WORK AND PLAY IN KAFER VILLAGE IN THE KALIMPONH HILL REGION

Life in The Kalimpong Hill Region.

A pair of oxen and the wooden plough is shared by all the people of the village.


The Kalimpong Hill region has a very underdeveloped infrastructure; it is mountainous and heavily forested.
The land has to be terraced for growing crops; this is done manually and with the help of oxen. The main crops grown are rice, potatoes, corn, dhal, maize, and several varieties of root and green vegetables. Also bananas, guavas, mangos, grapefruit and pineapple.
They also grow a few cash crops: ginger, broom, cardamom, arrowroot and tea, however tea is not grown in the region I was working in as the land is too heavily forested.
The villagers are hard working, their plot of land is often far from their homestead, water has to be carried to the fields and to the home, there are no mod cons.
Fodder has to be gathered in the forest for their animals and wood for their clay cooking ovens.
Their furniture is very basic and made in the village. They do not have chests of drawers or wardrobes or televisions. A few of the villagers have a wireless, but the reception is poor.
However they love music and have their own local musical instruments. They also love to sing. They are a very hospitable people and very generous, even though they have so little.
Education is very important to them as they realise that unless their children get an education the conditions in the villages will not improve. Their plots of land are small and it is not possible for them to acquire more land. In order for their children to gain paid employment outside of the area, they need an education. Many oif the adults are illiterate.

THE HIMALAYAN CHILDREN EDUCATION TRUST

Teachers of St. Mary’s Tribal School
St. Mary’s is a small tribal school situated in the hill village of Nok Dara in the Kalimpong Hill Region of West Bengal in India.

Nok Dara is a very isolated village; there is no hard surfaced road into the village, so no vehicular access. There is also no industry in the hill villages of this Region. The people are poor financially. They practice subsistence farming and exchange excess produce for other products which they need. Saleable produce eg eggs, bananas and some vegetables will be taken to the weekly market in GitDubling, which is a two to three hour walk over very rough, hilly terrain, they carry their goods in a cloth bag strapped around their foreheads. The money paid for this produce will be used to buy items like: salt, oil for cooking, soap and cloth for making clothes.
The children also have to wear school uniforms, this is very important to them.
Nearly all children in India wear school uniforms. The parents will do without many necessities to provide a school uniform for their children.

Some of the teachers and children have to walk a long distance to school every day.
They have school on a Saturday morning as well.
When the children go home from school, they have to help with many chores eg. collecting wood for the clay stove to cook the evening meal, clean the rice, prepare the vegetable and fetch water. These are just a few of the chores they have to do every day.
They work hard and have no time for play.

Holy Angels School

Three of these children are now being educated in Bethany School through Sponsorship, and doing very well in their studies.

Betany School Children in school uniform

HIMALAYAN CHILDREN EDUCATION TRUST

St Joseph's Hostel children queing up for their evening meal steamed rice and curried veg.

Nearly finished Wonder if there will be any seconds?

NO doesn't look like it! Not tonight.

HIMALAYAN CHILDREN EDUCATION TRUST

This is a photo of the children who stay in St. Joseph's Hostel

A photo of one of the hostel buildings

Washing their plate and spoon after a meal. The older children help the younger ones.

All done! Ready for the next meal.

Some Welcomed Publicity

Can I share my two articles inserted in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Herold and Post for me, by Jane Bradley, with you.
I am really grateful to Jane for this publicity and have made a few useful contacts through it.

I'm still working hard to try and raise money for Teachers' wages in St. Mary's Tribal School, Nok Dara in the Kalimpong Hill Region and to tell people about the region and it's people, with the hope that volunteers will want to travel to this very beautiful region to work for a few weeks or a few months or even better for longer.

The New School Year begins in The Kalimpong Hill Region Schools

Photo time in the village. This is Komalika. She is 7 years old.

Taken from further up the hill looking down on a typical hill village.

Taken on Easter Sunday. Time to relax.

Grandad. I spent the 4 day Easter school holiday with this family in a village called Merik.



Hello Friend Bloggers

Once again another academic year is commencing for the pupils of the schools in the Hill regions of West Bengal.
I think that perhaps many of the children will be happy, to be back at school and even back to living in the hostels again.
The winters in the Hill region are chilly and the majority of the children live in fairly flimsy accomodation, with toilet shed situated quite a distance from their house,no heating and just 1 electric light in their kitchen/eating room building, a one room building, which is also separate from their house.
The house itself usually consists of a front room into which you enter the house, this is the largest room and has 1 or 2 beds in it, which are used as seating during the day and for sleeping at least 3 or 4 members of the family at night. There are often, 1 or 2 small rooms ,curtained off from this main room, one for the parents or a very elderly member of the family, and if they have a second one, this will be kept for any visitor.
Most of the homes do not have any other furniture. Their few extra clothes are hung on the wall on nails. and they will use cardboard boxes to store their bits and pieces in.
The parents do not get holidays, as field work,transporting, on foot, any excess produce to Git Dubling the small market village,to sell it, or around the neighbouring villages to exchange it for other items required, still has to be done.
The children will be kept very busy looking after the younger siblings, collecting water, sticks for the cooking stove and fodder, from the surrounding woods, for the animals in the village.
They will be very unlikely to receive any food during the day, with the the meal of the day being prepared, when their mother comes home from where ever she has been working, during the day. Breakfast, which may have been eaten at 6am or even earlier, will have been a chipatti or any food left over from the evening meal.
The children will not have had much time for play or chatting to their friends during their holidays, especially the older ones.
Their life seems hard in comparison to many of our lives in the Western World,but I never heard them complaining.
However, you can maybe see why coming back to school after the 2 months Winter holiday, is quite an attractive alternative for some of the children.