Nepal-06: Graduation

After a year since I started working at school, I had been used to teaching and feeling improvement of the school little by little. Especially 5 students in grade-5 were really motivated and I was deeply impressed by their will to break though their current predicaments. We hardly see students with such a will in Japan. Most children in Japan dislike studies as I used to be, but those grade-5 students looked that they really like it. And the more they improved, the more I wanted to do something for them.

Nepal-05: Underdeveloped Society

Since I started teaching at school, I was thinking how to improve its circumstance. I wanted to make this school as good as the private schools nearby, and I thought it wasn't too difficult. Government school students are very weak at English, but those private school students didn't speak English either even though they were studying in English-medium education system. Needless to say, there are a lot of good private schools in urban areas like Kathmandu or Pokhara, yet private schools outside the cities didn't seem really different from government schools in the quality of education.

Nepal-04: Teaching Days

School education in Nepal is called 10+2 system that consists of primary level of 5 years, lower secondary level of 3 years, secondary level of 2 years and higher secondary level of 2 years. However, all students take the examination called School Leaving Certificate (SLC) which is organized by government all over the country simultaneously in the end of secondary school. And this exam is the first milestone of schooling for Nepalese students.

Nepal-03: Becoming a Teacher

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia. The population is about 30 million and total average age is 22 years. That means the number of children has been rapidly increasing over decades. The more children are there, the more education becomes competitive. In fact, there are so many schools including private ones in Nepal especially around major cities. Therefore, the school attendance ratio of children is not as low as before. But there is a huge gap between government schools and private schools in the quality of education. Environment of government schools is much worse than private’s, but there is no choice for poor families besides putting their children into free government schools.

Nepal-02: Visiting Schools

The Japanese group I met was 14 college students and their teacher from Kyoto. They were staying in the same guesthouse where I was. Mr. Fujiwara, the teacher, told me that he comes to Nepal with his students every year to help government schools in poor villages around Pokhara. They collect donation of about 10,000 USD in Japan, and then help poor government schools to build new classrooms. Not only donation but they help the construction as well. “That’s a part of our activity that the students help them by their own hands. It would be a great experience for themselves.” told Mr. Fujiwara. That sounded really interesting to me, so I asked them to let me join their tour. And Mr. Fujiwara willingly accepted my request.

Nepal-01: Prologue

In 2007, I visited Nepal for the first time. Until then I had stayed in India for 2 years. Most of the time, I was staying in Kolkata, volunteering at the Missionaries of Charity (as known as Mother Teresa's House). Mother House has several institutions and each of them is for different kinds of patients such as sick or injured people, handicapped people, mental patients, orphans or old people. Most of the patients have no relatives to depend on. The institution where I was working at is called Prem Dan, which is one the biggest institution among Mother House for sick, injured, old or handicapped people but not in critical condition.

Prem Dan (2006)