Getting out of the gloom

It's five o'clock but already dusk in a small remote hamlet nestled in the mountains north of Punakha in western Bhutan. The autumn light is fading, but after a hard day's work in the fields harvesting rice, 21 villagers ranging in age from 10 to 29 crowd into a windowless room no larger than 10 feet by 20 feet, sit down on the dirt floor, and open their reading books.

The diminutive 20-year-old teacher, Niaichen Lhamo, stands in front of a battered wooden board balanced on a barrel and begins the lesson, peering into the gloom to try to make out the students' faces.

Then, eyes growing used to the half-light, the class in enthusiastic but polite unison begin to read, repeating after her in Dzongkha, the national language, the paragraph on why it's important to preserve the forest. These were the less fortunate ones who missed their opportunity at formal education and are now too old to enrol.

UNICEF, together with UNESCO and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), is helping the government give them a second chance in such non-formal education courses as the one held in this small room provided free of charge by a generous family.

The dozen or so lessons that make up the course aim to impart literacy and numeracy skills and at the same time convey such development messages as environmental conservation, breastfeeding, personal hygiene, nutrition, safe drinking water, avoidance of early marriage and use of smokeless stoves.

Ugen and Tsering, the ten-year-old boy and girl in the class, could no longer go to formal school as their parents did not enrol them when they were six or seven. Great distance from the nearest school and poverty -- including the need for children to help around the house if not on the farm -- are common reasons why enrolment rates have been low.

But now, with Bhutan accelerating efforts to meet the goal of Education for All, there seems to be no holding back. Karma Dorji, at 29 the oldest student, expects to be able at least to write a letter after he finishes the course. His classmate Dophu, 19, sees it as a stepping stone to learning business accounting. "I'll have self-respect and need not rely on others to read for me," says Namgaljdem, 25, when asked why she turns up regularly for the hour-long sessions. "When I go to town, I'd at least be able to read the signboards," pipes up Dechen, 24.

Three quarters of an hour into the lesson the light is almost completely gone, but none of the students has lit his or her oil lamp, preferring to conserve fuel until they can no longer make out words on the pages. In a figurative sense, however, there is light, light shining in their eyes as they recognize words they didn't know before, and light -- enlightenment -- that makes their future a little bit brighter. - By Edgar Koh.