Trip to an orphanage, dogs included!

With all the excitement of last week’s events finally settling down, and after a 10 hour bus ride (due to some mechanical trouble and petrol shortage traffic jams!) to return to Kathmandu from Pokhara, Sarah and D were back at work on Monday.

The day’s program involved working with two groups of orphans at the Bal Mandir orphanage. The first group were toddlers around 2 to 3 years old. Some of the kids had disabilities, this was most likely the reason they were abandoned in the first place. This is one of the harsh realities of life in a country like Nepal and Sarah and D were fantastic in taking it all in their stride.

We arrived just as these kids were getting dressed for the day however upon seeing us they were more interested in playing football than putting their clothes on! So after a game with semi-naked kids running around the halls of the orphanage we managed to get them dressed just in time for their teacher to arrive to start the class. Sarah and D spent the morning with the class helping the teacher do some craft activities with the kids and they also had the chance to help prepare and feed the kids their morning tea as well.

After lunch the girls moved on to the kindergarten class which kept their hands full for the rest of the afternoon. The kids here are between 4 and 6 years old although there is also a boy who is 9. He had recently been abandoned in a village in southern Nepal and had never been to school. He also could not speak Nepali when he came to the orphanage as he spoke the local language of his village. Sarah and D took a particular shine to this boy and by the end of the afternoon they had him counting to 10 in English and also saying some basic words and phrases. It is amazing how quickly kids can learn when given the tiniest bit of care and attention and Sarah and D should be really proud of the impact they have had on this boy’s life.

All of the kids in the class enjoyed the girls reading a story, “Spot Goes To The Farm”, complete with all the noises of typical farmyard animals! Then there were some colouring activities and also some games outside including skipping which managed to incorporate a counting lesson.

Whilst all of this was happening I managed to sneak away to collect Mango and Tara from KAT for the second running of our Pets as Therapy program. You can read more about this program in my post for the first day we ran a few weeks ago. When I arrived in the kids’ room with the two dogs there were some tears again but this time many of the kids had remembered their previous experience and were thrilled to see their new friends return. We spent well over 2 hours playing with the kids and the dogs and this time the favourite activity was feeding Mango treats which he was content to eat all afternoon. Nearly all of the kids were brave enough to hand feed Mango although some of them were more interested in trying the biscuits for themselves!

Sarah and D arrived just in time to help us finish up with the dogs and take a few photos before bidding farewell to the little ones once more. So overall it was a big day at Bal Mandir with all kinds of programs happening for the kids. The rest of the girls’ time is going to spent working at drop-in centres with kids who work as domestic labourers. This promises to be a challenging and touching experience for Sarah and D as some of these children’s stories are horrific. I will post an update on this in the coming days.

I have posted some photos of the first visit to Bal Mandir with the dogs on our website, and I will post some more from the second visit soon.