Geography - Lesson One

I open the atlas book I purchased in Chautara this afternoon. It is evening time and as usual the children of the village have made their way to our room. They come here to simply sit around and listen to Tsering Kunzes and I speak or learn Ladakhi songs from Kunzes. Last night we taught each other the names of body parts. In Chautara, we were able to get posters and markers in the hopes of having the children draw a map of Nepal and India. Opening the fold-up atlas I ask them, “Nepal, kaha?” (Where is Nepal?) Sabina along with Manuj and two other village children look at the world map and begin to search. Their eyes going back and forth in a state of both curiosity and confusion. Sabina is sixteen years old and would look at the ground or cover her mouth when we first met each other. Now, after spending every evening in our room she looks at me with confidence and points to North America, then to Africa, then to the blue Pacific Ocean. I then try again. “Asia Sabina, kaha?” They all use a click of their tongue to let me know they do not know. I say very slowly the Nepali meanings of English words for ocean and land to them while pointing to the blue ocean and then to the green continents. “Land– Mahadesh” “Ocean-Mahasagar.” I repeat the words again and again while moving my finger from land to ocean all over the map. I then ask Sabina “ocean, kaha?” And she slowly moves her finger across the atlas tracing the outline of the world’s blue ocean and looks up to find me smiling in approval. She knows she got it and continues to move across the Atlantic ocean onto the Indian ocean. Mahasager – Nepali word for ocean. A word she may have been forced to memorize in school. How to understand what an ocean is living in the landlocked country of Nepal in a village with no television, internet, magazines or tourists and in a school that provides no pictures in the books. “Land Sabina?” I bring her hand up to the continent above the Indian ocean and slowly say, “Asia.” And she begins to trace Asia wither finger.