Ranjan announced that he had a surprise for my final day in Gawai; we returned to the village to present the elderly couple with a large photo that we had taken on our previous visit. They were so excited to see a photo of themselves as it had been many, many years since they'd seen a photo of themselves. Many of their neighbours gathered around as we presented them with the photo.
All in all there were certainly positive and negatives to the whole stay. The former definitely outweighing the latter. but the experience could have been improved by the placement being more goal oriented and project-based. Do I sound like I’m leading a teacher’s Professional Development seminar? Going into the placement, I had inquired as to ways I could prepare or materials I could read in order to get a better idea of the specific duties I would be performing and what they were looking for in terms of community development. With my experience as a teacher, I was afraid I’d be stuck teaching, which ended up being the case somewhat. I was really not looking forward to going to the school, mostly due to the disorganization of the entire thing (i.e. being told where I was going 2 minutes before and rarely told what to teach) and then when I wasn’t covering for a teacher, I was just placed in a class with another teacher which was incredibly boring and stressful when you can’t just take over and do your own thing. I had some ideas for how to improve the classes in terms of management and behavior, but never did get a chance to voice them. I should write a summary report and send it to them along with the video when it is uploaded.
While the children were, for the most part, very pleasant, the time I had to spend in the teacher’s lounge was really starting to grate on my nerves. I could understand their interest in this foreign girl who is also a teacher from a developed country, but the staring, open conversation about me in Nepalese while they would turn and look at me throughout the conversation, became very irritating. At first I would just pretend to write things in my book or work on the iMovie once I had started that project, in attempt to ignore their stares, but then they would come stand over my shoulder and read what I was writing or sit and watch me work on the computer for like 5-10 minutes. I had turned my screen down and partially closed the top of my laptop one morning when I had to run downstairs for a few minutes. I returned to find one of the teachers with the computer open, going through a folder of pictures I had on my desktop. This same teacher was reading my “journal” over my shoulder one day, even after I stopped typing and said “This is kind of like my journal. Journals are usually kept private.”
“It’s ok!” He said.
Ranjan was so kind and open to my ideas, but I found that he provided little opportunity to really get involved in the community. After the first week, I told him I wasn’t really interested in teaching every day and was hoping to get more involved in the environmental/community development side of things. He’d drive me around and show me bio-gas units and point out the toilets that had been provided in the community, but I was really hoping to get more directly involved and get my hands dirty; like helping to physically install one of these units and learn more about how they work or develop other ways to provide sustainable solutions to the area. Maybe the program is developed to that stage yet and my disappointment most likely arises from having these sorts of expectations.
So, on the days where I chose not to go to the school and worked on the video, I was pretty much left to my own devices. Again, I should have been more self-motivating perhaps but I found some days pretty boring.
I am choosing to look at these negatives as learning experiences that may lead to a potential career path; studying sustainable development and learning how to incorporate these types of projects into communities that need them.
As Friday was another holiday, I decided to bike to Sauraha to a shop to purchase a couple of small gifts and cards for the teachers at the school and the Bhandari family.
I also wanted to get some notebooks, pens, and pencils for the little boy who lives down the road from Ranjan’s family who Swapna was telling me about. I returned to the shop that Ranjan directed me to the first time we went to Sauraha, owned by his friend where he gave me a great deal on the items I wanted to purchase.
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