Demi Tour of the World

From the start Manasarovar Academy seemed to me different from other schools.
I was told that teachers of an other school united themselves against the headmaster, influenced by few maoists. In an other school, the headmaster’s got trouble keeping her staff. She doesn’t want to employ nepalese teachers anymore, not enough dedicated and responsible. To illustrate this one social study teacher left a month before without any notice. The school still looks for a teacher.

In Manasarovar (from the name of the lake near Mount Kailash) they already know that a teacher will be missing on the next academic year. Over 15 teachers, 13 are Tibetans, 2 are nepalese. One of them is the co-founder of the school.
That was 8+ years ago, Mrs. Bijaya and Ms. Tsultrim, old friends, opened their schools of four rooms and 8 pupils. To pay the rent they gave evening courses for adults.
Today there’s no time for evening courses, their school welcome 224 pupils in 8 differents classes from nursery to class V. As Ms Tsulrim said to Li (she had a stand with France-Tibet in the Festiv’Art 2007) who visited the place, they depend on outside help.
This year, the landlord made them rent the whole building of four storeys even if they  use only two. Why ? Because nobody wants to rent flats made too noisy by the children. What a man which make his money before the education of children you could think and who wouldn’t set doors to the entrances of the building, not repair the bell. Here the governement acts alike.
Manasarovar academic is a private school because its team made her motto to give a better future for its children while the government just send its employees to collect taxes who are paid on a percentage over the amount of taxes collected. So the one who came last month stayed a week doing his job zealously, even tried to imagine mistakes.
In this school the taxes are low, so last year he didn’t came, the school could not report its accounts and so it had to pay a fine. It is the law.

But Ms Tsultrim and Mrs. Bijaya opened this school for a better education for the children, not to be intimidated by some money collectors. With their other teachers they teach 3 languages to children as young as 4 : nepali, tibetan, and english. They make important for the youngest pupils to write, spell correctly as that’s the basics. To show the level of the school, the new pupils coming from other ones need always to catch up with their new comrades. Even the 26 new comers who arrived from a so-called reputated school.
Here the teachers are all dedicated to their work, they keep late classes to help children in their homeworks.

No nepali will tell you that they want to become teacher. What for ? You would think the same, here the average salary is too low for a living. In Manasarovar all the team’s got the same salary, and so the teacher’ve got  better ones, and this year even more, near 2000 NRs.
Also important, the reasonable size of the school.
A whole atmosphere built by the two co-founders.
Miss Tsultrim swore to open her own school when she was a teenager in Dharamasala, so impressed of her teachers works and knewing it was for the good of all the students. Her close friends thought alike, but now all are settled abroad in USA, Canada, UK or Japan.
Mrs. Bijaya would have loved studied in a foreign country as did her brothers, but in Nepal girls’ faith is different. USA, China Norway were dream to follow her akins. before her country stagnation, the poverty of so many families and the so poor education of nepali children she’s still got a spare tear. But at last, she’s a happy woman. With her husband they decided not to have children of their own, but to take care of the ones in needs of loving adults. Both of them are teachers, they adopted a daughter’s far relative, they sponsor a child in an other school. They have given a lot from their heart, with first just the children’s smiles as reward, but now Mrs. Bijaya can be proud of her school which parents around trust.
Nonetheless Manasarovar academy’s budget is still frail. Organisations sponsor children, but it would be unsufficient without material support from furnitures to stationnary. One Lyon’s club gave ten computers three years ago. This year “Graine d’Avenir” sent books and money to increase teachers’ salary. But not one school can rely on sporadic donors. For example what’s the use of printer when cartridge are still too expensive, plus computers’s updates, plus internet, plus…
Quality books are a problem in whole Nepal, it looks like the publishing system is starting from scratch. (i’ve met a japanese gentleman on the Anapurna’s sanctuary who volunteer in a printing factory near Bhaktapur). The big majority of the bookshops look for tourist and foreigners living in Nepal.

Donations are always precarious for you never sure if it’ll last or what to expect, nor you can expect foreign donations to cover all the need of Nepali schools. It helps but create a gap of education into the population, and Nepal is still not able to feed its grey matters which, in consequence, fly abroad if possible.