By Karen Cove
Where do you take two teenage boys on holiday? That was our dilemma. We know there won’t be many opportunities for family holidays as the boys get older, so we make the most of each year we have together and want to make sure our plans are greeted with enthusiasm, and not grudging reluctance.
This year we all enthusiastically agreed on Nepal – which would be part holiday and part volunteering at the school that Q. Learning has built in the remote Himalayas.
We chose it for the following reasons:
- Because it was a suitably ‘cool’ destination that they were keen to visit.
- Because we hoped the experience of volunteering might inform their future career decisions.
- Because we wanted to give them a wider perspective on life. To help them realise how lucky they are, and how other people live much poorer lives in material terms, though rich in other ways, in a very different culture.
- Because we wanted to give that same wider perspective on life to the children in the school.
We took Owen’s girlfriend Georgie with us, and this added an extra layer of responsibility: her parents needed reassurance about the safety of the trip. This was easy to provide, as we knew we would be in the care of Moti, a trusted local travel agent, from arrival to departure from Kathmandu. Moti knows everyone and is a very experienced guide who can take you to the right shop to buy a cashmere shawl or to a Hindu temple on a mountaintop. He is based in Kathmandu, but he comes from Hangdewa, the village where the school is, and was instrumental in its founding.
On the day we arrived, as we walked through the streets of Kathmandu, Moti showed us where the locals do their shopping, as well as the places where the tourists go. He also made sure we had time to rest after our long journey, and we stayed in a really comfortable hotel where you could order any kind of food – local or Western.
Depending on the time of year you travel, you can either fly direct from Kathmandu to Hangdewa or spend eight hours in a Jeep on unsurfaced mountain roads after flying to the south. Flying direct is obviously the easier option, but then you miss the experience of seeing Nepal up close: the tea-growing district of Ilam, the cows wandering around the streets, the little shops outside houses in the middle of nowhere – who goes there, we wondered. Also, the farming of cardamom, corn, bananas and rice. And, most of all, you would miss the stunning scenery. As for the full eight hours, you are climbing or descending the most amazing mountains; you cross bridges over rivers and then go up the other side sometimes into the clouds and the cold before descending again into the valley and the heat, always twisting on roads where every bend must be at least 270 degrees!
Whether you fly or travel by Jeep, you will visit Taplejung, which is a bustling market town, over an hour’s walk from Hangdewa, and if we ran out of bottled water or toilet rolls, someone from the village would be despatched there to do the shopping. Taplejung is also a base for trekking – to the Great Himalaya Range, to Kanchenchunga, the third highest mountain in the world, or to Pathibhara Devi Temple, a three to seven-hour climb of the last part of 3,794 m, which we trekked one day with Moti. Owen joined him in Hindu worship at the temple, and it was very pleasing to learn about the level of integration of different religions, with Hindu and Buddhist temples frequently being next to each other in Nepal.
In the village, we were treated as honoured guests, even though we made it clear we had come to work as volunteers. We stayed in a lovely new villa, recently built for visitors, and enjoyed the local food, which majored on rice and vegetables and chicken or pork (meat is not eaten daily by locals and is saved for special occasions, or for visitors), along with omelettes, fresh milk, which we had to pasteurise, and the wonderful local Ilam tea.
We had many memorable evenings eating in the houses of either the teachers or parents in the village. Over one meal, we had a very interesting debate about the changing view of marriage. A law has just been passed to make it illegal for a girl to marry before she is 20; in the past, a girl could be married at 13, even grabbed in the local market and carried away by the groom. Traditionally, marriages have been arranged, but now, particularly in the cities, love marriages are happening, and it was interesting to hear the different views on this from the different generations – the small room was crowded with about ten people!
What makes this part of the world so special is that it is totally unspoiled, and an evening meal in a village house is just that – no special show for tourists – this is authentic Nepal, and this genuine experience of a different culture is getting rarer, so we were delighted to find it. Every house in the village, poor though they may be, has a stunning view of the Himalayas that people in the West would be wowed by. It’s difficult to convey the breathtaking beauty of the scenery all around you, everywhere you look.
On our trip, we had an equal balance of volunteering and seeing Nepal. In the school, Owen and Thomas taught sports, and Georgie taught art. I helped with both, as well as supporting the school leadership team in school administration and interviewing 20 of the Ambassador pupils (some of those who are sponsored) about how being an ambassador for the school had changed their lives.
The children are very keen to learn and, by the end of the week, so proud of what they had achieved. The school leadership team and teachers are amazing; taking the challenge to keep raising the bar beyond typical Nepalese standards and working with the local community to ensure this investment in the future has an impact beyond the school gates.
I was bursting with pride for what Owen, Thomas and Georgie had achieved. I watched them grow in confidence and develop as people – I struggle to put into words how wonderful that felt. Pride in seeing them working together to organise, enthuse, energise, encourage, teach and play with 160 children between 6 -15 years old. Pride also in seeing them cope with difficult, stressful and pressurised times. Yes, behind closed doors, there were frustrations and disagreements, but only because they were so determined to give the best experience to all 160 children – and so they had to negotiate and coordinate their different ideas. But what an experience it proved to be! They stuck with it and eventually agreed on a joint plan with great outcomes. My overriding sense was “They’re going to be ok – in life!”
