Travelled from Rithepani to Chitwan
Arrived in the dark and welcomed by Capt Ash and his driver!!
Later we were entertained with food and songs around an open fire with Maj Lil leading the chorus.
Thankfully neither Jp of DD were invited to join in!!
Born to dance!! Er, no!
Er, YES!!
Friends and neighbours.
Backing group on chairs......
Friday
Up early mushroom soup, boiled egg, bread and boiled unknown
starchy root vegetable!
To school puncture 300 yd walk to the start of the
procession?
Civic welcome was indescribable!
Chrishna, Maj Lil, Capt Ash, Duncan and John
We were greeted and entertained for 3 hours plus reception
including the opportunity to award prizes of books for the top students. This included a prize for the basketball team
almost entirely comprised of Gurung players.
Time was now short so after the formal handover of
Computer’s our work began.
The Principal - a thoroughly decent and committed man.
The computer room is on the third level steps and metal
stairs mean no DDA here!
Duncan set about unpacking and setup the new pcs whilst I
got on with reviewing the old ones.
Ahh! No CDrw and cables missing out of most.
Other problems – power drops out or spike and no ups! Long
gaps when generator required and work lost.
Went shopping with Captain Ash to buy tomato and chicken!
Cooked meal chicken in tomato onion and garlic on the home
open fire– no one died
Rose early at 5am Duncan already awake
After 4 coffees and a cold shower Duncan went outside for breakfast.
Bekash then brought Johns water which was hot!! Duncan was DELIGHTED.......
Soup pancakes egg and toast – delicious.
NO School today – Saturday
By car driven by Captain Ash to purchase 5 dvd rw, cables
and attendant bits
After visits to two shops without stock we left for Chitwan
national park and an elephant ride.
Half way through the Elephant safari it started to rain reverentially and canoe ride was abandoned.
Called for emergency collection from the shallow end of the car park via Maj Lil in Pokhara.
The misted windows in the vehicle coupled with the road to our
temporary home made for the MOST frightening journey to date!! Again no one
died.
Sunday is a normal working day in Nepal. What started as a
lovely sunshine day turned into a monsoon day. At the school’s and unregulated supply of
electricity which can be anything from okay to spiked feel completely without
warning. The generator is far more reliable and gives a regulated supply
however, with the thunder and lightning storm the supply was flaky to say the
least. With us both frustrated by the random
closure of machines and the storm the machines were unplugged and the work
abandoned for the day.
After an excellent night’s sleep we rose to a warm shower
and the pleasant comments from Bikas the house boy.
Monday was
democracy day in Nepal but we continued to school again taxied by the
delightful Captain Ash. (Good going forward scary going backwards!)
At lunchtime we made a short walk in the village to a
roadside cafe where we enjoyed chapatti and vegetable curry with a side order
of pakora.
Work continued in the afternoon with great progress made.
Tuesday
arrived and after a sumptuous breakfast as usual we travelled to the school and
continue to install software. There was a number of scary issues not least of
which when six of our computers were hit with a virus (unknown) fortunately, we
were able to inoculate them using Duncan’s memory pen, after we’d wiped it of the
virus.
Wednesday We had agreed to rise early but was unable to
dig Duncan out of his bed until a pitiful 4:30 AM! We worked with the network engineer
until 12 noon completing 99.9% of all installations and agreed to pass on
details of security and passwords to the IT teacher by email.
Job done
Whilst setting up Skype on "Teacher's" PC John logged in to his own account for testing.
The assembled group were very impressed when his 83 yr old mum made contact on Skype to say hello!!
The system worked well!!
We quickly made our final trip to the chapatti lady in the
Main Street and has a light lunch before returning to Captain Ash’s House.
We said our farewells and on moving out of the garden towards the waiting vehicle to take us to Pokhara we were surprised by an assembly of neighbours and friends who would met earlier. They had gathered to say goodbye.
Following photographs and handshakes we set off on another
gruelling trip on the Nepal roads. (Thankfully with several stops!)