Monday, April 12, 2010

Women's Literacy starts Second Year

Our women's literacy classes in Simpani are now starting their second year. Two classes running here. We are able to run these thanks to individual sponsors and a donation from Orca Publishing in Victoria and other donations. As I have outlined before these are very successful programs along with our new Literacy class in Hamza at the quarrey. These women have amazed me.
Here in Kathmandu the work is very hard as our children are so spread out and the schools all have different days that they take registration which is confusing to say the least. We have a few teenage problems which seems to happen between 14 to 16 years. Usually it is boys but we have a girl this year also. One boy we had a problem with a few years ago, Pradip, I saw yesterday and he is now 17 and doing very well. I was so happy to see this as I thought we were going to lose him to drugs and the street four years ago. He is now starting class 9. The poverty and lack of guidance all make for problems in these families.
I have less than a week left now before I leave for home. Wednesday is Nepali New Year and that means a day off for us. Riding around all day on the back of a motorbike is tiring, dirty and dusty in this city and today we shopped for handicrafts that I bring home to sell and these we had to carry home on the motorbike as well. When I think of all the safety regulations at home and here there are basically none. Passengers on bikes do not have to wear a helmet as the law states that only the driver has to wear one. I do always wear one but I never see anyone else doing so. They laugh when I tell them that cyclists have to wear helmets in Canada. Also lining up at schools to register can take a long time. Jagat lined up at a government school yesterday for 3 hours to register one child.

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