Keeping this blog topical, I thought I should cover this hot topic.
As across the world masks fly off shelves, people hoard tinned food and the BBC ran a headline that, although he had a nasty cold, the Pope did not currently have coronavirus – Nepal continued oblivious. If not for contact with the UK, we genuinely would not have known anything about the global drama – until this week. In classic Nepali timings, Nepal got there in the end. On Sunday morning, our headmaster warned the school of the rising threat of the virus. In his announcement he warned students to cough into their elbows rather than hands and to wash their hands correctly to prevent the spread of diseases. This slightly confused Selin and I as the kids don’t even cover the mouths with their hands when they cough, instead preferring to spray you with phlegm, half chewed corn and who knows what else. Neither does the school provide any soap for hand washing so it did seem a bit like running before they can walk but whatever…
Who knows how many cases of the virus are in Nepal (Nepalis certainly don’t). We’ve heard there to be one or two but without proper testing the number is probably higher. Despite being on top of a mountain that Google Earth struggles to locate, it is possible for the virus to reach us through the return of men who work abroad and would have to travel through airports and cities. Although the majority of the population have barely left the area surrounding Neta except a few trips to the larger ‘town/city’ Bagdula (sells kitkats!). However, the contamination risk is much lower than the UKs. Regardless, the headmasters announcement came mainly to say that the final yearly exams (Nepali new year is in April) were to be started two weeks early and therefore so was the holiday. Why, you ask, when the UK have kept all schools open thus far? Simple: Nepal loves a holiday be it for a festival, wedding or virus. They’ll probably also sacrifice a goat to coronavirus and have a dance.
The school took off with this news. Two extra weeks of holiday!! Coronavirus was the talk of the playground. Although at first confused, the kids quickly got on board with declaring themselves infected or running from whoever did. From this a fabulous game of Coronavirus Tag began which my class twos thought was particularly hilarious until the infected child, in a bid to catch his classmate who was on top of a desk, did not see the sharp end of mental sticking out of another broken desk. The result was a lot of tears. Coronavirus’ first casualty in Nepal.
Later last week I settled my class fives on benches in the sunshine outside to begin a lesson on possessive ‘s’. Three boys, Sanju, Bicas and Bikram were absent and I asked the class if they knew if the boys were in school today. Unfortunately I discovered, the three had contracted the virus and died overnight in hospital. Equally unfortunately, the virus had also eaten another boys homework (Me: Shiba, where’s your homework? Shiba: Miss, coronavirus took it!). I grew skeptical of the boys’ story when the three boys returned to school the next day although Sanju did swear he had caught the virus but had miraculously recovered from the brink of death that morning in time for his two hour walk to school.
Right now the weather is lovely and hot in the sun where we can happily sit in a long sleeved t-shirt. However, indoors or in the shade it’s is freezing. This leads to us often sitting on plastic chairs outside. This ultimately leads to us becoming climbing frames for the young (and not so young – some of them as like 13) students – a high risk activity for contracting nits. However, the other day as we sat defending ourselves from dirty children, the headmaster shouted across the playground something which roughly translates as “Get off the two Misses, someone’s gonna catch coronavirus”. And here’s the amazing part: it actually worked! The kids scarpered. We tried it again when we were next swamped – it worked again! Coronavirus had come to our rescue. We were suddenly free from being molested and attacked. This is definitely a short term solution. Once the effect wears off, the kids will immediately go back to clambering all over us. However it might deter them for a week or so.
11/03: I saved off publishing this blog for a couple days to see how the situation developed. Here are some gems that followed:
“Miss, don’t go back to Britain. Many people have coronavirus there. You’ll die. No one has it in Nepal, just live here.” – Sandip, class 4
At the end of last week, school closed on Thursday to reopen on Tuesday for Holi festival. Neta doesn’t celebrate Holi – so why the holiday you ask? Because everyone loves a holiday (similar motivations are definitely behind school closing early due to the immediate threat of coronavirus). Anyway, Holi was on Monday (although some said it was on Sunday but we put this down to Nepalis timings. We have now learnt that if offered two alternate times for something, always assume the later to be true and then assume it to be delayed.) and we had decided to go to Khung. Although they don’t have volunteers this year, two girls were in Khung last year and we’d heard that the Holi there was pretty impressive. Only a 5 hour walk – no problem! Holi is the festival of colours and involves throwing colourful tikka all over each other. The idea is to end up looking like you’ve done a colour run and for very similar motivations – to post on Instagram. On Sunday afternoon, we walked up to Puja (by walked I obviously mean took the bus) where Hector, a volunteer from the next district, was visiting Joe and Gray. The next day the five of us headed back down, looking for Khung and Khung’s legendary Holi. Arriving in our ‘large’ local town, Thulabesi, we found kids spraying each other with makeshift water guns and brightly coloured water. However, we were told that Holi had been cancelled due to coronavirus. Clearly mass gatherings are too high risk in rural Nepal – Britain needs to catch up and start taking the threat seriously (and cancel A Levels).
15/03: Nepal has effectively shut the boarder by cancelling all tourist visas. Anyone arriving in the country needs a negative coronavirus test and then a further two weeks in quarantine. With the Nepali school year about to end and lots of parents planning on visiting over the Easter holidays, everyone’s holiday plans have had to change. Additionally, trekking visas might be suspended. This makes our holiday (beginning on Thursday) quite uncertain however it also means Pokhara’s streets will be empty of 30 year old vegans discovering themselves (just 24 teenagers) and hopefully we can capitalise on cheaper hotels. Whilst the risk of contracting the virus is much higher in cities, when you haven’t eaten Western food in five months that is a risk worth taking.
I can also confirm that telling students we have coronavirus was a very temporary solution to them climbing all over us. As my previous strategy of waving them “bye-bye” was scuppered by their witty comeback “no bye-bye”, so too have they started ignoring the threat of contamination.
A Year in Nepal 