In Kathmandu I spent two weeks as a volunteer in an orphanage called Helpless Colony. It was long my desire to spend some time as a volunteer and finally I decided to put it into action. I found the Helpless Colony orphanage via an American organisation which specialises in linking the potential volunteers with relevant organisations all over the world.
I organised the volunteering placement while being quite far from Nepal – via internet from Australia and Thailand. The American organisation (it’s called Global Crossroad) sent me the coordinates of the orphanage. Its Nepali affiliate was supposed to pick me up from the hotel and to deliver me to the orphanage. As this is Nepal, and everything moves here on “Nepali time”, on the actual day the man from the organisation did not come to pick me up until around noon, and only after a series of phone calls from my side. We waited for his driver for about half an hour (he came by a motorcycle); then it turned out the driver cannot find the hotel; so as if it’s most normal we put my huge 20kg bag on the motorcycle between the two of us and off we went between the puddles of Kathmandu’s streets. Finally we found the driver; I moved to the minivan; the minibus took me to a hostel that belongs to the Nepali organisation (which is called RCDP Nepal); after an hour’s wait me and some other volunteers boarded a minibus; the minibus first took them to their destination – about 1h drive; then we went back to Kathmandu and finally we got to my orphanage, having visited yet another one on the way. The absurdity of this process only became apparent to me later as I learnt that it takes 30 minutes to get to the orphanage by public minibus.
As I entered the house, Nanu, the manager of the orphanage, greeted me on the stairs with a bow and a respectful “Namaste” holding her hands together. We sat together in one of the children’s rooms and as the children came back from school, each would approach me and ask me where I’m from and say “Glad to meet you!” with infectious laughter. I would ask their names and ages.
The orphanage:
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