Terai Trip in May

After the Easter break and a hectic time of report writing and meetings I set off on my delayed field trip to Rupendehi district on the flat Southern border(the Terai) on 2nd may. This is not an ideal time to visit the flat, hot plains on the border with India but school holidays and political demonstrations meant that  this was my third attempt to get down there.

Usually this would mean a 6 hour drive but since the road was shut for most of every day due to road widening , I flew down on a little twin engined plane instead. As I waited at the airport for the project  vehicle to arrive there was a thundering crash behind me , I leapt up only to find it was just some workman chucking big concrete blocks from the flat roof down onto on to a trailer below, despite the passengers walking close by!

concrete and stones raining down onto this trailer at the airport

I stayed at the old umn guest house in the woods outside Butwal, a real time warp since much of the furniture was exactly the same as when we stayed there 20 years ago when the children were small. The guest house is now under Nepali management and the Dahl Bhat was delicious .It was good to hear the gheckoes at night. and the bird song at dawn ws lovely There is a big malaria risk there so it was back to the mosquito net but with a fan and the old aircon unit going all night I managed to sleep quite well.

well structured lesson

Our education officer and driver took me to visit four schools, they were a mixture of the very good and the poorly managed but all had road access, good quality buildings and friendly students. In one school (which has longstanding links with us) I observed a great lesson where students were actively engaged in a practical task.

 In another the government provided science labs had not been used for so long that cobwebs, insect nests and a thick layer of dust coated the benches. When a teacher emerged from the prep room he had a huge orange and black spider on his shoulder, obviously suprised to have its long term home invaded!

The teachers of this school asked for a photo

On my return to the office I will be writing reports and meeting with colleagues to decide how we can help these schools.
The heat was  intense, with a hot wind blowing and 42 degrees maximum temperature that day,

The next day we trained 16 teachers from 8 schools and a government official in the use of electronic learning materials which we provided on a hard drive. I got the teachers to use the resources to prepare a lesson and show it to the group and I was impressed with the results

training teachers

group work: What do you understand by a child friendly lesson?

Everyone was really engaged during the training

it was good to have several female teachers attending

. The feedback was very positive despite the heat and I plan to return after the monsoon when it is cooler. in the meantime I will be in touch with our field staff who will be helping the schools.

typical village cowshed

village grain stores