Over the Easter holidays, UIV Form pupil Rosie travelled to Nepal with her father in order to work for a volunteer organisation, and also to learn about Nepalese culture. Her trip took place prior to the devastating earthquake which hit Nepal on 25th April 2015. Rosie was very relieved to hear that the children they got to know during their trip were all ok; however most of their houses aren’t safe to live in or were destroyed by the earthquake. Thankfully, all of the volunteers who Rosie worked with in the city of Pokhara also survived the disaster. Rosie will be selling some of the things she brought back from Nepal on Founders’ Day to raise funds for Ed Rich’s (school Company) chosen charity – CFENC – the Charitable Foundation for the Education of Nepalese Children, which is supporting the Nepalese crisis, and she is also looking into other ways in which she can be of help to those affected by this tragedy which has killed more than 8,800 people and injured more than 23,000.
Rosie wrote a diary of her time in Nepal, where she worked and lived alongside a range of people of different nationalities and ages as a volunteer, helping ‘street boys’ in an orphanage.
“I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal at 7am on Wednesday 19th March. In Kathmandu, I went to a Buddhist temple. My dad and I were blessed and prayed for by a monk. We then spent the rest of the day looking around the shops in the temple courtyard and relaxing in our hotel.
The next day we got a flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara, which took about 30 minutes. When we arrived, we got a taxi to our hotel and had a look around Lakeside. Everywhere we went, if we passed a local they would greet us by saying ‘Namaste’. Everybody there was so nice and friendly. The lake and the mountains surrounding the lake were amazing too – it was so pretty. There were also a lot of different shops: internet cafés, Nepalese shops selling goods, restaurants, hiking shops and lots more. The next day we were picked up from our hotel with three other volunteers called Margaux, Larisa and Bev. We were collected by three of the staff members from GVI (the company which organises the volunteering projects) called Brydie, Kate and Bini. Bini took our bags to our accommodation in a taxi, whilst the rest of us walked there.
We were staying in a Nepalese house owned by Pashpati and Chetra. The house had four floors and we were on the second floor. Our room had a western-style toilet, beds with mattresses, and a cold shower. Once we’d taken our bags up to our rooms, we went to a place called Himalayan Encounters where we were given safety talks and a presentation. The next day we had our first Nepali lesson at Himalayan Encounters with a man named Chet. Nepali was a little bit difficult but Chet made it fun. At lunchtime we went to a restaurant called Shanti where we had our lunch with Margaux, Larisa, Bev, Brydie, Bini and Kate. We had a mixture of Nepalese foods including momos, pakoras, chowmein, dhal bhat and rice. We learnt to eat with our hands, which took a bit of getting used to! After lunch, Bini took us on a trip to an island in the middle of the lake. We walked to the end of the shops in Lakeside to a place where you could get a boat across the lake to the island. There was a little statue in one of the Hindu buildings on the island with red dye. Bini dipped her finger in the dye and gave us all tika marks on our foreheads.
The next day we had another Nepali lesson with Chet and, after lunch, we went on a cultural trip with him, where he took us up a mountain to a few Buddhist and Hindu temples. We then went to a meditation centre where we watched a video on Prem Rawat and his speeches.
Over the next two weeks, our daily routine was quite similar. We would leave at 6:30am to go to our first project, which was working with about ten boys who lived in a home: we called this ‘streets’. All the boys were so sweet and nice. We had so much fun helping them with their homework, reading with them, and playing football with them. After streets finished, we would walk back to the house and have breakfast, which consisted of a boiled egg, porridge, toast and tea. After breakfast we would leave at 10:30am and walk to our next project – a place called Male Paten. This was a nursery where we worked with two to four year old children. When we were there we would teach the children their ABCs, how to brush their teeth, read with them, play games with them and feed them. At lunchtime, whilst the children were napping, we would have lunch across the street of either buffalo momos or chowmein. Once we’d finished lunch we would go back to the nursery and help tidy up. Afterwards, we would walk back to the house and have a couple of hours off. In the evening, for dinner, we would have dhal bhat and rice.”
The whole experience was very rewarding and I enjoyed volunteering and helping the children. The most challenging thing for me was learning how to cope with the nursery children when they misbehaved; we had to introduce a ‘naughty bench’ to keep some control!
For me, the scariest moment was when we went paragliding, not taking part in the paragliding itself, but when we drove to it, as there were some mad drivers!
