The American Embassy in Nepal has a mobile bus that travels the country on request to bring books and activities to remote villages that otherwise wouldn’t get exposure to a library. It’s aptly named “the Book Bus.” That bus filled with books along with six teachers came to my school at for a week to lead some workshops in Literature, Arts, and Sciences and let the kids read. Most of my students have never held a book other than the government-issued, black-and-white textbook they get every year. There were no trips to the library where they got to choose a book to read. They certainly didn’t grow up being read to every night. So ensuring this was a success was very important to me.
The day before the bus was supposed to arrive, the driver called me and said the bus couldn’t make it on the road to my village. He said there was a smaller bus (with higher clearance) that was in storage, and he would try to get it out and come up. He promised they would come, but because it was a weekend, he didn’t think it’d be on the scheduled day. A few hours later, he called and said that they had driven the big bus back to Kathmandu and gotten the smaller bus out of storage at the Embassy and were heading back my way! To go back to Kathmandu and get that smaller bus required a lot of people helping on their day off.
With the bus
The next day, right on schedule, the (much smaller) bus showed up at school. It was brightly decorated with massive pictures of US landmarks and of books. A real attention grabber. Of course, all the students (and everyone else in the village) came running out to see what was with the colorful bus parked prominently outside the school.
The book bus teachers were totally in the element, having experienced the same reaction all over the country. They explained how they were going to be teaching English and science classes for the next few days, as well as allowing all students to read from the book bus whenever they had a free period.
The science classes included a ton of experiments. The bus had come with science teachers who led each class in age-appropriate activities. The youngest classes collected leaves and the older classes experienced a chemical reaction of some sort. The students did various art during the arts portion of the day, including making collages. For the literature portion, the students learned about inequality in the US. They read the story of Ruby Bridges where they read about America’s history of segregation and also read the “I Have a Dream” speech. Both books were in both English and Nepali. During the reading, the teachers explained about the US’s long history of segregation. They had the kids make a list of all the types of inequality that exist in Nepali, and they talked about how all of those inequalities also exist in the US.
They also did an activity where they had students run for student body president. One boy and one girl were nominated, and they both gave speeches. Afterwards, everyone came up to place their ballot in the ballot box. But whenever a girl approached the ballot box, the student in charge of collecting the ballots put his hand over the box. The girls walked dejectedly back to their seats while the boys voted. After everyone had gone to the ballot box, the teachers how the voting was. The boys said everything was fine; the girls remained silent. The teachers asked why no one said anything at all during the voting or afterwards. No one had challenged the vote keeper. The students had a long discussion about that, and how they felt during the voting, and they were instructed to go home and ask their mothers and grandmothers how it felt to not be able to vote until very recently.
The mural being painted
They even painted a mural of the surrounding scenery.
The bus also held an event for the entire community. They had a projector and generator, and one night they played a film that the whole community was invited to. Over 100 people came. The film was of Nepali gold-medalist ultramarathon runner Mira Rai. You can read more about her amazing story here.
The final day the bus was at the school, the students had begged enough of the teachers to let them read at the bus instead of having class, so the entire school camped out at the bus the whole day, reading. It was like a big picnic, one of the best days at school.
I took way too many pictures, so please enjoy just a few of them:
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