Friday 9 October 2009

Return to Nagarkot

Hello,

Those of you who've followed the blog in previous years will remember we spent most of our time in and around Nagarkot, and have had quite a lot of contact with one school in particular, Shree Gadgade School, and also with the health centre.

So this week we've been up in Nagarkot for a couple of days seeing how things were going. We stayed at Eco Home which is where Semanta now is as he owns the place, and also met the chef Kishan, Manoj (both of whom were with Semanta at Nagarkot Cottage), and the two new staff Krishna and Pasang. It was just like being back amongst family again, and we had a nice stay there - I can certainly recommend Eco Home and I'm not saying that just because they are friends!


We had a few wanders round the village, even though it rained much of the time we were there and the paths were very slippery. We visited the Health Centre where Kat worked when she was here and caught up with the news from the "In Charge" Begum, and his two assistants Laxmi and Champa. When we left there was an arrangement for a doctor to visit once a month and hold a clinic, but this has not happened for a few months because the doctor who was in charge of the arrangements suffered a family tragedy. But we had tea there and they were so pleased to see which was nice.


Then we went to visit the new library which has been provided by a charity called Room to Read. It's a beautiful building and has lots of books in both Engish and Nepali and newspapers too. It seems to be attached to Shree Gadgade School, and has a reading area where the younger children can sit on the floor and look at books with their teacher. We met one of the teachers there, Govinda, and the headmaster Uddhav arrived soon afterwards. So we had a good chat about the school and the new building which is being erected behind the library. This is going to be the first phase of the new school, so for those of you who bought calendars or kindly gave donations last year, the attached picture shows where your money is going. This building will have four classrooms, and in due course another four classrooms will be built on top of the library building. The delay in starting the school seems to have been because the money from the Room to Read charity had to be used straight away, so the library had to be built first, but at least the school is being built now, which is good.

Nagarkot doesn't seem to have changed all that much, though there is quite a lot of new building going on. Men are still leaving to go and work abroad because there isn't work in Nepal and they can earn far more abroad anyway - in fact Nepal and its people probably wouldn't survive without all the money that comes in from Nepalis working abroad.
Jill will be returning to Nagarkot on Monday with a new volunteer -Elisse - and they will be staying at our old place, Nagarkot Cottage, for a while. As for me, well I'm not sure what I'll be doing. I was supposed to be going to Chitwan on Friday with Bhakta to see how the hotel building was going, but Bhakta's mother was admitted to hospital in Kathmandu earlier in the week and until she's fit to travel he won't be going back. So at the moment I'm not quite sure what to do - stay in Kathmandu or go to Nagarkot, or do something entirely different. The possibilities are endless as they say!
So I think that's all my news for now.
Take care of yourselves,
Love,
Vivienne xxx

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