Perspective

Last week I had the good fortune to attend a conference for all the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants in South and Central Asia. The conference was held in Kathmandu, Nepal, which would have been enough to make the week fantastic, but the incredible location turned out to be just a part of why the week was such a memorable experience. The ETAs present are teaching in amazing places-- Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. I think there were about sixty of us total, (including the 15 from India). I arrived early, on Saturday afternoon, with Porter, as Sean forgot his passport and missed the flight and Hannah and Tangi were flying in the next day. We were told in no uncertain terms that if we were getting there early we would have to pay our own way that first night, including transportation from the airport. Naturally, when I met up with the other ETAs who were there early from Kolkata and Madurai, they informed me that the hotel would be free that first night. Thanks, South Asian bureaucracy! After getting lost for a while trying to find my friends, we went to a Mexican restaurant my friend Ernie from Corrymeela had recommended, and it was DELICIOUS! So exciting to just eat tortillas and salsa again! I ended up staying in the hotel that night, even though I had already paid at a roach motel in Thamel, the touristy area. The next day we went walking around Kathmandu, a city reminiscent of India, but with a very different feel. People were much more laid back and less aggressive. Crossing busy streets didn't make me feel like I was imminently going to die and the pushing came from the shoulders, rather than the elbows. We wandered around Thamel, admiring the abundant pashminas, camping gear and silver jewelry that adorned the windows along the street. We dined on momos, Tibetan dumplings that constitute much of my diet in Delhi, bargained a bit, and enjoyed the mountain air and blue sky. Eventually we reached a square with a stupa, or Buddhist shrine. We rang the bells and spun the mandalas, taking pictures and passing our fingers along the sanskrit engravings.

In the evening we returned to the hotel for dinner, meeting up with the other ETAs, many of whom I was meeting for the first time, as I'd had to leave early from the orientation in Austin in June. It was exciting to see all these people who I knew were having experiences equally significant as my own but in completely different places and contexts. Those of us in India have also been lucky enough to have had several opportunities to spend time as a large group with everyone from the three cities, both at the orientation in Delhi upon our arrival and in Kolkata during Durga Puja.

Nepal ETAs go traditional

The next day began with presentations. Each country gave a half hour presentation about their placements, students, and experiences. The Nepal kids went first, describing their life in rural villages, living in homestays and working in a wide variety of school. One girl works in a very large school, with class sizes ranging from thirty to eighty students, as the major teacher shortages require classes to be combined. Another ETA, teaching in the Gorkha district of Nepal, showed a picture of her staff room, a small, square area with a dirt floor and a bald lightbulb. She pointed to the lightbulb and explained that it was the only one in the school. “Sometimes it has power,” she said, “and sometimes it doesn’t.” There was a violent civil war between the government and Maoists that began in 1996 and ended only in 2006. Over 15,000 people were killed and 100,000-150,000 internally displaced. The upheaval and human rights violations committed by both sides forced many people to seek work abroad, ending up mostly in the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, and the economy there is extremely dependent on the income sent back to relatives that remain in the country. The ETAs there live in the Kathmandu Valley and in a district called Gorkha, about five or six hours from the capital. They all wake up around 5AM, help their family with chores and cooking and go to school only around ten. Many of their students work five or six hours in the fields before school, arriving already exhausted at 10AM from their day’s work. Their Nepali was way better than our language skills, certainly no coincidence considering their living situations. Two big differences from our placements are the fact that they all co-teach with Nepali teachers and are rarely alone in a class, and that they work in ACCESS programs, English classes for underprivileged, highly motivated advanced English students. It was fascinating to hear about their experiences, but also hard to listen to all of the great things they get to do with their students—the election speeches they prepared with their kids, the lyric writing competitions they held—when we are just struggling to get our students to sit in their seats for more than five minutes at a time without attacking each other.

Because there are so many India ETAs and we are in such different places in the country, our presentations were split into the three cities—Delhi, Kolkata and Madurai. Hannah, Tangi, Sean and I had decided to make our presentation about well-being: what gets in the way of it in India and how we try to achieve it. Tangi made a decision to talk openly about her difficulties in India as a Black woman—the crisis of identity she’s experienced when people here insist she is from Africa, the ignorant, hurtful comments made about her hair and skin, even the time she was refused entry to a club because the bouncer said they don’t allow Black people because they cause fights (true story). She started crying and the presentation became very emotional, causing half the people in the room to cry with her. I spoke about accepting and working with the fact that I am so outside of traditional norms of being a teacher in my cultural differences and classroom manner, and about learning to see and appreciate children beyond their disruptive behavior (thanks, Clear View!).

After our presentations came those of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Bangladesh group only arrived six weeks ago and are still in language training, so they made an awesome video in which they interviewed people on the street about their perceptions of the US. The Sri Lanka kids gushed about how they live on the beach, teach motivated students in university settings, in which they can create their own curriculum based on literature they choose, and one guy at an NGO for children affected by violent conflict. Yet the presentations I found most captivating were those of the ETAs in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. I have never learned about Central Asia at all before, and it was so interesting to hear about something so unknown to me. Tajikistan is a developing country, the only former Soviet Socialist Republic that does not speak a Slavic language. Tajik is actually a dialect of Farsi, and the region is an unusual intersection of Near Eastern culture with heavy Soviet influence. The Kazakhstan ETAs told us about the history of that country, the dictator they’ve had since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the emphasis by the government on learning English, the horrible pollution caused by the Soviets that has left the water heavy with lead and the air full of carcinogenic toxins. Both countries expressed an unrivaled eagerness among the people they interact with to learn English. Several of them said they are stopped on the street to ask for English lessons. Both countries have such a dearth of native speakers that having one in the community is extremely exciting and motivating for the local English teachers as well. They discussed the difficulty of creating sustainable English learning programs that can function after the departure of the ETAs, rather than having people sit around and hope for another native speaker to come along. All the ETAs in Central Asia work in centers called American Corners, programs set up by the US government after the fall of the Soviet Union to encourage people to learn about the US in a positive way, and about what it has to offer in order to counteract the negative image propagated by the USSR.

The rest of the conference was mostly seminars on English teaching, in which I learned some great activities to use, but found largely boring and unhelpful. Those of us in India were also so depressed by the contrast in support and experience teaching between our own placements and those of everyone else; it was hard to focus on being a better teacher when we realized we were the only ones just struggling to keep a class from the brink of total anarchy. But hanging out with the other ETAs was awesome. The group was full of so many smart, motivated, adventurous people and I felt so inspired and honored to be a part of it.  

Patan Durbar Square  

Because our time was consumed mostly by the conference, a few of us got up very early several mornings to explore the Kathmandu Valley before the first session. The first of these mornings consisted of a trip to Patan Durbar Square, about twenty minutes from where we were staying. There are three Durbar Squares, the generic name for the area where the palaces of the three kingdoms were. We got out of the squished shared van and wound our way through the quiet streets in the hazy sunlight of dawn. People were performing pujas (ritual prayers) at shrines along the way, smearing the red tika on the foreheads of the idols. After the Nepal ETAs tried unsuccessfully to convince the lady at the ticket booth to let us in for free, we walked around the corner and waltzed right into the square. It was peaceful and lovely, and we stopped for some chai before heading back out.

View on the hike...

After the morning’s session that day, we went on a hike as a big group in the mountains, climbing to the top and descending through a stunning, picturesque village. Low houses peeked over mustard fields, women passed us carrying bundles of firewood as big as their bodies, I held a wandering baby goat and watched some chicks follow their mama hen. There was a lovely temple at the end of the trail, in which we played with the stray puppies when we weren’t watching a local toddler hit them with a stick (seriously).

Foggy Morning at Swayambunath

The next morning we went to a Buddhist temple called Swayambhunath, seated atop a hill overlooking the whole valley. We climbed the steep stone steps, passed along the way by uniformed soldiers exercising by running up the stairs, and I snuck in for free (again) while the others unsuccessfully argued about getting in for free with the ticket man. It was a foggy morning so we couldn’t see very far, but we walked clockwise around the stupa, ringing the bells and avoiding the swarms of monkeys and pigeons. We sat for some chai before heading back. 

Cremation and Almost-Dead Foot Washing

That afternoon we went to Pashupatinath Temple, one of the holiest and most famous Hindu temples in the world. It is also a burning ghat, or place along the river where cremation takes place (like in Varanasi). This temple is where members of the Nepali royal family were traditionally cremated, and it’s the only place people asked me if I’d been to when I came back to Delhi. Pashupatinath sits on the Bagmati River, which is believed to be holy but looks like one giant sewage site, and we could see workers combing the shallow water for usable wood that hadn’t completely burned. We watched someone being cremated, covered in marigolds, with their relatives all around. The guide explained that there is a hospice right next to the ghat. Doctors monitor the patients very closely to try and figure out exactly when they are going to die, so they can be taken beside the river and have their feet washed in its holy water to be purified before their soul leaves this world. After Pashupatinath we went Boudhanath Temple, the second largest stupa in the world after one in Myanmar. The thing is enormous, and the plaza surrounding it is accordingly round. 

Boudhanath

We walked around the stupa clockwise, buying tchotchkes and entering a school for thanka painting, the traditional art form used by Tibetan Buddhist monks to create mandalas and other religious art. We climbed on the stupa itself to take pictures among the prayer flags and soak in the last rays of the sun before it sank. That evening was the last of the conference, and the open bar ensured a long night of dancing and merriment that took place outside on the patio of the hotel and then in a bar down the street, where we were pretty much the only people there. It was a great night with (shockingly) no debauchery, just fun people enjoying each other’s company.

Clockwise we go...

Thanka Painting

Most people departed for their respective countries the next day, including Hannah and Tangi, but Sean and I and everyone from Madurai and Kolkata had a few more days. That day was spent mostly wandering around Thamel again, saying goodbye to the lovely people I had met and unwinding after the overload of information the week had provided. On the last day, we went to an awesome brunch and sat outside in the clear air and sunshine, and then I was determined to see Bhaktapur, the most extensive and beautiful of the three Durbar Squares that had been recommended to me by everyone who had seen it. Sean insisted on taking a cab rather than a bus, so five of us piled in, with Sarah stretched across our laps and a breeze coming in the window. Despite its 1,100 rupee price tag (about $15 but that’s a LOT of rupees), Bhaktapur was totally worth it. As with the other architecture we had seen, the buildings resembled pagodas somewhat, but with decorative motifs highly reminiscent of both Indian and Chinese designs, but somehow different altogether. 

Bhaktapur Durbar Square

When one spoon just isn't enough...

We met a group of adorable street boys playing on the stone temple guardians—lions and dragons and elephants. We saw them pass again as we sat to eat momos, and bought them some along with samosas, watching them delight in the food and chuckling at the boy that needed two spoons at a time to eat all the chutney and then straight up ketchup. Sean and Nicole went back around four, but Kelly and Sarah and I walked aimlessly for a few more hours, watching women string beads and children play jacks with pebbles. The ornately carved windows formed a stunning backdrop against the blue sky…it made me realize how much I miss blue sky when I’m in Delhi.

The three of us found our way to the bus station and got seats on a minibus that would soon be jammed with passengers. We watched the dusk turn to night through the windows, and I was so grateful for the extra time to have seen Bhaktapur. We left the hotel early the next morning, still full of the sights and sounds and smells of the week, the pine in the altar flame, the bells beside the deities, the puppies nuzzled at the feet of the statues at the entrance to the temple. Nepal is a beautiful place that I hope to see more of soon, and I really treasured the opportunity to meet all those great people doing fascinating things in all corners of the world. To view the rest of my photos, click here and enjoy!