Back in Nepal it is just as magical, heartbreaking and fascinating as I remember. After taxiing from the airport to a cheap and basic hotel I legged it to the children’s home I fell in love with in February. The kids proceeded to cuddle me to death. Bikram, the child whose schooling I sponsor, held back and stared at me, looking like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“You came back!” he said softly. My heart pretty much melted right then and there.
The same couldn’t be said for Pushpak, the eleven year old eldest boy. When I sat down and started reading Hairy Mcleary, he too started staring at me.
“Alex Miss”
“Yes Pushpak?”
“I think you got a bit fat!”
“Um, what did you say?”
“You know. Fat. F-A-T. You got fat!”
Jeez, what a welcome. I flew all the way to Nepal for that?! Begrudgingly, I suppose I do love the way that children have no filter whatsoever.
In February, some of the other volunteers and I organised and paid for four of the children to start going to school. It has been so exciting to see the changes in them since then. In February, Bikram couldn’t even write his name in English, and now he writes whole paragraphs. When he started reciting his seven-times-tables to me a couple of days ago, I almost cried. At the moment it is school holidays, and the kids have loved me creating English and Math worksheets to keep them busy during the day.
Every night I get home happily exhausted from a day of cricket, painting, soccer, drawing and reading with the kids. Yesterday when it started to rain, all of the kids took their clothes off and danced and sang outside; it made me laugh. There are four new children at the home since I last visited, and their stories are heartbreaking. One little girl was orphaned at a young age and her aunt adopted her, only to put her to work in a huge laundry washing clothes for 16 hours a day. A young child, Porteeb, is a hermaphrodite, which is considered bad luck in Nepal. His family kept him locked up in a cupboard to keep him from bringing his bad luck into their lives. It’s all pretty heartbreaking and I could just sit and cuddle these kids for hours on end.
I made friends with another volunteer, Sam, who is working at the orphanage at the moment too. She is a nurse who specializes in women’s health and sex education, and I have come and helped her take some presentations to local Nepali women and schools. These topics are taboo in Nepal and, as a result, there are a lot of rumours and untruths surrounding them. It was fascinating to hear some of the questions from the women – they seemed to really love the talks and be really interested in what Sam had to say to them.
Sam and I have also been sharing a room together in a basic hotel to cut down on accommodation costs. Last night we were chatting; Sam was standing up and I was lying in bed. Suddenly she stopped in mid-sentence; there was a cockroach bigger than a mouse climbing across her sheets. I jumped out of my bed, and we screamed for about 10 minutes. It was almost midnight, what were we going to do? All of Kathmandu closes down at about 9pm and the streets get pitch-black, dangerous and deserted. Not to mention all the hotels close their big roller doors at night time for safety reasons. However, Sam and I both agreed that there was no way we would be able to sleep in a place with roaches in our sheets!
We packed quickly and carefully, shaking out all of our clothes that were on the floor to make sure they were free of creepy crawlies. By the time we checked out of the place it was 1am, so we walked the streets to find a taxi to take us to the swanky part of Kathmandu and found a nice hotel that would let us in. We fell into clean, white, soft beds around 2 in the morning, and laughed at the thought of us recalling the night in years to come. This was third world, budget travel at its finest!
Sometimes when i’m lying in bed listening to the sounds of Kathmandu sleeping, I start to think of home. Barbeques and bikinis, running along the beach, tramping in Hunua, lazing on the deck with a glass of wine chatting to the people I love. All the things I once took for granted I would give anything to have right now. How do you know when the right time is to come home after travelling’s addictive emotional extremes? It takes a different type of bravery to live a sedentary life – a diligence, a resignation, a fortitude. In the secure and more predictable world the pendulum of life rarely swings as wide. It’s less brutal, but also less exciting. Some days, I think i’m ready to come home and experience that again.
Mum flies in on Friday, and it’s going to be great to chew her ear off about all this stuff. I can’t wait for her to meet Bikram and introduce her to the country I love so much.
Ciao!
