Cleanup at the Orphanage
Volunteering
I’m also settling into my placements. I’m working at two schools and one orphanage over five days. The children are all really nice and friendly and amazed to see a white person…let alone an Australian. Almost instantly, I’ve fallen in love with two of the youngest at the orphanage – Laxmi and Puja – who have no family and rely on the orphanage for food, shelter and education.
Every time I walk into the orphanage, all the children come running towards me and I can’t move because they are hanging on to my legs and arms. There is about 35 children ranging from age 4 to age 13, and kindergarten through to class 7. I’ve been helping the older ones with their homework (most of the work for the older classes needs to be done in English, except Nepali of course). I’ve also been teaching the younger ones some English, we learnt “Heads and Shoulders” and a simple song along the lines of “walking walking walking walking hop hop hop hop hop hop running running running now we stop” (to “I am Sleeping”). Every time I get there now they all start singing them and doing the actions. Good news is that they now know the English for all of their body parts 🙂
On Saturday they had some visitors, including a Nepali couple with two bags of chocolates. I have never seen so many children rush into the same spot at the same time. We ended up having to rescue some crying ‘littlens’ and take some chocolate and hand them out to them separately.
At one of my schools, I have been thrown into a class 5 English room for three days a week as well as computer studies for classes 3, 4 and 5 (although computer studies appears to be more of a free time class). I’m also reading to the little children in classes 1 and 2. I’m relief teaching at the other school, basically being thrown into teaching whatever the class is doing at the time with no warning and no preparation. It’s a bit of a challenge but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Makes it easier when the view from the school buildings looks like this.
Thank you James and Dina!
Whilst life at the orphanage is going great, we hadn’t managed to treat the scabies outbreak that had been there since the day I arrived (at least).
Last weekend, we had some medical students visit with a doctor and they returned this week with medicine for all. We had a big cleanup day, drying the mattresses in the sun, spraying them with dettol and mopping/wiping all the rooms down. We then took all their clothes to the laundry for their first hot water wash ever.
Over the last week the results have been spectactular with Puja still the only one suffering, but much improved…
