Every morning, before the sun goes up, Durga Kami brushes his teeth, puts on his uniform and walks for over an hour to get to school. His routine is not too different from that of other ten graders in Nepal. Except maybe for one thing: he is 68, and one of the country’s oldest students.
A father of six—and a grandfather of eight—Kami told Reuters he was forced out of school by poverty as a kid and never fulfilled his dream of teaching.


ollowing the death of his wife though, and to avoid a lonely life at home, he decided to go back to the classroom.

“To forget my sorrows I go to school,” Kami said in the interview.

Durga Kami, 68, who is studying in the tenth grade at Shree Kala Bhairab Higher Secondary School, uses a torch to read a book during a power cut, at his one-room house in Syangja, Nepal, June 4, 2016. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar. SEARCH "DURGA KAMI" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "THE WIDER IMAGE" FOR ALL STORIES
Navesh Chitrakar—ReutersDurga Kami uses a torch to read a book during a power cut at his one-room house in Syangja, Nepal, on June 4, 2016.

After his own kids had all left his hilltop home in Syangja district, 155 miles west of Nepal’s capital Katmandu, Kami first went to a primary school to learn how to read and write.

He then got a scholarship to attend the Shree Kala Bhairab higher secondary school, which gave him stationery and a uniform: white shirt, gray trousers and a tie.

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