Alumni News Summer 2017

Issue 3

Welcome Welcome to Issue 3 of Alumni News, our newsletter for former pupils of Sawston Village College. In this edition we hear from Alice Gilderdale, who left the College in 2014 and is currently in Istanbul, having spent time in Nepal and India before she heads off to university. Here, Alice writes about her interesting experiences of teaching in a school in Nepal. This is not, however, the first time that Alice has visited Nepal. When she was in Year 10, Alice accompanied her father on a trip there, visiting schools and learning about the work of the Mountain Trust. She then fed her findings back to the International Forum here and was able to inspire some of the work done in school, and so it is heartening to hear of this latest visit to Nepal, which I am sure will be of interest to the pupils in our current International Forum.

We hope you enjoy reading Alice’s account and we invite you to contact us with your own stories and, in particular, your memories of Sawston Village College. You can sign up to our growing Alumni Network at www.sawstonvc.org/alumni/ and also contact us via email at alumni@sawstonvc.org.

Mr Jonathan Culpin, Principal

Teaching in Nepal Alice Gilderdale is a former pupil who left Sawston Village College in 2014. She is currently travelling overseas before she takes up a place to study Human, Social and Political Science at Cambridge University in the autumn. As part of her travels she spent three months in Nepal, in Nakote village, teaching 60 students in a small school nestled in the Helambu Valley. Below is an extract from an email she wrote in April describing her experiences.

I have just arrived back in Varanasi from Kathmandu. I have returned with so many beautiful memories of teaching in Nakote village that I do not know if it is even remotely possible to write them all down in an email.

A usual day might look like this…

6.30-7.00am: Wake up covered in many blankets and listen to the birds and the chopping of wood in the valley. Plan lessons which were not finished the day before. Light the fire and see what the weather is like.

7.30am: Get dressed and ready for school.

8.00am: Chhiten (my Nepali 'ama') would arrive and make tea with lots of sugar, spices and milk. We would eat breakfast.

This ranged from a packet of coconut biscuits, to leftover fried rice with dal, pumpkin soup, noodle soup, pancakes, roti, ground apples and eggs.

8.30am: The children would begin to come to the school shop (my house) to buy chocolate, chingam (chewing gum), packets of noodle soup, crisps and cigarettes for their parents! This would always be accompanied by a "Good morning, miss!" which was always a lovely way to start the day.

9.00am: Teeth brushed and rucksack on my back, filled with books, colourful pens, juggling balls and glue, I would walk the 300m to the school just down the hill and say hello to all the children.

9.15am: The bell would go, and all the children would line up for assembly. This consisted of some exercises and stretching, singing the national anthem, singing the lama prayer and a quiz prepared by the students.

9.30am: (But usually later) Lesson 1 began. I taught Class 5 English, Class 6 English, Class 7 English and finally Class 8 Grammar.

12.10pm: TIFFIN TIME! I would head back to the school shop to find delicious food waiting - potatoes and spinach with dal and rice, chapati, noodles, soups or delicious bakpe (a traditional Hyolmo soup made from potatoes, onions, spinach and small pieces of dough boiled in the soup to make a kind of pasta).

1.00pm: Lessons would begin again. My afternoons were always a little more relaxed, teaching Class 5 Life Skills (usually playing lots of games, singing or talking about England), Class 4 Life Skills (more games, more songs, English country dancing, drawing,

or making games), Class 5 English Grammar (but by this time my Class 5s were so crazy and hyper they would often jump around and be so difficult to teach we never got much done!) and then Class 2 Life Skills, but they had finished the book so these classes which I also taught with Rabia (my

friend who volunteered for some of the time with me) were also games, songs... and generally by Period 8 in the day most school lessons had disintegrated into chaos, and most of the children would be playing football, dragging us from one classroom to the next, demanding colouring pens or to play their favourite games!

3.40pm: School finished, and I walked, exhausted, back up the very short path to my house, where there would always be tea, biscuits, or boiled water to drink!

4.30pm: The 9 children staying in the school hostel would come to the shop and we would play games, or football. I would also go walking up to the next village, find quiet spots to sit, wash my clothes, or prepare the next day's lessons, paint with the children, help the teachers with odd jobs that needed doing, fix the children's clothes or sit and talk to whoever visited the shop to buy noodles, flour, sugar or Raxy (the local wine, which was drunk heated in a frying pan with a little melted butter and sometimes some sugar... it was very very strange).

6.00pm: Chhiten would begin cooking dinner and would feed me bits at 6.00pm when her tired husband, Sarki, arrived home from work, either ploughing the fields, looking after their buffalo, planting crops, or building new houses in the village.

7.30pm: Dinner time! This would always be a lovely time of day, when work was finished. We would sit and laugh with Chhiten and Sarki, who would always be very very funny. A lot of delicious food would be eaten, cooked fresh every day from her garden.

8.30pm: We would finish talking and laughing, and I would take my torch, a pack of cards and a colourful storybook down to the hostel to read and play with the children staying there. This would often involve some sweets, biscuits or chocolate bought from the school shop, much to the delight of the children!

10.00pm: I would arrive back home, where Chhiten and Sarki would already be sleeping. I would quickly brush my teeth and crawl, exhausted, back into all my millions of blankets always with a huge smile on my face.

During my stay I was invited to a traditional Hyolmo wedding where everyone danced around and around in a circle singing, saying "sha sha sha" and stamping in rhythm.

I was also there for the Holi Festival where all the children came into school, and we all ran around for an hour chasing each other with handfuls of red paint and buckets of water! It was so much fun, and I think the children enjoyed absolutely drenching me in freezing cold water. The charity I was volunteering with also organised 'The Himalayan Games', which was

an enormous 5-day school trip for 14 of our students and probably around 500 students from 17 other schools in the valley. We trekked down the mountain for 3 hours, then, all squashed in one hot bus, we drove for 2 hours down to another village where our school all crouched and bounced around for 4 hours in the back of a dirty truck right back up the next valley to the school where the Games were to be held. It was a beautiful event, with all the children competing in so many games, from football to chess, volleyball and drawing, shot put and tug of war. It was also lots of fun to meet other children from all the schools and there was always lots of music, dancing and running around in the evenings.

But, it was definitely the little things which made my stay so magical. Spending time with the children after school, painting, or walking and being invited in for tea to everybody's houses, showering under the huge freezing waterfall, experiencing all the forces of the elements from hot days with lots of dust, to the incredible thunder and lightning which shook the ground, and the beautifully peaceful mornings. One day it was so cold, all the

children wrapped themselves in blankets in the classroom to keep warm! Their enthusiasm to learn, to play and be creative really humbled me and gave me a totally new perspective with which to see my day to day life.

Travelling back into the world again, with internet, busy crowds and real chocolate has left me feeling very strange, but also very privileged to have experienced these peaceful and focused three months.

I am now in India for another two and a half months, where I think I will be travelling up North to escape some of the heat. I am hoping to visit Rishikesh, Dharamshala (where the Dalai Lama will be teaching for three days), and Tibetan Ladakh… but my plans seem to be changing every day, so I cannot be too sure!

I am now sitting in the dark on a large roof in Varanasi with the wind on my face, listening to Eastern European music and watching the lights of the city reflect off the Ganges - this city is truly magical.

Alice Gilderdale, former Sawston Village College pupil

Alice enjoyed the Holi Festival