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Along the banks of the black slimy Bagmati river live hundreds of immigrant & migrant landless squatters, there are thousands of such folk around the Kathmandu valley living in shacks, homes to them.
For about two weeks now, a group of Nepali and foreign volunteers have been working to get some of their younger children into a local school and provide a facility where the older ones can also receive an education in a quiet and safe environment.
Some people would see it as harrowing work simply because the 20 families involved live a life, at times, of squalor like existence. Most of the boys of this small Indian tribe of people work evenings and nights collecting rubbish around the busy, polluted, tourist area of Thamel, the mothers, elders and girls stay close to the homes, sorting out and messing up the rubbish. The fathers sell fruit off the back of bicycles around the hilly city.
Out of about 40 5-15 year olds we’ve talked with, only four of them were attending school. A local school is to admit 15-20 of them about a week from now, school dress has been ordered, most feet have been traced for shoe sizes, wow, there’s lots to be done and loads to do it for. Profit of the people. When friends and more come to help out a little, give a little back to the kind worlds we have lived in.
If you have blessings to count, then blessed you have been. I count many of mine on days like this. Being literate has given me an upper hand in an uneducated land. A slice of unrequested power in a sometime lawless seeming land.
These families build homes from oil cans, bamboo, iron, wood, you name it, if it will keep one safe and dry and warm and fed and watered, then what problem. Motionless landslides of garbage strew the rolling banks of the river, just behind their homes, the kids run dirtily up from the hearth of it with shiny dirty bits and bobs and a cup and a broken lighter-torch and old strange money and a headless toy and so much more to cherish for a day, an hour, a lifetime.
School officially started today, the nursery class, the young recruits, but we ain’t got the Kalimati kidz ready yet. Uniforms take 10 days, shoes will take a week or two, books will be ready waiting for them when they go. We are hoping to admit 20 4-7 year olds in the one school, where a good lot will be starting school for the first time.
We will not improve the lives of the families in any sudden way, we just hope to get them into school, it will take a fair few years for them to have an impact on their way of life. In some ways I even envy their self sufficiency and will to survive.
There’s been many questions relating their living situation to that of the street kids, the ratpack, the glue-sniffers. These Kalimati kids have families who work hard enough to eat and for some of them, to share a rented room. I can see proud fathers and loving mothers and eager-eyed children leaping at the chance to learn. It will be a proud day for some to see their kids go off and be the first generation to study.
As with every endeavour, we are viewing the impact that this operation will have on their lives as individuals thrust into a totally new and structured environment and that of the community that benefits from their children being given a chance to learn.
Behavioural differences with other kids will be an issue as they are Indian immigrants and not local Nepali kids. But we all must go through something similar when these steps are taken. Being able to take them with people you trust and believe in will make it all the easier.
Fachtna Doc Clandillon
0868217502 (irish mobile)
00977 98 41129063 (nepali mobile)
bilijoni@hotmail.com
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