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Having finished the last post saying we were enjoying the food, as a weekend treat an ox curry was cooked up. Heather, having elected to be vegetarian from the start, was very pleased with her omlette. Drew, meanwhile, was already feeling ill before he had finished the plate of 'tough as old boots' meat. We won't dwell on the fall out but he has now told them as politely as possible that he would also like to be vegetarian!

After the frustrations of the visit to Charikot it has been the case of a few steps forwards and and a few steps back. Following a welcome day of rest on Saturday, we were back to school on Sunday. We did a mix of computer theory and English conversation classes. Class 10 (currently the oldest students) are split in two because there are so many of them (89), but some of the classes lower down are approaching 70 students, which is certainly the biggest class either of us have ever stood in front of. This provides quite a challenge in terms of giving effective 'conversation' classes. One of the main things we have been tasked with is getting the students speaking out loud, using the English they already know, and overcoming their shyness. We were progressing quite well when their teacher came in to 'help'; this consisted of standing behind them and slapping them at the slightest hesitation or error... which was not what we had in mind to help them relax and loosen up. We think perhaps he was anxious to impress us but that was not the effect it had. Hopefully he will mellow or decide that he is not needed in our lessons because we are not desperate to have his continued 'help'.

The day was topped off with a computer theory lesson to the teachers. Drew thought it was about time to draw the class to a close when more than one of the teachers looked like they were struggling to keep their eyes open. It is hard to know where to pitch the lessons for the teachers as their English is of quite varying levels.

Ram told us that he would not be around for the next few days – it is the anniversary of his mother's death. He has followed the tradition of wearing only white clothes for the year following this, and when he comes back to school we have told him we expect to see him looking very colourful. Before he left, he managed to get a message through to his friend who is coming from KTM to take his classes. We tried to arrange for the friend to bring the computer equipment we had failed to get in Charikot. We were pleased to think that problem was solved.

On Monday morning we took some of Ram's English lessons. In the afternoon we were supposed to be starting computer practical lessons with groups of 9 students at a time from class 10. However, there's been an almost total absence of electricity since Saturday afternoon. Late on in the day the lights suddenly came on and we hastily grabbed our first nine guinea pigs and set about trying to get them to use a word processor. It perhaps shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was, but the most basic concepts such as the different mouse clicks, selecting text, and even controlling the mouse pointer took quite a lot of coaching. It took us a while to get across that errors can be corrected without deleting almost everything that's been done! However they made quite good progress and were certainly keen. As if by magic almost as soon as the lesson was over the electricity went off again.

This morning Ram's friend had arrived. The message about the computer equipment had got through, and he produced from his bag a very suitable looking ethernet switch (which had cost less than half the cheapest one in Charikot) and a small bundle of cables. Drew did his best to hide his disquiet when he noticed the absence of any connectors on the ends of these wires. He was hoping that the last thing in the bag was a handful of connectors – which would be extremely tricky to attach to the cables manually (it's a job that's usually done with a specialist crimping tool) but hopefully not beyond the realms of possibility. However, rather infuriatingly the request for ethernet cables had been taken extremely literally, and the shop had not included the connectors at all. Thus rendering the whole lot about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

With no electricity still and no lessons to teach, we headed back to the ranch. Whilst it is futile speculation, Drew couldn't help but give voice to the question of “why would anyone assume you want a switch and cables, but not the connectors to join it all together?”. Oh well, we've only wasted two whole days (about 10 hours of walking up and down hills and over 3 hours on buses) to get absolutely nowhere with the networking of the computers. Tantalisingly close, but no cigar...

We returned to school later to teach the English lessons to be met by a wall of students coming the other way. Confused, we asked in the staff room what was going on. It appeared that the teachers were going to have a meeting, so instead of waiting until the end of school, they'd sent all the students home early. We've been told about government teachers in general but have been surprised by how long they'll linger in the staff room when lessons should have started and how many lessons have been called off for one reason or another. However, the school has been performing well and recently won a prize for their exam results. The teachers also teach more lessons every day than most teachers here do, and are generally quite motivated.

We are hoping that the electricity will get back to something like reliability soon, and lessons will actually continue, so that we can do some work... our book supply is dwindling and we may run out long before our time is up if things carry on like this, leaving us only the old newspaper articles wallpapering our room to pass the time!

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