Volunteering in Nangi Village
Trip Start
Aug 03, 2007
1
8
10
Trip End
Oct 18, 2007
Nangi,
Nepal
Friday, October 5, 2007
Way back in December we thought that after 8 months of constant travel we'd want to spend two weeks volunteering in Nepal. Biking is a great way to see a country but being on the move all the time makes it hard to feel like you're developing relationships with the citizens. We chose Himanchal because it sounded like an awesome location. From Pokhara take a 5hr bus ride (or 3hr taxi) then it's a 6 hour hike up into the Himalayan hills. A place with out honking horns!
Trying to experience Nepal as the locals do, we decided to take a bus instead of a taxi from Pokhara to Beni where we were to meet Tek, our guide up to Nangi. The bus was about 18hrs late due to a Maoist road closure, thankfully we knew about that so we went back to the hotel we had just checked out of, checked back in and got a good nights sleep. The bus bumped and swayed for 5.5hrs on the narrow pot holed road. It's mildly amusing that the 90km distance took us 5.5hrs on the bus where we could probably bike that in a day. You get a lot more reading done on a bus, however.
Heading out of Beni
Finally arriving in Beni, we met Tek, who decided that we might not be able to walk to Nangi that day so we'd spend the afternoon in Beni before heading up the following morning. Anyway, it was raining and who wants to walk in the rain? So, we kicked around Beni for the afternoon and tried to not eat too many samosas.The next morning Tek showed up at the hotel to take us to Nangi. Sadly, it was still raining but we're Satellites, we like walking in the rain! The path up was wonderful, it was stone steps the whole way. Yes, steps, it's stright up. Amazing trail maintenance. The hills outside of Beni are packed with people so those trails get a lot of use.
About 6hrs later we were quite soaked with the rain still coming down, we splashed into Nangi. What a spot they have! It's a good size school with various classroom building, a library, a computer lab, basketball court, student houses (for the older high school kids who live in villages too far for a daily walk), a clinic, a hotel/restaurant (which has fresh donuts every day!) and two round house building for the volunteers to live in. All with an amazing Annapurna range view when the rains clear (which they did after 6 days). Tek dropped us off at one of the round houses where we met the other volunteers. With us there, it was 8 volunteers, which was great for us because having had only each other for company and conversation for quite a while, the new people were fun to talk with. Four of the volunteers were from Canada and two were from Finland. Two more came while we were there, both from Pennsylvania, both doctors who spent their time in the clinic. The eight of us ended up doing a lot of community eating which made me nostalgic for my LVC years.
Almost to Nangi, it's still pouring!
Luckily there were a few talented chefs in the group who could be quite inventive with our generous but simple selection of food. We also had a few talented guitarists who played everything from Ben Harper to "Red river valley". What a treat to listen to live music!We stayed in one of the two round houses which are indeed round. It was made of stone and mud with a thatch roof. Six days of rain made it a bit musty but once the sun came out and things dried out a bit it was fine.
Most of our work while we were in Nangi was sub teachers for English classes. Sometimes I would go though a chapter in their text book, reading it out loud slowly so they could hear the pronunciation and having them work on reading it back to me. But, because that was boring normal school work, we would play hangman which was sometimes tricky because you all know how bad of a speller I am. Or, I would give them a definition of a word and they would need to come up with that word. Matt gave (and I helped) a lecture on fulcrums (F1D1=F2D2) and demonstrated with a teeter totter scale, putting different weights on each side and moving the fulcrum around. He then continued the demonstration with showing how an airplane is designed using the same concept. Demonstrating that with paper airplanes was the next step and boy was that a hit! We had paper airplanes flying all over the place.
Once it stopped raining we taught a few Tai Chi classes. A bunch of teenage boys were herded up for a first class.
Nangi on the ridge
We though the class was advertised as "Martial Arts" which congers up Jackie Chan moves which is not really what Tai Chi is all about. So, we were stunned to see the next morning at 6:45am almost all of the boys were back! To jazz things up a bit, Matt started with Hap Ki Do warm ups which has kicking and general jumping around then started teaching them Tai Chi. The form of Tai Chi we know, Kwon Buup, is much more active then other sorts of Tai Chi, so that helped hold their attention. Remarkably we made it though the entire form in 4-30min sessions. Obviously a lot of the details were glazed over, but for them to just be able to follow the feet and hand motions is impressive. It took me over a year to learn the whole form. The kids are excellent mimics. Matt would simply scooch to the left 4" for better footing and all 30 of them would scooch with him. They were way more interested in the kicking, blocking and punching aspects of Tai Chi then the breathing and centering, but for teenagers at 7am, can you blame them?The women of Nangi have a community businesses which they call "Cottage projects" of making paper and from that very nice journals. Some of you might remember that paper making was one of my jobs while working with LVC at L'Arche 10 (!) years ago. So, it was great to see a different way to make paper. These journals are very nice, the women take great pride in their work. They sell them in bulk to distributors who then sell them both in Nepal and internationally.
Still raining
On some of the rainier days, I helped them assemble them. It was nice to sit in the work room which doubles as the community gossip room with all sorts of women and their babies coming in and out chatting and laughing with the other women who were working. Nepalese is a beautiful language, it sounded as if they were singing a lot of the timeThe community of Nangi did a great job making us feel welcome. Various teachers and town people stopped in regularly to see if we needed anything or just to say hi. They would invite us to various school functions or community parties. There was a school talent show were the Nangi kids were joined by the Beni kids and they performed both traditional and modern dancing. We were snookered into performing a Nepalese folk song "Reshim Firiri" which we hope we didn't insult the locals by butchering. They were very open to us asking questions on what life is like in Nepal and very entertaining with their stories. Thank you Nangi for welcoming us into your community.
Tek yet again drew the short straw to walk us back down to Beni. Poor guy, we even wanted to go out the long way to see another cottage project where they make cloth out of stinging nettle. That's a lot of work to spin the thread and then weave it. The cloth is quite pretty though, when they are done. Down down we went back into the heat and humidity of Beni. Feeling that we had done our bus time coming up to Beni, we popped for a taxi on the way back to Pokhara.
We spent another day gathering up supplies for our bicycle trip back to Kathmandu. That's an easy chore in a city that caters to backpackers! Matt also had a late birthday present and went paragliding, whooie! We're taking the southern way back to Kathmandu, via Butwal.
