Game Changer

Before I left for Surkhet in January, I was reading a book called Little Princes that is set in Nepal. Throughout the book, the author regularly mentioned Carom board, a table game similar to shuffle board in which you flick little pucks into corner pockets. The book made it seem like everyone in Nepal had a Carom board, so I wasn’t surprised when I arrived at Kopila and all the kids were avid players. It was all Carom board, all the time. When the kids were bad, we took away the Carom board for a week and they died a little inside.

But what did surprise me was when the Carom board became old news a few weeks later. One day they were obsessed, the next day the board was pushed behind the TV to collect dust. Carom board was out, and jump rope was in. And it wasn’t just a few kids here and there who made the switch, the change was drastic and obvious, as if the kids in Surkhet had a secret meeting and all decided they needed a new game. After breakfast, the kids were jump roping. At school, even teachers were jump roping. After school, before dinner, sometimes even in the dark, the kids were always jump roping! I tried to figure it out. Maybe the warmer weather made them want to be outside? Maybe Surkhet received a new shipment of jump ropes?

One morning I came downstairs to jump rope with the kids and showcase my talents before school. To my dismay, the kids weren’t congregated in the side yard and the jump rope was nowhere to be found. Instead, the kids were scattered about the house taking apart old bike tires and roping the rubber bands together. The new fad had arrived: chungi. It’s like hacky sack, you see how many times you can juggle the chungi without it falling on the ground. It was the first time I had ever seen the game played with old tire pieces, but it was clear the kids had played this many times before. On my first try, I juggled twice and was pretty happy. Then a 4-year old got 36 juggles and I cried. Forward, inset, eyes closed, sidestep, with claps, with a partner – the kids had all different variations of juggling and impressed me every time.

A few weeks later, chungis were replaced by rubber bands tied together for a game called “rubber ping”. Then the obsession switched to a pile of tiles and a sock ball (“kitiball”). Then a game in which players only need one stone and some dirt and really no coordination (“aram”). And now we are in the middle of rock – or gohti - season. It’s jacks but with rocks and I guarantee any Nepali kid could beat you, they have mad skillz. One of the moves looks like this: toss a rock in the air with one hand and use that same hand to scoop up four other rocks on the ground and shoot one of those rocks into a hoop formed with the index finger and thumb of the other hand before catching that very first rock that was thrown in the air with that very same hand that did the throwing. It blows my mind how gravity ceases to exist when they play rocks yet comes crashing down (literally) when I attempt.

In 6 months we’ve gone from Carom board to jump rope to chungi to rubber ping to kitiball to aram and now gohti, and who knows what’s next or when it will come. I know all the 90s kids remember the evolution of our games: there were pogs and tomagachis, Polly Pocket and American Girl Dolls, baseball cards then pokemon cards. It’s always changing but you can never quite predict what will stick next. You spend hours and hours perfecting your Skip-It technique to showcase at recess, and the next day it doesn’t even matter because all the kids are learning how to feed their gigapets hamburgers and watch them poop. And soon enough, everyone’s trading that toy for the newest version of Bop-It.

Fads are funny; they are everywhere, but I can’t help but see the contrast between here and home. Our games had batteries included or required a desktop computer and you could play all day long without burning a calorie, and if your parents didn’t spend a huge chunk of change at Toys R Us, you certainly could not keep up with the latest fad. It’s refreshing to be here, in a place where the kids are resourceful, creative, active, and can turn what I would consider garbage, into the most prized possession of the month. I guess Maggie did it right by raising her children in Nepal…

a chungi - intricate & resourceful

Gauri & Nanda Miss jump roping during break!

Check out my video of the kids at Kopila in action! 

Matt & Shan & Raggedy Anne

Imagine if you took the straight, even, mechanical, repeating streets of downtown Manhattan, so clearly marked and easy to distinguish and direct, and and placed them all into a giant blender along with some temples, dust, prayer flags, wires, and counterfeit merchandise, and blended on high for 30 minutes, then poured out all the contents between a bunch of very tall Himalayan mountains: this would be Kathmandu and its surrounding valley. 

I was more than a little terrified to tear off on a bike into those streets. Traffic rules do not exactly exist in Nepal. I mean, they exist, but about like the drinking age in Europe, or like my parents rules against their dogs getting on couches. Traffic flows on the left side of the road, mostly. Sometimes, traffic lines or plants bifurcate the streets, but only sometimes. Pretty much, the Nepalis on the road are left to their own devices, policing and directing themselves through the frequency and persistence of their own car-horns. 

When we left the hotel, keeping with the difficulty of anything Nepali, it began to rain. You can look at a map all you want but I am quite positive that the cartographer(s) in Nepal (only one company produces every map in Nepal) take artistic liberties whenever they damn-well-please, including the straightness of streets, and especially the distances of those supposedly-straight-streets. Anyways, we managed to escape Kathmandu proper, ending up on one of the less-traffic-heavy old roads heading towards Bakhtapu. The rain was more welcome than I would have ever expected. First, the heat was somewhat tampered, and second and most importantly, all those tons and tons of dust were relegated to mounds of muck on the sides of the road. This leg of the journey turned out to be by far the easiest. It was a gently sloped fairly straight road all the way into the town. I had plenty of time and energy to think about my surroundings. These can be basically simplified into a small list: wires, stray dogs, stray people, dirt, advertisements, and poverty. 

The wires are everywhere, going in all directions, seeming to originate from the ground, the sky, houses, other wires. Randomly placed poles (sometimes) hold these wires off of the ground, and there are a lot of them to hold. I don't know why each pole has 30-50 separate wires converging towards and diverging away from itself. Power outages, lack of power, no power; these are all common occurrences in Nepal, so they certainly don't have the surplus of power these wires would seem to suggest. At this point, I think the wires have somehow seeped into the aesthetic of Nepalese architecture, and 90% of the tubes are conducting nothing but their own weight around the Kathmandu valley and on to the rest of Nepal. That, or someone or group of someones is just randomly placing impotent wires everywhere just to mess with people. It beats me. 

Stray dogs I will (sadly) be talking of shortly. For the stray people, see for reference any medium to large city in the United States. 

I think I've sufficiently covered the dirt.

The advertisements are probably the most surprising thing of all. It's funny to me that America bears the cross of alleged over-advertisement and being a nation ultimately sold out to corporations and their inexorable train of profits. The advertisements are literally everywhere in Nepal. It's hard to know who exactly the 6x10' Minsk Cherry Apple Vodka billboard on the side of a 3 mile hike to the top of a mountain is aiming at, but damn if they might as well not try right? Lest anyone think the Coke/Pepsi debate is even close to settled, please take a walk through any Nepalese village, I assure you it is alive and well. Stores are lined side by side with their awnings alternating their white-washed Coke and Pepsi signs back and forth in what must have also joined the Nepali Aesthetic. Not to even mention that every single stores sales the same 20-30 items of soda, potato chips, and cookies. Most likely 1Liter bottles of both Coke and Pepsi can be found in any one of these shops. The shops don't even have names, they don't advertise themselves, just whichever large corporation gets to them first. On our trip up the mountain, I believe Tuborg, a Danish beer company, took first place for most square footage of advertisement space occupied. This includes entire 3 story walls of houses  painted (not stores, people's own homes, where they pick up some rupees to stock a few beers for whatever random traveler just happens to stop by too scared of the water and just thirsty enough and to buy a beer). If we're talking Nepal-at-large, the cell phone company Ncell has to have actual non-zero numerical percentage points of the Nepalese landscape covered in its advertisements. Ncell seems to have monopolized not only the cell-phone market, but also the color of purple. Every few houses we'd pass there would be a roof entirely painted that horrific shade of purple, and without fail we'd see a little rack of Ncell cell-phone cards for sell. This wasn't in downtown Kathmandu, this could be on the top of a mountain, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but farms and more advertisements around. It honestly makes no sense.  

The poverty is hard to convey. I would come to find throughout my trip that most of the wealth in Nepal appears to be focused in Kathmandu and its valley, but despite this the poverty still screams out to your mind from every direction. Poverty is the over-arching theme that connects all of the last few topics. The living motif of an entire nation. People have to give in to the advertisements because it's one of the only ways to get money. The stray dogs exist because the people are struggling enough to feed themselves,. The wires, hell, who knows about the wires. I've thought a lot about the poverty of this nation while I've resided in it. It's hard not to think about when it pervades your environment so thoroughly. It's certainly not because of the people's work ethic. If anything, this trip has given me more faith in the hardiness, ingenuity, and perseverance of the human race than any other experience of my life. 

And yet, when you're on your 5th mile seemingly straight up a mountain, and you see a little girl running at you smiling and shouting "Hi how are youuuuuuu," or a family staring in the most genuine expression of interest humans can produce, you cannot help but shudder with happiness and amazement. It's the kind of happiness that utterly dissolves whatever meaningless trifle you are or have ever worried about. And no matter what the job is, farming the mountains and valleys, selling cheap fabrics and counterfeit hiking gear in downtown Kathmandu, running a boating service along the Phewa Tal lake in Pokhara, maintaining a hostel at the top of the mountain, these people work hard. They're at their shop/hostel/farm right after the sun rises (5am by the way), and they are there past when it goes down, always willing to sell, entertain, or work through whatever ridiculous weather presents itself. And those same people are there the next day, and the next, and the next. Work ethic does not, and I cannot believe it ever has, contributed to the state of wealth of this country. My only idea is that the geography has ensnared and limited the entire nation. Ceaseless mountains and valleys make infrastructure all but impossible to perfect. To bring in goods to Kathmandu from the surrounding area requires short trucks (18 wheelers simply cannot exist on the winding roads) going 2500 feet straight up a mountain. There are no "highways," and there is no way of creating them. A rapidly altering climate, including monsoon season, means that the path straight up the mountain is alternately covered in snow, soaked with mud, or stopped by landslide. While taking all of this in, it's a wonder the country has come so far. It's a wonder they weave the tons of wires through treacherous impasses and mountainsides at all. It's incredible that they can supply enough food throughout the country that people can exist in the far reaches. 

Anyways, we made it out to Bhaktapur, and it would turn to be by far the easiest part of our excursion. A little bit about Bhaktapur from the handy dandy internet and my own hard-earned knowledge. A world heritage site, Bhaktapur is one of the best kept and preserved ancient towns within the Kathmandu valley. It is full of ancient monuments, palaces, and ornate decorations, mainly in the main square (called Durbar Square in Nepali). While attempting to enter, we were stopped at the entrance and were told to pay 15 dollars to enter. We met a similar scene in Kathmandu. It basically ends up as two guys in a shack halfheartedly attempting to stop all of the white people and make them pay. 

Not the types who fawn over monuments and palaces and artwork in the first place, we said nah. Instead we went the other way, biked down some side streets and took a 10 minute detour and came around the back way, free of charge. While in the back alleys of Bhaktapur, it feels more like a medieval town in the European Alps than as if you're 10 miles away from Kathmandu, Nepal. We stopped at a coffee shop so we could leave our bikes and walk around, and grab some caffeine for the trip up the mountain. There we met a man from Bangladash who noticed we had our bikes with us (not too difficult a task, as they were the only non-motor bikes, possibly in the whole town), and shared that he just biked up and came down from Nagarkot, our eventual destination. He let us know that it was really no big deal, a short hop, skip, and a bike up the slope. This assuaged our fears, which at this point had been pretty substantial. 

So we set off from Bhaktapur full of curry and caffeine and anticipation and sweat. The rain cleared as we set off and soon it was a beautiful sunshine-filled afternoon. At the outset the gradual incline through the farmland and quaint villages and cottages made us feel like the Bandledashi man was right, this was going to be alright after-all. False hope never tasted so bitter. About 30 minutes later the Mountain hit us. Shannon and I are in pretty decent shape., but nothing could have prepared us for this mountain. 

At some point, what seemed like hours later, is when we started assuming every little collection of greater-than-2 huts had to be Nagarkot. We had to be there soon. There was simply no way that it was much further. Then we saw the sign, Nagarkot - 10km. 10 kilometers really is not that far. 6.2137 miles. In a car on a straight interstate that would take about 5 minutes. Even in a bike on a flat track on a leisurely stroll it wouldn't take much longer than 30 minutes. But this was no flat track, and it was certainly no leisurely stroll. Nagarkot is 7000 feet above sea level. Kathmandu lies half as many below. The vertical difference between these two locations is made up almost solely within that last 10 kilometers. The challenge was just beginning. I will not go into any further details on that last 6 miles. It's too painful to recall. We both agreed that it was one of the most physically difficult things we've ever done. We finally walked our bikes across the threshold and into the town (because by now, our butts were numb, our legs were worse, and honestly, fuck biking), helped being pushed by a spectacled Nepali child. We made it even further up the mountain to our hostel, The Hotel at the End of Universe. After a cursory washing (we could not bend over or practically move), we went up to the hotel teahouse and restaurant in time for one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever witnessed. There is a reason we expended so much effort to get to this village of less than 5000 people - it is well known for being one of the best viewpoints in all of Nepal. The Himalayas formed the backdrop of the sky along the north, and somewhere along the east, though I could have never pointed it out, lay Mount Everest. 

We thought with exhausted our bodies were we would sleep like corpses, but again, nothing in Nepal comes easy, least of all sleep when you most want it. Our shack had no window screens, and no fan. It's slightly cooler up on the mountain, but nothing can nullify that Nepalese heat. It took hours to even fall asleep, and when we woke up at 3am it would be for good. So when life gives you lemons hike up a mountain. We walked around the hotel area for a bit, got some tea, and sat off for a tower lookout about 3 miles to the south on a paved trail. On a clear day, this tower was supposed to provide a 360 degree view including one of the widest views of the Himalayas, as well as a panorama of the Kathmandu Valley. Unfortunately the sky was beset with clouds and fog and haze. We walked on all the same, because the other choice was to throw our tender gooches back on those bikes and roll down the mountain. 

Our short hike turned out to be the start of the most depressing event of our entire trip. As soon as we began to hike up the mountain a small white dog, with fleas, flies, and bugs I have never seen before crawling all along her bruised and scabbed skin began to follow us. We didn't do anything to make her follow us, other than say hey and not yell at her to leave us alone. That's apparently enough for a Nepalese Street Dog. Mistake number one. She followed us the entire 3 miles up the mountain. Eventually, we did what no one should ever EVER do in this situation, like naming the goat you're about to slaughter and eat, we named her. Raggedy Anne (don't worry, though I ate a few slaughtered goats in Nepal, we did not end up slaughtering and eating Anne). Mistake number 2. And then we did what every sleep deprived, jet-lagged, compassionate, dog-loving travelers would do, we bought some 20 cent cookies and fed her for a job well done of climbing an entire mountain. Mistake number 3. She followed us all the way back to the hotel, up to our room, up to the desk as we checked out, and back down to the road when get onto our bikes. We probably used a bit of purposeful deception to lessen up the morally agonizing situation we had managed to land ourselves in, but we were convinced as soon as we got on our bikes and started pedaling down the mountain, Anne would understand and stay put. Mistake number 4. She sprinted after us. We could not shake her off. There was really nothing we could do. There were no shops that we could buy some more cookies and leave them for her and bike away, and even if we could, no Nepalis would want some white people running another stray dog onto their property and leaving it. That's yet another mouth they have to feel guilty about leaving empty. We were emotionally entrenched enough with Anne to scream and yell and run her off after we'd come this far, and she would be so far from home down a mountain anyways. And it's not like we could let her follow us the 20 miles back to Kathmandu. 

It was a very emotionally distressing and confusing time. On the one hand, we were doing something really cool. We were on mountain bikes riding down a rocky mountain trail with breathtaking views of the Kathmandu Valley from the opposite side, with heart stopping sheer drop just 3 feet away at times. On the other hand, a rocky mountain trail was not exactly the most comfortable thing to be biking on with an extremely sore buttocks. On the other OTHER hand, we were riding with one eye looking at those sheer drops, and the other look back checking for the sight of Anne sprinting after us, exhausted, hot, and thirsty. You could not look forward without the overwhelming sense of dread at knowing if you turned around you would either see her still following, or even worse, she would be gone and you would have to worry and wonder if she was okay. 

Eventually we gave her the slip, painful as it was. We hit a stretch of paved road downhill and sped off as fast as we could. When we looked back all we saw in the distance were elderly Nepalese women carrying bales of corn on their head, or Nepali children herding goats down the mountain. It was both a relief and a tragedy. 

Finally we were getting closer and closer to Kathmandu. The bike ride down the mountain turned out to be more difficult than we imagined. In my completely stuporific mindstate the night before, I had envisioned one long, straight, paved, constantly downward-sloped, guilt free road and we would rest gently on our bicycles and it might very well take us directly into the hotel room and onto the bed. What we got instead was a long, curved, rocky, emotionally distressful road that sometimes even went uphill. It was awful. I never signed up for that. I never thought it would end. I certainly couldn't see how the hell I was going to get that bike anywhere near Kathmandu, much less navigate the chaos of traffic once I did. 

We started passing little villages, then little towns in quick succession, then all of a sudden, we were in a full blown, smog filled city. We gave up. We couldn't take it anymore. Our entire bodies screamed, muscles creaked, lungs coughed, we gave up. We stopped and got some coffee and food. We were about 5 miles away from our hotel. We had stopped at, fairly serendipitously, right where we were planning on stopping anyways: Boudha. It's one of the largest temples, or "Stupa," in the world. It's beautiful and awe-inspiring, but honestly, I just couldn't manage to give a shit about it. I was too tired and just wanted to lay down in a bed. We left, and Shannon managed to hail down a local City-bus. We thought it would be impossible for a local bus to pick up two white people, especially with bikes in tow, but sure enough they stopped. A kid who could not have been older than 15, and smaller than Shannon, somehow lifted up our bikes one at a time and carried them up a ladder and threw them on top of the bus, and we took off. I was too tired to worry about the very real possibility of our bikes flying off the top and hitting some poor hapless car behind us. 

Not too long afterwards we managed to walk the bikes from the bus lot the 30 minutes back to our hotel. No matter how tired we were though, and no matter how comfortable the bed was, it could not shake the pervading anxiety of Anne. Where was she? Was she hot? Did a family find her and feed her/water her/take her in? Did she make it back up the mountain? Even now, is she okay?

Bhaktapur

THIS SUNSET THO

Matt, all of Nagarkot, and Raggedy Anne's friend

view from the tower in Nagarkot

ANNE! She is with a loving family right now, I'm sure. 

The amazing Boudha Stupa

Matt Hodges is a writer, ex-waiter, and aspiring doctor, with a side hustle that pays the bills. He is moving his belongings and boyfriends to Charlottesville next month, where he will be getting his M.D. in IPAs if he survives his bout with Typhoid fever. He enjoys thought-provoking conversations and is "so so so against mumbo jumbo and mysticism and stuff." Follow him on twitter @profgrafenberg, then google Grafenberg. 

Nikki & Nacho

About a year and a half ago – long before I was even hoping my dreams of visiting Kopila Valley would ever come true – someone at Kopila decided taking care of 43 children just wasn’t enough. So they bought two German Shepherd puppies from Kathmandu and named the girl Nikki and the boy Nacho. When I arrived in January, Nikki and Nacho were still technically puppies but their size would make you guess otherwise. I would venture to say Nacho is 80 now pounds of pure muscle and Nikki, a little shorter, must be a few pounds shy of that. To give you a sense of their strength, they ripped a chain-link leash in half. Twice.

They are truly two of the most beautiful German Shepherds I have ever seen (behind Marley of course) and are definitely the most attractive dogs in Surkhet – the street dogs aren’t much competition. They protect the hostel all day and night. Well, for a few weeks, Nacho was sneaking up to the roof of the hostel and howling at the moon until sunrise, so he and Nikki got transferred to night patrol duty at the school instead. You’d be dinner if you tried to break into Kopila Valley School on Nacho’s watch.

Constantly being around children ages 3-17 has really made N&N very sweet when it comes to human interaction. Tail tugging, back riding, lip lifting, whisker pulling, ear folding, paw tickling, toy teasing, you name it the kids do it to the dogs. I feel like if it were any other big dog, we would have a bunch of kids missing hands and a few even missing heads – Nikki and Nacho are just so relaxed and let the kids do whatever they want to them.

N&N are pals. They run back and forth throughout the compound and pretend bite and pin each other all day – however sometimes I don’t think Nacho is really pretending. He is actually quite aggressive with other animals, and we found this out the hard way. We were taking Nikki and Nacho to the school (a short 90 second walk from the hostel), and along the way, Nacho saw a goat tied up in someone’s front lawn. There was no contemplation; he knew exactly what to do. Seconds later we were prying Nacho off the neighbor’s goat. The goat was lucky – he only lost a little bit of blood from where Nacho bit his ear. We weren’t so lucky. For our dog’s little snack, we had to give the neighbor 8000 Rupees ($80) and buy the goat from her.  The offering price and the transaction happened so quickly and without thought, it made me think “Is it a Nepali custom that you have to buy a goat if your dog bites its ear? Kinda like you break it, you buy it? And is it always 8000 Rupees?!” All I know is that goat lived a nice couple months on our new land up in the hills, and then provided sustenance for all of Kopila Valley last Saturday night – and they have Nacho to thank for that delicious meal. A few weeks after the goat incident, Nacho plowed through the bamboo fence that encloses our side yard and mutilated a piglet. We now have a metal fence and Nacho’s heavy-duty runner is attached to a steel rod cemented in the ground to prevent further problems with our neighbors.

Of course, Nacho went through the typical male dog mounting stage a few months ago. When I returned to Kopila a few weeks ago, of course, Nikki was very pregnant and then gave birth a few days later to 5 adorable little German Shepherd rascals. The puppies truly make my day! They just learned how to open their eyes and a few of them are working on this awesome puppy army crawl in preparation for learning how to use their limbs. All they really do is squeal and climb on each other and roll around and drink milk but I could watch them for hours. Who knows what we will do with 5 German Shepherd puppies?! I can only think of one family in Surkhet that has the (wo)man-power and money to take care of a pure-bred German Shepherd puppy –- and that family already has 48 children and the puppies’ parents to take care of.  

Nacho boy

goofy ol Nikki & Maya

Nikki and the pups - day 1! she looks sleepy. 

can't get enough

in just two weeks, they have grown so much! 

Welcome Class of 2026!

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.

sweet little nursery girl & her older sister

their eyes say it all

mud hut

first week of school! 

sorting hat! 

Here’s to a great school year!