Orchid Garden Nepal

I've now had time to properly settle into both of the pre-schools at which I'm volunteering. This post is about the charity school, Orchid Garden Nepal (not Orchard something, as I reported in a previous post). I'll write more about MotherCare another time.

The first time I went to the school I was surprised because it was physically a nicer place than I expected.  There's a reasonable sized front courtyard which is used as a playground and washing area, made colourful by the laundry hanging to dry.  There are some garden areas, but filled with weeds, not orchids, as the name so promisingly suggests.  The school house consists of two main rooms - a large room for circle time, indoor play and napping and a smaller room which is used as a classroom for the older kids.  The rooms are colourfully decorated and have some cartoon pictures on the walls.  The smaller room has an alphabet along one wall.

I've already written about the founder, head and sole teacher at the school, Bina, and her warmth and affection. I've also now been able to witness her enthusiasm and dedication, not just to the school as it is, but to expanding it to accommodate more and older children (using the currently weed-filled land). Since new buildings will have to be constructed to house them, that's a substantial task and at the moment something of a pipe dream, financially speaking. Most of the money raised goes straight to educational scholarships for the students, who are all from incredibly poor backgrounds and cannot afford school once they leave Orchid Garden (in fact, several families cannot afford to feed the children, let alone educate them). £175 or CAD$300 provides enough for one child to study at a good school for a year (including uniform, books etc). Unfortunately, however, given their socio-economic background, the kids often face discrimination from both students and teachers when they move on. That's part of the reason for wanting to expand Orchid Garden Nepal (OGN).

I spend Mondays and Tuesday at OGN. I arrive at about 10am and play outside with the kids until approximately 10:45. There are a few toys scattered around the playground. Actually, other than three rocking horses and a small slide, all the toys in the playground are broken - a couple of punctured balls, bits of toy cars and lego blocks that have been so bashed around or chewed that they no longer fit properly together. Yet it's amazing how easily some of the kids can amuse themselves with these bits and pieces and whatever else they find lying around. I say 'some of', because others never seem to play at all - Sapna speculates that any kind of play is forbidden at their homes and they just don't know how to do so. That said, I always have a group of kids around me to give me with whatever they're playing with - somehow I can always find the enthusiasm to be pleased with a present of a doll's head. On my second day there, I gave a boy a piggyback and ever since then, whenever not playing with toys, I seem to have at least half a dozen kids grabbing hold of me, attempting to climb up any available limb.

Then there are the really little ones to hold. You can guarantee that at any time, at least one of the babies will be crying and in need of comfort, particularly the ones who are new to the school. And there are always a multitude of noses to be wiped. The combination of the poor nuturition and sanitation condition at these kids' homes means that many of them are permanently ill. Also, I spent a lot of time pulling up trousers. Most of the kids have clothes that are far too big for them (I presume from older siblings, or else the parents can't afford to keep replacing clothes and buy bigger ones that the kids can grow into), so I'm often chasing after kids with their pants around their ankles and dressing them again. 

It seems to me that what the school does best is look after the physical well-being of the kids. They range from about 9 months to 4 years old, but few of them look their age. Several of the young ones who are new to the school weigh about half of what they should at their age. At OGN they are fed a couple of times a day, a banana at snack time (about 50 of them suddenly appear and I run as far as possible in the opposite direction), and lunch. For the babies, there's milk and a mushy egg/rice/milk mixture available throughout the day. One of my highlights of my entire time in Nepal so far has been feeding a little girl, about a year old, though you'd never guess it she's so small.  Once I got over the grossness of the mush that I was spooning into her mouth, I couldn't help but wonder at how much and how gratefully she ate.  There is something marvelous about being able to satisfy such a basic need for a child completely unable to fend for herself and so obviously not getting what she needs at home.

As well as being fed, the kids are also given toilet training, washed all over, groomed and their clothes laundered (although they're all so stainted that washing makes little visible difference). These are all totally necessary services.  It also gives the staff an opportunity to spot any other physical problems.  There was one case, soon after I arrived, of an 18 month old boy who was found to have a horribly infected growth coming out of his belly button.  When Bina checked with the parents, it turned out he'd had this problem since he was just three days old.  Just let that sink in a moment - he'd had this growth a year and a half.  It could have been cleared up by a simple operation but his parents couldn't afford it.  Bina notified Dr Pradhan (from Sewa Kendra) and Sapna and between them they organised for the operation to go ahead and the cost to be covered.  But here's the sobering part.  The cost of this operation that was so prohibitive to his parents and had allowed this child to suffer for so long was 5000 rupees, which is equivalent, at today's rates, to about £45 or CAD$75.  I had spent that much on a pair of running shoes the day before.

Back to a day at OGN.  Around 10:45, the kids go into the bigger of the two rooms for circle time. This is my favourite part of the day, around 50 kids in a big circles, the littlest ones crawling or running inside as they see fit.  Bina leads them first in various songs, both English and Nepali, accompanied by various movements or dances.  The older children then recite days of the week, months, the alphabet and numbers up to 20 in English, though it's not entirely clear that they understand what they're saying.  They may also learn other little bits of vocabulary like 'open and shut' or 'rough and gentle'.  I have a little problem with the latter.  They are taught this difference first by hitting one hand into the other and being told 'rough', then stroking their arm and being told 'gentle'.  However, there didn't seem to be any value judgement attached to the relative merit of these types of behaviour, resulting in several kids coming up to me in the playground, whacking me and proudly declaring 'rough! rough!'  I have raised this with Bina.  What they cover in circle time varies, but it may end with somersault practice, one kid coming into the middle at a time and trying their darnedest to flip their legs over their head to the encouraging chants of the others.  It is utterly adorable.

After circle time, the inside toys (mostly stuffed animals) are brought out and the kids play with those.  Then the eldest half of the kids are taken into the smaller of the two rooms for a class.  The volunteers are then usually left alone with them.  There are three of us, but there's only once where we've all been there together as one of us always seems to be ill.  This class is chaos.  We just can't seem to hold the kids' attention - maybe we'll get them just long enough to go through the alphabet, or identify some colours or body parts, but that's about it.  We may bring out the school's half a dozen jigsaws, but the kids have done them so many times that they finish in a couple of minutes.  Or we may get them to do drawing (there's no paper so they scribble on newspaper scraps) but there are usually fights over the stubby and broken coloured pencils.  Resources are minimal.  Throughout the class, the kids are climbing all over the furniture and up the walls.  There's usually at least one kid in tears over something.  As I said, chaos.

That lasts about 45 minutes and then, thankfully, the kids go out to play again.  Then they're fed lunch and put down for their nap.  The emerge again at about 3:30 and play outside until they are picked up, which may be as late as 6.  I usually leave around 4.  

So that's a day at Orchid Garden Nepal.  I love it there.  I think what gets me the most is despite the daily hardship that these kids face they mostly come across as very happy.  There's nothing quite like walking through the gate in the morning and being greeted in the typical Nepali way, a chorus of 'Namaste' with hands together, bowed heads, by all these adorable, smiling children so pleased to see me.

Friends

I've been getting questions from my parents about various aspects of my daily life in Nepal.  They want me to write about the details of daily life here, as well as the big adventures.  So, over the next couple of days, I'll be answering some of their questions on the blog.

They want to know if I've made friends.  The answer is a resounding yes.  One of the advantages of living with a Nepali couple and working in a Nepali school is that I'm meeting and making friends with locals.  I hang out a good deal with Sapna and Rabi and they're always happy to take me out with them whenever they meet their friends.  I've met good people that way.  I also get on well with the guys and girl who work in Rabi's office.  I got to know them on the motorbike ride my first weekend here and I usually go to the office, which is right next door to MotherCare, for a bit during my lunch hour and hang out with them there.

But the people who have really taken me under their wing are the teachers at MotherCare (see photo below), in particular Namrata (second from left).  She often invites me over for meals and parties, took me shopping for clothes and jewellery for the wedding (I'll be writing about that separately) and had me over when she'd organised for a lady to put henna on our hands.  She's lovely.  Lhaden, whom I wrote about as a friend I made as soon as I arrived, left a week later to look after her very ill mother in India and hasn't come back yet.

As for non-Nepalis and a social life independent of Sapna and Rabi, there's relatively little.  I've met a couple called Julie and Anil who are friends of my aunt and uncle in London and are over in Nepal doing VSO.  They are delightful and I've met with them a couple of times and will continue to hang out with them every now and again whilst I'm here.  Closer to my own age, there's Jenny, an American on her gap year who is also volunteering at OGN (organised through an agency).  We get on well but have yet to socialise outside of school.  I'm not meeting any other travelers but that doesn't bother me at all.

My hair

Some of the posts that I'll be publishing over the next few days will be accompanied by pictures featuring myself. Before you see those, a disclaimer is necessary. Just before I left for Israel, I decided I would neither wash nor cut my hair for the duration of my travels. At that point, my hair had already not been cut since mid-October, I think.

The reason for deciding against washing my hair is that hair is supposed to be self-cleaning. Plus, there are water shortages in both Israel and Nepal, so I figured I'd be doing at least a little to conserve water by not standing under the shower for ages. It turns out that whilst hair may be self-cleaning of its natural dirt, it is not self-cleaning of Kathmandu muck and pollution, so after two months, and seeing the grossness that had accumulated on my comb, I caved in. Once I washed my hair, my head felt at least a couple of pounds lighter!

I have not, however, cut my hair. It is now the longest it's been in over ten years and it looks awful. It goes through rough periods, then settles down into a new, reasonable-looking style, then grows out of that too. I have very thick, dense hair and this length and heaviness really doesn't suit me. But I'm going to keep growing because I may as well take this opportunity to see what happens if I don't cut it for several months - I can't imagine myself conducting a similar experiment once home. And my trusted hairdresser back in London will have plenty to work with for a possibly interesting new style once I get back.

So, just bear that in mind when you see the photos!

A month in

I've been in Kathmandu just over a month now and the last week has been a little rough. That's why I haven't posted in a while. I didn't want my brief stint of negativity to pour out onto the blog. Briefly, the problem was two-fold. Firstly, I started to miss my family and friends. I'm not homesick, per se, but I was missing people and frustrated at my inability to contact anyone (electricity, internet access and time differences weren't lining up in my favour). Secondly, a good deal of Kathmandu's dirt and pollution has lodged itself into my lungs resulting in a nasty, hacking cough, two days in bed and just a general despondency.

I've turned a courner now. My naturally postive outlook on things couldn't let me mope for more than a few days. I've been able to speak to the people I really wanted to. I've been reminding myself that I can't expect every moment of my six months away to be stumpedously awesome. And there's so much to look forward to, not least of which is the wedding party for Sapna's brother, Supreet, and his wife Sangita. The wedding ceremony was yesterday and that will get a full post of its own as soon as I'm able to upload the photos.

Since I'm very behind on writing, you can expect several new posts in the next few days (electricity permitting).

My piece-of-trash bike

It's now two weeks since I bought my bike and since then I've had to take it to be repaired TEN times. Six punctures, one broken pedal (seriously, how crappy does a pedal need to be to break?) and three times to get different repair guys to tune up the shoddy work done first time round. And not even that has diminished my enthusiasm for biking.

An unexpected benefit from the visit of the Sri Lankan President

There is a terrible problem with electricity in Nepal.  There is not enough of it to go around.  As a result it is rationed - a system known as 'load-shedding'.  At present, there are 16 hours of load-shedding in each district of Kathmandu a day, i.e. 8 hours of electricity.  There is, at least, a schedule so you can plan your day/work around it.  

At Sapna and Rabi's, the situation is not so bad.  Like most comfortably off people, they have an inverter so we can, at least, have lights on around the place.  The rest of the available power from the inverter usually goes towards a few hours of television, but the quality of the picture isn't great.  Laptops can be charged when electricity is available and used when not.  The only thing I really miss during load-shedding is internet access, which is why I often don't blog for a few days then put several posts up at once.  It's also why some e-mails go unanswered for a while.  Sapna and Rabi live down a side lane, and when there's load-shedding the street lights don't work, which makes it pretty creepy coming back at night.  In fact, being out on the roads after dark is substantially more terrifying and dangerous than being on the roads during the day, which, as I've previously pointed out, is already terrifying and dangerous enough.

Load-shedding has really made me realise just how much we take electricity for granted when we have it all the time.

But what's all this got to do with the Sri Lankan president, you must be wondering.  Well, Sapna and Rabi live in the same district as the Prime Minister of Nepal.  For a long while after load-shedding was first introduced, their district was exempt, until too many complaints surfaced from the rest of the city.  But the official visit of the president of Sri Lanka, who is staying with the Prime Minister, means we've had two full days of electricity, something so appreciated that it makes it worth a blog post.

My hiking boots

(This post goes out particularly to my parents, Kat and Thomas, who were all unlucky enough to get caught up in the saga that I am about to describe.)

Purchasing hiking boots and getting them ready for this trip involved the following:

• approximately twenty hours of shopping in Covent Garden over five days in the space of a week
  
• trying on so many pairs that I wore away the skin on my fingers tying up laces
  
• purchasing and then returning five pairs after getting them home and realising they were not comfortable enough
  
• one in-store almost panic attack 
  
• three exceedingly patient and sympathetic sales guys
  
• one knight-in-shining armour of a friend who stopped said almost panic attack becoming a full one
  
• one pair of volume reducers
  
• one pair of custom insoles 
  
• one pair of gel heel pads
  
• a sum of money off of which I could have lived comfortably in Nepal for a month
  

Strangely, at no point prior to heading of for six months did I feel consciously nervous about my travels, but it seems that I poured every bit of lurking anxiety into the search for the perfect hiking boots. 

So, after all that and a day hike to start breaking them in, the big question is 'are they actually comfortable?'  Well, almost.  On flat ground and ascents they are perfect.  They hardly rub at all, fit very well and there were more than a few times in Shivapuri National Park that I was grateful for their strong ankle support and solid, good-gripping soles.  The only problem, and one I couldn't have predicted, is that I was getting terrible cramping in my right foot on the way down.  I hope that this will resolve itself as I continue to wear the boots in.  Otherwise, I will just have to carry running shoes and change into those for such stretches.  If anyone has tips for avoiding such cramping, please let me know.  Overall, though, I'm pretty pleased with them and, of all the pairs I tried, reckon that I ended up with the right ones.

Musical Escapades

I've joined a choir!  This will strike as particularly amusing anyone who has ever heard me sing.

Sapna is on the organising committee of a group called 'Women in Concert'; its nature is probably self-evident from the name.  They've got a show coming up in about three weeks and there's a choir that's going to open and close the programme.  I'm now in it, having accompanied Sapna to rehearsal last Saturday.  We're singing 'Sisters are doing it for themselves' and 'I'm every woman'.  When I'm surrounded by other people singing in tune, I can actually keep pitch with them and my voice isn't too bad.  In consideration of the audience, however, I declined a solo.  The rehearsal was great fun.  One of my very few concerns before leaving for my travels was how I'd cope without playing music for six months (it will be the longest I've gone without picking up an instrument since I was about nine years old).  Singing in the choir will go a little way towards remedying that.

Shivapuri Hike

Although definitely a big city girl, I'm often at my happiest in complete wilderness.  I love being in nature and enjoy all kinds of outdoorsy, sporty activities.  Hiking definitely falls into that category and one of the parts of my gap year that I'm most looking forward to is a two week trek, the Annapurna circuit, that I will be undertaking in April.

Although I'm reasonably fit and am used to walking a good deal, trekking the Annapurna circuit is no mean feat.  It seems sensible to prepare myself for it by undertaking a few day or weekend hikes before I go (the difference between a hike and a trek is that the latter lasts at least a week).  And, of course, these day hikes are a pleasure in themselves.

On Sunday, I went on my first of these, a six and a half hour hike in Shivapuri National Park, on the edge of the Kathmandu Valley.  We (myself and my guide/friend Vivek) started a couple of km outside the park at Budhanilkantha, a place notable for its 5m long sculpture of a sleeping Vishnu, in his incarnation as Narayan.  It was made in the 7th or 8th century out of one piece of stone and is most impressive.  It's a site that is holy to both Hindus and Buddhists and, when we arrived, just before 9am, there were a number of young monks chanting and lovingly (it seemed to me) washing the statue.

From Budhanilkantha we walked to the park.  I slogged up the hill, sweating and panting and wondering what I'd got myself into then, looking at my watch, realised with dismay that we'd been walking about 10 minutes.

Once we got to the Shivapuri National Park, the situation improved dramatically.  The scenery consists of a variety of forest types, depending on altitude and aspect.  The park lies in the transition zone between subtropical and temperate climates.  We planned to hike from the entrance at Pani Muhan to the summit at Shivapuri Peak, via the holy site at Baaghdwar.  That's an ascent of about 2000m over a distance of 12km.  Believe me, that's pretty damn steep.  Four hours solid uphill hiking.  And then, of course, what goes up must come down. 

Despite the poor start, I felt I did rather well overall (Vivek may well have disagreed, but then he;s used to that kind of walking).  There were certainly brief moments of clambering up particularly steep sections when I wondered if I'd make it out alive, but then we'd get to a slightly less steep bit and suddenly I wouldn't feel tired at all and enthusiastically pushed on.  What's for sure is that it was beautiful, with the forest becoming denser and the path narrower the higher we got.  At times, were so isolated from any signs of human life or civilisation that I felt it wouldn't have been much different if we'd walked the same path hundreds of years ago.

Vivek made a good guide.  He's knowledgeable about birds and plants and would stop to identify trees, flowers and chirping.  Along the way, we passed a monastery, from which we would have had a lovely view if the air had been a bit clearer.  Two hours later we hit Baaghdwar, a pilgrimage site since it is the source of the holy Bagmati River, which pours out of the mouth of a beautiful tiger-face fountain.  The last 45 minutes from Baaghdwar to the summit was a total killer but worth it.  The views weren't exactly spectacular; although there was a clearing, there were still too many trees to get the full panoramic experience, but we could see the snow-covered peaks of the Langtang region which was magical.  There were also prayer flags to admire, which added to the fantastic sense of achievement.  The best part of being up there was the air; so pure and fresh.  We lay on our backs and I watched the clouds which seemed noticeably closer than when in the city (although that may well be my imagination).

The way down was a doddle in comparison with the ascent, taking just two and a half hours, and there were some pretty decent views to enjoy, allowing us to appreciate just how high we'd climbed.  Unfortunately the photos don't do it justice.

Seven and a half hours after we left Budhanilkantha we arrived back there tired but happy.  Vivek took me to a traditional Newari restaurant (the Newaris are the original people of Kathmandu Valley).  I would never have found the place myself, nor trusted it if I had.  We had to climb a ladder into a converted old house.  There were dozens of local men packed into the three tiny, crooked rooms, sitting on low benches along the wall, not a table to be seen.  We were brought plates of much appreciated but far too spicy (for my taste) food, resulting in my mouth being far more sore than my feet!

Overall, I enjoyed the hike terrifically, the best bit about it being that I did it.  I now know that I can handle walking that many hours and covering such a significant ascent and descent in the same day.  All that remains to be seen is whether I can do it for 14 consecutive days.

Boudha

Saturday afforded the opportunity for some more sightseeing and I seized on the chance to make a trip to Boudha (also known as Bodhnath).  Boudha is the home of Nepal's sizable Tibetan Buddhist exiles and its stupa is one of the largest in the world.  The bike ride there was a slog (it's not far from Kathmandu but it's mostly uphill and the roads are rough).  As soon as you pass through the gate to the stupa area, however, your whole mood changes.  The first sight of the stupa is magnificent:

Unfortunately, the photo fails to do justice to its size.  It's an imposing 100m in diameter and approximately 40m high.  Since it was Saturday morning it wasn't too crowded but there were enough Buddhists there to create an atmosphere and I joined them in their clockwise perambulation of the stupa, spinning the small prayer wheels along its circumference as I went, which had a slightly hypnotic effect on me.  I found out afterwards that if I'd walked around three times, my sins would be been absolved.  As it is, I'm still is possession of two thirds of them.

Once I'd walked around the outside of the stupa, I climbed up to the next level and walked around up there, looking across at the shops, street and people through the prayer flags.  I really like prayer flags.  For a start, I find the bright colours aesthetically pleasing.  But, more than that, I'm rather fond of the idea behind them; each flag has a prayer on it and as it flutters in the wind, the prayer is released into the world (for a non-believer, quite why I like this is a mystery to me).

I had read a newspaper article which described Boudha as a haven from the bustle of Kathmandu.  It wasn't nearly as peaceful as I'd expected from reading that.  Nevertheless, as I walked around on the stupa, under the blue, cloudless sky on a perfectly warm day, appreciating the architecture of the stupa and the surrounding houses and watching the prayer flags flutter in the gentle breeze, I became aware of a sense of calm inside myself and, moreover, realised it was the first time I'd felt that way since I'd arrived in Nepal.

After a very happy hour or so around the stupa, I went off to explore some of the surrounding gompas (Tibetan Buddhist monastries).  Unfortunately, most of them were shut at that time of day, but they're still impressive from the outside and I enjoyed wandering the backstreets to find them.  Unlike the austerity of so many of the churches I've visited in Europe, I was particularly struck by the bright colours with which they are painted.  The photo below is a detail on the wall of the Tsamchem gompa:

It was with some difficulty that I tore myself away from Boudha in order to make it back to town in time for lunch with a friend.  I do, however, hope to go again.  I hear that it's particularly lovely in the early evening, when the Buddhists come out in throngs to light butter candles, covering the stupa in a glowing light.