We Have Much to be Thankful For

By Sambriddhi Nepal

Walking into Shree JanaUdaya Lower Secondary School in Kathmandu having spent the year abroad at one of the best universities in the world, I was immediately struck by how lucky I am. The building wasn’t painted, there was mud surrounding the gates of the school, and the classrooms’ windows had no glass or screens on them. I could only imagine the itchy mosquito bites the children must have, and the inescapable cold they faced in the winter.

There was a rush of commotion as the students, who knew of our arrival as volunteers, came running out of their classes to wave and say “hello,” something any Nepali – from the innocent vendor on a street to the creepy men staring at you – will say to a foreigner.

The second thought that came to mind was how these children were smiling more than most people I meet abroad. This is amazing considering the burdens they face, being from poor working class families. They waved and the brave ones came up to us to practice their English, something they rarely get to do. When they found out I was Nepali, the first thing they asked me was my last name, so that they could know which caste I was from. I wasn’t surprised. Our country is secular only by name. The stigmas of the caste system still remain.

We went inside the Principal’s office to talk to him about what we had planned for the coming week. I asked him about the school’s library and again wasn’t surprised to hear him say that they were ‘planning on organizing the library.’ Typical. All talk. We asked to see the library. I was again not surprised to see that it was a big mess. The school had been donated literally thousands of books from other schools and organizations such as Room to Read. However, they weren’t being put to use. I couldn’t help but think of the hundreds of other schools in Kathmandu whose ‘libraries’ looked exactly the same.

The two other volunteers and I told him our plan: we could clean up the library, organize the books, and would come back later to make sure that the library was being used properly. The principal mentioned that he had ‘planned’ on putting carpets in the room, and that the carpeting would be done by tomorrow.

We returned the next day and were surprised to see the carpets in place in both the library and the reading room (which was right next to the library). We set to work immediately. For the next two days, we worked on organizing the books, getting rid of ones that were not suitable for low-level English speakers, and we bought some more books for the library so that we could have more colorful, exciting books for the children.

All this while, the children, curious as they are, would come up to the windows of the reading room and watch us working. Smiling occasionally and some would bravely come up and talk to us about what we were doing. I asked one girl her name, and when she said it was Kaavya, I remembered with a jolt that she was a student who had been receiving a scholarship from the NGO I had been working for. I had read about her parents, who were from a low caste and did not have good jobs, and about her 4 siblings and how her eldest brother was working as a laborer to provide for the family. To see this girl in person and have a face to the student profile I had written in the comfort of my office brought tears to my eyes.

The last day of our volunteering, I walked into the school and a smiling young girl in the 7th grade gave me a flower, which I immediately put in my hair. Later, that girl came into the library, which was now open for the students and smiled brightly when she saw that I was still wearing the flower in my hair. She found so much joy in so little a thing.

The library had been set up, as had the reading room. The bravest 10 students walked in and immediately picked out books and began to read. They shared stories and talked about the pictures in the books. As we took pictures of them, they barely seemed to notice. They were so wrapped up in their books and sharing stories with the students.

My happiness at being there was tainted a bit by one of the other two volunteers I was working with, who insisted that we have one of the students pose with a book so we could have ‘a good PR photo.’ I said nothing, but would have much preferred to not be taking pictures at all rather than having a posed picture.

I sat with that little girl, who turned out to be a 2nd grader and read a Nepali book with her for a little bit, and when we walked down to the courtyard hand in hand, her friends joined me. The other little girls insisted that I return another day and read more books with them. When I promised I would, one of the girls said “that’s what you say now, but you probably won’t even come back.” This made me want to cry again – yes, I did that a lot throughout this week – as I wondered what kind of promises had been made to them before that hadn’t been kept. I showed them a pinky promise, and promised I’d be back.

I’ll mentally prepare myself better next time, and go back to the school aiming only for smiles this time.