animals and petals on flowers. I think I smell a recycling movement in the making here at Kopila! We've been asking the teachers and kids to bring in their old newspapers, water bottles, cardboard containers, jars, anything, because we can use it all. We're kind of limited when it comes to art supply availability (I'm pretty sure we are the only school that even does arts and crafts at all) and there is no trash or recycling system in Surkhet so everything just gets burned or thrown into the sewer/on the ground. In the mean time, everyone thinks we're crazy for hoarding our trash the way we have been, but they'll see! So if anyone has any ideas for arts and crafts using minimal supplies and recycled materials please please share!

Project number two had the kids using balloons to make paper mache baskets. Some kids covered the whole balloon so they will have nice colorful paper mache balls, which is ok too. Project number 3 (and my personal favorite) was paper plate turtle making! Well they weren't actually paper plates. They have these cool little bowls here that are made from dried leaves, leaf mache if you will, that are used at many of the food carts on the street. We get this amazingly tasty sauteed corn concoction called chaat sometimes, which is how we discovered the bowls. They're super inexpensive, more environmentally friendly than paper, and I think they looked even better than paper plates would have. If you don't already know, turtles are my favorite and so I was thrilled to see all the kids in KG and 1st Class each making their own. They were soooooo so cute, and everyone was so proud of their creations. My favorite thing was watching them all carry their little turtles home with them after school to show their families. I thought of when I would make something cool in school and be so excited to show my Mom what I had done. I'm happy these kids get to feel that too :)

Since the whole school was doing crafts today, we were so lucky to have Cristina take a few classes while others got started. She taught them some Hindu chants and yoga poses that she learned in Pokhara. The sound of the chanting was so great, and the kids definitely loved it. She also busted out the parachute that we brought for them and they played some games with that for a little while before it was their turn to get their paper mache on.

Overall it was a wonderful, successful, and exhausting day. I hope you like the pictures!!

The kids just had dinner (Chow mein! YES!) and are downstairs watching TV, a special Friday treat. Tonight the plan is to watch Ratatoullie, one of my favorites, and tomorrow...Bul Bule!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Bindu!!

I apologize for how long it's been since I've posted but things have been non-stop around here! Gosh, where do I even begin? Ok I guess I'll get a stressful, frustrating thing out of the way first.

So last week, I'm going to say Wednesday, Maggie and Tope had to travel to Lucknow, India to pick up the remainder of the school uniforms. Lucknow is a 12 hour drive from here, so we knew they'd be gone for over a day, but of course when they arrived the uniforms weren't ready so their overnight journey turned into a three day trip. Back here at Kopila Valley we had been dealing with a boil that one of the boys, Nabin, had developed smack dab on the middle of his forehead. Over the course of a few days it had gotten progressively worse rather quickly and we started to get concerned since it was clearly spreading fast. We could see that the infection started moving downward around his eyes and Frank became worried that it would get into his nasal cavity and ears. He diagnosed it as a Staph infection and took him to the doctor. Now this all sounds good and fine right? Well it would be except for the fact that I could be a doctor in Nepal. YOU could be a doctor in Nepal. We could all be doctors here and probably help people a whole lot more than the actual doctors here do. So the doc said impetigo, which it clearly was not, and sent them home with the same antibiotics which we already have here. Low and behold, in the middle of the night while Maggie was gone Nabin woke up crying because he was in so much pain. Frank decided he needed to go to the hospital, and we were getting ready to walk there when luckily Tope's nephew who was visiting woke up and offered to take them on the scooter. Oh, and this was after we called for an ambulance and were told that there was no driver. How do you like that? Big Nisha, who was translating for us, then told us that they were most likely lying and that the driver just didn't feel like coming out. Because that's how things work here. Maggie later told us that we were better off because the driver most likely would have been drunk anyway. Isn't that just great? And it gets better. They get to the hospital and there is no doctor. Of course. What were we thinking expecting there to be a doctor at the hospital at 2 am??? We must be crazy. There was one nurse. This hospital has six beds. And only beds. The way the hospitals work is that you show up, pay 50 rupees to see the doctor, he tells you what supplies he needs, you go back out of the hospital to the nearest pharmacy, buy the supplies yourself, then go back to the hospital to see the doctor again. Bleeding to death??? Oh too bad.

So anyway, there was no doctor there so Nabin was given some pain medication and told to come back at 7 am when the doctor would be in. Well it's a good thing they didn't go back right at 7:00 because they would have waited 2 hours for the doctor to show up. And when he did finally make an appearance he was well aware that he had previously misdiagnosed Nabin. Frank recommended stronger antibiotics and draining the infection, but the doctor said no to the draining. At that point there was so much frustration toward the doctor and the hospital that Frank got a prescription and brought Nabin home to treat him himself. This was a great move on Frank's part. Early in the afternoon we brought Nabin into the clinic and sterilized his forehead as best we could and had him all settled down and ready to have his infection drained with a syringe. THEN Frank took the syringe out of the package and apparently Nabin has a SEVERE phobia of needles. Like totally ridiculously out of control. At least with Madan and the other really little kids you can just hold them in your arms and do what you need to do, but Nabin fought us with everything he had and once again I felt awful trying to restrain this kicking screaming kid who is already in so much pain. An of course there was no reasoning with him that he would feel better afterward. A phobia is a phobia and there's no reasoning with an irrational fear. Eventually one of the women here came in and spoke to him in Nepali and got him to sit still long enough for Frank to stick him with the needle, at which point I think Nabin was too scared to move with a needle in him. I had the great job of holding his hands down and telling him what a brave kid he was being and passing along clean gauze. I really didn't think it was going to happen because he was kicking so hard it seemed impossible. How can you explain to a scared kid that you know they hate what you're doing and that it sucks and might hurt but that it has to happen and they will feel better afterward? You can't really, and I know now that I need some thicker skin. I've never cared for kids in this way before. I worked in nursing with adults, and I've experienced what it's like to put someone through something painful in order to make them better in the end, but when it's this kid who I've played with and feel totally attached to it's heartbreaking.

The wonderful news is that Frank was able to get so much of the infection out, and within two hours Nabin went from a miserable little boy who didn't even want to move to almost completely back to normal, bopping around and singing. By the end of the night he was like 200% better. It was really incredible. I was soooo happy. And so was Frank. It ALMOST made me forget about how awful the medical care here is. If someone had been dying here, they would have died. I haven't been to the hospital yet, but I'll definitely be going to check it out before I leave here. There must be a better way. This can't be how it is. It just can't.

Luckily, Nabin was all better for the SHOW the next morning!!!!! Kopila Valley School's first ever show! Late in the day Thursday the stage still wasn't finished, and I had given up hope that we would be using it on Friday morning, but thanks to the wonderful workers, it was ready to go when I woke up!!! But of course, it just couldn't be that simple. The power had been out here almost the whole day before and all night. (It also hadn't rained in a couple days which made it crazy hot!! but that's another issue) By that point, there was also no solar power. Sidenote: We are the only ones in Surkhet with solar power, so when the electricity goes out as it often does we still have some lights that work and there is power for the workers at the school. The fans, however, do not. So since the electricity had been out for so long the solar had been used up and we had no way of powering up the speakers to play our music for the songs and dance in the show! Maggie and Tope were still not back from Lucknow, and things were looking pretty glum. Although my new motto is "things could be a lot worse", and I tried to be positive. Oh and 6th class also was without their cd for their dance because they had left it in this little sound system type thing, and with no power to turn it on, they couldn't eject it. So we resorted to using the computer to play our music and hoped that maybe if everyone was really really quiet they would be able to hear. And then....word spread that Maggie would be home in five minutes!!! Relief! Maybe she would have some solution. Then the beautiful mind of Lisa started turning and she came up with such a brilliant idea. Why not run the Ipod and cds through the speakers in the car and pull the car up to the stage?! OF COURSE!!! So once again Lisa and Scorpio saved the day.

Everything about the show was so wonderful. I stood there with my camera like a proud parent, and yes I teared up quite a few times :) It was just overwhelming seeing these kids finally perform what they had been working so hard on. There were so many parents and grandparents and guardians and everyone there to watch. And as I stood there all I could think about was that this was the very first time in any of their lives that they have ever been on a stage. That they have ever performed at all. It was the first time that parents got to watch their kids sing and dance and read. I did gymnastics when I was little. I played soccer. I was in plays. I took dance lessons. I played guitar. I tapped danced my heart out in our foyer because that was where the floor was already a little scratched up. I sang and sang and sang despite Amber informing me of every single time I changed keys (which was a lot). My whole younger life revolved around doing something, anything, and my parents watching and cheering me on. They sat through a soccer game every single weekend. They even sat through practices when I was on a team too far away for them to go home and come back. My poor Dad sat through dance recitals watching dozens of 9 year olds who were too big to still be cute and funny, but too little to actually be good and interesting to watch. And this was my life. I was given every opportunity to find what I loved and what I was good at, and my parents watched me grow through it all.

This was the very first time any of these kids or parents had that. I just couldn't get over it and I started to cry. I still feel emotional when I think about it. I'm so happy to have played a part in this, and I am so so proud the kids. The readers, the puppeteers, the dancers, the singers. Everyone. Everything they did was the best they had ever done it. We have pictures and videos, but the videos have proved impossible to upload here and I'm working on the pictures. I pinky swear that I will upload everything when I get home. It's too wonderful to not share!!!

One more exciting thing before I go. Reading tuition keeps getting better and better. I'm going to take a video of the class so that everyone can see and understand the magic happening in it. Yesterday, the kids sounded out a word all by themselves. The word was can. Which I think is just that much cooler....(you CAN read!!!! hahaha) They were probably thinking of a tin can, but I don't really care because in my mind it has special symbolic meaning and I'd like to keep it that way :) So it may not sound like much, but these are kids that didn't know any letter sounds three weeks ago. Lisa would hold up the letter c and get blank stares. Now they know all the sounds. We started with simple words like me, go, do, and it. That alone would have been enough for me, but then Lisa asked them if they wanted to try a three letter word and they excitedly all said yes! Three letter words are a big jump because it involves more blending of the sounds. So she went for it, and as she wrote the letters c-a-n on the board all the kids, all together, sounded out the sounds of each letter and made a beautiful smooth word. It's difficult for me to explain the method and how it works, so hopefully the video will help. And if anyone is interested in looking up the Spalding Method, its fascinating. These kids CAN learn English!! They are!! And like Lisa said, if you can learn English you can go anywhere in the world. It was a really special day and Lisa and I were both teary eyed as we high-fived the kids and they got their bags to leave.

Maggie later told us that statistically women who can read have, on average, 2 fewer children than women who cannot and they marry 3 years later. That is huge. If a girl gets married when she is 18 instead of 15, thats a great difference. Women in the market here can't do any simple math and so they get cheated out of money. They can't read signs or make phone calls because they don't know numbers. Not every girl here will become a doctor or a teacher. Some will marry by the time they are 18. Some will never leave Surkhet. But they will be better off because they can read and write. They will understand the importance of sending their children to school and helping them learn. They will be able to take their vegetables to the market and sell them and write up their own bills without having to wait for their husbands to do it for them. Listening to Maggie say all this opened my eyes so much. The huge difference might not be made in this generation, but there is a difference being made and it will continue on. And at least one of them will be the doctor or the teacher or the nurse. Someone here will be the leader that makes the difference for the next generations. I know it.