Visiting the School for the Deaf in Gorkha

The hostel for Gorkha's deaf school. Girls live on the top floor, and the boys have the lower floor.


Students at the Gorkha school.


The "classroom" for 1st graders at the Gorkha school. After exams, they moved into their new location by the hostel, where there's enough room for each grade to have a classroom.

A few days ago, I visited the School for the Deaf in Gorkha, which is about a five hour bus ride from Kathmandu. Gorkha is the former capital of the now-exiled Shahs (the royal government). It's a sleepy little town with little to recommend it other than incredible views of the Himalaya from the old royal palace.

About five kilometers from the city center, away from any villages and surrounded by beautiful forests with a lovely view of the valley below, is the Gorkha School for the Deaf. The school began in 1999 with only 4 students, and now, ten years later, there are 66, with classes 3 through 8 crammed in a single large room, and the younger kids studying outside. There's a class zero, for a handful of kids who have just arrived and haven't learned sign language yet. Few of the students ever see their parents, who are too poor to make what might be a journey of many days to the school.

I try to imagine what class zero was like ten years ago, in the middle of the Maoist insurgency, with just four students in the entire school. Though Gorkha, being a symbol of the Shahs, was often a target of the Maoists, the school was never affected. It seems like a little island, with its hostel, dining room and school all in this small clearing in the forest.

Things have changed tremendously, and are about to change more. With help from Hong Kong, a new building has been built, and students will move into the classrooms after they finish their exams. As I write this, they have probably already started in their new building.

The students who began ten years ago are now in class 8. Next year will be the first year that the school has taught a class 9.