A Teacher by Circumstance
A Bhutanese Community Volunteer
PA, USA
I reached a Bhutanese refugee camp in eastern Nepal in the summer of 1992. It was a sea of people that clustered in small makeshift bamboo huts. Some educated adults had started schools for children in small clearings in the forest nearby. I joined the group of adults. This was the beginning of a job that would go on for 16 years. And that was after successfully completing a two- year diploma in agriculture in Bhutan. I had dreamt and prepared myself to be an agriculturist but now my life had to change its mode from dream to survival.
I threw myself to the education of children in the camp. We, the self- proclaimed teachers, some were trained in Bhutan though, decided to keep English as the medium of instruction. This would keep the children at par with those in Bhutan. It was very satisfying and encouraging to get up every morning with a purpose: give something what you had, to those who needed. There were classes from KG to eighth, all under trees, scattered in the jungle. Each class moved constantly as the shadow of the trees moved. Summer sun was intense. If dark clouds gathered up in the sky and the rain was imminent, we dispersed the classes. We had swarms of students marching from the woods to the huts.
Three months later, all those families who had not got their permanent huts were shifted to another location, about 30 miles away. This was forming a new camp. My family was one among them. My brother joined me in starting a new school at this new location. More educated adults joined to volunteer, and now here was another school running smoothly.
Soon a national non-profit in Nepal started taking care of the education of all refugee children. Textbooks and stationery were provided to the children. Blackboards and chalks came. Teachers started receiving small stipends. How happy I was to receive a 500 Rupee (close to $10.00 per month then) bill for the first time! I gave my first my pay to my parents. Students grabbed anything they could find to sit on. Most of them sat on bare grounds. Earth was their bed, their dining table and their class table.
Later, bigger huts were constructed designed for school. We now had shelter with thatch roof and wall of bamboo shafts. This kept us cool in the summer, but the wall did not keep the winter wind out. Children didn’t have enough clothes on them. So, whenever there was sunshine, we took them out. I can still remember students taking their exams out in the open ground in winter. We learnt to take the best what the nature had to offer.
Every school day began with a morning assembly where we had morning prayer and sang Bhutan’s national anthem. A headmaster ran the school administration. Teachers were given 5-6 classes a day. Each class had a minimum of 45 students. I got to teach the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grades, all different subjects: English, Science and Social Studies initially. Later, I was asked to teach high school students where I taught English, Earth Science and a vocational subject, Education. I became a teacher by circumstance, not by choice or interest. But I enjoyed.
Students were evaluated three times a year. As examinations came, students studied under kerosene lamps and teachers worked on those test papers late hours in the night, 7 days a week. Evaluating 225- 250 test papers was not an easy task for teachers. Students too worked hard because we all had one goal: to be as competent as those in Bhutan when we got back in our country. We all hoped we would be repatriated one day, if not soon.