Bandh

*Full disclosure: this is a long post and it doesn’t have pictures. Sorry! But if you’re willing to brave the long stretch of text I think it will be entertaining and you’ll find out how I broke my cardinal rule: don’t ever let a six year old tell you what is supposed to happen.

Today was my first experience with a Nepali bandh. The word is pronounced kind of like “bond” but with a stronger “aw” sound in the middle and a slight inhale/gasp at the end: b-AW-ndh. Literally bandh means closure. In practice, it is a fairly successful form of protest where an unhappy group of people decides to close down a certain portion of road. With the road closed to all vehicular transport, people do not go to work and most places are closed. This could mean all of Kathmandu, just a small section of the city, or any other place in the country. The bandh is “announced” which really means that it effectively travels through the grape vine, and then it may or may not happen.

Like many things in Nepal, bandhs come with a high degree of uncertainty. After hearing about the potential closure I asked many questions, to which I found very few answers.

-          Who is sponsoring the bandh?

-          Will police, ambulance, government, or tourists vehicles be allowed to travel?

-          Will our school be closed?

I really should have just conserved my oxygen because I still can’t answer any of those questions with complete certainty. Let me just tell you about the school aspect.

By American standards, today was a failure. At least 50% of the students were absent and for nursery-grade 10 there were only eight teachers, myself included! (By the way, starting in class 6 there are two or three sections for each grade so if you thought we were close to having someone to supervise each class, think again.)

When I arrived at 9:40, I was the only adult. I went to the teacher’s lounge and waited; hoping that another adult, preferably one who spoke the same language as all the students, might show up. At 10:00, the school peon rang the bell calling all the students to morning assembly. At this point I was nervous that he might ask me what to do with the two hundred children milling about, but then I decided that if no one else showed up I would either teach them all how to play the quiet game or do nothing and see how long before they just left on their own.

At 10:10, two other teachers and the principal appeared and we went outside for morning assembly. A few more adults straggled in during the meeting. The principal gave a lot of instructions in Nepali, the kids sang the national anthem, and then they filed off to their classrooms like any other day. I wandered from teacher to teacher asking “ke bhayo?” (what happened?) until I found someone who said that it had been decided that classes would run.

 If I had been principal, I would have immediately sat down and mapped out a plan for combining classes and assigning teachers. But that’s not quite how it went. Basically, each teacher grabbed an attendance book and headed to the corresponding classroom. I picked grade two because that’s normally where I start my day and I already knew that their regular teacher was not present. Since there were lots of unclaimed classrooms – meaning unsupervised children – the headsir called some of the smartest grade 10 boys and they divided up the rest. Perhaps this strategy could be employed in American schools when there aren’t enough subs, just pick your favorite student and let them teach. I don’t really know what happened in those classrooms because I had my own kiddos to worry about.

Oh, and by the way, since when I left for school that morning it had seemed pretty likely that classes would not actually run and everyone would be sent home, I had decided not to bring all of the supplies (textbooks, games, crayons, etc.) that I normally bring. Remember that book Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire? That’s about the only thing that could have made this day more ridiculous.

First period with grade two actually went pretty well. This was my second time teaching them by myself because my co-teacher was absent a few weeks ago. Plus there were only 16 kids today. We reviewed the adjectives that we have been talking about lately (fat, thin, tall, short, near, far, etc.) and then I made up a game that filled the rest of the time. When the bell rang I saw lots of teachers changing classes so I decided I should too. I created a writing and drawing assignment for the grade two students, wrote it on the board, tried to emphasize that I would be back later to make sure they did it, crossed my fingers, and left.

I spent second period with grade four. When I walked in there was an older boy standing at the front of the room, and the kids seemed under control. I asked what he was teaching and he said “nothing.” So I told him I would take this class and he could go to another room. Whether he went somewhere else or just walked home I have no idea.

This group of students is very eager (read get easily out of control with excitement) but I like them. Their regular English teacher is fantastic so they’re used to following directions and doing activities besides reading aloud in unison from the textbook. They told me the teacher had given them homework the day before so I checked it. Only two kids didn’t do it so I made them move to the back to finish the assignment; I let it slide but what really happened is that they moved to the back and copied someone else’s work so that they could join the rest of us in playing a game. But remember, there were tenth grade teachers today so standards were a little lower than usual.

We played run to the board with vocabulary words from the story they are reading, “The Very Bad Landlord.” Most of the kids really loved it, but there was one girl who was really shy and didn’t want to come when it was her turn. I was trying really hard to get her to play, and I had every intention of cheating a bit to help build her confidence, but then class ended. There is a little break between second and third period so I made all the other kids leave and kept her behind. I brought her up to the board and we practiced one-on-one the words that were up there. She actually knew a lot of them. I tried to convey that she could trust me to help and not to embarrass. I made a big deal out of shooing all the kids away from the window so that she could practice without an audience. I think she smiled at the end, either because she understood that I don’t hit kids who don’t know the answer or because I was letting her go join her friends outside.

One nice thing about teaching on my own is that I have full control over the feedback that students get when they struggle. The kids here are caught totally off guard when they don’t know how to respond to the question and I just whisper the answer so that they get to look successful in front of their peers. It’s so important for students to know what it feels like to get it right, especially the ones who are openly referred to as “very weak” or just ignored by most teachers.

Normally I don’t teach during third period, but not today. I headed back to the corridor with classes one and two. Since no one else came that way I took both classes. I quick scribbled the names of some colors on sheets of scrap paper I had grabbed during the break and motioned for all of the kids to follow me out to the courtyard.

After quickly reading over all the colors, I picked five of my most confused students. Their only job was to hold one of the papers high over their heads and I spread them out around the area. For the next 30 minutes I called out colors (or pointed to things of different colors) and the other kids ran to the corresponding sign. The whole activity attracted a lot of attention. At one point the principal, three other teachers, and some people who work at the food stand nearby were all spectating. (Remember, there were only eight teachers present so draw whatever conclusions you want about the fact that three of them decided the best use of their time was watching me try to corral the 40 students who speak the least amount of English in the entire school.)

There was only one casualty: a kid who was running with his pencil and fell so that the point stabbed into his palm. I felt really bad, but I have an especially hard time understanding crying children who are speaking Nepali so I sent him to one of the spectating adults. I think said teacher basically hit him on the back and told him stop crying. I went over and let him hold a color sign for the rest of the game.

Eventually the game lost its novelty and I ran out of creative ways to practice five colors so I lined the kids up ready to walk them back to class. They all ran, but whatever.

I decided I should spend a little more time with class one since they are small and they hadn’t had a teacher all day. Thank goodness I did have my run to the end cards (half pictures, half words). I had them work with a partner to match the words and pictures. I tried to teach two of my naughtiest boys how to share, but there is only so much you can do in one day of impromptu teaching with a language barrier.

I was just arranging the students to play a new game with the cards when two students, maybe seventh graders, came to the door. “Class one is going to…[lots of fast Nepali/English that I did not understand]” they said. I looked quite lost, but my students were all packing up their things and heading for the door. “Where are you going?” I asked. “Oh, we have to go practice running for children’s day tomorrow.”

Normally, I do not take seventh grade boys or first graders at their word. But given that tenth graders were teaching, and that yesterday (when the full staff was present) all classes had ended after third period so that the kids could practice for the Nepali equivalent of field day, it didn’t seem out of the question that another teacher would have sent the two boys to fetch the grade ones since the American teacher had clearly missed the memo on running practice.

I looked very seriously into the eyes of the smartest, most proficient English speaking girl in grade one and asked if this was true. She gave me a genuine smile and said “yes, we must go.”  And as soon as I said okay, the herd of first graders were screaming and running down the hall, across the courtyard, and out the school gate. Yes, out the school gate.

Honestly, I sort of thought I was done for the day; that the teacher who had sent the boys had organized large group games practice for the students since there weren’t enough teachers for actual instruction to take place. But I was quickly corrected when one of my co-teachers emerged from another classroom and asked something equal to “what the h*** is going on here?!?”

So there I was. Standing outside the door of a grade one class in a Nepali school, having just watched at least half of my students (and definitely all the boys) escape out the front gate with my permission. Did I know where the location for running practice was? No. Did I have any idea if my students were actually going to that mysterious location or if they were all halfway home? No. Did I know how many of the kids were gone or any of their names? No. Was I suddenly granted the ability to speak Nepali so as to explain the situation to the other teacher? No. Were the seventh grade boys who had started the whole mess anywhere to be found? Of course not.

Was any of this a problem? No.

The other teacher just told me that there was no practice today and shooed the students who hadn’t run fast enough to get away back into the classroom. I tried to ask about all the kids who were gone, but she told me just to teach the five who were left. Eventually the others came back, I don’t know who arranged that or how it happened, but whatever.

Approximately five minutes after I had a full class again more students, older girls this time, showed up at the door and said that school was closing and everyone could go home. While my students yelped with joy and grabbed their backpacks, I firmly planted myself in the doorway. No way was I going to fall for this again! But this time when I leaned out into the hallway the same teacher appeared and confirmed that yes, school would be closing. The principal had decided that we could not continue with so few teachers. Why this occurred to him hours after morning assembly I have no idea. 

So at 1:05, school ended. I went upstairs to get my umbrella and found the rest of the teachers already in the lounge waiting for tea to be delivered. We sat in the room together, one of the teachers offered to find me a good Nepali husband (he even asked if I had any specific criteria), we drank tea, and then we left.

When I was in Cameroon, our group used to say “if you’re not having a good day, you’re in the middle of a great story.” While today was not good in the way I might I have designed it, it was spontaneous and joyful in a lot of other ways. And it is most definitely an incredible story.