Nishant (and Kathmandu schools)

As you may have gathered from my previous posts about OGN, I have become rather attached to the place and the children there and want to help them as much as I can. As I have mentioned before, one of Bina's main concerns is that the kids receive a decent education once they leave OGN. As far as she's concerned, this involves sending them to a private school. Government schools in Nepal are dire, especially in Kathmandu. At private schools, unlike government schools, most of the teaching is done in English, a distinct advantage when it come to securing a decent job.

Needless to say, private schools cost money, something which the OGN families distinctly lack. So sending the kids there requires 'education supporters', people (usually Westerners) willing to commit to paying for a child's education for its duration, at least 10 years. To cover the yearly cost of private school fees, uniform, textbooks, exercise books and stationary, lunches and extra curricular activities, Bina asks for 20,000 rupees, approximately 175 pounds. Although not a totally insignificant amount of money, it seems like a pretty good deal.

There are concerns, though. One worry, and this has been a problem for OGN kids receiving sponsorship before, is that sending kids from such poor socio-economic backgrounds to an expensive private school will result in them being badly bullied. The caste system is still very much in play in Nepal. Also, exposing such poor kids to the ways and means of richer ones might make them miserable in wanting for things that they cannot have. (Something that has often struck me about OGN kids is how happy they are and I can't help but wonder if this is because they haven't yet had the experience to realise just how dire their situations are).

Another worry (raised by Rabi after noticing a similar problem with kids from Khokana leprosy colony that have been sent away for a basic education) is that there's a risk that once the kids finish their ten years of schooling, they still won't really be ready for a decent job (that would require a +2 - equivalent to A-levels or grades 11 and 12 - as well as university), yet they will consider themselves above the manual jobs that without such schooling they'd be destined to go into. Nor will they have apprenticed in a particular skill or craft. Thus they'll be left in a kind of limbo. I suspect the way round that is for the education supporter to be prepared to keep up support throughout the latter stages of education, provided the child has shown an aptitude and keenness for their studies.

One other question concerns the amount. I know I mentioned that it doesn't seem like much, especially to a Westerner (what my father would have given to only have had to pay 175 pounds school fees a year!), it is actually a small fortune here and there are less good private school than the one that Bina has in mind that cost less than half what she is asking. Perhaps it would be better to send two kids to a less good school than one to the better place. I don't know.

I think these are all valid concerns and I will talk them through with Bina when I get the chance, yet I'm convinced that the benefits of providing one of the OGN kids with a good education outweighs the worries. Education, after all, probably offers the best chance of allowing the children to pull themselves, and hopefully their families too, out of their current rather miserable lot in life.

Thus it is that I have become the education supported of a boy named Nishant (pronounced Nees-hant, with the 'a' as in 'father'). He's five years old and an absolute sweetheart. He's bright and hardworking and good-natured. He's a happy kid.

That he should be a happy kid seems to me quite extraordinary, given his family background. He is, needless to say, from an extremely poor family. His mother is a labourer on a building site; menial, poorly paid and irregular work. I'm not exactly sure what his father does, but it's equally menial. He's an alcoholic and whatever he earns goes to feeding that habit. He does not support his family and has disavowed any responsibility for his two children (Nishant has a two year old brother). It's a good thing that the education support will be managed entirely through Bina - none goes to the family directly. There was also an older brother but he died recently, at the age of six, after a three year battle with cancer. Caring for him sucked up all the very limited money the family had. They are so poor that they could not even afford the 5p/10 cent bus fare to take him to the hospital. Instead the mother had to carry her ailing son for the one hour walk in each direction. It was the death of the son that turned the father into an alcoholic, and that's on top of his mental health problems. Because the couple married for love, rather than the expected arranged marriage, Nishant's mother's family disowned her. But so much for that love now. It's not a happy story, and I haven't even got to their living conditions, about which you'll hear more at the end of this post.

Given that I'm sponsoring Nishant, I wanted to see where my money will be going, so I asked Bina to take me to the school that she wants to send him to, a government school for comparison and to his home. She did so, and more, actually taking me to visit six schools in the neighbourhood, four private and two government. For someone who wants to see all aspects of Nepali society, and especially for someone with such a keen interest in education, this was a fascinating tour.

The first school she took me to is a private school which some of the ex-OGN kids currently attend. For someone whose image of a private school is along the lines of SPGS or Branksome, this was quite a shock to the system. The place was far more basic than even the most basic of English state or Canadian public schools. It seemed to lack any notable resources, the rooms had rickety benches and desks, a blackboard and teachers desk and otherwise was totally bare. Classrooms faced out onto a courtyard and weren't fully enclosed, which meant that during lesson time, everyone would hear what was going on in everyone else's classroom. Since it's exam period there weren't any kids there, which gave the place an extra bleak feel. I appreciate that I'm judging on appearance, and from a Western perspective at that, rather than on the quality of the curriculum and teacher, but nevertheless I left with the thought that if private schools are so much better than government schools, I was dreading what the latter must be like.

The second private school we visited was even worse. This time there were kids there, which only served to intensify the impression that the place was crowded, squished and dank. This one didn't even have any outside (or indeed inside) play area. We couldn't get out of there soon enough, as far as I concerned.

Next Bina took me to the school to which she hopes to send Nishant. After the other two, this was a breath of fresh air. Although the grounds were still far more dilapidated and the classrooms and resources more basic than anything you'd find in England or Canada, the place immediately struck me as an improvement. The first thing you notice is that there's a decent sized play area with climbing frame and swings. The classrooms were covered in the children's work, which livened the place up a huge amount (as a side note, though, in Hungary classroom walls are left bare but they have an excellent education system). The kids all seemed pretty happy and attentive and the teachers, as far as I could tell, seemed warm. I can see why Bina wants to send him here and also why it's relatively expensive. Other important considerations are that the headmistress is particularly sensitive to the poverty/bullying situation and also that the kids are allowed to stay at school until 5:30, which is a necessity given that both Nishant's parents work full days. This is a photo of the current year ones at the school:

After that, we went to a government school. There were no kids there. Aesthetically it wasn't so bad, having received money from various embassies and trusts for cosmetic improvements, although Bina assured me that the standard of education wasn't up to much. Next was one of the best private schools in the city, which Bina's own daughter attends, and that was leaps and bounds above anything we'd seen so far. That school wouldn't have been out of place in England or Canada. Unsurprisingly, it was terribly expensive. Finally we went to a typical government school. Unfortunately it was closed, but the view from the outside and peeking through the window confirmed the fear I'd had at the first school.

Later in the day I met with Nishant, his brother and mother and we went with Bina first to the mother's workplace and then to their home. This is the workpace. The woman in the photo isn't Nishant's mother, but that of another of the OGN kids. The strap on her head supports a basket into which she shovels sand and then carries it to the builders.

And then to the home. This made Jenisha's home, which I'd visited the day before, seem positively palatial. Again, it was a one room affair, I reckon about 2.5m wide to 5m long (for a family of four). It was dark and dank and dirty and squalid. At one end was the one bed. There was a set of shelves onto which clothing was stuffed, and a kitchen surface on which there was one hand-pump gas hob and lots of dirty pans (gas has to be bought in canisters and carried to the room). The only electrical item belonging to the family was a bare lightbulb (the TV in the photo below is being briefly stored for the husband's cousin). There was a disgusting hole-in-the-ground toilet in the courtyard outside but no water nearby. The mother has to walk 20 minutes to get any. It was too dark and small to take decent photos. This is the best I have. Nishant's on the right.

We stayed for about 20 minutes. The mother told me about her life and family (translated through Bina), whilst I played ball with the boys. But I couldn't wait to go. The place made me feel sick, both physically and emotionally. I found being there far more affecting, even, than being at Khokana leprosy colony. Although the conditions there are horrible and the LAPs suffer terribly, leprosy is, thankfully, relatively uncommon these days. Relatively uncommon, that is, compared to the daily poverty experienced by Nishant's family and millions, even billions, like them. What particularly tweaked me was realising that I had cycled past his home almost every day on the way to and from the gym, without ever stopping to think about who lived behind the walls and the kind of life they have. That's to say, whilst I've been having a very comfortable time in Kathmandu, I've been surrounded by poverty all the while and barely noticed it outside of OGN.