I still can’t believe the first month of the World Race has come and gone. So far I’ve been away from home for 36 days and out of America for 32. We spent 22 of those days in the small village of Haripur in Sarlahi, Nepal. Sarlahi is in southeast Nepal, and our village was only a few miles from the Indian border.
It was hot. It was dusty. It was muddy. And I miss it like crazy.
We worked with a local Pastor (I can’t pronounce his name, so we all just called him Uncle according to polite Nepali manners) and the Christian school his son ran in Haripur, as well as with the organization New Light Nepal that both he and his sons organized. We had the opportunity to teach in the school, be a part of his church services and other services throughout the week, and help build the new offices for New Light.
Teaching was amazing. Many of the older grades (somewhere between 3rd and 8th grades) didn’t have teachers at all. They instead sort of taught themselves out of their own textbooks, and the few teachers check up on them as needed. So we were given the opportunity to step into the classroom with them. All of the textbooks were in English, and many of them spoke English fairly well. It was fun to talk with them and learn more about where they come from, as well as get the chance to give them more specialized attention when it came to school work. It was really eye opening getting to see the difference in what education is in America versus what it is in Nepal. So many things were different, but so many things were same, all at the exact same time. Kids still picked their noses and didn’t finish their homework and tried to copy off other kids and didn’t like reading out loud. But some kids didn’t even have a pencil, or their last pencil was work down to the nub. Some kids didn’t bring a lunch at all, and spent the whole morning from 6am to noon with nothing to eat. When asked what they wanted to do when they grew up, some responded “truck driver” or “farmer”. So many differences, but still so similar to children in America.
I miss Nepal. It was a beautiful country, and I’m even more excited for what the next few months have in store.
