Finding the way.

"Chabhilchabhilpashtinatpathbaddnarthbaktipil...." The sing song of the bus conductor as the bus crawls past. This cry is muffled by the incessant beeping of the passing trucks and other buses, as well as the lady at my arm pestering me to buy a necklace 'Very cheap, only 50ruppees, very pretty, bring good luck miss'. 'ChabhilChabilPash...' Accepting that I will never be able to locate a singular place name in the cry of the conductor (although it doesn't stop me trying each time I neeed to catch a bus) I run to the door and questioningly ask Pashtinathpath (or Chabhil, or Boddnarth etc). This is a slightly risky business, firstly although I am trying Nepali sounds are really really difficult and although I think the the place name is right I can never be truly sure, secondly I think the bus conductors like to have westerners on the bus (this is maybe through curiosity at our dress, white skin etc or more likely they can charge us whatever they like and pocket teh difference because we are too dim to know better!), thirdly the Nepalis like to be helpful so will often answer yes just to be polite even if they have no idea what you just asked. Actually I'm not being entirely truthful, I have another weapon at my disposal... It appears that the buses on certain routes tend to be of similar colours, for example the ring road bus going east is always blue and white stripped, whereas the bus going to teh center of town has always been yellow and green. However I'm not sure on the reliability of the colour method for finding directions as I often see the wrong colour bus going along a road that I don't think it should be ?!? ( I asked Vishnu Sir about my colour theory and he had no idea, saying that the Nepalis just listen for the place names and its really not that difficult!) Once committed to a bus I carefully follow the route in the Lonely Planet map (where would we be without the wonder that is the LP), this is also complicated by the Kathmandu roads having no names and often there being no space on teh bus so we are squished in the middle without being able to see a window. Surprisingly more times than not we have arrived at our destination although not always by the most direct route.

The chaotic bus system is actually quite a good descriptor of life in Nepal. In that I have no idea how it works, and am often quite lost but somehow everything seems to work out. Take for instance a side project that I am helping out with. Head Sir also runs an organisation Santi Sewar Ashram which is an umbrella organisation for a number of projects including a street children feeding project, drug rehabilitation and an after school homework help club for the local children. I have volunteered to help with the homework help (although I will also be helping with the street children next week). The program starts with chanting and a spiritual direction all in Sanskrit or Nepali. Children sitting everywhere, no apparent order. Then the children come to me individually with various questions about science or maths (yesterday I had the whole of grade four acting out the solar system to describe how day and night come about - I was the Sun :) )yet still there is no order or method in the people who come one minute I am explaining how to form the past tense to a 13 year old and the next helping with basic counting for a 7 year old). Yet somehow the whole system seems to work!

Its actually quite harrowing helping at the Ashram, take one boy Jaggared who to look at you would guess his age at 7. He is fact just severely malnourished and is 15! Yet despite his situation he is incredibly intelligent, hard working and so polite. I have a huge sense of uselessness that teaching in English is just not going to help him that much.

Oh well I must get on, Maths with grade 10 in 15 mins. They are studying for the equivalent of GCSE and yet are doing maths that most English A-Levels students would struggle with (2nd order differential equations). Kind of embarrassing to realise that these students have better maths skills learning in a foreign language than most English people do learning in their mother tongue.