Cake at Bal Mandir!

Thursday (2nd October) was Bec’s birthday and for something different we decided to share the day, and an enormous cake, with the kids at the orphanage at Bal Mandir. It was surprisingly easy in Kathmandu to arrange a cake to feed 200 kids – the only challenge was getting it into the back of a taxi! We had to put the back seats down and it took 3 of us to maneuver the cake in, thankfully we only had to travel a couple of kms to our destination.

This week was the first week of school holidays in Nepal for the Dashain festival, the major festival of the year here. It is a particularly hard time for orphans and kids living in protection centres such as Bal Mandir as it is the time they would normally be spending with their parents and/or families. It was therefore the perfect time to inject a bit of surprise and fun into one of their afternoons.

I had to walk through the entire orphanage to the ‘party room’ at the back so by the time the cake was sitting on the table nearly all of the 190 kids were hovering nearby with a mixture of curiosity and anticipation. After a raucous rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ the cake was served. We started giving each child a small piece as we wanted to be sure there was enough for everyone. This first round was devoured in seconds and there was plenty left for seconds – at which point it became a much less organized affair with large chunks of cake being whisked away by cheeky little hands!

It was fantastic to see so many smiling faces and we had such a great time that this may become an annual event!