Big Weekend Update
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Hi everyone! It's Maggie here with a big end-of-the-week update. These last few days have been an absolute whirlwind. It's midterm time so our teachers have been busy bees administering exams and assessments for all the kids. I can not believe we are half-way through the school year already. The kids are champs and take their exams very seriously, especially the older kids. They've been studying up a storm! We're also revamping our school structure a little bit to make it more student run. I listened to this interesting piece a couple years ago called "Kid Politics" on This American Life and have been intrigued ever since. I've been reading a ton about the concept of peer mediation and student run schools, self-governance and leadership. Becky—our Kopila Mental Health Fellow—is helping us tremendously and conducting staff development meetings and trainings to get the wheels in motion. We're letting the kids make the rules, the consequences, and hold each other accountable for how things are done in and around our school.
Our bamboo school! Love this place <3
Earlier this week Prabal Thapa, one of Nepal's most renowned and leading architects came for a visit. Prabal is really famous for his designs. He thinks outside the box and has come up with the coolest carbon neutral and green buildings in the country. I heard about him years ago and put his name on the "DREAM BIG" list that I keep inside my head. Then my friend Cara gave me his email address and minutes later he returned my email and said he'd be willing to come out to Surkhet to look at our new site. Prabal is even cooler in person when you meet him. He climbed through the jungle with us, worked the measuring tape, and helped us dream up our design and building concept for Kopila High School. He's just amazing. We've got some really cool ideas in the works. We want this school to be out of this world, innovative, green, and something that's never been done before!!!
In other news our home and school got hit with a bad case of scabies. It's kind of been a nightmare. Actually, drop the "kind of," it's been a total nightmare. Scabies are these little microscopic bugs that burrow into your skin, itch like crazy, and spread like wild fire. The little boys were going through a marble craze and were playing with some of the neighborhood kids who we later find out were covered in scabies. So three of them got it and by the time we put all the pieces together another three had it and then another three and then it spread to thirty of them. Sometimes I forget that I live in a children's home in the middle of nowhere in Nepal until times like these.
Rooftop scabies treatment because my fellows are angels sent to me from above.
It was Caroline's first week on the job as our Kopila Home Fellow and she was such a champ: scrubbing the kids down with anti-bacterial soap, applying lindane lotion, and homemade neem and herbal pastes from the neighbor's trees. Everyone had to be treated twice a day, not to mention bed sheets and mattresses and trying to get everything washed and out of the house. Like I said, nightmare. My friends Michelle and Pradhan whose guest house in Kathmandu I always stay at helped me out by finding some better/stronger cream and himalayan oil, and sent it to us with Magdalena (Kopila Women's Center Fellow) and Brendan who were on the way from the states. I seriously have the best friends in the universe. So today we treated everyone up on the roof. First boys, then girls, followed by a major house deep cleaning and garden planting session at school.
Our new washing machine!!!
Yesterday I bit the bullet and splurged (BIG TIME) on a brand new front loader washing machine. I'm pretty sure it's the first one ever sold in Surkhet and it came straight from Kathmandu. I've had my eye on it all week, talking about it, thinking about it. The LG shopkeeper is my friend and he gave me a killer deal. Mostly we all wash our clothes in a bucket which is fine, but during scabies outbreaks, and for all the bedsheets it just gets stressful. Seriously one of my favorite parts about being in the states is access to a good washer and dryer and so finally I just said to myself, "Maggie, you have 40 kids and a scabies outbreak, now's the time to do it." So I did. My Uncle Ed installed and got it all hooked up this morning and it's been running all day. One load after another after another. I am so happy and so are all the aunties!
The Women's Center is going great! Magdalena arrived and we have cool people and fun trainings going on for the entire month! So stoked!!! And you have to see the adorable pajama pants and aprons, and these cool yoga bags they are all making. We're planning a fashion show and all kinds of fun things. I love our women.
Yoga mat bags with iphone/jewelry pockets! Just what you've always wanted.
Last night Chairman Tope and I were sitting outside on the balcony, talking about the kids, the construction, the women's center, the teachers, just everything... how far we've come and all there is to do. Obviously we have moments where we feel totally and completely overwhelmed. We talked about the children and how they are getting older. The boys are officially taller than I am. The girls are getting there. I'm only 5'3 so they don't have too far to go ;) Our children are kind and compassionate and good. Sometimes it's hard to see amidst the occasional fights they get in, and "not cleaning of their rooms", or forgetting to do their chores, and toddler tantrums, and when they lose or break things, but we reminded each other that they are good good kids. We are lucky. And the only good thing about them growing up so quick, (geesh sometimes I feel like it's over night) is that the sooner we'll have them to help us grow and expand and make our project and the world better.
How awesome is that? The thought of my older children helping run this place one day makes my heart sing. Maybe I should get them to start helping me answer my email!!!
Basanti and her new yoga bag!
Introducing more of the fellows this week and sending you all so much love from our little corner of Nepal! xo Maggie
P.S. Thanks for all the facebook and instagram love!