“and Miss without education how will our country change?” That was the question I was asked by Avishak from class 6 yesterday on the bus ride home. It was in reference to how Kathmandu is currently out of petrol. This is more and more apparent from the lack of vehicles on the road, the lines that go on for miles at the gas pasals, and the armed military that surround the petrol station. It is no longer uncommon to see the army or police in riot gear along the streets, or to read about clashes, shoot on site curfews, and general disturbances throughout Nepal. We have no petrol, no government to change this, and people are beginning to take matters into their own hands. It is to the point where school buses can no longer get diesel, and therefore we can no longer have school. How to answer this question? How to understand a twelve year olds worry, when at his age my biggest concern was whether or not Matt thought I was cute.
As I read the paper and feel the change in Nepal, it is hard not to think of my students. It is an intense thing for me to pass by an armed officer with an automatic rifle, but what is that like for a 6 year old? How do they understand this? There is no way to hide this from them or to protect them, because they live it everyday. The past two days have brought many discussions and tears as I think about the future of Nepal and what that means for those I see running around SXG everyday. Most of these kids will never leave Nepal, and in a year and a half I get to go home. If things become bad here I have the magic ticket, a passport out of here. They don’t. And this idea breaks my heart.
Whenever I think of what may happen in Nepal and its future, students pop into my head. I think about Aditya, in class 2. He is really little for his age, and absolutely adorable. He is a kid who observes life, very indiscreetly, but you can just tell there is so much going on in his mind. I often watch him and his friends playing football during our chiyaa break, and it always warms my day. On the school bus Monday, he was forced into a seat with three other boys, and I could tell he was being squashed, but he said nothing, so I got up and told him to sit in my seat, as I bent down to hand him his backpack, he whispered (because he never speaks above a whisper) “Thank you miss.” Or Sanjay and Sofit who run around, dance in class and in general do things that they should get in trouble for but make me laugh instead (Sanjay has an uncanny ability to fall out of his chair). And then there is Mille and Julee twin sisters who love to talk with me during lunch asking questions about my favorite color, family, and if I get married can they come to my wedding?
I worry about what will happen to them. How it is unfair that they have to deal with this at such young ages and how helpless I feel. There is literally nothing I can do to change their futures. I sit by helplessly as I watch Nepal fall more into it-self. I can only hope that my prayers are heard by someone and things start to change. It’s just (to sound like a 4 year old) not fair, and I know life isn’t fair, but come on! People here are already dealing with poverty, water shortages, loadshedding, an unstable “government”, violence and now this. And the sad thing is, it effects the kids the most, because so often people just assume they are little and don’t understand anything, but it is because they don’t understand that you have to be more aware around them. They are little, not invisible.
I worry more for them then I do for myself. It just really is heartbreaking when you think of what this means for them. As I write this, we don’t have school because there was no petrol so the buses couldn’t run. It’s absurd to think that it is okay that school is cancelled because there is no gas. It is a major problem when schools are shut down. For awhile things have been on a downward spiral in Nepal, but it is finally hitting me, it is finally getting personal, when we have to start stocking up on food since the whole Tarai is on strike, or when my students can’t go to school. It hits home when I can cross a street that use to be packed with cars and now has maybe four or five or when armed militants running down the street greet me. I wish I could reassure students like Avishak that things will be okay, but to be honest, I just don’t know. I just don’t know how the country will change.

The (mis)Adventures of Teaching

Third grade is just as ridiculous as I remember. Life as a 9-12 year old is as dramatic and obnoxious as how much news coverage of B to the Spears is out there. But I am loving (most days) every moment of it. I am often bombarded by students asking me if they can go to the long toilet (our #2), saying that some random body part such as a finger nail is paining (hurting) or to simply, in my opinion drive me crazy, continual get up to sharpen their pencils. But I have been given some of the best laughs from these students as well. The other day I wore my glasses to school for the first time, and one of my favorites (every teacher has favorites no matter what they say) Ashwin, stands up and bursts out “MISS what happened to your face?!?” In which I thought what did happen to my face? He continued with “you are wearing those glasses!” In which I smiled and explained that the polite way to ask is “Miss, why are you wearing glasses today?” He laughed and said okay did a little dance I refer to as the Ashwin shake and we then learned about Quadrilaterals, which no one could say but we all had fun trying. And this is a typical day in class 3A.
3B however is a different story. The class is made up of 22 boys and 7 girls. Now while I don’t like to believe in the stereotypes, but this class has a reputation for being bad, and I do attribute it to their being 22 rowdy and ready to go boys. But to be honest they have quickly one a spot in my heart. They are the class that challenges me the most, has made me cry and has more importantly made me realize that everyone is human, even the little ones. For the first two weeks I came home horse and frustrated with why they just wouldn’t listen. I finally hit my breaking point during a particular hard class, acted like a third grader, and spent the weekend reflecting and realizing that I needed to grow up. Instead of wondering why they weren’t working well, I needed to realize why I wasn’t working. So I walked in on Monday and had one of the best conversations with 3B. We now have a kicking behavior chart, a better understanding, and most importantly respect, and that carries us both through the bad days. It is also, because of 3B that I have learned what a mom must feel when her kids are hurt. One afternoon in the midst of a riveting lecture on line segments, Siddhyartha called “MISS!!” in which I responded “What do you do when you want my attention?” He then raised his hand, so I came over (feeling quite proud of myself) and asked what he needed, he pointed to Mahin next to him and said “He is crying Miss, really crying!!” (in which that proud feeling quickly turned into feeling like an ass). I looked over and my heart dropped Mahin was crying, really crying. I tried to find out what was wrong, but all he could say was “My foot.” He tried to stand to go to the office, but could not put any weight on that foot, in which I became really scared. I picked him up and had Siddyartha and Nikesh follow me out to the hall. As I shouted over my shoulder for the students to be good I carried him up the stairs, trying to ask him what had happened to his foot but he kept saying “It hurts.” Once at the top of the stairs I had Nikesh and Siddyartha be his crutches and take him to the office, feeling torn between taking him myself and the 26 other students I had destroying the classroom. After class I walked into the office to see Mahin sitting in front of a heater with a foot swollen to twice its size, but he had calmed down. I spent the next 30 minutes playing I Spy while waiting for his mom to come and pick him up. When he returned to class three days later, he still didn’t know what had happened, but that day changed a lot for me. I constantly worry about my students, and their futures here. Mahin went to the hospital but they didn’t know what was wrong and his foot still hurts sometimes. The put tape over mumps, kids are constantly coughing because of the pollution, debris from a rock curie falls onto school grounds, and I feel helpless. As they say here “Ke Gharne?” What to do? I can’t change how things work, but I can do my best to be present to my students, and not get caught up in being the “teacher” especially since I think I may learn more from them.

Chaa Mahiana

It is hard to believe that I have passed my 6-month anniversary with Nepal; and what a time it has been. As I have been reflecting on my time here in Nepal I realized that nothing could have prepared me for what it has meant to me. I don’t think I ever felt an instant love for Nepal. At orientation we heard about how you have a honeymoon phase in which you are awed by all around you, I somehow, through the smells of burning tires, garbage on the streets, dogs who both loved and would bite me, hours of sweating and no water, missed that part. Not that I walked off the plane and hated where I was, but I definitely was not skipping through the streets hugging everyone and everything around me as they made that stage sound. Instead, I struggled. I struggled to find a place as the only new person in a community of 5, I struggled to find meaning in my work, I struggled not react to the cat calls or derogatory remarks, I struggled with language (including the time I said I bought Katie at the store), and I struggled with the decision I had made to knowingly distance myself from those I loved, and relationships important to me. This last one was the hardest, especially at the beginning. But then I began to experience and learn Nepal. It started with my first micro ride by my-self, continued as I began to speak Nepali outside the classroom, bargained for the price I wanted, wore my first khurta, went to festivals, had the first conversation with my aama in Nepali in which we both understood each other, the realization that I would be sad to leave Nepal if we were pulled out, and the longing to know more about the country I live in. I still continue to be amazed by what Nepal brings me, especially since I know I will never bring as much to Nepal.
It is hard to believe that I have transitioned from feeling that my time here will never end, to panicking that I only have a year and a half left?!? There is so much left that I want to learn and do before I head home, and it doesn’t seem like I have enough time to do it all. I want to learn how to make good dhal bhatt, I want to learn both Nepali and Hindi, I want to volunteer, see Mt. Everest up close, sleep in a cave, explore the Tarai, and just soak up all that Nepal is. I pass so many tourists on the streets that come and look at the pretty mountains or smile at the “exotic” culture, but I want to understand it. I want to come home and know the place I lived for two years.
Six months brings a good time to really question what am I doing here? Am I being nothing more then a glorified tourist? Am I willing to experience the culture here even if it pushes me outside my comfort? Am I willing to let go of the strings of home that I cling to? To let go of the fear of those I may lose at home, to open my heart to those I may gain here. As I was deciding to do JVI I read, “The way to change is to let go of fear” which is what ended up deciding for me. And just as it helped me to realize I have to risk what I feared to accept the change that Nepal would bring, I need to continue to risk my fears to have the courage to change and be changed.

Peace in Nepal?

This is the cover article for Time here. Below is also a link for a photo essay Time recently did of Nepal.

Comrade Sandhya's voice trembles as she speaks of her father. "He was a major in the Royal Nepalese Army," she begins, cupping her chin with one hand while rearranging a neat schoolgirl plait with the other. "When he found out I had gone underground, he said I was no longer his daughter — only his enemy. The next time he wanted to meet me was on the battlefield."
That encounter, to Sandhya's relief, never came to pass. In 1996, as a 14-year-old student from a town north of the capital Kathmandu, she joined Nepal's Maoist cadres at the moment when their armed insurgency had just begun to take hold of this rugged Himalayan nation, long a magnet for foreign backpackers and adventurers. Her father's military income meant Sandhya did not grow up among the country's many poor, but she chafed under the rigid caste laws and gender norms that blunted her parents' ambitions and stripped her of the same opportunities as men. The Maoists, led by their talismanic leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a.k.a. Prachanda, promised her and thousands of others nothing less than a complete reordering of society, and Sandhya gave herself to the struggle, fighting as a soldier in a decade-long civil war that claimed over 13,000 lives and displaced countless more.
Today, Sandhya sits batting away mosquitoes in a sparse wood cabin, part of a sprawling Maoist cantonment in the southern district of Chitwan. She believes victory is at hand. A peace process triggered by mass protests in April 2006 against the autocratic rule of Nepal's King Gyanendra brought the Maoists into the political mainstream, paving the way for the extraordinary transformation of a country ruled for two and a half centuries by Hindu kings into a secular republic. Both the Royal Nepalese Army and the Maoist guerrillas — the civil war's bitter foes — returned to their barracks and camps with the stated intention of eventually reforming into one new national force. "We all want democracy. No one here wants to fight again," Sandhya insists. Even her father, who has since retired, has reconciled with Sandhya. "He respects my decisions now," she says. "He realized I was a figure of change."
Change can bring uncertainty, however, not just for Nepal but for other countries. Nepal, a country of 28 million, is sandwiched between the world's rising giants, India and China, who both have cast their eye over the Himalayan nation as a buffer against the other. Any unrest in Nepal — hostilities have been suspended, not buried — could spill across into its restive borderlands, particularly Chinese Tibet and the troubled Indian state of Bihar — developments that Beijing and New Delhi would view with alarm. Nepal's Maoists, moreover, are still on the U.S. State Department's list of terror groups. They have traded their guerrilla hideouts for plush offices in the capital, but had a fearsome reputation for committing violence when the armed struggle raged.
Indeed, the hatreds that fueled the civil war threaten even now to bubble over. Elections for an assembly that would draft Nepal's new republican constitution are slated for April 10, but only after much bickering and dithering. Nepalis of all stripes are losing faith in the seven parties, including the Maoists, that make up the country's feuding interim government and see corruption and cynical power-politicking stifling the nation's slow reconstruction from the ashes of war. Over a third of the population still lives below the poverty line.
As the politicians fiddle in Kathmandu, a hundred mutinies burn around the country: vigilante gangs run rampant in the countryside, while ethnic groups long marginalized under the monarchy have taken to armed uprising, especially in the southern lowlands of the Tarai where over 40% of Nepal's population lives. A cocktail of anarchist elements, militant factions and a growing separatist movement hold sway there and prove a daunting challenge with elections coming in little more than two months. "What happened in Kenya could happen here," says Jayaraj Acharya, a former Nepalese ambassador to the U.N., speaking of the ongoing ethnic conflict in the African nation triggered by disputed elections, which has claimed hundreds of lives. "Only here," Acharya adds, "it will be worse."
A False Dawn
The security situation in a nepal under cease-fire is dismal. During the civil war, both the Maoists and the Royal Nepalese Army held brutal sway over segments of the country, but now, as they wait in their camps, law and order has deteriorated. Reports filter in every week of kidnappings for ransom. Last December, a Swiss trekker was beaten up after refusing to pay money to a few rogue Maoists, a worrying sign for a country heavily reliant on the money brought in by foreign tourists. Many in Kathmandu blame the Youth Communist League (YCL), created by the Maoists less than a year ago, for much of the disorder. Red YCL banners around parts of Kathmandu urge Nepalis to report "suspicious, reactionary activity" to cell-phone numbers emblazoned on the cloth. As soon as night falls in the capital — which, as a bastion for the King's army, had been safe during all of the years of the civil war — the usually teeming streets grow deserted. "The police have no motivation at all right now," complains Kanak Dixit, editor of Himal magazine and an outspoken advocate of democracy. "There is an alarming surge in crime."
Public safety isn't the only challenge the interim government has failed to negotiate. Fiscal mismanagement has led to chronic fuel shortages across the country; lines in Kathmandu extend for kilometers and prices have tripled in less than half a year. Last week, protests against rising fuel prices shut down the capital. Kathmandu residents face at least six hours of power cuts a day. The government has been unable to raise Nepal's middling growth rate, which hovers around 2%, and funds many of its programs on an IV drip of foreign aid. Trade-union activism and general strikes, some suspect spurred in part by the YCL, disrupt factories in outlying areas and basic services in the cities. During Christmastime around Kathmandu, sanitation workers had been agitating for over three months. Piles of garbage festered around every cobblestoned corner of the city, visceral reminders of a deeper rot seeping into the nation.
"We live in a broken state," says Mandira Sharma, a leading human-rights activist. For the past five years, she and her NGO, Advocacy Forum, have investigated hundreds of cases of disappearances that took place during the decade-long civil war. To Sharma, both the Maoists and the Nepal Army are guilty of a catalog of atrocities, from forced recruitment to extrajudicial killings. Attaining justice for the victims (and compensation for the nearly 200,000 displaced) ought to be as important to the country's push toward democracy as elections. "But human rights don't seem to be anyone's priorities here," she laments. "The problem is a failure of political leadership."
Elections for a Constituent Assembly, which have thus far been canceled twice, became the focal point of political squabbling. The first date, June 17 last year, was missed for mostly logistical reasons. Nepal simply wasn't ready at the time to hold a fair and efficient poll. But the Maoists scuppered the next date, November 22, much to the chagrin of many Nepalis as well as the international community. Reneging on earlier understandings, the Maoist leadership grandstanded on a set of demands that included the outright abolition of the monarchy before its fate could be determined by popular referendum. When the other parties — including the establishment Nepali Congress, the party of the country's current Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala — refused to accede to the Maoist agenda, the Maoists pulled out of the government and plunged the peace process into a rancorous impasse.
"It showed how unnatural the alliance is between all the interests in the interim government," says Kamal Thapa, a royalist politician who served as Home Minister under Gyanendra. Up till last year, the Congress Party had always defended the idea of constitutional monarchy, a commitment enshrined by their party following similar protests in 1990 that curbed royal power. But the need to assuage the Maoists changed the equation. "The Congress has had to understand the new political reality," says C.P. Gajurel, a top Maoist politician, "and it has been difficult for them."
The Maoists see themselves as the agents of democracy in Nepal, stifled by the objections of reactionary, status-quo forces, while many in the Congress, let alone in factions aligned still to the ancien régime of the monarchy, doubt the radical guerrillas' commitment to any political scenario where they may not retain complete control. Despite a compromise thrashed out at the end of last year, which set elections for this April, observers expect conflict to be inevitable. "What more must we give the Maoists?" asks R.S. Mahat, Nepal's Finance Minister and a Congress Party member. "Their strategy is simply to create crisis. They are not honest."
This distrust speaks volumes of Nepal's present predicament, where parties spar over everything from the distribution of ministries to the appointment of ambassadors. "There is no genuine consensus at all," says Rhoderick Chalmers, Nepal expert for the International Crisis Group. Continued discord only strengthens the hand of the weakened King. Though the throne has lost much of its credibility under Gyanendra, many Nepalis still look to the institution as a source of stability and unity. "You can't legislate away the emotional link of the people," says Thapa. Others, including journalist Dixit, fear further squabbling and political anarchy could lead to a more ominous "right-wing backlash ... where royalist elements in the army would step in on the pretext of stability." Further heightening tensions, Prachanda, the Maoist leader, made noises as recently as November about returning the people's war to the jungle if progress toward a republic wasn't made. "Either through [the Maoists] or through the army," warns royalist Thapa, "we are going to see some sort of authoritarian solution."
The End of Kings
The threat of a coup may be exaggerated, but it points to perhaps the single greatest achievement of the Maoist insurgency: the unraveling of a national myth. Nepal came into being through the 1768 military campaign of King Prithvi Narayan Shah and his army drawn from Gurkha tribes in the hills near Kathmandu. Ever since, Nepal's polity has remained largely unchanged: its borders an approximation of the land conquered, its political élites tied to old families close to both the monarchy and the army, and its princely rulers all descended from the same messianic line. Power and legitimacy radiated outward from the palaces of Kathmandu into a highly hierarchical society in the countryside, where feudal mores and caste discrimination still hold sway. Propped up first by the British, keen to have a client buffer to the north of its imperial heart, and later India, this arrangement rarely had to fear outside interference and had remained roughly intact for more than two centuries.
Nepal's monarchy hammered the nail in its own coffin in spectacular fashion in 2001, when Crown Prince Dipendra gunned down 10 members of the royal family, including the much beloved King Birendra, and then allegedly shot himself. The attack, clouded by conflicting reports and conspiracy theories, sent shock waves around the world and plunged Nepal into existential crisis. With a centuries-old dynasty virtually eliminated overnight, in stepped the reigning King's brother, Gyanendra. As the Maoist insurgency raged, Gyanendra declared a state of emergency in 2005, arresting mainstream political leaders and assuming absolute power. But he could not quash the Maoists, whose influence grew apace in rural areas around the country. Rumors swirled depicting Gyanendra as a man given to superstition and mysticism, who would sooner look to the stars or a coterie of tantric priests for counsel than his political advisers. "He wanted control, he wanted to be a heroic savior," says a source close to the court, "but he had few actual ideas, if any."
Gyanendra's power play worked to the advantage of the Maoists. Their urban cadres and activists played a prominent part in the 19 days of mass demonstrations in April 2006 that ended King Gyanendra's absolute rule and led to the reconvening of parliament. The surge of popular goodwill at the time catapulted the guerrillas out of their jungle redoubts and into the international limelight. Prachanda, whose very existence had been in doubt only a few years before, appeared on televisions regionwide, saluting crowds and pressing the flesh. A King had been toppled, a war ended, and change in Nepal looked very much on the way.
The Way Forward
Little has gone according to script since the people-power protests 22 months ago. In November 2006, the Maoists committed to a peace accord with other prominent pro-democracy parties in Nepal and joined the new interim government that would rule until elections for a Constituent Assembly could take place. But the acrimonious squabbling that followed has dispelled many of the hopes raised by the success of the mass demonstrations. "We just felt so proud being Nepali then," says Sanjog Rai, a college student in Kathmandu. "The protests showed us how united we were and that feeling of brotherhood gave us real hope for a better future. Now we're stuck with politicians who have no vision and only care about keeping power."
There is a broad consensus among Nepal's strife-worn people that parliamentary democracy must come sooner rather than later. "A functioning government can't be in a permanent state of transition," says Bojraj Pokhrel, chief of Nepal's Electoral Commission. Now, Pokhrel will have to manage a staff of over 230,000 election workers spread across the mountainous country, some in polling stations miles away from local roads. Highways and bridges were routinely bombed during the civil war, making transportation in a nation with woeful infrastructure difficult at the best of the times. Still, Pokhrel is confident Nepal has the means to carry the elections out. "The people are all hungry for this," he says.
But they'll remain disappointed as long as the interim government's leaders fail to forge any meaningful political unity. "It's a testing time for them," says Acharya, the former ambassador to the U.N. "One wonders if they'll prove their statesmanship." The only indication that they will, most observers drily point out, is that neither the Maoists nor the Congress Party have any better alternative other than sorting out their differences and calming the many fractious forces that might undermine April's polls.
If they don't, the international community must do more to safeguard elections and move the peace process forward. Nepal's giant neighbors, India and China, both backed the monarchy during the civil war, supplying it with weapons and aid. India, which has close ties with virtually every faction in Nepal, eventually shepherded the peace process along, forcing the main political parties to come to terms with the Maoists. China has remained a bit more circumspect, letting India flex its geopolitical muscle while building bridges with the Nepali Maoists it shunned until not long ago and beefing up its hydropower investments along Nepal's glacial rivers. As the budding superpowers expand in influence and ambition, many see Nepal falling into the crosshairs of a new "Great Game" for the 21st century.
Beyond the turmoil and political intrigue looms the very real chance that Nepal might join the region's sorry list of failing states — populated already by Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Besides forging alliances and staging elections, the country and its politicians need to steel themselves for the thorny task of drafting a constitution that reconciles its feuding factions and enfranchises all its kaleidoscope of ethnic groups. "This is a crisis hundreds of years in the making," says S.D. Muni, a Nepal scholar formerly at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Whole groups have never been in the political structure. You have to in effect create a new Nepal."
Back in Sandhya's Chitwan camp, the commander, named Biwidh, clings to such hope. From a poor, indigenous-minority family, he speaks urgently of peace and of the need for a competitive, multiparty democracy. A slight man with a scarred, weathered face, Biwidh looks much older than his 34 years, and describes his time spent warring in the jungle with primitive rifles and stones in hushed, quick breaths, as if he would rather forget about it. As Nepal lurches from one crisis to another, Biwidh says the soldiers in his camp are in a permanent state of readiness. "If the revolution must be fought again," he sighs, turning his head to the setting sun, "it will be."

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1708984_1527435,00.html