Messages from Nepal

25th Anniversary

It’s not what you are thinking!

We haven’t been married 25 years but it was the 25^th Anniversary of Kathmandu International Study Centre (KISC). KISC is the school that our children started on Tuesday. It aims “to provide quality education, primarily for the Christian mission community and Nepali national teachers, based on the sovereignty of Christ”.

Over the latter part of the week there was a programme to celebrate the school’s 25 years of service in Nepal. It commenced with a communion service on Thursday evening, celebrating the past and rejoicing in the future. KISC Founder, Alan McIlhenny, who is from Northern Ireland, returned and gave a presentation of the foundation and original vision of KISC. It started with 4 pupils at secondary level, a disused building and no money. It now has 180 primary and secondary pupils and an EQUIP programme, which works in rural schools to support and train Nepali teachers.

The current CEO of KISC, Judith Ellis, who outlined the vision for the future, emphasised the need for improving education in Nepal and worldwide and the concern and well-being of the whole person – “we are not just coke bottles being filled with knowledge but we have an emotional and spiritual side”.

On Friday after the ‘Whole School Assembly’ there was the Formal Programme with many dignitaries and speeches.

Dr Tirtha Thapa (Head of HDCS – owner of KISC), with the 25^th Anniversary Banner in the background.

The dignitaries

Some of the attendees!

Alan and Margaret McIlhenny unveiling a specially commissioned painting to mark the celebrations.

The weekend of celebration was concluded with a fun day out to the Godavari Village Resort – it was billed as a time of fun, games, swimming and celebrating, concluding with a dinner. It was a great day out and even a mid-afternoon monsoon thunder storm failed to quell the craic.

Over its 25 year history, KISC has had no permanent home and has had to move 5 times. Part of the vision for the future of KISC is that they will be able to firstly purchase land and then construct a purpose built school. They would also like to expand by building a Teacher Training College that would serve people in all parts of Nepal.

What’s New?

One of the frequently asked questions is it’s been a while since you were last here, what has changed?

Not an easy question to answer – take the roads for example.

They appear very much as before, narrow, windy, dusty and generally chaotic with cars, buses, trucks, rickshaws, bicycles and people all contesting the same narrow space. The rules of the road are fairly easy to understand but not so easy to trust in – it is your responsibility to avoid everything in front of you. A result of which is that at roundabouts you give way to vehicles coming onto the roundabout (or circle). Whilst walking, contrary to the country code (DOE training!) you walk on the same side as the traffic i.e. the left hand side – after all it the car driver’s responsibility behind you to miss you – the trust thing! There is lots of horn tooting, just to let you know that they are there.

However Kathmandu is in the process of a road widening programme, particularly on major arteries and through roads. The process is fairly simple, two men with a tape and red spray can, measure the width of each road and then mark on any obstruction a number representing how much needs to be demolished.

This is a cafe on a road close to where we live, which leads to Phulchok. The boundary wall is marked and needs to be brought back by 2.6m. The picture also shows pedestrians and cars passing. There are differences of opinion, naturally the owners of the affected properties (both commercial and residential) are not very happy at having to demolish and then re-build, but the government has insisted that the buildings have encroached on land, which was always marked for road construction. It is interesting that in general people have accepted this and work proceeds.

The same cafe has already commenced their work!

The scene is repeated throughout the Kathmandu valley. There is a lot of hardship associated with this. Whilst it is relatively easy to move a boundary wall, some of the demolition works will affect homes and businesses. The bakery round the corner (a four storey building), fronts onto the road and it is marked that about 1/4 of the bulding will need to be taken down – it will be interesting to see how this is achieved. A lot of the smaller single storey shops have already been taken down.

It provides an interesting conversation topic. I’ve pointed out to a number of locals that a recent newspaper article reports that all work will be completed by next April, which seems to result in much laughter – whilst the road team are hard at work the moving of the service utilities is another matter. One can foresee wider roads and electric and telephone poles down the middle of them.

The last concern is that wider roads will allow more traffic and increase flow resulting in the vehicles travelling faster. The current narrow roads means that cars etc travel quite slowly and there are surprisingly few accidents. We will wait and see how these improvements affect life in Kathmandu.

Settling in Update

Thanks for all your comments and messages – they have been a great encouragement. Today has been a good day as we were able to get all our freight cleared through customs and our house is now full of blue barrels. A quick picture shows the barrels with some happy folks sitting on them – and yes we did bring Joel and contrary to common belief he did not come with the barrels!