During Tihar, apart from spending some time visiting and taking photos of the most beautiful city on the planet, Pokhara, I also paid a visit to Maya Universe Academy in Tanahu, a school founded and run by Manjil Rana, a fellow UWCer. I drove to the school late Thursday, November 3 and left Sunday the 6th.
Friday, school day, started with the “Morning Circle” (see image below).
In the circle, members of the school community shared different things like poetry and short prose.
I shared two limericks I had learned as a fifth grader — in 1981 — from Father Downing, our class teacher. I don’t remember seeing the limericks anywhere at any time since then. But somehow, they have been part of my repertoire of verses I have shared with others from time to time! It’s possible that I have remembered parts of them wrong however! 🙂
Here they are anyway:
A tooter who tooted the flute
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot
Said the two to the tooter
“Is it harder to toot?
Or to tutor two young tooters to toot?”A fly and a flea in a flue were imprisoned
What could they do?
Said fly to the flea: “Let us fly!”
Said the flea to the fly: “Let is flee!”
So they flew through a flaw in the flue
Following the Morning Circle, I visited three different classes. I had loads of fun conducting a science lesson on “Image, Light and Sight” with two different classes, and sharing my life story with the third!
I walked into the class, asked them if they had a coin and, taking the coin, told them that I would show them some magic tricks! That I would first make the coin disappear without even touching it and then make two of them re-appear!
The point of the lesson had been to teach them what image is and how you need three things to see something: light, eyes and the brain.
The lesson was an adaptation of a demonstration I have used with my students in the past. With the class I had extra time, I also performed the demonstration where a coin at the bottom of a container comes into view when water is poured into it.
In the afternoon, Manjil took two volunteers and I to visit their sister school in Pokhari! And what a location!
I spent Saturday exploring the surrounding area. Along with two other volunteers, I went off walking into the hills early morning and what an amazing day it was. We got to learn a great deal about the history of the area from a really friendly local shop-keeper and got to see yet another view of the Annapurna Mountain range and more.
Maya Universe Academy provides boarding facilities to about five dozen students from other parts of the country in addition to providing education to the local students. The novel aspect of the school is that it attempts to finance itself by running social businesses — such as chicken, goat and pig farming — something we, at COMMITTED, have been setting up in the schools we work with in Thangpalkot. Maya attempts to be self-sustainable in other ways too, such as by vegetable farming!
Families that can’t afford the fees can choose to pay the school in kind. They can contribute to the management of the vegetable gardens or poultry and/or pig farming etc. You can learn more about the school, their mission etc. here.
It’s an education model that is relatively new and unique. It definitely has the potential to impart an education that’s context-appropriate as well as one of considerably higher quality than at most public schools in the country. Children graduate from public secondary schools in Nepal with mostly just one skill — the ability to regurgitate! Maya Universe Academy students, on the other hands, most likely will graduate with very good English language skills and a pretty good understanding of farming, among other things.
The children attending Maya have their own challenges! Most rural nepalese children, including those attending Maya, face challenges arising either directly or indirectly as a result of being from poor families. Many also face challenges due to lack of infrastructure, such as in the villages near parts of the Trishuli river, where, lacking in bridges, they have to cross the river in a tuin to get to school.
Maya had a pretty unique issue however: fear of leopard(s) that prowled the area! Locals I talked to shared stories about how “that animal of xyz” or “that dog of theirs” or “that chicken of their neighbour’s” got taken by a leopard. The good news is that the animal(s), I was told, has never attacked a human being! That was reassuring because, lacking in “street” lights, we did have to move around a lot in the dark with the help of flashlights!
I would venture to guess, however, that the animal(s) is not much of a preoccupation for the students!
