On Friday and Saturday we staged 3 performances for schools in and around Kaza. Around 600 Spitian schoolchildren and their teachers (and a scattering of parents) have seen the show now.
The cast are coping well with the demands of high altitude touring, though Alfie did one show with tissues bunging up a nosebleed in progress – stoicism at its best! The main problem really is fatigue, we have to be so careful to make sure everyone rests after a show- sometimes hard when Izzy and Fred have a host of little buddies enticing them out to play in the street. Kaku has settled in well and is doing a great job.
On Friday we performed the first two of our Spitian shows for Munsel-Ling School just outside Kaza, and their sister school Rong Tong. The school building at Rong Tong is still being completed so the two schools are squeezed onto the same site at the moment – about 600 children in total, from 5yrs right up to 18yrs. There are lots of boarders as children come from the remote villages to have a better standard of education than can be offered in their tiny village schools. With the school so crowded they are sleeping 2 to a bed.
Between the 2 schools there are 400 children up to age 13, so we did 2 shows for them - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It’s right at the end of term here, so children were having their last exams today, and looking forward to a couple of weeks at home. The shows went really well. Kaku was a little nervous as he went to Munsel-Ling and knew lots of the teachers! Afterwards Ben chatted to the staff about the resources we brought with us, and ways in which they could use the performance to enhance their lessons.
Outside, Juliette showed a group of children some drawings which we had brought from year 1 children at Christchurch Infant School. They loved the maps of Christchurch, showing rivers and the sea, the Priory and the New Forest. Behind the group, the Spiti Valley stretched away into distant snowcaps, barren and rugged, it just couldn’t be more different. An Australian volunteer at the school, Matt, has agreed to help establish a link between the two schools, so hopefully the Munsel-Ling children will send a reply to Christchurch Infants after their holidays. It’s a little tricky to set up this link as even the youngest children here are taught by subject and don’t have class teachers like our children do. Matt is helping out in the English department, and as a volunteer has time to get things started.
We had a surprise show on Saturday morning. Kaza Public School decided to close a week early (!!) so at their suggestion we rescheduled their performance to Saturday so that the children didn’t miss out. We arrived at 9am to set up and found the school full of curious excited children but no adults! The school moved to this site only a year ago, and the main building stands still half-finished on the outskirts of town. The children proudly showed us their classrooms, to our eyes bare and basic despite being one of the biggest and best resourced schools in Spiti.
About 9.15am the principal arrived, Miss Kalsung Lamo, a lovely warm lady who welcomed us to her school. She bustled about greeting parents, handing out the end of term results, and smiling widely at the children. There is a particularly friendly feeling to this school, which must be down to her leadership. About 200 children, parents and teachers crowded into the downstairs hall for the show. We presented Miss Kalsung with the resources for her school at the end of the show.
It’s been a tiring 2 days, but very successful. We are feeling a little bit famous in Kaza now as lots of people, especially children, are starting to recognise us and wave hello in the street.