Nepal, where I 'voluntarely' lost my heart

27 februari 2011

I decided to use this blog again to mail my adventures in Nepal. Some of you have already read the first part through my email, but if you scroll down you will find also the latest update. With this blog it is easier to send to my mailinglist, reason why I am using this blog.

Hello every body,

I will try to tell you a little bit about my trip to Nepal, but I am still so full of impressions, emotions, that I am not sure whether I will get it in the right way on paper.

It has been an incredible week so far.
Saturday I arrived at Kathmandu and it was again a coming home.
Staying in the Kathmandu Guesthouse and waiting for Voula and her family, who where delayed in Delhi.
They had problems with the connecting flight so they arrived on Sunday afternoon in Kathmandu.

I met them in their hotel and the guide they had arranged for this trip took us to a traditional Nepali restaurant accompanied with music and dance.
The next morning we made our way in a minibus to Pokhara.

We have visited the house of the children of C.W.A. (my children) and in a way we were shocked. From the poor orphanage where I met my kids the first time in 2005 they now moved to a very big house with own play=yard, garden, etc.
They were so lucky to have met a Swiss family who is sponsoring them and this family bought a piece of land just outside of Lakeside Pokhara and build this enormous house.
Voula knew about the kids through my stories and pictures and wanted to meet them now and had planned to do fundraising for them through the foundation she and her daughters founded. This Foundation is called UCAN (United Children Aid for Nepal). If you want, you can have a look at their website, which they just recently published on the net. It is : www.ucaninfo.org.

After visiting the new house, we were all a bit upside down. Of course we were very happy for the kids that they now have such a nice place to live and to be so well taken care off, but we were a bit confused, knowing that so many other children are still homeless or poor, without any care.The difference was too huge to understand why the Swiss family spend so much money on such a big house instead of helping many more children.
But anyway, that is their choice and as said it is nice to know that it happened to my children.

The rest of the week we visited some other orphanages, where still a lot of help and support is needed.
Pashpathi from Himalayan Encounters took us to a very poor orphanage, where at the moment they are taking care of 9 children. Voula and her girls are now going to raise money to start to help them out.
Also we visited one house of the Starchildren.
The Dutch lady (Margriet) who founded this foundation I met for the first time in 2005 and I was lucky to just had to change to spend one evening with her, before she was just on her way back to Kathmandu.
Her website is : www.Starchildren.nl (also available in English) and also this is worth to have a look at.

Voula is going to meet Margriet in Kathmandu tomorrow evening and both Voula and me are going to try to get as much support for Margriet and her Starchildren as possible. If only we all could donate just 1, 2, or even 5 Euro a month for Starchildren we would all make a big difference in the lives of these children.

We also visited a daycare centre, where children can be brought to when the mother has to go to work. There are only the very young children and it was a real party when Voula and I came to visit them.

For the rest we have been shopping for souvenirs for the girls' friends back home.
We have visited the Tibetan Monastery close to Pokhara and yesterday we did the sunset tour. This means a 45 minutes drive high up the mountains, but unfortunately it was very cloudy, so we could not see the Himalayan Range. Anyway it was still a nice drive with great views.

This afternoon we went back to my children's home. Today they did not have to keep their strict homework schedule, because tomorrow they are not going to school.
We have been playing football, badminton with them outside in front of the house, until it started to rain with heavy thunder and lightning.
Inside the house some kids showed their magic trics, which was ever so funny, others showing their drawings, their room and so on.
We all ate together Dahl Bath and after dinner we went outside on the balcony to see the girls dance.
It was a great show and after the show we all joined them on the dancefloor being silly, happy, laughing, dancing.
Some boys showed their breakdancing skills.
It was already about 21.00 before we were going to leave the house.
A lot of hugs, cuddles, thank you cards, drawings, as always it was hard to say goodbye to them.

Now I am sitting in a dark room, because we only have 8 hours out of 24 hours a day electricity and as I said in the beginning of this mail, it is hard to get the emotions on paper. But, I think you all understand that once again the children of Nepal and the people of Nepal have stolen my heart. Especially this afternoon, together with Voula, Michael and the girls, undergoing the same emotions meeting my kids and sharing this all together, have given me back my energy, my love for life and for the whole world. This is better than any medicine in the world to make you feel good and happy.

Tomorrow Voula and family are flying back to Kathmandu and then further to Delhi, I am staying here one more week.
I will miss them very much, it was hard to say goodbye to them this evening. But, life goes on, and still I have a few more days in Pokhara to fill up my battery completely.

Tomorrow one of the boys of C.W.A. will come to take my on his bike to the house, it is now quite a long walk from Lakeside and I will spend the afternoon with my kiddies again.

I will now insert a piece that I wrote on my laptop on Febr. 22:

Pokhara, 22 February 2011

This morning I woke up early to say goodbye to Margriet. She left around 8.00 and everyone of us was crying.

I met Margriet the first time in 2005 in Nepal. I was volunteering and had a room at Himalayan Encounters. Margriet was in the room next door to mine. She comes already many years in Nepal and she is the founder of Starchildren.

This is a foundation that is creating care-homes for H.I.V.-infected children.

At the time Margriet started this, AIDS and H.I.V. was still a big taboo in Nepal. The children sometimes were locked in a small wooden shed and food was pushed inside under the door.

By now Margriet already has set up 3 houses for these children. They are managed by Nepali managers, a board and some mothers of the children are living in the house as caretakers. For more detailed information I would suggest to have a look at the website www.starchildren.com.

I know that the website is not fully translated in English yet, but they are working on that.

Last night we had time to sit down together for an updating talk.

Besides the stories of Starchildren she also updated me on the situation of 'my' children.

She told me that they have moved to another house, which is bought by people from Switzerland. They have a huge piece of land around the house and the house............. Even though Margriet and Pashphati (from Himalayan Encounters and taking care also of the volunteers) told me that they were well off now, I was overwhelmed with seeing the house.

It is sooooo big and very very well equipped.

The have a couple there, a Swiss lady married to a Nepali, both of them teachers, who are living permanently in the house.

Two classrooms, several big bedrooms, separated bathrooms for the boys and the girls and so on and on.

The couple have introduced structure and discipline in the house.

Early in the morning: study. Then Dahl Baath, getting ready for school. With a schoolbus to the school.

Coming home at 4 o'clock, schooluniform changed for regular clothes and study. Dahl Baath, study again and bedtime.

As you can understand I was so happy to see the kids again and it did good to see their happy faces when they saw me.

But, it was so strange: the Swiss lady ordered them straight upstairs to take the schooluniform off and 8 children had to go straight to the classrooms.

No way, I ignored this order and hugged all the kids one by one.

When they came down also Voula kind of ignored the lady and suggested to play some games with all the kids.

After agreement we played a running game and a namegame. This was great fun. We all sat down in a big circle and one by one we had to say our name and for every syllable in our name we had to make a movement with our arms.

Voula started of with one hand slapping her cheek VOU, the other hand on the other cheek LA and every one repeated after her.

The next one: Bisahl. One fist forwards BI, the other fist forwards SAHL. All of us repeating and then all together:

VOU LA, BI Sahl. This way we moved around the circle ending up repeating all the names with all the different hand.arm movements.

It was a great way using your memory and after this game even Voula, Michael and their girls knew all the names of the children.

After my first visit I thought to go only today to my kids with Voula and then not to go back.

But I have changed my mind: I will go and see them a few more times before I have to leave. I know it will get harder to say goodbye to them again, but all the time I can spend with them now nobody can take away from me anymore.

And if the Swiss lady there does not like, then that will be her problem, I am just going to ignore it and make the kids happy with my visits as they make me happy with their smiles and love.

By leaving today they were all clinging on to me as always, are you coming tomorrow please please? How can I say No, of course I am coming back. Also Gongka, the mother of the house, was begging me to come back and holding on to me as she always used to do.

Yes, I will go and see them a few more times and enjoy every minute of being with them.

For now, I am closing this email, because my battery is getting low and I need to just relax and let all the emotions settle down.

Sunday , 27 February 2011 Pokhara

Today was a great day.

Much, much better than yesterday, a day that I have almost slept away, with many visits to the toilet in between.

After the great evening with the children I fell asleep straight away, but around 1 o'clock at night I woke up shivering from the cold and my stomach turning. I could not catch sleep again, just kept on turning and turning. Then finally around 3 my stomach decided it was not any longer keeping some bad food inside, just in time in the bathroom to vomit.

Feeling better after this, I slept a little, but then still my stomach decided I needed to get rid of more bad things inside me. So, I ended up going in and out of the bathroom the whole night.

I sent a text to Voula and luckily they had no stomach problems what so ever. I was very happy to hear that, because it would have been awful if you have to travel with a bad stomach. But, they were all fine.

In the morning I just had a tea and some dry toast. I walked down to Lakeside, but was not feeling too good so I decided to sit a little outside my room in the sun. As soon as the sun was gone from my porch I went back into my room and spent the day with reading, sleeping, toilet, reading and a lot more sleeping.

I cancelled my visit to the children of course.

I had hardly something to eat, just drinking loads of water and tea and that fixed my stomach.

This morning I was feeling much better.

At 10.00 I had my appointment with Sagar. In 2009 I also went to him to do a course in a mixture of meditation, healing, etc.

By the time I left Holland I felt I lost everything I've learned in 2009, so thought it would be good to go back again.

The first session this morning Sagar did a chakra healing and I came out full of energy again.

I spend two hours at Lakeside in the sun, it was a real nice warm day today, got even a bit sunburned. Early in the morning the sky was so clear, you could see the Fish Tail beautifully.

At two o'clock I had the second session: a stress-relieving pressure point massage. Ouch, at some points it really did hurt, so that was necessary.

All my typing of the winter has been pressed out.

The girl was funny. After the massage we sat down to have some herbal tea and she told me that she was scared to give too much pressure on me, because I had no meat on my bones. She was scared at some areas to hear the breaking of my bones.

Okay, a night and a day on the toilet was not a way to get meat on my bones, but it also did not make it all disappear!!

Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with Sagar again at 10.00 and then we will repeat the meditation practices I did in 2009.

It is incredible, in Holland I believe you will need to pay at least 50 euro just for a chakra healing, now - because I have been before (am part of the Family)- I only needed to pay 20 euro for all sessions I will have this week. So I better enjoy all the sessions I can have.

At four I took a taxi to the children. I was very lucky: the teacher-couple was not there and we had a good time like in 2009. First they played volleyball - me sitting on the wall with Sofia (my little angle) and Binod on both sides holding me. Then we went inside (the wind was getting very strong) and did the homework. I was sitting with Bimal, who still - like then - tried to get out of his homework with trying to let me write some stories, but again I did not fall for it.

Binod was so sweet, like a real teacher he was helping one of the little ones with writing the alphabet. At one point the little one started to cry, Binod was too much of a teacher. A big sigh and the words: how many times do I need to explain? And that from a boy who is just 6 or 7 years old!!

All the kids were of course asking where Voula and the girls were, did they really left Pokhara already? And when are they coming back?

At six the taxi came to collect me, I had a coffee at Himalayan Encounters and a fried vegetable rice at the Japanese restaurant, which is in front of Mountain Villa, my hotel. I think I will keep myself away from any meat the rest of my stay here, just to be sure I will not end up on the toilet again.

I've told the kids that Wednesday will be the last day that I can come and visit them and it turns out that that day it is Suba Rathri.

This is a kind of festival where the kids go to the small temple, put sugar canes in the fire and then bang them on the floor which is producing a big bang. After that all and everyone is chewing on the sweet sugarsticks. That is a perfect last night I think. The temple is just around the corner of my hotel, so when they all get in the minibus on their way back to their home I can quietly walk back to the hotel, without to much goodbyes and the kids still excited from the festival.

In truth I am leaving Pokhara on Friday with the touristbus. I will be back in Kathmandu around 16.00 and then on Saturday my plane is leaving at 18.00. I believe one evening and a morning in Kathmandu will be enough. I still will have time to go with Dill to visit his wife and children and in this way it will not be like I am only waiting for the time to catch the plane again.

Having reloaded my energy I even typed a few pages of the dictionary work, while waiting till the electricity gets back on (23.00) so I can send my emails.

While typing I end up in complete darkness, I think the generator of the hotel is without gasoline, but I still have candles in my room. In 2 hours the electricity will get back on, so then I can get on the internet for a little while, because after that I am more then ready to have a good night sleep again.

Just got a text message from Voula that they all arrived safely in New Delhi. They still have many hours flying ahead before they will be back home.

I do miss their company, it was so good to share Nepal, the children and all impressions, emotions together.

Well, that is it for now. Will speak to you soon again and also will add some pictures later. Now it is midnight and time for sleep.

Suba rathri (good night) and peri betonlah (see you later)

Love Rita Sanghita