The Colorful Gifts of Volunteering as a Teacher Trainer in Nepal
Sezgi Yalin, North Cyprus
Sezgi Yalin earned her M.A. in teaching English as a foreign language at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and English Literature. She worked as an English teacher and teacher trainer in the USA and Poland, and gained additional experience in the field in various countries such as UK, Spain, Egypt, China, Nepal, Tibet, Vietnam and Turkey. She currently works as a CELTA trainer at the English Preparatory School of the Eastern Mediterranean University in North Cyprus. Her research interests are teacher training and creative writing.
E-mail: sezgi.yalin@emu.edu.tr
Nepal, for me, is a man - a man whom I fell for about three years ago; a man who seduced me into his narrow alleys of delightful pleasures, into his sweet smell of incense, into his seductive colors of red, purple, green, and yellow; a man who came into my heart with a love that I feel is honest and truthful.
Nepal showed me his brightest spots when he opened his heart so that I could sample his gentle hospitality. He invited me to see the peaks of mountains within him and around him; he allowed me to witness the colorful flags of prayer that crown his heart. In turn, I gave myself to him in my purest state, in a way I never have with another man, another country.
Nepal showed me that no matter who you are, what your religion or nationality may happen to be, you are welcome to settle into his heart. He proved to me how global a country he can be.
I had kept him in my heart as long as I was away from him, in the hopes of returning to him as soon as possible. And, although it was difficult, I managed to return into his embrace after three years.
Nepal is as gentle, loving, sweet, and welcoming as when I left him three years ago.
Love is, however, sometimes so strong that it might also taste like hatred. And my love for Nepal carries a tinge of hatred for its capital, Kathmandu. As I enter this 'untidy' city for a second time, having waited for almost two hours on the bus in the maddening traffic jam blocking the only road from Pokhara, a city in central Nepal, going into the valley where Kathmandu is located, the air stings my nostrils and the noise offends my ears. It all tastes like cheap whiskey and I can feel it in my throat. I start coughing as I usually do when paying my debts to my habit of 'social smoking'.
I love being back in Kathmandu to enjoy its many 'new age' bookstores, cafés in wide open green gardens and bars on rooftops with live music. I need to remind myself that this is not the real Nepal, though - Kathmandu is very similar to many other cities which do not truly represent the country they are located in.
I am back in Kathmandu to run teacher training sessions for education students at Kathmandu University, where, luckily enough, I run into David, my best friend from Lhasa, Tibet, an English teacher I worked with there. We meet on Freak Street - a street made popular by tourists who come to Nepal looking for some 'psychedelic' time. It is a street where only the Nepalese people (and I) do not sport dreadlocks, a street which is 'more than the others' in Kathmandu where you can 'lose your head' to dreams and not to what you want to forget about back home or in your private life.
We sit on the floor of the rooftop of Moon Stay Bar with some Israelis and Belgians, all in dreadlocks, talking about the routes they all have followed in Nepal - the country where one, at least for a while, may call oneself a 'hippie'.
After traveling as a volunteer for about a month and training, under the sponsorship of Nepal English Language Teachers' Association (NELTA), about 350 primary and secondary teachers in different towns and villages in remote parts of the country, it is good to be back in Kathmandu, my last teacher training stop, living on my favorite rooftop. I am staying in a tiny room in the middle of the wide-open rooftop of Kathmandu Garden House and have a panoramic view of the city's cramped buildings and the surviving green hills which surround the valley.
Every morning, the plants on the roof give birth to beautiful flowers enjoying the monsoon rains. They usually take a break in the morning and I do yoga, trying my best to be oblivious to the noisy motorbikes that invade my privacy.
The funny thing about staying on the rooftop is that I end up taking three showers a day. You see, the shower is in a tiny room on the opposite side of the rooftop. The first shower is when I run to the bathroom under the heavy monsoon rain, the second is in the shower itself and the third is when I run back to my room under the continuing rain. I have not felt this clean during any of my other stops in Nepal.
I am happy I have more time in Kathmandu this time, as the last time I was here I was rushing between an international NELTA conference and the touristy sites of the city. This time, I experience more the city which the Nepalese writer Samrat Upadhyay describes in Arresting God in Kathmandu and The Guru of Love. When you really 'open' your eyes, it is a tough city for many of those who flock here from other parts of the country. Children roam the streets late at night smoking hash and begging for a piece of your late-night snack - usually momos (Nepalese dumplings).
The night before, a NELTA member, life-time resident of Kathmandu and a classmate of the Nepalese writer Upadhyay, confirms how tough Kathmandu can be on those who do not have much money or power. He shares with me the realities of Kathmandu while driving me back to my rooftop in the Paknajol area of Kathmandu in his small white car after a feast hosted at a restaurant called Bojhan Griha by the main NELTA executive committee for my contributions as a teacher trainer in Nepal. Bojhan Griha, a beautiful building in pastel colors of blue and yellow, used to be a palace. We sat on the floor and ate some delicious traditional Nepalese food served in bronze plates and bowls. As we watched the traditional dancers paint the beautiful interior with their traditional costumes, Laxman, the general secretary of NELTA and a good friend, presented me with words of appreciation for my volunteer work, and the NELTA president respectfully bowed and handed me a green shawl and a NELTA t-shirt.
The next morning, as I wait for my good friend Daya, also a NELTA member, to come from Pokhara to take me riding around in Kathmandu and show me more of the Nepalese Kathmandu, I watch Yves, the French owner of my rooftop, re-potting a purple begonia. He used to be a chef and traveled quite extensively in several different countries. He has been living in Nepal for fifteen years with his Nepalese wife Sangita and their son. Having settled for good here in Kathmandu, he looks content and at peace.
“One has to do what one has dreamed of doing,” he says, “before one can settle into one place.”
“Right,” I say, thinking about my own garden, the one in my dreams.
Another dream for me had been to work as a volunteer teacher trainer in Nepal. Now, in Kathmandu, I revisit this dream which has been realized beyond my expectations, and think about some of the places I visited in Nepal to hold sessions.
Tansen in the Palpa province of Nepal, situated on a low hill surrounded by beautiful green mountains, is my first stop of the NELTA training program. Even though I am in Nepal as a volunteer for NELTA, a perfectly well-networked volunteer organization all over Nepal with very supportive and hard-working representatives, the organization does not allow me to pay a single rupee for transportation, lodging, or food.
“What have I done in my previous life to deserve this?” I ask myself several times on the bus to Tansen, accompanied by Prem, NELTA member, a profound intellectual and a devoted academic. I really do not know why but my heart fills with joy and I silently give thanks to Nepal and NELTA for allowing me to live this beautiful time. It is a spectacular feeling.
I stay in Tansen for two days and work with primary and secondary school teachers. One of my colleagues, Gopal, tells me that I made the newspapers and will be broadcast on Nepali TV.
“So I have finally found fame in Nepal!” I joke with Gopal.
The teachers I work with in Tansen are extremely hard-working, motivated, and down-to-earth. The women are often shy but not more so than the men. They are all very intelligent and active, but under the poor circumstances of Nepal, I am told there is not much they can to do to help their students very effectively as they often have over 100 students in primary school classes.
My hotel, the White Lake, has a huge, wide balcony that overlooks the green hills. I usually have my breakfast there and then walk to the school for the sessions.
Tansen itself is a lovely town. I am the only foreigner around so whenever I stand outside during breaks in between the sessions, people come and stand around me, chatting with me or just staring at me. They are sweet people, almost always smiling and putting their palms together to say namaste (I salute the divine within you).
I adore the different bright colors of the saris that wrap the womens' bodies, their beautiful hair, and their jewelry - colorful bangles and necklaces. And I love watching the relaxed people sitting at their shops or by their fruit stands - they add so much life to the beautiful clay houses in pastel colors.
After each session, I feel more alive and energetic knowing that I have given at least a little of me to these people who have been perhaps grossly neglected by their own government.
The teachers themselves are not short of compliments: “You are very energetic. You are very talented. You are beautiful,” they all say between or after sessions.
Before starting our morning sessions at 7 am, I am invited to the principal's office for tea. His school is the host of the training sessions in Tansen, Palpa. Overlooking the Palpa hills, the principal’s office is clearly that of a great educator who pushes his limits to better his school.
Sitting behind his desk, under the Hindu goddess of education called Sarasoti, he tells me how he is trying his best to find money to buy more computers and mobile chairs for the classrooms. He is truly dedicated and speaks very good English - he was an English teacher before becoming a principal.
As we sip our milky tea called chiya, he tells me how much he appreciates my help and hopes that I can come back to Tansen some time in the future. Later on, along with the physics teacher and the NELTA representatives, the principal takes me around and shows me the school's very poor facilities.
The library affects me the most as books are my life and I believe in their power to change lives. There are but a few books on the shelves but I get the feeling that as long as this principal is in charge, this library will come a long way. I write how I feel about all this in the guest book but it is really hard to express oneself when overwhelmed by such joy but at the same time helplessness that comes with not being able to give enough.
After lighting a candle to start the closing ceremony for the training sessions, the district education officer of the Palpa province, two NELTA representatives, the principal of the school hosting the sessions, and I give a speech, in English or Nepalese. Before saying anything, however, each speaker salutes the other speakers sitting in front of the class by addressing them by name. After each long speech, I realize more and more what an impact I may have had on the teachers. How I am described in the speeches and after the ceremony by these people who only own their pride and exemplary efforts is something I cannot even start describing. I am invited back and I know I will go back. I end my speech by saying pheri betola – ‘see you again.’
The teachers say their farewells with a beautiful hand-woven shawl from the region and dedicated principal presents me with a huge silver water jug of the same region, my full name carved onto the top of it. Possessions have never been important to me as words mean more, but these gifts have great value.
One particular teacher has captured my heart: he is intelligent and sensitive, works in a small village and comes to my sessions on his motorbike. Not only his piercing and loving eyes affect me, but his dedication to his students and his efforts to improve himself for their sake. At the end of the ceremony, he comes up to me and wants to take a photo of me on his mobile phone. He says he will never forget me nor what he learned from me. More specially, he says, he will carry my eyes with him as long as he is alive.
As I fast-forward my thoughts from my first training stop in Nepal back to Kathmandu, my friend Daya from NELTA walks toward me on the hotel rooftop. Just the sight of him reminds me of my days at another training spot - Pokhara in central Nepal, where we first met.
“I had always wanted to be a bird,” I tell Daya how my wish came true in Pokhara. For 40 minutes, I had become a bird and joined the crowd of hawks that patrolled the skies of Pokhara and the Himalayan Range in the distance. Paragliding is something I never thought I would be able to do as I am scared of heights but I feel like I have overcome the fear and joined the bird family.
As I soar in the skies, I think back to my two days of training in Pokhara - the second biggest city after Kathmandu. There is a banda - a nationwide strike during the first day, and I now clearly remember my friend Anil in Kathmandu telling me how he had always had to walk to work for hours during the several strikes in Nepal when people were in the streets asking the king to step down.
I now have to walk to work for more than an hour with Daya, a 35-year-old teacher and the advisor to NELTA in this area. There are no cars, no motorbikes in the streets.
“People do not ride their motorbike as someone might set their vehicle on fire,” Daya tells me as we slowly walk in the middle of a wide road lined by motorbikes and cars. As there is no transportation in the streets, the cement buildings of Pokhara come alive against the beautiful green hills and the snow- covered Himalayan Range.
On another hour's walk back to my hotel, Daya and I first get caught in a dust storm and then in heavy tropical rain. We take shelter in a small teahouse where we drink chiya.
“This is a special time for Nepal,” Daya explains to me. “People have more demands from the government. They all want a better life, and more money, so a strike like this one every so often is not unusual.”
“We have to go through this stage in Nepal for a better future,” continues Daya, who speaks impeccable English and had the rare opportunity, for a Nepalese, to teach English in Slovakia some years before.
Teachers in Pokhara are just as lovely to work with - their English is good and they are very creative primary school teachers. For two days, we work non-stop from 9 to 5, going through several fun communicative language activities for primary school students. We dance, sing, and jump up and down as if we were the primary school students ourselves and it is lots of fun.
On the second day of training, for breakfast, I am invited by the NELTA president of Pokhara to the weekly meeting of the Pokhara branch of the International Rotary Club and given a 'Service above Self' award. It catches me by surprise.
At the end of the training, I spend some extra days in Pokhara to enjoy its paradise-like surroundings with a lake watched over by the Himalayas. In this very same paradise, one morning, I cannot stop myself from crying.
Amit, a 23-year-old man from the far west, works as a waiter in the restaurant of the hotel where I am staying. He is very much like many of the other gentle and proud Nepalese people. We talk after I have had my breakfast. Just like many other Nepalese, he asks me what life means to me.
“A life of purpose,” I say.
“And for you?” I inquire.
“Struggle,” he says, again just like many other Nepalese I meet during my stay.
Amit works from 6 am to 10 pm every day and never gets to take any time off. He makes 1,000 Nepalese Rupees - about 15 US dollars a month. Tourists usually spend 500 Rupees a night for a decent room in the big cities of Nepal – so do the math.
“I do not understand tourists who spend a lot of time at the night clubs,” he says, as he looks far into the distance, towards one of the many lakes surrounding Pokhara - a city that lures you into thinking that the color green is paradise itself.
Amit had to quit high school years ago because of the trouble the country was going through with the Maoists.
“My friends are now doing their M.A. degrees, but it is over for me,” he continues as a lady comes in to beg. I feel tears rolling down my face as Amit takes 5 Rupees out of the drawer to give the lady of about 60.
“I am going to go back to my village - the money I make is nothing here,” Amit says. I am embarrassed to sit there, a foreigner - a foreigner who just gobbled down a breakfast which cost 80 Rupees - what people like Amit have to save to buy food for a week or so.
I think about the struggles I go through each day in my country, North Cyprus, located in southern Europe, and I am embarrassed even more. I am, in fact, ashamed of myself. My heart shatters into pieces. I think about my pitiful needs, my gross desires - I am again, once more, embarrassed of being a human being and not being compassionate enough to really understand my fellow beings. I hate who I am, I hate every single thoughtless thought I have had. I hate myself for not being compassionate enough and for not being able to control my anger or my other pitiful emotions that might hurt others.
The NELTA chair in Pokhara must have felt that I am going through some kind of an emotional roller-coaster, as the next morning, he picks me up on his motorbike and takes me up the highest cliff in the area to show me the World Peace Pagoda facing the snow-capped Himalayan Range.
We almost both get killed, however, because he is, like most other Nepalese, very hospitable. The winding dirt path up the cliff is too rocky for the bike to carry us both, but his sense of hospitality forbids him to step down so he pushes it too hard. Even though I keep telling my companion that it is perhaps not good for the bike to carry two on such a road, we keep going, and when we arrive at the closest point to the Pagoda, one of the tires bursts open.
With laughter and probably some embarrassment on the part of my host, we then wait an hour for a mechanic to come fix the tire. After about a half an hour's work on the tire, the mechanic takes me on his own bike half way down the hill. Again I feel like we are going to fall onto the hard thorn-like rocks. We did survive and I can now share my memories from different parts of Nepal.
One of these memories is from my second teacher training stop. After riding in a taxi for about two hours from Tansen, through the serene beauty of green hills, I arrive in Butwal - a small city in southern Nepal which reminds me of the crowded towns in India but is less dynamic and more relaxed.
From my hotel room, I hear a wedding procession outside. This is probably the 100th one I have seen or heard in Nepal. I rush outside with my camera. The people, being the friendly Nepalese they are, help me get closer to the groom so I can take better shots. Suddenly, I find myself chatting with Sunati, the sister of the groom himself. The next minute, I am invited to attend the wedding, and after another minute, I am inside swallowing the 'wedding food' and chatting with Sunati and her father. At some point, Sunati excuses herself and says she has to go 'inside' where the bride and groom are. She comes back a few minutes later, looking sad but angry at the same time. Something is clearly wrong. At the same moment, I realize that Sunati and her father were the only ones who had been friendly with me. The rest had lacked the usual smile the Nepalese wear. I start feeling odd. Something is definitely wrong.
As I am struggling with these feelings, Sunita says, “I am sorry but it is not ok for you to join the wedding.” I had felt quite uncomfortable anyhow, joining such a private ceremony as a foreigner, but I had been encouraged and invited by the hosts of the wedding in the first place.
I say, “I understand perfectly, it's ok - really ok. I'll give you a call in Kathmandu. Please do not worry,” and leave. As I walk back to the hotel, I go through the same thought process I always go through when I am in a new culture - not everything is what it seems to be. Nepalese culture is still very much traditional, I feel, while at the same time, people are absolutely sweet and will never shy away from sharing a smile with you. However, there is an interior that foreigners might not be able to see, right behind those beautiful gentle smiles. I feel the culture may be quite strict and perhaps not as open as it might seem.
Part of me knows that I am absolutely perfectly welcome into this country as a foreigner, but to a certain degree only, and certainly respects that - very much so.
The other part of me feels sad as I am not a foreigner who only wants to taste the foam of the milk. I want to be able to drink the milk itself. This time, I am not allowed to. But this is just one reality we sometimes have to live with. What we want and create in our minds might not match the reality itself.
The next day in Butwal, the principal of the school where I conduct sessions comes with his driver to pick me up. He is a positive man with a rich heart. He takes me to Butwal’s biggest and most beautiful park with trees and flowers, made even livelier with several colorful weddings.
I am able to attend one wedding - the principal knows the people. I am very surprised to learn that the bride, dressed in beautifully dazzling golds and reds is only 18 years old.
I even sit with her, facing her. She looks so sad, so very sad. It is an arranged marriage. I want to console her but how can I - a foreigner, a western woman? I look at her and she looks down. We are surrounded by several men with fresh red tikas of rice on their forehead. I look at the bride and they all look at me. All, in a second, seem to forget the bride and the groom and the wedding in general and watch me curiously. They stop taking photos of the couple and I become the focus of their cameras. Click, click, click... a western woman with long light hair, light eyes, and a pinkish skin. I keep telling the women how beautiful they are and they keep repeating, “no, YOU are beautiful, YOU…”
The principal tells me about weddings in Nepal. The bride covers the top of her hair with a small white towel so the groom's parents do not see it. The mothers-in-law bless each other with colored rice tikas without touching each other.
“The reasons for all this?” I ask.
“Tradition,” he says with a wide smile, not knowing the real reason behind.
The principal and I walk further in the beautiful. I find out that he owns three boarding schools and lot of land in this area. He is yet another one of those amazing educators and intellectuals of Nepal, working for the people and with the people. As we walk in the garden, we witness more wedding processions in orange, red, green. I am overwhelmed by the beauty and at the same time by everyone observing me.
Having finished training and experienced several weddings in Butwal, the NELTA representatives hire a special car to take me to Lumbini, close to the Indian border, to see where the Buddha was born. How they all go out of their way to make me comfortable and to entertain me is overwhelming. It is extremely hot - I am from a Mediterranean island but I am having a difficult time adjusting to the heat in May. My stomach is not in the best of shapes either. The whole time I have been in Nepal, I lose weight partly due to constant diarrhea and partly due to sweating like I have never sweated before, especially when I am training.
After visiting each and every temple in the area where the Buddha was born, we come back to Butwal where another NELTA representative picks me up to take me to a much smaller town called Bardghat in the Nawlaparasi district. We take a public bus which allows me the absolutely beautiful experience of being among Nepalese people. Being the focus of attention wherever I go can, of course, be overpowering at times, but I am used it by now, so I calmly hold my palms together and say namaste. Apparently, Laxman, the general secretary of NELTA in Kathmandu at the time, has told all NELTA representatives to take very good care of me. Hom, the a principal in Bardghat and the person in charge of me, tells me on the bus that not even a single mosquito is to bite me. Even at an Internet café in Bardghat, I am under the supervision of Lumlina, the young daughter of principal Hom. The poor girl sits right next to me, almost touching my arm, reading my e-mail messages - which seem not to mean very much to her.
In Bardghat, which is a tiny town, I stay in a hotel and almost everyone in the town gets to recognize me, and they are also responsible for me. The first night, I have dinner with Hom’s family. Even though I was there earlier during the day and had pickled cucumber and chiya, I am welcomed again by Hom’s beautiful wife and a large bowl of dal bhat (rice and lentils).
Bardghat is a town that I have been longing to experience. It is real Nepal – the people are poor, the facilities are humble, life is basic and simple. There is not much space for them to complain. I love Bardghat, though, very much so. This is why I am here - to help teachers in areas like Bardghat.
Every day from 6 to 8 pm, there is no electricity. One evening, I do not want to go sit in my dark and suffocatingly hot room, so I sit outside with the people working around and in the hotel. They all, of course, keep looking at me and I keep looking at them in the feeble candlelight.
One of the young women working there keeps touching my hair and saying things in Nepalese. She wants to see my hair, I think, but it is much too hot for long hair like mine to be let down. With a smile, I keep trying to tell her that it is too hot and that I do not want to let it down.
I keep sitting there with the people, not even fighting anymore against the heat but letting it absorb me just like the rest of the people. I feel the sweat dancing down from my neck to the rest of my body. I watch the army of mosquitoes greedily eyeing me. After a while, I feel quite tired so I walk back to my room with the candle and the mosquito coil the hotel manager has politely given me. He even takes me to my room. Not long after, he also brings me plain rice and curd.
After my lovely dinner, I lay on my bed listening to the people outside and the mosquitoes buzzing around my head. Sweat, sweat, sweat - that is the only thing I can feel and the fact that I am in Nepal - darkness, sweat, and Nepal.
For a moment, my thoughts take me back to my time in Kathmandu before before I left for the training program. I think I spend about a week with a friend I knew from Tibet and two Danish men I had met in China. How different life is in Kathmandu for me and the Nepalese there. We spent most of the time going from one bar to another, drinking and smoking and chatting about different things. I now know every other corner in the heart of Kathmandu. We even made friends with the singer of the band that plays at a bar where there is live music every night.
Kathmandu is not Nepal - it just is in Nepal. I, with the rest of the foreigners, who are there to smoke the ‘hash’ out of the famous Nepalese dreams, have the illusion that Nepal is cool, Nepal is hippie, Nepal is psychedelic, but we are very wrong.
Nepal can be sad, Nepal can be difficult to live in. I see the agony in the eyes of many Nepalese, especially of my colleagues working in remote areas. There is always a tiny bit of depression living in their eyes. They work very hard all their lives and produce all they can, but the reality of the country gives them a total of 0. Their passport is very difficult to travel with as most countries require a visa, which might be difficult to obtain, and the value of their currency outside Nepal is very low. They are also being psychologically suffocated by their own country's corrupt government.
At principal Hom's house in Bardghat, I get a chance to talk to his daughter and to observe his wife. The man seems to be absolutely at home in the Nepalese culture. He is served water, he is served food - all is done according to his orders. I ask the daughter if she wants to get married (it has to be an arranged marriage). She looks at me with the eyes of a frightened deer.
“No,” she says. “I want to get a job.”
“But, but…” she continues with a bowed head, “I have to get married.”
Her parents will decide, she knows, who she will get married to.
The wife, on the roof of their house against the sunset, peels fruit for the principal and me. She looks happy and there does not seem to be any questioning on her side. If there was, I could not see it. Even if there were, she still seemed happy. “Who am I to decide, anyhow?” I remind myself.
I sit at an Internet café the next morning after breakfast of omelet and tea but there is another power cut, so I start chatting with a handsome young Nepalese man called Saim who lives in Australia with his Spanish wife. He invites me to his family teahouse in Bardghat.
As Saim tells me his life story, his family members arrive one by one, and look at me attentively.
“Another foreigner?” they question him, jokingly. Half of his family still does not speak to Saim because he is married to a foreigner.
“It is a difficult culture…,” he says, “a difficult culture to live in.”
“Didi (older sister),” Saim adds, “the Nepalese man sometimes lacks the courage to stand against family or culture. He has to do as he is told. He does not have the luxury to follow his heart.”
As Saim pours more tea into my cup, he tells me how important the family security network is in the Nepalese culture and how individualism does not have its place yet in Nepal. A person only exists in a group.
After a successful teacher training session with, surprisingly, only male teachers (in my experience, there are usually more women in English teaching), I go to principal Hom’s home to have a lovely dinner of mutton, rice, and cucumbers with the whole family. The wife calls me her daughter as she says I am now a member of their family. Later, they walk me to my hotel. The daughter holds my hand and the wife hugs me from time to time. It is cooler at night. We walk slowly, making sure we do not get run over by the buses and trucks that pass by with lightning speed. I feel good being with the people of this culture - they welcome me so very warmly. I feel good.
I go back to my room to welcome the darkness and solitude into my heart. A storm starts, a very heavy one, apparently, as two people die because f it. I watch the trees outside. It looks beautiful as they dance to the strong wind. I can hear the walls shaking, confirming that it really is a violent storm. I am in a very small room and I remember how important it is to live each day as if it were my last. This storm might get out of control, I think, and if it does, it is ok. I am happy and I have been happy - I have had a good life.
The next day, I leave Bardghat overwhelmed, once again. The principal’s wife and daughter have decorated me with bangles, necklaces and earrings. I have also had a wonderful farewell dinner with them – food the wife has brought from a wedding she attended: mangoes, bananas, Nepalese doughnuts, and rice. The wife is sad that I am leaving – she wants me to stay longer. I do want to stay longer but others wait for my sessions in other towns.
I wait for more than two hours in Bardghat for the bus that will take me to my next destination - Kawasoti, a bigger town in the central plains of Nepal. I now know why teachers are always late to the training sessions - public transportation is not the best in Nepal.
I finally arrive at night in a private car the teachers stopped for me on the main road of Bardghat. I am with the NELTA president of the area and I am taken to his house to stay with his family. It is a big beautiful house with a wide balcony adorned with gorgeous plants, overlooking green hills and a beautiful jungle-like area. We have a big dinner of dal bhat, potatoes, marrow fried in masala, boiled carrots and giant cucumbers, and curd prepared by my host's lovely wife, Laxima.
We happen to be very close to the Royal National Chitwan Park, so NELTA secretary Laxman in Kathmandu wants me to take two days off and visit it. Early in the morning, a car comes to pick me up. I check in at a beautiful quiet resort where the gentle 40-year-old owner is very welcoming and seems to be a man of his word. In the morning, I sit by the river watching elephants going by, relaxing and thinking and reading and writing.
Three young Nepalese men in their twenties want to join me - this is a scene I am used to by now. The first question always is, “Are you alone here?” If the answer is ‘yes’, then I am asked if I have children. If I did have children, that would mean I am married, and since I do not, they feel more comfortable communicating with me.
The three men are musicians. They sit with me, playing the guitar and singing and drinking whiskey. One Nepalese rock song called 'Sharaha' affects me the most - it talks about the destruction of nature in Nepal. They sing it with their whole being and soul, facing the Royal National Chitwan Park, one of the best preserved jungles in Nepal.
In the afternoon, I take a jeep into the same jungle for about five hours. Even though I have seen more animals in Africa, it is still wonderful being able to see spotted deer, ghurdial crocodiles, rhinos, and some beautiful birds. It is gorgeous in some parts of the park dotted by lakes. One of the lakes is adorned with beautiful lotus flowers and tree trunks, and the trees that surround the lake bear sweet shades of yellow. Some areas have amazingly shaped ancient trees, which make you feel small on this Earth older than you could ever imagine.
The highlight of my trip is when I sit next to a 33-year-old Nepalese man from Kathmandu. Sirish, who works for Himalayan Bank Limited in Kathmandu is a self-confident man, very cultured and knowledgeable, speaks good English and we really enjoy each other’s company and talk about many different things and laugh at the same time.
He knows a lot about the nature and animals there and takes lots of photos. He seems quite independent and travels alone, which is not typical of his culture. He also reminds me of how lucky I am as I get to meet lots of Nepalese people from all walks of life.
The next day, I sadly leave the animals and the jungle behind. The owner of the hotel takes me to the nearest town on his motorbike.
Motorbikes are the main means of transportation in Nepal. The principals or NELTA representatives in the towns where I train teachers usually take me places on their motorbikes. The traffic is not the greatest in Nepal, although there are few buses, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, and a handful of private cars and taxis clogging the roads. Everyone drives, for some reason, at breakneck speeds, so if you have never been in a similar country, you start thinking that every second you spend on a motorbike is your last.
I take a public bus to go back to Kawasoti where I am to start a two-day session with primary school teachers the following day. Buses are crowded and the drivers are usually in their late teens or early twenties and they love speeding, like the rest of the drivers in Nepal. During this trip, I almost say good-bye to life five times and this reminds me of how each day of our lives should be lived as if it were our last.
About fifteen minutes away from Kawasoti, my bus and the rest of the traffic stop in the middle of a small town. The road is blocked by stones and tree trunks. The week before, a man was killed by a public bus, and therefore, the people from the town are protesting. The bus company apparently does nothing to compensate the family of the deceased. This is common in many other aspects of Nepalese's people's lives too, I am told by many Nepalese teachers - you get nothing, nil, zero, nada from the government and its institutions.
The bus driver tells the passengers to get out of the bus so I am in the middle of another town watching the people, the rocks, and the tree trucks in the middle of the road. I call Tilka, the NELTA representative in Kawasoti.
“Hajur? Hajur? Hello Tilka. I am stuck in a small town. Help!” Of course, Tilka is like Speedy Gonzalez. About ten minutes later, he comes to my rescue on his motorbike and takes me to Kawasoti in no time.
Back in the maddening heat, I do some research on the computer and get ready for my training sessions the next day. The plan is again to include as many communicative activities such as games and stories to which many teachers might not have access. Teachers can then use these in class with their students or be inspired to create their own. I am told by the NELTA representatives that my name is traveling around among teachers and the number of participants increases with every town. I feel that it is the turquoise stone given to me by my Tibetan friend - what luck it brings!
Each day I spend in Nepal I start looking more and more like a Nepalese woman. This morning, Laxmi, Tilka's wife, put a beautiful green tika on my forehead before sending me off to my first session. I feel that I must also get myself a sari - preferably a green one - to fight off the heat and to look as beautiful as the Nepalese women.
The flat with the beautiful balcony where I stay usually hosts Nepalese writers as well as visitors like me. In the mornings, it always rains heavily and the green hills look even more alive from the balcony under the pouring rain.
An aunt and uncle of the family are staying with us, too. They are are usually at home, quietly sitting and observing the rest of us. They do remind me of my culture in North Cyprus - especially the older ones. The many Nepalese people I meet, especially outside of Kathmandu, eat the same thing – dal bhat – almost every day and for every meal. The clothes they wear also lack variety, because they cannot afford more than two sets of clothes. They wash themselves with a bucket of cold water and they are barefoot inside their houses. I get used to walking barefoot in the houses where I am a guest, and like many others, I use a bucket of water to wash. Again, it is not that I am unfamiliar with all this - the not-so-distant past in Cyprus, perhaps 30 years ago, and the times when my grandmother, now 86, was a young girl, but it does remind me of how spoiled I have become, eating different kinds of food every day and taking hot showers in a ‘regular’ shower.
The day, especially in rural Nepal and in areas where it is very hot, starts some time between 5 and 6 am. For the first time in my life, I hold a teacher training session at 6 am. This means lunchtime between 10 and 11. They have another meal around 3 pm, which is light. If I am not teaching on a particular day and I wake up at 8 and have breakfast then, I am then forced to have lunch after only three hours. As in Cyprus, you cannot be impolite in Nepalese culture. In other words, you cannot say ‘no’ to food you are offered as a guest.
“You are a God as a guest in Nepalese homes,” Tilka reminds me.
My training sessions in Kawasoti go well, even though there are more than forty participants in the room and I find it quite difficult to manage such a big group in such hot weather. I try to adapt all the activities to their needs and try to get them to think about how some of the activities can be further adapted by them. It is at times quite difficult for them to find creative ways of adapting my activities - not of their own fault, I am told several times by them, but because of the educational system they were ‘born’ into. They are not often encouraged to think for themselves or to speak up, so they are puzzled when I do not give them the ‘right’ answers straight away, but when they are encouraged, they do their best to come up with answers themselves.
During one of the sessions, the traffic comes to a halt on the main street facing the school. In another town, 10 minutes away, the road is again blocked by rocks and tree trunks as the bus company still has not compensated the family of the deceased.
“The traffic will probably not move until about the late hours of the day,” says one of the teachers, worried that he might not be able to return home. While we watch the traffic outside, the power goes off three times within one minute.
The traffic and power problems immediately reminds me of how people in Cyprus complain about things: power cuts, a far from ideal political situation, an educational system in shambles, deteriorating moral values, weakening family ties, and so on. The situation in Nepal is much worse, with the exception of family ties.
“The drinking water is polluted, people do not get enough nutrients as they have to eat the same thing almost every day, everything is done through bribes, education is centralized and controlled by people who know little about it,” says one teacher who is committed to professionally developing himself at every opportunity.
“For example,” he continues, “there is a district education officer in each of the 75 regions in Nepal, but they are not necessarily educators themselves.” I have actually met some who came to my sessions. I am told they used to be English teachers themselves but cannot, in fact, speak much English.
Some of the best conversations I have with teachers is when we rest after the sessions and chat informally. One of those times is when I spend an afternoon with five of these teachers in Kawasoti outside a café drinking banana lassi by the side of the only asphalt road. It is also a modest celebration of the end of my two-day voluntary training of primary school teachers from the province of Nawalparasi where Kawasoti is located.
The training session ends with a closing ceremony where the branch president of my sponsoring organization presents me with a candle and a white woolen shawl called dosala usually gifted to academics who 'light up the way to knowledge'. I remember seeing the same kind of candle lit at the opening ceremonies of any kind of teaching session in Nepal.
“It opens the path to knowledge,” explains Tirtha, the organizer of the training session in Kawasoti, emphasizing its importance in Nepalese culture.
A certificate of gratitude and some beautiful Chinese roses given after the candle and the dosala are enough to get me crying. This is one of the most emotional ceremonies I experienced during my twenty-day teacher training tour of Nepal. By the end, I have met more than four hundred teachers at each of my mostly two-day-long stays in seven different provinces and helped them with their professional development in the field of teaching English as a foreign language.
I promise the teachers that I will one day come back to Kawasoti.
“Nepal has become my second home,” I hear myself say in the midst of the excited applause of teachers, and my heart goes ‘click’, attaching itself more tightly to this very poor country nestled in the Himalayas.
As we continue sipping our lassis at the café, Krishna, a strong man with bright and ambitious eyes, hanging tightly to his black bag, walks toward us. Even his face seems muscular, wrapped in a vast number of wrinkles.
A 52-year-old English teacher and farmer, Krishna is from a tiny village called Ranibas in the Gulmi district of western Nepal and has traveled five hours just to pick me up.
Krishna is dedicated to making some changes in remote Nepal. Five years ago, with the help of the Australian Embassy, he started a non-governmental organization called Book Bank Nepal. Lots of families cannot send their children to school because they cannot afford textbooks. Krishna collects money from a variety of donors and uses it to buy textbooks. He then, through Book Bank Nepal, lends these books to children who cannot buy them.
In addition to the two-day training session for primary school teachers, one of the other reasons I am going back to Ranibas with Krishna is to donate the $1,000 I collected last year at the university I work for in North Cyprus to help the Book Bank.
Krishna is a gentle, well-mannered Nepalese who believes in helping people.
“This is why we are on this earth.”
He continues to tell me about his dreams for Book Bank Nepal as we stand on the road to hitchhike from Kawasoti to Butwal.
“I want to start a Book Bank in every town and village of Nepal,” he says with excitement growing in his eyes and his voice right at the moment when a truck stops to pick us up.
We go through the green hills and mighty jungles of western Nepal crowned by clouds. I am drawn into the mesmerizing beauty of the Nepalese countryside while Krishna seems engrossed by his never-ending thoughts about Book Bank Nepal.
When we stop for lunch at a restaurant in Butwal, Krishna tells me more. The restaurant is in a typical hotel where Nepalese truck drivers stay. Under a fan moving painfully slowly, our hands dip into our dal bhat, mixing rice with lentils and bitter gourd, jackfruit and okra. Krishna is determined not to waste a single grain of rice.
“I won’t let go of my dreams very easily either,” he chuckles, still not quite sure if I enjoy my lunch as much as he does.
After lunch, as we wait for a jeep to take us to the tiny village, Krishna's 20-year-old son Ganwali joins us. He is studying healthcare in Butwal and wants to get his higher education abroad.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money,” he says, like many other students and teachers I have met in Nepal who are all in the same position. I am saddened again to remember that there are some brilliant people in Nepal, just like in many other countries, including my own. The difference is that the Nepalese might never get a chance to step out of their country - not even once.
“I am 52, I have never been abroad and probably never will be able to,” Krishna confirms my thoughts.
The trip to the tiny village lasts about five hours in a very old English jeep. The three of us are canned in with thirteen other people. The only part of my body I can move is my hands, and that is when I have to peel a banana Ganwali bought when the jeep stopped for a restroom break.
The winding road takes us higher onto greener hills held in place by the breath-taking color of the red soil. By the time we arrive in the main town of the Gulmi province, my legs feel paralyzed.
They come alive once we start walking to Ranibas, where Krishna lives and Book Bank Nepal has its home. As Krishna and Gwanali confidently walk through puddles of water and carrot-colored mud, I have to constantly watch out not to get stuck and lose my black slippers in the mud.
The house which becomes my home for the duration of my stay in the village overlooks green terraced hills like the zigzag back of a giant dragon.
As Gwanali drops my heavy backpack on the ground, the owner of the house, Krishna's 68-year-old uncle Laxmi, walks out to greet us.
“Namaste,” he softly says as he holds his palms together and places them over his heart.
The house is built using the red soil which so dramatically paints the area. Inside, everything is made of mud, including the floor. On the outside, the upper part of the house is painted blue and the lower part is brown. When you sit in front of the house on a straw mat on the ground, the green hills, the many rose bushes, the banana and papaya trees momentarily transport you to paradise.
Krishna tells me that my host, Laxmi, like so many other Nepalese who have to seek their livelihood abroad, worked for the army in India for twenty years. His wife Bhagawati, of Brahmin caste like her husband, is sixteen years younger and looks very Aryan with her long, thin, bridged nose and slanted green eyes.
“It is quite normal for younger women to get married to older men in Nepal,” Krishna responds to the quizzical look on my face.
The couple’s 20-year-old tall and hot chocolate colored son Shurish is a carbon copy of his mother and as handsome as his father. Tall and athletic, right before the darkness starts falling, Shurish climbs one of the trees facing the house to cut branches with a machete for our dinner fire.
The whole family is very welcoming and treats me as if I was a family member for the duration of my stay. They give me Shurish’s room facing the green hills of the village and also sheltering a tiny mouse which sometimes keeps me awake in the middle of silent nights.
“They are honored to have you as a guest,” explains Krishna as I slowly become surrounded by beautiful children who follow me and giggle at my every move.
“The whole village knows you are here,” says Krishna, worried that I might not like this. Becoming the center of entertainment in the village, however, amuses me.
“ 'Milk' = 'dut', 'banana' = 'kira',” the children teach me proudly as I walk with them to watch Bhagawati as she milks a water buffalo in the shed behind the house.
“Dut – for dinner,” explains Shurish to satisfy my curiosity about how water buffalo milk tastes. Bhagawati’s skinny, strong fingers gently and skillfully squeeze the animals’ teats for the milk which is worth more than gold. Two minutes of her efforts yields to a bucket of cotton-white milk.
After the milking demonstration, the children continue giving me a tour of the house and its surroundings. They all seem to take take pride in being tour guides to a foreigner. We climb one of the hills behind the house to see their mantini, the Hindu temple where Shiva resides. The children excitedly point to the statue of Shiva and one of them rings the bell inside, showing respect to Shiva, the god of destruction.
Our tour also takes us to the house of Krishna’s younger uncle. The younger uncle is a primary school teacher and also plans to take part in my sessions.
“Come, come,” he invites me inside his house, pushing into my right hand the textbook he uses with his students. Shyer than other Nepalese men I have met and who usually look at people with genuine curiosity and respect, he avoids eye contact with me.
“I do not know, I do not know,” he says, pointing at one of the exercises in the book, wanting me to clarify a language point for him.
As I am nearing the end of my explanation of why the present perfect is used, it is cut short by Krishna’s call asking us to come back home for dinner.
“The best dal bhat I have ever had is here,” I tell Krishna who, with the happiness of a child, translates to my host family as we all sit on the straw mat of the kitchen floor.
Before enjoying the delicious dal bhat, I watch Bhagawati, crouched on the kitchen floor, first turning corn into creamy white flour in a stone grinder and then using it to make roti, the Nepalese flat bread. In the thick smoke, with teary eyes, she grills the roti on the fire. Served on spotlessly clean steel plates, three pieces of roti are savored along with delicious fried onions and potatoes. We wash the food down with water buffalo milk and tiny sweet bananas from a tree outside sweeten our palates.
“I could stay here forever,” I tell the family.
“Asthai,” says Krishna, emphasizing the temporariness of everything and encouraging me to enjoy my stay with my host family as much as I can.
It is almost impossible to communicate with my family but their smiles guide me throughout my stay. Peaceful, welcoming, and giving, even in grim poverty, all they want from me is a smile in return. I feel that this tiny village and its people are my favorites in Nepal.
At the end of my first peaceful night under an infinite number of stars, I wake up to welcome a fresh morning.
“Ok, ok?” says Laxmi, the father of our house, with a broad smile as I walk out of my room. Like Bhagawati, he is constantly worried that I might be uncomfortable staying in their humble house.
After a breakfast of roti dipped into fresh buffalo milk, which I enjoy under Bhagawati’s motherly eyes, I sit in the beautiful garden reading, studying Nepalese with the kids, and watching the uncle joking with them. His face bears an enlightened, Buddha-like expression and he always seems content with his life.
Every so often, he stops to ask me, “Ramhru cha? Ramhru cha? Good? Good?”, repeating his fatherly questions, to make sure I am happy.
At 10 o'clock the same morning, I walk to the primary school to visit the office of Book Bank Nepal. The dirt path winds through the spectacular scenery of green terraced fields under cotton-white clouds. As I am enjoying my walk, breathing in the surrounding beauty, I begin to feel, right behind me, the presence of students in their white-and-navy colored uniforms. They push each other to catch a glimpse of me. When they do, they shyly smile and the moment becomes theirs forever. Some divert their looks and start whispering in Nepalese into each other’s ears.
When I walk into the schoolyard with my tail of thirty students, I am surrounded and watched by even more students, this time hundreds of them. I see heads coming out of school windows and doors, staring at me, smiling. They follow my every move. They look at everything I have on me; they scrutinize my bag, rings, bracelets, necklaces, glasses, and my green eyes.
Krishna, with great enthusiasm and several textbooks in his arms, greets me and takes me to the office of Book Bank Nepal: a tiny room, containing only a cabinet with books inside and a new computer donated by the Australian Embassy, and on one of the walls pictures of the person from the embassy who took the initiative to help Krishna set up the Bank.
Krishna closely watches my reaction and wants to see his pride for the Bank reflected in my eyes, too.
“Sezgi…Sezgi - I want to start a library for English teachers, too,” he starts, again with bubbly enthusiasm. “To help them improve their English,” he continues.
“We should find donors to send books,” I say responding to his enthusiasm to help others.
As Krishna goes to find some students to whom Book Bank Nepal has lent textbooks, I sit in front of the office on a balcony facing the courtyard. Realizing that I am there, the students approach the balcony and look at me from below. All I see is uniforms and tiny faces. When I take a photo of the navy and white sea of curiosity moving below me like a wave on the ocean, I hear an “Ooohhhhh…” of exhilaration at becoming a part of my photo collection.
Our photo session is interrupted by students shyly approaching in small groups.
“We have books. No money for books, happy,” some say timidly. Others just watch with a shy smile. When I ask them questions about their school and village, they giggle, looking at a confident student to translate for them. Even the translator struggles with deciphering my English. The only English they have heard is that of their Nepalese teacher’s and in isolated words, at that.
Our chat ends when Krishna comes back at 10:30 to take me to lunch at the only diner in the village. As we eat fresh mangoes and smoke in the back room of the diner I am overwhelmed by it all once again. In Krishna's voice I hear his dedication to Book Bank Nepal and to underprivileged children. Tears well up in my eyes when he tells me how he has found his purpose in life and nothing can stop him from now on.
“People in my village do not like me very much,” he tells me, staring at the hills through the small window of the diner. “They question people 'doing' something for others with nothing in return.”
“Those dedicated to making a difference are suspect because of their good deeds?” I ask and watch him nod slowly.
After this lunch which injected me with enthusiasm and hopefully filled him with the joy of sharing his feelings with a stranger, we walk for about twenty minutes up and down some hills to another school in the same area.
Although he is stronger than me, Krishna starts calling me 'iron lady', surprised that I do not easily tire. “Your strength must be coming from your dedication to help others,” he guesses.
“I am a real village man, always fully using what God has given me - my body and the natural food from the fields,” Krishna says with a smile.
“You are from a European country but not you are not all that different from me,” he continues with a happy tone.
“Am I not?” I ask wondering if I am as strong as Krishna and if my dedication to helping others is as solid as his.
At the school we visit, I hand students textbooks from Book Bank Nepal. The money for these particular textbooks came from the donation I brought with me.
“Reading is good,” I say, after handing out their books. Some ask me to sign my name in the book. “Happy reading! Good luck!” I usually write as others nervously wait for their turn.
After the textbook distribution in the tiny teachers’ room, I chat with the teachers themselves. Even though it is very difficult to hear them under an aluminum roof which is far from soundproof against the heavy drops of rain, we chat about the differences between my country and Nepal.
A puddle forms around my chair from the leaking roof and my sneakers get wet but I try to answer their questions with equal enthusiasm.
“You are a non-native speaker of English but still a teacher trainer,” they say, not able to contain their surprise.
“You should be an inspiration to all of us,” one of them adds, feeling more confident about the possibility of a non-native speaker becoming a teacher trainer and traveling to other countries to provide professional support to other non-native speakers.
When the rain slows down, I borrow an umbrella from a teacher and walk back to my host family’s house. It takes me two hours to find my way, up and down the hills, through the fog draping me and making me feel like I am trapped in a giant marshmallow. I manage, however, with no incidents, to get reunited with my family and a huge plate of dal bhat and pickled mango.
As I happily devour my dinner and think about the happy smiles of the children to whom I lent textbooks on behalf of the Book Bank, I realize I have not taken a shower for days and my clothes have faded. It also feels like lice now live in my hair, and I don’t know what my face looks like anymore either. “But what does it matter?” I ask myself. I will forget the color of my clothes or the dirt in my hair but I will remember the amazing experiences I had in Nepal, especially in this village carved in my mind for the rest of my life.
Mostly in the afternoons or evenings, other family members come to visit my host family. If it is night, they sit on a mat on the ground outside, in the smell of a flower we call 'Pakistani nights' in Cyprus - a flower that blooms and smells at night but dies during the day.
The younger Nepalese always touch their foreheads to the feet of the ones as they greet them. The married women wear crimson red saris and necklaces of shiny beads. They all seem happy as they drink sweet milk tea - dut chai - and seem not to have worries. They choose to live in the moment. As I watch or listen to them in front of the mud house facing the green hills, I feel I am transported into a National Geographic documentary. Everything and everyone looks romantic.
At the end of each day, before we are swallowed up by darkness, Krishna comes by and takes me for long walks. We follow dirt paths and catch glimpses of several neighboring villages up in the hills, down in the valleys, and on high terraces of rice paddies. The soil is red and all else is infinitely green. Patches of white clouds in the sky sometimes break the beautifully orchestrated monotony.
Back home, Krishna shares some beer and cigarettes with me in my room, and we eat rice puffs with curried beans spread out on the straw mat on the floor. I feel fortunate to get to know better Krishna’s wisdom and determination.
“You have inspired me to do more for Book Bank Nepal and never give up,” he says. “But Krishna, you are the real inspiration,” I say, caught completely off-guard. “You have proved to me that people like you still exist,” I continue.
“You remind me of my late father,” I share with him, watching the growing happiness in his eyes at being compared to someone special in my life. “‘If we don’t serve the people, who is going to do it? If we do not believe in making a difference, who is going to do it?’ my dad used to tell me when I was a child,” I continue.
“I love the place where I was born and where I am going to die,” Krishna nods, hoping to answer my father’s rhetorical questions. “I want to leave my village only because I want to learn more in other places and bring back what I have gained.”
Later that night, roti and fried okra with potatoes taste even better. Krishna is a learner for life. He is an optimist whom nothing and no one can discourage. But more importantly, he holds a mirror to my own self. My vision of myself is clearer than ever. I want to be Krishna. I want to live life with a purpose.
“Krishna - I thank destiny that it has brought me to your village,” I tell him. “I felt that something has been waiting for me in this part of the world, and I have now found it.”
“And we found you - the mother of Book Bank Nepal,” he responds, his myriad wrinkles seeming to disappear in that one moment.
The second day of training is a long and challenging one. This is one of the groups with the lowest language skills I have yet encountered in Nepal. Some of the teachers cannot speak English at all. Especially the weakest ones are from the lower castes. The teachers I encounter at the training sessions tend to be from the upper castes but Krishna has tried his best to encourage those from lower castes in his own and surrounding villages to attend the sessions.
While they are in groups working on an activity, I look at the mud floors and at the benches and desks covered with dust. Not much light enters the room from the glassless grilled windows, and the lonely electric bulb dangling from the ceiling sheds but a dim light - when there is electricity, that is. It is very difficult to write on the board. I feel that I am trying to do the impossible, carving with chalk into the very hard bark of a tree trunk. This place is where I am definitely needed the most.
Krishna celebrates the end of the second day of training by taking me to his family home. We reach the house at the bottom of a deep lush green valley after two hours. The mud house he built with his own hands is in the middle of rice paddies surrounded by mango, papaya, lychee, and guava trees and rose bushes. There is a river by the house, where Krishna built a pool. The carp he has in it allows the family to sometimes eat fish instead of dal bhat. A progressive and eccentric man in a tiny village in remote Nepal, Krishna uses solar energy for electricity and produces gas from buffalo dung.
“My foreign friend who used to teach in our village said that I think outside of the box,” Krishna says as he sees the surprise in my eyes when he hands me some wine he himself made from rice, corn, and sugar.
While watching the sunset and sipping wine, Krishna tells me more about his ideas to develop the Book Bank. “I do not want my family to spend money for my funeral but to use it instead to help students buy textbooks,” he says. Nothing can stop Krishna from thinking and talking about Book Bank Nepal.
Even though our return to my host family's house from Krishna’s takes about two hours and it is a climb back up from the deep valley, Krishna never gets tired. Along the way, life-long leaner that he is, Krishna asks a lot of questions: “Why is there lighting? Is there life on other planets? Do teachers in your country volunteer to help others?”
We sweat profusely during the long climb in the May heat, but the fact that we can almost touch the stars cools us down.
Millions of stars are visible in this remote part of Nepal where there are not many distractions of ‘civilization’, except for a few lights in mud houses decorating the dark hills like Christmas trees.
Apparently, there were lots of Maoists in this area until about a year ago. Their aim was to replace the country’s constitutional monarchy with a people’s republic, transferring the power from the ruling classes to the masses.
As we walk with our tiny flashlight, we feel someone walking behind us. “Can it be a Maoist?” I joke with Krishna. “If it were some time ago, you could have been kidnapped as a foreigner,” Krishna jokes back.
At around 9 pm, we finally arrive to find my Nepalese family waiting for me. They offer me rice and fried cabbage with potatoes and cucumber salad. We soak our rice in buffalo milk and add bananas to it. Even though I protest and say “Ogayo” (“I am full”) Bhargawati keeps adding heaps of rice on my plate. “She always eats so little,” she complains to Krishna.
I tell Bhargawati that I am going to miss them. “You should stay with us, then,” she responds.
My time with Bhargawati, especially in the kitchen, is precious.
In the morning, I watch her first make butter in the churn and then rotis. She uses fresh mint from the garden and mashes tomatoes, salt, and hot green peppers with it to make chutney.
Bhargawati works very hard, like all women in Nepal. “You work very hard all day,” I say to her. “We have to eat,” she responds with a peaceful smile.
I feel embarrassed by my naïve question. Bhargawati has to make the family meals each day from scratch. There is no refrigerator to keep extra food, so she has to cook small amounts every day.
My limited conversation with Bhargawati takes me back to another morning on the way to school when I walk with Sabita, a teacher, who tells me that her husband lives in Kathmandu and has been there for six years. She has to stay behind to take care of her father-in-law.
“This is our culture,” she says.
“It is very difficult for women,” she adds. Other female teachers who feel comfortable with me as a female foreigner agree. Most of their husbands are away in countries like the UAE, Malaysia, and India.
“There is nothing we can do,” they all say. “We need money and someone to work abroad to support us.”
On the last day of training, having established good rapport with the teachers, everything goes smoothly. At the end of the session, they ask for my autograph, making me feel like a movie star.
“We have never been trained like this before, Madam, and we have never met anyone like you. You have a very different teaching style,” says Arun, who actively participates and does his best to learn from the sessions, very respectfully.
During one of our breaks, Krishna takes me to a tailor who takes my measurements for a green sari. All the vendors come out of their tiny shops to look at us. They are happy that the foreigner in their village is going to be dressed like a Nepalese woman.
In the closing ceremony at the end of the same day, the lady teachers help me put on my new sari. They wrap me tightly and decorate me with a green necklace around my neck and two red stone earrings in my ears.
Once Krishna and his son have added one more necklace around my neck and several red bangles on my arms as gifts from his wife, “You are now Nepalese,” they say, blessing me with a red tika on my forehead.
On the motorbike traveling to my next destination, Waling, a small town in the Syangja province, I think about the village teachers who have no exposure to English and need much support. I remember how they all took pictures with me and then all forty of them walked me to the gate of the school.
“Do not forget us,” they said. “Come back, ” they pleaded.
Saying ‘bye’ to my host family is just as emotional, if not more. I give the children a few of the things I own like my hair pins, my scarf, and my hat, and I hand my thick coat to Krishna to keep him warm in winter as he climbs up and down the valley between his home and Book Bank Nepal. I promise my father Laxmi and my brother Shurish that I am going to stay with them longer next time. My mother Bhargawati gently braids my hair with her red Nepalese ribbon and then hands me two beautiful red roses from her garden.
Before I get on the bike to cut through some magnificent green mountains fed by long rivers to go to another town for another training session, I struggle for words to give Krishna.
“Working in this tiny village has been the most rewarding for me. I will miss you and the wonderful teachers and my Nepalese family,” I want to say but feel such phrases are banal.
Instead, I look at him as he looks back. He knows we need no words for each other. I am going to return one day to stay longer and will continue to support Book Bank Nepal, and he is going to wait with the rest of the village for me to come back.
He looks at me one last time with those eyes burning with enthusiasm and dedication, turns around, and walks away, slowly but steadily.
Krishna is one of those Nepalese who left the biggest imprint in my heart and memories. There is also Chudamani who says, “You have given us so much,” when a staff, taller than me - about 2 meters long - is handed to me as a gift for my volunteer work as an English teacher trainer in Baglung Bazaar, a small town in west Nepal, my last small town stop. Long and ostentatious, the staff is decorated with intricately carved tigers and princesses in black, on bamboo of light yellow flesh. On each segment, between the joints of the staff, a princess is bravely fighting a formidable tiger with a sword.
When I am physically transported on the main route connecting the lush green hills of Nepal to India, my memory travels back to the day when I am given this fascinating present in Nepal, one of the painfully poorest countries in the world. At the end of my two-day training program for primary school English teachers in Baglung Bazaar, first, the third eye on my forehead is painted with a tika of vermillion powder by the female primary school principal, elegantly wrapped in a crimson sari. Then, my neck is decorated with a garland of orange marigolds, and finally, the bamboo staff is presented to me by a District Education Officer, a representative of the Teachers' Union of Nepal, and Chudamani, a member of NELTA. They hold the staff delicately and respectfully, in dark purple begonia petals, as if it were a scepter given to a newly crowned princess.
My bamboo staff, this elegant piece of hand-made art, is undoubtedly from people who are more princely than myself. 31-year-old Chudamani, for example, makes enough money to sustain himself and his family, but still, with eyes emitting an unfaltering and almost unearthly positive energy, volunteers for the betterment of Nepalese teachers and also for a non-governmental organization called Deep Jupti Youth Club (DJYC). With DJYC, Chudamani strives to improve the lives of Nepalese women in small towns and villages. My own country - Northern Cyprus - is definitely wealthier as teachers make twenty times more than Chudamani’s salary of about 85 US dollars a month, but Turkish Cypriot teachers tend not to see volunteering as a serious option for the betterment of their peers or fellow citizens.
“I will do this as long as I am alive and healthy,” says Chudamani about his volunteer work, with a determined voice, as we stroll down one of the streets of Baglung Bazaar, his tiny town observed solemnly each day by the snow-covered giant - Dhaulagiri, one of the mightiest Himalayan mountains in Nepal.
My mind cannot help compare Chudamani to Dhualgari itself when my body, like that of a princess with a staff in her hand, walks to cross the border from Nepal to India. The clouds sometimes choke Dhualgari just like difficult moments prey on Chudamani's life. But he stands as strong as Dhualgari and soars up in the skies, continuing to work toward the empowerment of women and English teachers in Nepal through his volunteer work. There is one clear-cut difference between the mountain and Chudamani. The beauty and strength of mountains like Dhaulgairi is often well known whereas the existence of people like Chudamani often goes unacknowledged.
“You are my didi,” he says as he takes me to a car hired for me by NELTA to later rush me to a city called Pokhara on a winding tarmac road, through the green hills forming the apron of the snow-covered Himalayas. The worddidimeans ‘older sister’ and is a word of respect used by Nepalese men to address women in general. Chudamani does not have an older sister, nor do I have a younger brother. We, therefore, adopt each other, as it were, even though I already have a wonderful older brother. I am Chudamani’s didiand he is my bhai- younger brother.
When I cross the border at the end of my month-long volunteering, at night, in my dreams, I am back in Nepal, in a royal palace in Patan, the capital of a powerful Nepalese kingdom in the seventeenth century. I am the princess of the palace and I watch a tiger sleeping on the floor. My magical staff is beside me.
Also standing close to me is my royal advisor, Chudamani. “Your specter is your shield against everything,” he whispers in my ear, pointing to my staff.
“Everything,” he stresses in a confident manner.
“As long as you continue giving to others, your specter will continue being your guardian angel,” he explains now more audibly, waking the tiger on the floor. The tiger raises its head to look at me.
“Beautiful green eyes, beautiful thick fur - I want to possess its beauty forever,” I find myself deliriously thinking in my dream, but all of a sudden, the tiger takes off the ground to bounce on me and end my obsession with it.
With fear, I wake up from my Nepalese dream, now holding my bamboo staff even more tightly, and find myself back in my first-class cabin on the train traveling at the pace of a turtle in India. I look through the window at the slowly dawning day to catch the first glimpse of the city of Varanasi, the destination I set out for one day ago from Nepal.
Before I leave the halting train to abandon myself into the lap of Varanasi, I make a quick prayer for Chudamani and volunteers like him all around Nepal, who opened my heart even more to those whose ultimate purpose is to improve the lives of others.
“Give from your heart, and it will come back to you in abundance,” I confirm to myself and, relieved to have I survived yet another journey, I step out of the train - with my Nepalese bamboo staff, now even closer to my heart.
The Train the Trainer course can be viewed here
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