Most people in Chitwan Province grow their own food, and the family we stayed with grew all their own rice, and owned chickens, goats and a cow. The family was incredibly warm and welcoming, and typical for this area, multigenerational. The parents, kids, and grandparents lived together under one roof. Their small home included an outhouse, a hose for showering, a single tap in the kitchen area providing water for cooking, and an outdoor pump for water for everything else. The mom and dad gave up their bedroom for us and cooked delicious meals. We ate together every day sitting on mats on the kitchen floor and enjoyed a variety of food including rice, millet, curried potatoes and cauliflower and soybeans. Although it is common for Nepalese to eat with their hands, the family thoughtfully provided us with forks.
The school where we helped teach English and math was a K-8 public school with just over 400 students and consisted of a large 2-story building with 9 classrooms, a teacher’s room, a second smaller building with 2 classrooms, and a separate library building. A lack of resources was very apparent. There were 6 computers for the 40 kids in each class. Teachers wrote with barely readable white board markers and, most surprising, kids were missing pages from their textbooks. The library, while large, was very musty due to a leaking roof. The books were all paperback in various states of disrepair. Our daughter worked on organizing the books, but we limited her time in the building because of the mold she was breathing. The kids were allowed to read the books in the library, but were not allowed to take them home for fear of the books not coming back.
