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Friday, July 18, 2008
Micro Buses and Little Bahinis
Ratnaparkrantaparkratnapark!!!!!
So, Rachna and Jess both fell ill on our day off. We managed to make it to Kathmandu, but were not about to brave another crowded, bumpy, two-hour bus journey back to the village, so we stayed the night, woke up the next morning, and went right back to the village in time to volunteer at CBR! We are getting pretty savvy at navigating these Nepali bus junctions, you only see us, two little American girls pushing our way through the crowds, yelling “Laghenkel?!?” or “Ratna Park?” in the most American accents that they’ve ever heard. Yesterday evening, walking home from our volunteer placement we saw the bus driver who drove us on our morning journey... he yelled out his window in a mocking American accent and high voice, “Laghenkel?” Haha, we’re famous.
Yesterday was an amazing day at CBR, despite the fact that there were only three children who showed up. Rachna was not able to go because she was still a bit ill. There is still no petrol available for CBR’s jeep, but somehow a different group of kids arrives each day. There are always around 3-5 kids to show up when there is no petrol; their parents bring them on foot or motorbike. Yesterday there was a little girl with Down syndrome, the boy with obvious autism who is classified here as “deaf and hyperactive ADHD,” and an older girl with hydrocephalus. It was wonderful because Jessi got to devote all of her attention to the usually uncontrollable boy with autism! He came so far, it was so exciting.
For example, he always requests a very spicy pepper during lunch by making a hand motion to his mouth and biting noise. The child who the didis and teacher think is deaf has surprising communication abilities if you pay close attention. When a didi gave him the pepper, he found it so unusually spicy that he drank all his water in one gulp.
Jessi has been working with this child on using the “more” sign-language motion to request more of a food or activity. When we wanted more water so badly, he independently said “more” with his sign language! Jessi was floored and immediately served him an overflowing cup of water in excitement.
Later that afternoon, he got into the book cabinet, of course a place easily accessible to him, even though he usually gets physically reprimanded when he goes to pick out books. When he pulled Jessi’s hand to go to the book cabinet, Jessi realized his attempt at communication and pulled out a communication picture card that read “book.” The boy took the symbol, handed it to Jessi, and together they got books. Each time the boy finished a book he would grab for the symbol rather than just run over to the cupboard. You have no idea how exciting this was since this boy is usually seen as completely out of control and hyperactive.
After CBR, we went to the VSN children’s home down the road and played a geography game and taught some mass guitar lessons. The children on one side of the room were guessing the locations of countries on a map eagerly with Rachna while the other half of the orphanage was chanting “down down up up down up” in unison, learning strumming patterns with Jessi. We are making great strides in our service work and can’t wait for this weekend in Kathmandu! We plan to do a music program at one of the new orphanages in the city on Saturday, so we will stay overnight in Thamel, the tourist district of the city, for the weekend.
The wailing child...
Contrary to what you might think, this is not a child at CBR. Typically developing, very cute, but way too loud. Every morning around 5:15 am, the little girl, our bahini (little sister), in our house starts wailing like she’s eaten by a leopard, trampled by a cow, or any of the other likely situations that could occur in Nepal. She usually comes and bangs on our door around 5:45 am and continues to wail until her grandfather or mother comes and picks her up and takes her downstairs where she, again, continues to wail. The wailing has barely ceased when the mother comes up and knocks on our door at freaking 6:15 am to give us some chiyaa... when her mom goes back downstairs, the wailing starts up again. Please keep in mind that this is no baby... she’s 18 months old. We usually leave to go to the placement around 9:45 am, and when we return, guess what? The baby’s still wailing. We sing to her, and she’ll stop crying and start dancing. Once we start going up the stairs to our room, however, she starts crying again because she wants to come into our room. During the evening after dinner, she’ll usually come bang on our door until we let her in and come straight to Jessi’s side of the room and start chewing on her toothpaste bottle. If we try to take something away from her, she starts crying. We usually try to lure her out of the room and try singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or the ABCs to make her stop crying. She falls asleep around 9:00 pm and we finally get some peace and quiet until the next morning around 5:15.
So, Rachna and Jess both fell ill on our day off. We managed to make it to Kathmandu, but were not about to brave another crowded, bumpy, two-hour bus journey back to the village, so we stayed the night, woke up the next morning, and went right back to the village in time to volunteer at CBR! We are getting pretty savvy at navigating these Nepali bus junctions, you only see us, two little American girls pushing our way through the crowds, yelling “Laghenkel?!?” or “Ratna Park?” in the most American accents that they’ve ever heard. Yesterday evening, walking home from our volunteer placement we saw the bus driver who drove us on our morning journey... he yelled out his window in a mocking American accent and high voice, “Laghenkel?” Haha, we’re famous.
Yesterday was an amazing day at CBR, despite the fact that there were only three children who showed up. Rachna was not able to go because she was still a bit ill. There is still no petrol available for CBR’s jeep, but somehow a different group of kids arrives each day. There are always around 3-5 kids to show up when there is no petrol; their parents bring them on foot or motorbike. Yesterday there was a little girl with Down syndrome, the boy with obvious autism who is classified here as “deaf and hyperactive ADHD,” and an older girl with hydrocephalus. It was wonderful because Jessi got to devote all of her attention to the usually uncontrollable boy with autism! He came so far, it was so exciting.
For example, he always requests a very spicy pepper during lunch by making a hand motion to his mouth and biting noise. The child who the didis and teacher think is deaf has surprising communication abilities if you pay close attention. When a didi gave him the pepper, he found it so unusually spicy that he drank all his water in one gulp.
Jessi has been working with this child on using the “more” sign-language motion to request more of a food or activity. When we wanted more water so badly, he independently said “more” with his sign language! Jessi was floored and immediately served him an overflowing cup of water in excitement.
Later that afternoon, he got into the book cabinet, of course a place easily accessible to him, even though he usually gets physically reprimanded when he goes to pick out books. When he pulled Jessi’s hand to go to the book cabinet, Jessi realized his attempt at communication and pulled out a communication picture card that read “book.” The boy took the symbol, handed it to Jessi, and together they got books. Each time the boy finished a book he would grab for the symbol rather than just run over to the cupboard. You have no idea how exciting this was since this boy is usually seen as completely out of control and hyperactive.
After CBR, we went to the VSN children’s home down the road and played a geography game and taught some mass guitar lessons. The children on one side of the room were guessing the locations of countries on a map eagerly with Rachna while the other half of the orphanage was chanting “down down up up down up” in unison, learning strumming patterns with Jessi. We are making great strides in our service work and can’t wait for this weekend in Kathmandu! We plan to do a music program at one of the new orphanages in the city on Saturday, so we will stay overnight in Thamel, the tourist district of the city, for the weekend.
The wailing child...
Contrary to what you might think, this is not a child at CBR. Typically developing, very cute, but way too loud. Every morning around 5:15 am, the little girl, our bahini (little sister), in our house starts wailing like she’s eaten by a leopard, trampled by a cow, or any of the other likely situations that could occur in Nepal. She usually comes and bangs on our door around 5:45 am and continues to wail until her grandfather or mother comes and picks her up and takes her downstairs where she, again, continues to wail. The wailing has barely ceased when the mother comes up and knocks on our door at freaking 6:15 am to give us some chiyaa... when her mom goes back downstairs, the wailing starts up again. Please keep in mind that this is no baby... she’s 18 months old. We usually leave to go to the placement around 9:45 am, and when we return, guess what? The baby’s still wailing. We sing to her, and she’ll stop crying and start dancing. Once we start going up the stairs to our room, however, she starts crying again because she wants to come into our room. During the evening after dinner, she’ll usually come bang on our door until we let her in and come straight to Jessi’s side of the room and start chewing on her toothpaste bottle. If we try to take something away from her, she starts crying. We usually try to lure her out of the room and try singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or the ABCs to make her stop crying. She falls asleep around 9:00 pm and we finally get some peace and quiet until the next morning around 5:15.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Everest!
Cultural considerations of volunteering...
There are many things at our placement that are just downright awful, such as constant negative reinforcement, hitting, and lack of educational materials, but there are many other aspects that we are skeptical of or disagree with that make us wonder if their way is inappropriate or just unfamiliar because of different cultural norms.
For example, there is one young girl, about five or six years old, who is incontinent. The first day we watched her pee in her clothes three times during nap time. Every time, the teacher/didis would just change her clothes. The next day, a didi had the girl sit on a little baby potty, near the teacher’s desk and the center of activity of CBR, for long periods of time. She almost never went when she was sitting on that toilet! As volunteers, we both asked each other, “Is this called toilet training? I don’t think so!” The teacher would plop the little girl on the toilet, make a, “ssssss” sound, and expect the girl to pee! After being appalled at this seemingly degrading activity, we came home the next afternoon to see the mom in our host family making that same “ssss” sound to her 18-month-old daughter sitting on a similar blue potty. Even with the age difference, we realized that maybe that is a culturally appropriate way to toilet train children. It is so hard to cope with the fact that they do not wear diapers, especially because children with disabilities have to deal with changing their clothes all throughout the day! But, even the 18-month-old in our house does not wear a diaper.
Some other cultural differences that are difficult to keep in mind as “normal,” especially when it is our job to help take care of children, are the fact that it is completely normal in Nepal to bathe once a week, and hair and bodies are constantly oiled. Oily hair at home would look unclean and unacceptable, but here it is what is normal and even expected.
WE SAW EVEREST!
This past weekend, we spent most of our time touring and sight-seeing. We got into Thamel on Saturday, July 12th, and made our way to Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal. It is a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, and it is absolutely gorgeous. Because the temple is reserved for Hindus only, Rachna and one of the other girls on the trip went in. There are huge doors made of silver and gold that lead to the main temple (inside of which no one, except for priests, is allowed), and there are many smaller buildings in the area that are available if someone wishes to pray or make an offering to the temple. Outside the temple, we all walked across a bridge to a ledge overlooking the temple... the view was gorgeous even though it was pouring down that day. One of the most interesting things about the temple is that they performed public cremations right behind the temple. None of us had seen a cremation, so it was a very new experience. We had always thought of cremations as a more private ceremony. We later learned that the river that runs behind the temple leads to the Ganges River, the holiest river for Hindus. Once the body is cremated, the ashes are spread over the river.
The next morning, we all woke up at 4 am, got on a mini bus and drove to the Kathmandu airport to take a flight to go see... EVEREST! Before we bought our tickets for the flight, we were told that the flight might not take off because of the weather. It is currently monsoon season in Nepal, so many of the flights get cancelled due to rainy weather. When we got to the airport, the sky was overcast, and many of us thought that the flight would be cancelled. We got into the airport, and they informed us that the flight was still leaving but we were all aware of the fact that not many people get a good view of the Himalayas during this season. Well, it seemed as if we had picked the perfect day... we saw every single mountain that broke above the clouds. It was the most amazing experience! To see mountains that floated above the clouds... Mt. Everest is close to 30,000 ft high, and the other mountains around it are not too far off.
There are many things at our placement that are just downright awful, such as constant negative reinforcement, hitting, and lack of educational materials, but there are many other aspects that we are skeptical of or disagree with that make us wonder if their way is inappropriate or just unfamiliar because of different cultural norms.
For example, there is one young girl, about five or six years old, who is incontinent. The first day we watched her pee in her clothes three times during nap time. Every time, the teacher/didis would just change her clothes. The next day, a didi had the girl sit on a little baby potty, near the teacher’s desk and the center of activity of CBR, for long periods of time. She almost never went when she was sitting on that toilet! As volunteers, we both asked each other, “Is this called toilet training? I don’t think so!” The teacher would plop the little girl on the toilet, make a, “ssssss” sound, and expect the girl to pee! After being appalled at this seemingly degrading activity, we came home the next afternoon to see the mom in our host family making that same “ssss” sound to her 18-month-old daughter sitting on a similar blue potty. Even with the age difference, we realized that maybe that is a culturally appropriate way to toilet train children. It is so hard to cope with the fact that they do not wear diapers, especially because children with disabilities have to deal with changing their clothes all throughout the day! But, even the 18-month-old in our house does not wear a diaper.
Some other cultural differences that are difficult to keep in mind as “normal,” especially when it is our job to help take care of children, are the fact that it is completely normal in Nepal to bathe once a week, and hair and bodies are constantly oiled. Oily hair at home would look unclean and unacceptable, but here it is what is normal and even expected.
WE SAW EVEREST!
This past weekend, we spent most of our time touring and sight-seeing. We got into Thamel on Saturday, July 12th, and made our way to Pashupatinath, the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal. It is a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva, and it is absolutely gorgeous. Because the temple is reserved for Hindus only, Rachna and one of the other girls on the trip went in. There are huge doors made of silver and gold that lead to the main temple (inside of which no one, except for priests, is allowed), and there are many smaller buildings in the area that are available if someone wishes to pray or make an offering to the temple. Outside the temple, we all walked across a bridge to a ledge overlooking the temple... the view was gorgeous even though it was pouring down that day. One of the most interesting things about the temple is that they performed public cremations right behind the temple. None of us had seen a cremation, so it was a very new experience. We had always thought of cremations as a more private ceremony. We later learned that the river that runs behind the temple leads to the Ganges River, the holiest river for Hindus. Once the body is cremated, the ashes are spread over the river.
The next morning, we all woke up at 4 am, got on a mini bus and drove to the Kathmandu airport to take a flight to go see... EVEREST! Before we bought our tickets for the flight, we were told that the flight might not take off because of the weather. It is currently monsoon season in Nepal, so many of the flights get cancelled due to rainy weather. When we got to the airport, the sky was overcast, and many of us thought that the flight would be cancelled. We got into the airport, and they informed us that the flight was still leaving but we were all aware of the fact that not many people get a good view of the Himalayas during this season. Well, it seemed as if we had picked the perfect day... we saw every single mountain that broke above the clouds. It was the most amazing experience! To see mountains that floated above the clouds... Mt. Everest is close to 30,000 ft high, and the other mountains around it are not too far off.
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