Best time of our travels spent with kids from Children's home Little Angels

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The beauty of our travels was in the diversity. We visited the main tourist attractions, we were sucked into the athmosphere of sacred and old temples and the craziness and noise of huge and modern cities, we had time to relax on beautiful beaches, to enjoy the peacefulness of remote and non-touristy areas, to explore unexplored, to admire wild animals in the jungle and to meet friendly people along the way, to try the proper backpacking way of traveling and to have experienced some seriously mad adventures. Volunteering in an "orphanage" and spending nearly a month in a tiny village called Talamarang in Nepal in the middle of nowhere gave a completely new dimension to our holidays. It gave us the opportunity to stay in one place and not have to move every second day and the advantage to get to know it and understand it. To get to know the local people and their real lives much deeper rather than by moving from one place to another all the time. And mainly we got the chance not to take but to give something back, to the world. And to the human community (no matter how idealistic that might sound).

And it wouldn't be a proper story about going volunteering for the first time without saying that we were expecting to teach the children so soo much, maybe not to change their lives, but to have a great impact on them to say the least. Our expectations turned out to be very different from the reality, of course. But not necessarily in a bad way. We realized very soon that there is really not much we can teach the kids. Au contraire, it was obvious that by the time we'd have to leave, it would be the two of us, who will be leaving with new pieces of knowledge, enriched and honoured to have the chance to spend the time with them.

But let me start from the beginning.

Let me start by saying that is wasn't an orphanage but a children's home. Which simply means that the children or at least most of them, have parents, at least one parent and they definitely have some kind of family such as grandparents or uncles. So most of them would have someone who could take care of them but who doesn't. There were reasons where it is obviously better for the child to be in the children's home. Like when they were abused or badly beaten at home. In most cases, the families were too poor to take care of them or the parents separated and they put the kids into the children's home so they could find new partners and have a new life. So sometimes it felt like some of the children were simply dumped here. Mainly when an uncle came for a visit wearing new Nike runners and holding keys to a fancy motorbike. Then, at least seen by my, maybe wrong, european point of view, felt like they were not that poor and they just couldn´t be bothered to take care of the kids. As this is supposed to be a happy story, I should say that the children were extremely happy in the children's home. You hear really bad stories about some orphanages which are just a great business or where the children are being abused but this one was different. You feel that the children here are in a way extremely lucky, they have food, they can go to school, thanks to the volunteers there is no money shortage and they can learn english and hear about the rest of world.

Getting to Talamarang involved 4 hours by bus and it was one of the most scenic and scary bus drives you can experience. Mountains, cliff edges, bumps, too many people packed in small spaces in excrutiating heat, more bumps, more people. It was mad. And 2 weeks after we left, we heard that a bus fell over the cliff in our village at Talamarang and 14 people died!

As we had to sign a contract to promise we'd be behaving good and we wouldn't smoke or drink in front of the children and within the orphanage´s premises, Davy had a sneaky cigarette after getting off the bus and then we were ready for the big adventure. First we met two housemothers - Goma, which was the main cook, and Kabita, who did the hard work in the household and the houseteacher - Elina. Their English was limited so we couldn't properly talk to them but we absolutely loved Goma. She was always smiley and happy and she made absolutely yummy potato curry. Goma was only 23 years old and was already the mum for 15 kids. Then it turned out that both Goma and Kabita had their own sons in the children´s home and later on we learnt another surprising thing, that both of them have also daughters that live with their families! It´s hard to imagine that children from the children´s home could ever get the message that it´s not normal to dump your children and leave them for someone to take care of them.

All the kids were in school when we arrived. We had a quick look around, the children´s house is a simple building with a few rooms, big patio with a few tables where all the social life with homework, dinners and games take place and has an amazing landscape around. High mountains surrounding a valley with a river and beautiful green lusty paddy fields everywhere y ou look. Soon after we sat down, we could see the silhouettes of kids in school uniforms coming home on the narrow paths between the paddy fields and they came to us, one by one, saying "Namaste" and "Welcome to our home", they shaked our hands and asked what was our name. Then we asked for their names and thought that we would never remember 15 names but by the end of the day we knew almost all of them. It was funny as we were more shy than them, they are obviously used to having volunteers around and it didn't take them long to get us involved in helping with their homework, letting them to use our phones to play with and to be holding our hands and pushing us around. Although we were supposed to treat them equally, it was quite hard, we both had our favorites from the first day and we could spend hours talking about the kids in the evening, laughing at all the funny moments, discussing what to do when something serious happened and trying to figure out who was our favourite that moment. It was the more extrovert kids at the beginning, the ones that were stealing our attention every second but with the time progression, we got to like the more quiet ones, the shy ones as we were getting to know them better by every day.

Here they are:

Sukumaya - the oldest girl of the bunch, 14 years old. She was quite serious most of the time, doing her homework for hours and acting like one of the housemothers a lot of the time.

Pasang - the oldest boy of the bunch, also 14 years old. He was such a smart boy and his English was great so he was the one we would talk the most as he could understand or explain to us what was happening.

Krishna - he was a quiet boy but with such a good heart!

Binita - she was the pretty one. I was saying she could be the next Miss Nepal as she could sing and dance and be pretty but unfortunately her English was really bad. Her parents sold her to some guy so she couldn't go to school until getting to the orphanage.

Jamuna and Ganga - twins with completely different personalities, Jamuna was more extrovert and really liked being hugged and she loved attention and Ganga was the more quiet one.

Sanjay - he was definitely my favourite. He came to the children's home in the worst condition of all the kids after being very badly beaten by his father. And he was an absolute brat and a little devil. But he was the one who was obviously missing someone to love him and he started saying i am his mother on a day when his real mother came for a visit. And since the day, I would make sure he gets the longest hug before going to sleep and he'd always give me a goodnight kiss. He was the reason I felt like there was point of coming to the children's home, that I could actually give someone a feeling that he is loved.

Sushil and Saroj - two brothers with scars on their faces. Sushil was the wildest from all the kids, there was something evil in him but as he saw his mother killing herself when he was only 3 or so, it was hard to blame him for anything. Sushil would be running from school and from the home and throwing stones at the other kids. His smaller and much cutter brother Saroj was called Touche or Touche majle - the cry baby. He was 5 or 6 and he'd cry several times a day. Or sometimes just pretend to cry to get whatever he wanted. And he always had a huge green snot under his nose 😊

Sanchamaya - was the most shy girl, quiet, she loved tickles and she was a little chubby. So all the other kids would make fun of her and give her food when they couldn't eat anymore.

Ruby - was the cuttest girl and probably our favourite girl. She was really smart and had a beautiful smile.

Bikram - Kabita's son. He was really quiet and he looked like bambi a little bit.

Saurab - was the youngest, only a 4 year old baby boy, Goma's son. He was the most spoiled but the cuttest. And he was a perfect example of how good a kid can be when they are let run around without any supervision or orders.

Amrit - came just a few days before us to the children's home and he was a little annoying sometimes. Constantly he'd be shouting, miss, sir, me me me, and was hard to communicate with. But unfortunately we couldn't get to know him better as his father died of cancer after a week and he went home for the funeral for the rest of time we spent in the children's home.

Novin - was another boy who came to the orphanage just a few days before us and he was the example of coming from a poor family who said that they didn't have money to take care of him. He was already 13 or 14 and all he wanted was to go back to his mother and he cried a lot. And he was the main reason I thought that family should be more important than the possible better future he could get by staying in the children's home. Hard to judge. He was really quiet at the beginning but got on well with Davy in the end and the latest news we heard is that he walked out of the home and was hoping to get back to his family.

Susma - a little girl that arrived to the home while we were there. Her family lived just a few houses next to us and a similar story, they were too poor to take care of her.

Sanju - she was a beautiful young lady who came just a few days before we left. She lived in the orphanage before but left to go to her brother, who had 2 wives and 3 children and who started beating her and she had to leave again.

As I said, we naively thought we would be able to teach them lots of things but it turned out that all of them are very disciplined, independent and responsible kids. I actually never saw children that would be doing everything without being told, without backtalking, without complaining, without questioning. These kids knew they are lucky and these kids didn't have to be told how to behave. Except occasional fights between boys, the little brats and their little arguments (and some of Sushil's stone throwing). Otherwise they all get up at 5:30 in the morning, they do their half an hour of yoga, morning homework, then happily go to school, do their afternoon homework and dishes after every meal. All including little Saurab. On Saturdays, the only day when they don't have school, they would all (including the little Saurab) pick their dirty clothes and go to the freezing river to do their laundry. I stood there in an awe watching baby Saurab washing his tiny t-shirt the Nepalise style, rubbing lots of soap into it and smashing in against a rock in the cold water. I felt almost embarrassed, looking at the bunch of small kids who seemed to be more self-dependent and grown-up than me.

So another field where we could help them was with their homework. Surprisingly, the school they were going to was very progressive and all the subjects (except Nepalise) were taught in English. It might sound as a big advantage but unfortunately the system of teaching was all wrong and was similar to a system which I imagine was used a few centuries ago. All the kids were just repeating English words and sentences without understanding their meaning and it all seemed like a phenomenal waste of time. They weren't learning any English and they couldn't get any knowledge out of the lessons. We tried to explain to them what they were learning and make them understand and make them think independently but I think 1 month is not enough so I am thinking it would be perfect to come back for 6 months or a year (with our own children so they can experience the freedom and the responsibility at the same time) and actually have a chance to teach them something real.

While talking about teaching, we would walk the children every day to school and one morning after dropping them there, Pasang was running after us, saying that the teachers want to talk to us so we went back and met Miss Parbati, a young friendly and very enthusiastic teacher who asked us to teach. We were trying to explain we really didn't have the experience, but she insisted so we tried and she was super excited that we are using great teaching methods (as explaining everything to the kids so they understand, drawing pictures, asking them questions) so we ended up teaching for a few days in different classes. And I really have to stress out that Davy has an amazing talent for teaching and working with children. It was already obvious in the children's home where it was so easy for him to interact with the kids and to always know what to do or what to say, to make them laugh and to know when to break their fight, but this talent got even more obvious when handling classrooms with 30 kids. So I really hope that Davy will do something about it because what he's got is a true talent. And then every evening, after all the homework were finished, it was play time and Davy spent hours every day running with all the children and playing catching games. Once again, all the kids loved having Davy around and loved chasing him until he was completely exhausted. They were like little monkeys, able to climb trees really fast and really high, to jump from one rice paddy field to another, to run around bare foot. They were so accustomed to their surrounding that we could only be jealous of.

I was trying to find some sort of spirituality all along the way during our Asia trip but couldn't really take a grasp on anything in any of the temples or while meeting some special people. But the moment we got to the children's home, it hit me. The way the children live here is the perfect example of a Buddhistic path of living. Although some of them maybe never heard of Buddhism before. The kids take the lives as they come. They don't question, they accept. They don't doubt, they believe. They don't get attached to what they can't have. The longer we were in the orphanage, the more I was getting attached to them. They really became our own children and we felt proud of every success, we felt part of their lives. And I knew I was going to miss them very much even before we actually left. And for a moment I had doubts if it is good for the children that there is so many volunteers to which they can get attached and get hurt. But that is the beauty of it, they don't. They just get as much as they want or need, they get their hugs, kisses, love, attention and english lessons but they let go when they are supposed to. The day when we were leaving and I was trying not to cry and was looking for my little Sanjay (which I wished I could adopt and take him with me) and who showed lots of affection towards me every day of our stay but he even wouldn't bother to hug me properly that day and as one of a few, didn't write me a letter to say a goodbye. Although he was the first who drew me a picture and said I love you on the envelope he gave me the drawing. It could be another european or just my personal nit-picking, but in general I found an objection against the acceptance of everything that comes in the home. Because it doesn't make you to improve. It doesn't make you think something could be done differently, better, easier. It doesn't push you to progress.

What a paradox, people (and I'd definitely be one of them) usually go to these parts of Asia to learn the acceptance, how to let the life flow on its own. But is that we really want? It's easy to say yes after having the chance of good education, of not being poor, of having the chance for a bright future. But we have that only because we and our parents fight for that, because we don't accept and we want more.

Another beauty of staying in the children's home was the modesty of the life. One gets to realize how much we actually need. Or how little to be precize. The electricity didn't work half of the time, the toilet was the Indian squating style, shower was just a huge jug with a cold water which one had to pour with a little jug on himself, no internet for a few weeks. We got food twice a day, always the same, mega huge portion of rice with watery lentil soup and potato curry. And everything is done on the ground, chopping of the vegetable, washing the dishes. A soap is used for everything - the laundry, the dishes, the shower. There is one restaurant in town with momos, the yummy dumplings with amazingly spicy momo sauce (which we would get as a treat every day for lunch) and maybe two shops where they don't sell much. And it was all perfect that way.

There is so many other things to be said but for some of that it's hard to find the right words. It is hard to describe how it feels to actually live in the children's home, to become part of the big family, to accept the way it all works there, to live in the most modest conditions, eating only rice for a month and still feeling privileged and lucky. I am missing all the good stories, the hopelessness when we couldn't change something that needed to be changed and the very frequent moments of all the amazing kids having a huge smile on their faces when they were happy we were there with them. There is no doubt that the happy faces were worth all of our effort and coming to the Children's Home Little Angels.

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