the diary of a traveling dreadhead: June 2014

The Class of 2026

Wrote this like 6 weeks ago, finally got my computer to re-connect to wifi so here it is….

The process of admissions at Kopila Valley is an intense one. We are a need-based school and we look for the most needful students to fill our seats – and I mean THE MOST needful. The first year of admissions, Kopila received 1600 applications, but since, they’ve learned to pre-screen a lot better. One or both of the parents has to be dead or gone or seriously impaired to even get an application now. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, like the single 24 year old mother of 7 girls and 1 boy who breaks stones for a living and whose husband left for India three years ago and never came back. Or the family where the parents are both HIV positive and cannot work and have four girls, 1 of which was sold as an indentured servant and had to be bought back. Just getting a first round interview means the child has a pretty sad life. The first day of interviews, there were 5 rooms of teachers, board members, and fellows and I personally sat in on 32 interviews that day. It was so mentally and emotionally draining but it was really interesting and eye-opening to hear real life stories of the ubiquitous struggle of people in Nepal. We ranked each student on a 1-3 scale, 1 meaning they definitely deserve to be considered in the next round, 2 being a maybe, and 3 being a cut. The very first interview was an 8 year old boy and his young mother who works labor (meaning she collects stones from the river bed and hammers them down to small rocks for a few rupees each day) and whose husband fell off a bus and died a few months ago. I immediately thought this kid deserved a 1, but the rest of the interviewers who have experience with the process, said 2 because the family owns some land and cattle. It’s true – cattle and land signify that a family is a little more well off than others and even though the dad was gone and the mom barely works, this kid was not as needful as the kids we were apparently about to meet over the next few days. That’s when I kinda figured out what “the most needful” meant…

After the first and second rounds interviews, I had to go on some home visits to ensure that the family wasn’t lying, the story all matched up, and to determine if the kid deserved to go to Kopila. I went on 5 different visits all over Surkhet and on the outskirts of town, and two homes particularly stood out. The “rich” part of Surkhet is called Etram and you know you’re in that ‘hood when you see three story, colorful buildings with balconies and window fixtures and animals grazing outside the houses. What’s ironic is right past Etram is one of the poorest parts of Surkhet. This neighborhood (don’t know the name or if it even has one) is a conglomeration of 1 room mud huts conveniently located alongside the river bed because every woman in this area breaks rocks for a living. It took 20 minutes on a motorbike and 10 more minutes on foot to reach the mudhut of our applicant. Again, a young single mother with two daughters and a son and no husband in sight. The son was applying to be in 1^st grade at Kopila, but when we asked her why the son was applying and not the daughter, the mother didn’t have the answer. In Nepal, everyone wants a son because there are simply more opportunities for men in the country, and overlooking the daughters is something we have to be cognizant of during the home visits. The family was definitely needful – 4 people living in a 5x5 mud hut, sleeping in the very same corner that they cook all their meals in. But instead of taking the son who was already enrolled in a government school and wanted to switch, we accepted the young daughter – really giving her the opportunity of a lifetime. The final home I visited was the most memorable. We drove in the car for 45 minutes through rice paddies and over mud mounds and through many little mudhut villages, until we reached the applicant’s hut. The blind father was asleep outside the house, a little baby was entertaining himself by playing with a machete in the garden, and another son was lugging jugs of water back and forth from the river. The hut was the size of my bathroom, infested with flies and cockroaches, and again there was no differentiation between the sleeping area and the kitchen. Somehow the mother, father, two daughters and two sons lived there. The mother explained that the father has been blind for 12 years and can’t work and that she occasionally mends clothing or sells rice, but otherwise, has no income. NO INCOME and yet she has to care for and feed her husband and 4 children?! It honestly makes no sense to me how they had survived thus far, and definitely explained the emaciated faces of all the children. It was immediately clear that this family was desperately in need and I couldn’t wait to return to school, report to the board, and get that little girl’s name on our acceptance list.

After 3 days of interviews and home visits and two more painstaking days of analyzing the applications and making the impossible decisions of who is “most in need,” we had our list of new Kopila students! 30 nursery kids (yay class of 2026!), 10 KG kids, a few 1^st and 2^nd graders, three 4^th graders, a 6^th grader, a 7^th grader, and a 9^th grader. Yes, we accepted way more than we intended but at some point we couldn’t answer the question “who is more in need?” anymore.

Orientation week of school was pure chaos, yet so great! We did workshops, book and uniform distributions, and got the students and teachers used to their schedules. The week culminated with a Harry Potter-esque Sorting Hat ceremony to place all the new students and teachers in their Houses. Yes, we had an amazing hat and Luke provided a great sorting hat voice from behind the curtain on stage. Most of the nursery kids had no idea what in the hell was going on, but that made it all the more entertaining!

So far, everyone seems to be acclimating well. I stop by the nursery classroom a couple times every day and I can’t help but smile. Mostly because it is entertaining to see thirty 4 and 5 year old rug-rats in a room together, but I’m also just so happy to give these kids the gift of education. Education is the key to success worldwide, but especially in Nepal. Not to toot Kopila’s horn, but by welcoming a child into the school, that student and his/her family’s lives are changed forever for the better. Partaking in interviews and home visits was challenging but probably one of the coolest things I’ve been a part of at Kopila so far. I learned so much about the community and got a glimpse of the hardship that so many Nepalese people face on a daily basis. I am a better person because of this experience and once again, I was reminded how blessed I am to be a part of the Kopila Valley family.