The Wedding Party

Definitely the final set of images from "the wedding". The top two speak for themselves as Sharon and Michael in more traditional British dress wait to greet guests at the evening wedding party. Held at the Kathmandu Radisson, drinks and snacks were served in the main banqueting hall before the Nepali banquet was served in the outdoor Waterfall Garden. The bottom picture shows Sharon greeting her cousin Hisila Yami who is the Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation in the Maoist Government. Her husband Dr Bhattarai, the Finance Minister, was unable to attend being involved in the meetings with the prime minister regarding the sacking of the army chief.

Trustees Wedding-Ceremony Slideshow

As reported below the wedding took place of Sharon & Michael in Kathmandu last weekend and this is a link to a short slideshow and a short writeup on the ceremony:
The ceremony took about 2.5 hours and contained 5 stages. The first was "Purification" in which the Buddhist priest and Michael spent almost 45 mins in a ceremony to purify the temple space/area prior to the wedding ceremony itself. Next, the marriage lasting about 20 mins in which the couple came together in the centre of the temple for rituals and exchange of rings etc. Next a blessing by the Guruju/priest involving the couple taking about 15 mins. Then a lengthy "receiving" of the family and "respecting" the marriage as each attendee came forward to offer a token gift of respect. Finally a ceremonial departure down the temple steps with everyone following before circling the car three times for luck and transport to the lunch reception. The link to the web slideshow click Nepal Wedding-The Ceremony

Trustees Married In Kathmandu

Three photos from the millions that were taken during a very long day in Kathmandu when two of our young Trustees were married in a Buddhist ceremony at Swayambhu Temple. The ceremony itself took about 2.5 hours and was followed by a "small reception" at the Yak & Yeti Hotel for about 50 guests. Later that evening a larger family party was held at the Kathmandu Radisson for 150 family members and friends.
More pictures and news to follow once we've recovered! Keep watching and commenting.

News From Nepal

Been here for about a week now, flew out on Sunday after Sharon's first wedding on Saturday. Since then we have had a hectic mixture of second wedding arrangements, attempted school visits and partnership meetings. Tried to take 5 visitors today to BalBigyan and Sramik schools but a general strike/road blockage and a teacher strike conspired against us. Last minute change to Kesh Chandra where there was no strike instead.
Posting up photos at the moment is virtually impossible due to power cuts, slow internet and dodgy keyboards. This has taken 40 mins.
Will try more tomorrow.
Family party tonight. Thanks for recent comments Nancy & Trevor, keep posting.

Nepal Visits

Across most of May a number of Trustees will be visiting and working at our schools in Kathmandu and THIS is the place to keep up to date. Keep checking the NewsBlog as we will be posting up news every other day or so and "events" will include:

• Sharon's wedding
• Selecting a new teacher for Bal Kalyan school
• Opening and running the new "Water & Sanitation in the Curriculum" course for 12 of the teachers in our schools
• Meeting with the Heads and Governors of each school
• Conducting a detailed fact-find on two schools
  
• Observing some specific lessons in each school
• Distributing letters and cards from the children of Haverigg and St Jame's schools
• Allocating our budget for the production and purchase of 22,000 exercise books, 1000 textbooks, 100 school bags

We would really welcome visitors to the NewsBlog leavingtheir comments against/under each posting so, especially for our supporters, please click on "comments" and use the "anonymous" login but PLEASE remember to sign your name at the bottom of your message!

Did they make it?

An email received today from Andy tells us that the group is back in Namche Bazaar. Apparently only 14 out of the group of 30 made it to Everest Base Camp, mostly due to the "usual" reasons of poor acclimatisation, sickness & diaorrhea. 

Unfortunately he doesn't tell us whether he and the rest of our supporters made it themselves!(The photo shows Andy on a previous successful trip).

We'll just have to wait for three more day's till they get back to Kathmandu!

Almost there ...

Well here we are at sunny Dingboche, a bit over 14000ft, been up to 15,000 this morning as part of acclimatisation process. Some rest day. Weather still good but it is very dusty up here. Sandra has copped a dose of D&V but is otherwise coping very well. The mountain views are pretty spectacular. Otherwise we are ok and heading off tomorrow to Lobuche and moving ever nearer Everest base camp.

 

Andy & Sandra

Trekkers reach Namche Bazaar

Hello and Namste !

Well here we are safe and sound in sunny Namche Bazaar. Weather is very good and bloody hot! Which is a bit of an issue as we have packed for colder conditions, but we will deal with it.

 

Had spectacular views of everest this morning. Needless to say the cameras have been busy.

 

We are all coping well with the altitude and trekking at the moment.

 

When we were in Kathmandu it was quite an eye opener visiting the school with Champa and Madan. The kids were great, always smiling. The conditions they have to learn in and the teachers have to work are not good. From what I can understand it is only through us supplying their books that they are able to keep the schools open. There is more work to be done.

 

We were also given stationary, pens, crayons, paints etc by some of the other trekkers to take to our schools. Champa is doing this whilst we are on the trek.

 

We will email again at the next opportunity........whenever thet may be.

 

Andy & Sandra

Andy visits Kathmandu schools

Making his fourth trip to Nepal and his third Everest Base Camp trek, Andy one of our trustees and his wife Sandra visited three of our schools in Kathmandu. Across a whole morning they whizzed around Patan and Balaju seeing for themselves the nature of each school and the effect our support is having. There's just no substitute for seeing it like it is which resulted in Andy "volunteering" to o some teaching work on his next trip.

Today they flew to Lukla to begin their trek and we are hoping he will email us with news on day 3 when they reach the Sherpa capital, Namche Bazaar.

Champa Visits Bal Kalyan Primary School

This school is situated along the banks of the River Bisnumati where there is a shanty town of many temporary huts. The source of children for this school is therefore obvious, migrant workers, extreme poverty, a culture where education is low on the agenda.
The school building is just a “shell” without clearly separated classrooms, the creation of which was aided by one of our Operations Team in Kathmandu, Laxmi Tuladhar. Despite the children's good behaviour this leads to quite noisy classes interfering with each other.
There are about 200 pupils at this school and they are receiving some food aid for lunch snacks from an Israeli source which in many cases is the only meal the children get. The children have nowhere to play except the building itself. They seem highly respectful and are taking good care of the textbooks we have provided them with so that they can be reused by new pupils next year.

Champa Visits Kesh Chandra Primary School

Another very, very poor school run by the local Newar community. The building itself is a Bahal, a kind of shrine/temple building so there are strict rules about its use which includes NOT having a toilet in the building. This means that staff and children have to use a plot of waste land about 500 metres away!
The part allocated to the school is corridoor-like with sheets of hardboard used to create partitioned classrooms. So, from an overall viewpoint their plight is very precarious with no security of tenure, five classes in a corridoor, no toilet or normal services, no government support for building, salaries or materials.
This all therefore puts our support into some perspective. We supplied textbooks as well as exercise books which are being extremely well looked after. We are also paying the salary of one female teacher which is encouraging more girls to attend.
The headteachers' parting words to Champa were “we cannot survive without your help”

Champa Visits Bal Bigyan Junior School

This school is in a good community financially who have funded the land and building. It is in very clean surroundings with classrooms, play areas and toilets, unlike most of our other schools. The parents are very poor however and cannot read. But, they are very proud to receive exercise books and textbooks funded from the UK and sign for each book their child receives! We also have a sponsored teacher here, Basu Maharjan, who teaches English and Maths.
According to Champa the children are “very friendly, keen, and beautiful” and are going to create some coloured cards to bring back to the UK. The teacher Basu is good with the computer so there is a good possibility of setting up a communication channel with a UK school.
We are told from this school that they are especially impressed with our Nepal Operations Team, especially Dr Madan who is particularly respected.

Champa Visits Sramik Primary

This is our poorest school situated in the ajoining city of Patan. We have a sponsored teacher here, Rajendra Maharjan whose salary we pay. He is the only male teacher with five female teachers.The attendees are the children of migrant workers, the majority of whom are peasants and illiterate. It is therefore a very big step to send their children to school especially from a financial viewpoint. The attendance has risen markedly however since we began supplying all their exercise books and testbooks as well as our teacher teaching maths and English.

The school is run in a small building which they do not own and they are pleading with the government to give them some land so they can then seek commnity support and finance to get funding to put up a building they will own without fear of being thrown off.
Champa delivered a lot of cards and papers created by the children of Haverigg School in Cumbria and she is arranging some coloured pens and crayons so the children at Sramik School can reply.
This school will be visited by our Everest Base Camp trekkers who arrive at the weekend.

Champa visits Himalaya School

Yesterday Champa made her first visit to one of our five schools in Kathmandu. At Himalaya School she met with the Head Teacher and staff as well as many pupils. This is a junior and secondary school with our support being focused on junior children who cannot pay the fees but are given places at this school. The Head will be joining Champa with the heads of the other five schools later in the week to discuss future support and setting up communication with UK schools.

Trustees Visit Nepal

Trustee News

Very soon two of our Trustees will be visiting Nepal on quite different missions. Champa will be in Kathmandu for a month across November and will spend extensive time in each of our five schools. We are attempting to begin communication between the schools and ourselves as well as with our supporting schools in the UK. She will have meetings with business contacts to seek financial support and to explore the potential for setting up a permanent business support group. It is also likely that she will have meetings with a number of politicians on the current government policies on primary education and in particular meeting one of the UN Milennium Goals in this connection.

Andy is leading some of our supporters on a trek to Everest Base Camp but will also spend a little time in one of our Kathmandu schools. The small group have raised significant funds for the charity and we wish then every success in their adventure. In each case they have paid for the trip themselves with 100% of donations going to the charity.

You can follow progress of these visits on our newsblog, just click the main link on the left.