‘What do you need? Tell us,’ Anil Kumar Jha, principal of Janvikas Secondary School in Balkhu, asked the children of the displaced settlement in the classroom on Wednesday afternoon.

‘We don’t have clothes, books, or pens,’ 12-year-old Bishwanath Gurung was adding his soft voice to the collective voice of the students. After the government’s bulldozers were used in various squatter settlements in Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, people who had been living there for years became homeless. The government had taken the displaced families to ‘holding centers’ in various places.

Bishwanath is one of the displaced families from Gairigaun, Shantinagar. Kantipur had asked him a week ago, ‘When will you start school?’ ‘Well, I don’t know where I will live. I don’t know where I will study.’ The copybook is finished,' he said, looking towards the Guheshwari Secondary School on the other side. Vishwa had studied in Guheshwari till grade 4. They had reached Kirtipur Holding Center just a few days ago and started coming to school regularly from Tuesday.

'They said that books will be copied in school. But now we have to look at other people's books,' said Vishnulakshmi Gurung, who is studying in grade 7. Vishnulakshmi felt like she should have worn her own clothes when she saw her friends. 'Someone else has a dress. It would have been fun to study in school if we had worn ours too,' said Vishnulakshmi. Like Vishwa and Vishnu, 52 children from the Radhaswami Satsang Vyas Ashram have started going to school from Tuesday. 52 children from the Radhaswami Satsang Vyas Ashram of Kathmandu Metropolitan City have started going to school from today.

Children from Slums: Friends lost, books exhausted, no school to attend

According to Kathmandu Metropolitan City Education Officer Namaraj Dhakal, the Department of Education had coordinated to take them to Janabikas Secondary School in Ward No. 14 for education from today after consulting with students and parents and identifying their interests and needs. 203 people from 66 families who were brought from various places including Thapathali, Gairigaun and Sinamangal in the process of vacating the shantytowns living in disorder on the riverbank are now in the ashram. Among them, there are 62 men including one with disabilities, 3 women including 2 mothers, 80 women including 3 pregnant women, 31 girls and 30 boys. Out of the children in these families, 52 children are of school age.

Lavita Pariyar, who is studying in class 6, is happy to be able to come to school. But she has neither shoes nor a bag. She is used to going to school with a tie, belt and ID card, but she feels uncomfortable when she comes to school without anything. Lavita's friend was Bishnu. They had moved from the same place to the holding center. 'All my friends were in the previous school. Here, it's just me and him. We haven't even spoken to any of our other school friends,' she said. Lavita had everything she needed for school, from books and notebooks, at home. 'The dozer went into the house and buried all the stuff,' she said.'

She also felt lonely when she didn't mix with her friends in class. 12-year-old Sizan, who was displaced from Gairigaun, is studying in Nepali grade 5. He previously studied at Guheshwari in Sinamangal. Sizan's family came to the holding center in Kirtipur after their house collapsed. ‘I was wondering when I would go to school. I was able to come. But I can’t study here all the time,’ he said.

Parents who were worried about their children’s studies getting worse are happy that their children have started going to school. 58-year-old Hirahari Dusad’s five-year-old granddaughter seemed happy that she had started going to school. ‘I was sad that I couldn’t start school at the age I should have. Now she has started going,’ he said. But since this is also a temporary place, parents are afraid that the children will have problems when the schools keep changing. According to the school’s principal, Anil Kumar Jha, the school had received a list of 58 students from displaced families. Of these, 41 students attended the school on Tuesday. The students were from ECD (nursery) to grade 9. ‘Only one of the students is in grade 9.’ The maximum number of students is 12 in class 6,' he said. He says that the children were happy to be in the school yard after a long time. 'When they came yesterday, the students were happy. The focus was on having fun rather than studying. We are gradually getting used to it,' he said. According to Jha, on the first day, the students who came from the holding center were kept in a classroom and consulted.

'We welcomed them, asked them, 'Which class have you studied and which class will you be enrolled in now?' and sent them to the classes one by one. Teachers and office assistants settled everyone in the classroom together. We have also warned our teachers not to look at these students from another perspective and not to let anyone see them,' Jha said. But he said that the students were only managed here for a short time. ‘They will not stay here permanently, they will come here only for one and a half to two months while they are in the holding center. That is why we have asked the metropolis to buy the goods from somewhere and send them or to coordinate ourselves by giving the phone number of the relevant place for track suits and uniforms,’ he said.

The same school that was teaching students from displaced families has also lost its regular students after the government demolished the slums in Balkhu. ‘80 to 100 students used to come to us from the slums in Balkhu. The parents wanted to teach them here, but after the slums were removed, they could not even get a place to stay in this area for one and a half to two months,’ he said. ‘Those who used to get two or three rooms for 5-6 thousand earlier cannot now pay 15-20 thousand outside. Even the daughter of our school management committee member had to go to Balaju and enroll there because she could not get a place to stay.’