Although Nepal has made important progress to decrease the number of illiterates over the past years, there are still too many girls and boys, women and men, who can neitherreadnorwrite.
She could neitherreadnorwrite, had never been to school, never been to a hospital or a clinic or a dentist, had never had a new dress or owned a pair of shoes, had gone to bed hungry on more nights than she could remember, and, like millions of other black South Africans, she had learned to settle for what was there and to expect nothing more.