Getting to know Samata "Bamboo" School

Samata1Bamboo school is 6 years old & was founded by Uttam Sanjel. The original Samata school was destroyed by parents & teachers because they didn't understand what he was trying to achieve, which is education for very poor children. There are about 3,000 children here. A big rectangular courtyard / playground is surrounded by bamboo huts roofed with corrugated iron. We didn't teach there as volunteers. We worked in the newer 2 year old school run by Laxmi the wife of the pricipal of Samata 1,Sushil. The layout is very similar though – each hut is a fairly dark classroom, the only lighting coming from unglazed windows covered with bamboo latticework & a doorless doorway. Currently Uttam, the founder, has 14 schools in districts of Nepal. Women teach the younger children, men teach the 14 – 16 year olds. Some older children teach younger children.

When we arrived the children were doing the National Exams which they work very hard to pass. It is common for children to get up very early in the morning to do chores & homework, come to school & then do more homework when they go home. A high percentage get good pass marks in the exams. The family pays 100R a month for the school, which is very low. Some children who come from villages away from KMD don't see their families for months, which must be very hard for all of them. We talked to Uttam, Sushil & some of the older children, who were a delight. Sushil prides himself on being so strict that the children are frightened to talk in front of him. Corporal punishment is commonplace, which was quite difficult for Western volunteers to see.

We visited the other Samata school 5 minutes away & met the lovely Laxmi. Each classroom has a wall painted with black paint as a blackboard, a dirt floor & old fashioned metal & wood bench / desks which can seat 6 children. They are all arranged in rows facing the blackboard, girls on one side, boys on the other. Unfortunately the timetables we had been sent were for Samata 1 and organisation of this school is different to the older one. Contrary to what I had been told, I discovered that Samata 2 does actually have electricity, but it isn't connected up to the classrooms so doesn't benefit the children.

Class Groups are quite mixed in age according to ability. Older students with poor English are kept down. They use the Oxford Reading Circle. Children provide their own paper, pencils etc, there are no central supplies. The school takes children from Nursery to Stage 7. There are 20 classrooms on each side, but only 21 are in use at the moment. Laxmi took us to look in some of the classrooms & introduced us to her deputy Binod who is 17 & has come through Samata school himself. It's all learning by rote by repeating what is written on the blackboard in the younger classes – (A – L / 1 – 10 / + 10 Nepali symbols. Also A is for apple etc). Bizzarely a teacher who can't speak English is teaching English in one class. Another teacher was really lovely with the children & did singing games with actions. The classrooms are completely bare with no charts, pictures or children's work displayed.

We overlapped with two of the previous volunteers Roger & Pauline which is very unusual, but very helpful. They obviously have great reservations about the whole scheme, including the money aspect, and gave us quite a bit of info. They suggested we should spend the £150 Saga money which comes out of what we pay for the trip while we are here. Pauline wanted us to let her know when / if the stuff they had “bought” actually arrived!

All would be revealed once we started teaching.