ISP… When you finally figure the rest of your life out.. or just one month of it.
As my last two school days are coming my class and I are preparing for the beginning of our ISP period or independent study project. Many students are going all over Nepal and India but I decided the Kathmandu Valley is the right place for me. I will continue to live in my homestay in Boudha, where I already know my way around and have lots of contacts available. For the next month I will be conducting research of the monastic life. I am interested in bringing the child’s lens alive in anthropology by representing children’s stories. Because I cannot legally interview children I will be teaching english in a monastery to young monks and possibly nuns in a nunnery here in Boudha. These kids will be about 7 or 8 years old and I do not know how much English they already know. I am not an education major but I will channel my ex preschool experience and do the best I can.
Teaching english to young monks and nuns will give me an outlet to develop a relationship with the children without being a random American with a notebook and pen writing things down awkwardly. I will get the chance to interact with them in a classroom setting which I believe will be a great contribution to my learning. As for conducting interviews, I am planning on having conversations with monks and nuns that have been raised in the monastery. I am interested in sharing their childhood memories or stories as a way of telling the world how life in the monastery is. People always glorify the monastic life and I think it’s important to look at all angles. I started this research thought when I was feeling very homesick in the middle of the night, during my first week here in Boudha. Until, at 5:30 AM, the monasteries around my house would start their loud drums and chanting very loudly. They would do the same chants every morning so now I too have it memorized. Anyways hearing this made me wonder what life is like for young monks and nuns. I see them everywhere, especially on my way to school and I see them playing soccer, riding bikes, and just typical kid stuff. This also made me think if they too ever miss home, and how they dealt with transitioning from their homes in the mountains or all over Nepal to Kathmandu.
After my visit to Mustang I learned that outmigration for education is a big thing in the himalayan regions. Because the local schools in the mountainous regions like Mustang do not receive much funding from the government, many parents in seek for a better education for their children send them elsewhere. Normally parents are sending their children to boarding school in Kathmandu or in India. But if they cannot afford it then they are sent to a public school in these areas. Education is a primary focus for Nepalis but unfortunately because most children do move out of their local villages, in the himalayan regions the populations are vastly decreasing. This also relates to children who are also sent to monasteries in Kathmandu and India. So my research will be done on children who have left their homes and have come to live in the monasteries here in the Kathmandu Valley.
As the rest of my class are booking flights and bus tickets I am on the hunt for school supplies and am creating my first lesson plans. I am very excited for this opportunity and I believe it will be very beneficial to my field of study. All semester I have been doing fieldwork but mostly small amounts, so now I will get lots of time to conduct my own fieldwork all on my own and this is a bit intimidating but I feel like I have been well prepared.