{"id":7215,"date":"2016-01-05T11:35:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T16:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dorjegurung.com\/blog\/?p=7215"},"modified":"2023-02-01T13:29:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T07:44:15","slug":"costly-education-kids-on-a-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/costly-education-kids-on-a-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"Costly Education: Kids on a Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"school<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A little over two months ago KP Oli became the Prime Minister of the country. In the first statement he makes as the executive, captured in a video<\/a>, starting at the 2:12 min mark, he says that the first and important decision his government has made is to replace the existing 350 tuins<\/a> in rural Nepal with suspension bridges within two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(A slap in the face of the victims of the April 25 and May 12 earthquakes<\/a>, I thought<\/a>, but there you have it. By that time, the government of Nepal had let seven months pass leaving them to their own devices for the winter<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuins, wire bridges, consist of a long metallic rod suspended across rivers which you hang off of and cross the river on by sliding along it. I grew up seeing a number of them stretched across Trishuli and Ghandaki rivers every time I traveled between Kathmandu and Pokhara<\/a> on school holidays in the late seventies and early eighties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education, more than anything, I believe, will change Nepal. But, in parts of the country, tuins are the only way for children to get to school, like the children of Chamdada village featured in the video below, schools that are under-funded, under-resourced<\/a> and under-staffed etc. etc. etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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