Staying Healthy While Volunteering in Nepal

It is very important to stay healthy while volunteering. It is no fun to lay low when you should be out and about helping the needy. Read some of the points below carefully:

1.       Eating with hands, instead of forks and spoons, is very common in Nepal. Your host family might expect you to eat with hand and some families might not even have forks or proper spoons. It would delight your host family if you eat with hand. But you must wash your hands properly. Use soap and make sure your finger nails are clean.

2.       Diarrhea is a common problem in Nepal and foreign visitors will easily encounter this menace if you're not careful. Do not eat salad and lettuces. Even well washed leaves have tiny bugs. Ask your host family to wash it with potassium permanganate.

3.       Food from vendors selling opening - a big NO NO. They are not only be hot and spicy, they will give you good stomach ache.

4.       Drinking water - always boil water, or buy mineral water and make sure the seal of the bottle isn't tampered with.

5.       Go to good restaurants and enjoy. In Kathmandu and Pokhara, you will find many different restaurants serving all kinds of food. Your host family will serve your dal, bhat twice a day (lunch, dinner) so you should go out and eat other food.

6.       Try Nepalese beer - they're good. Some of them are of foreign brands. Do not drink alcohol - not suggested - even if the bottles are of international brands like Jack Daniels. Lately, people have died from drinking from these brands as the alcohol is mixed with local spirits and sold on the market.

7.       No bananas - the traders use extremely harmful medicines to make bananas ripe.

8.       If you're trekking high up in the mountains after 3 thousand meters you will start experiencing Altitude Sickness. Drink plenty of fluids, ascend slowly, or better rest. If nothing helps, descend as fast as you can. Don't drink alcohol at these places as it will dehydrate you and make your sickness worst.

9.       And lastly, if you travel to Chitwan take your Malaria pills. Use a good mosquito repellent and buy a mosquito net in Kathmandu (cost you about USD7).

Volunteering in Nepal is fun. It is a very friendly country and people will really appreciate your presence. But you must stay health also to have more fun and better experience. 

What Orphanages in Nepal Are Like – Part II

I’ll begin by telling you what the children that stay in the orphanage are like.

Not all the children in the orphanage are orphans. They’re only 30% orphans in most orphanages. Almost 70% of the children have either one or both parents living. The reason the children are there is because their parents are not able to raise them. The orphanage provides the children with good food, education and provides them decent clothes to wear. These are things their parents won’t be able to provide.

In rural villages of Nepal, where people are still illiterate, many have large families and they have many children (up to 7-8). Family planning still hasn’t caught on with them. Because of this, the children grow up malnourished and they toil in the field for long hours instead of attending schools as they’re parents are unable to afford them education. When one of the parents get injured permanently and is not able to earn anything, the situation gets even more worst. The children can die of hunger also.

Usually, a head person of the village or relatives sends the children away to orphanages in this situation. The orphanage however needs a recommendation letter from the Village Development Committee before admitting the child to their orphanage. Without the letter, the orphanage has no right to raise the child.

The Food at Orphanage

Nepalese love dal, bhat (rice and lentil soup). They eat the meal twice a day. This is often out of necessity as dal and bhat is cheaper to eat than other food. Along with dal, bhat, they will have some vegetable curry and pickle. This is what the children at the orphanage will enjoy twice everyday. When volunteers will stay in the orphanage, you’ll enjoy the same kind of diet.

In the afternoon, the children will enjoy tea with biscuits, maybe noodles or beaten rice (called cwura) with curry. In the morning, they’ll just drink tea, with maybe an egg. It’s not a very protein packed diet, but it’s something that’ll keep them going.

The Children and their studies

The children at the orphanage must all be enrolled in a school and must be attending it regularly. The orphanage must find funds for children’s education. Often, many schools provide scholarships to the children of the orphanage. Many give them discount on tuition fee.

Besides the tuition fees, the orphanages also has to provide for the school uniform, books, copies and pencils.
The volunteers can help the children a great deal by providing them private tuition when they come back to the orphanage in the evening from schools. Speak to them in English not using difficult words, teach them nursery rhymes, play games with them and help them finish their homework. The children often become confident as result of all these activities and many strive to work hard at their studies.

Without good command over English and a college degree, the children will never find good jobs in Nepal. You should help them dream of a good future by giving them hope and turning them into confident children.

The staff of the orphanage

Besides the director who runs the orphanage, you’ll find several other staffs (part time and full time) working in the orphanage. This depends on the size and the budget of the orphanage. But the orphanage hires at least one or two staff.

Ayah

Or the caretaker. I’ve often found a middle-aged women working as a caretaker in orphanages. She stays in the same building and helps the children remain clean and tidy. The caretaker is often overworked as children demand attention all the time and the orphanages cannot afford to hire another caretaker. This is where volunteers will contribute, in easing the burden on ayah and taking even better care of children.

Teacher

Usually you’ll find a local teacher (either hired or a volunteer) that comes in the evening to teach children English and other subjects. The teacher is overwhelmed most of the time as there is only so much that one teacher can do to improve the children. Volunteers will help the teacher teach the children. This is as important as taking care of the children.

Cook

You’ll usually find a cook who will prepare all the meal. As I’ve written already, Nepalese people mostly enjoy dal and bhat, so it’s dal, bhat twice a day, with maybe tea in the morning and tea with some snacks in the evening. It’s not easy however to make meal for large number of people. If you want, volunteers can learn the cooking, even experiment and take over some of cooking jobs. It’s not easy though to learn to cook Nepalese food, especially the curry.

Your Stay

In many orphanages, you’ll stay inside the orphanage. You’ll have a room for yourself, which you might share with other volunteer/s. In some cases, you will live outside, usually with a host family and eat most of your food there, instead of in the orphanage. Make sure if you’re staying in a host family that it is not far from the orphanage as you’ll have to get up early to come to your orphanage.

The summary

So this is a brief summary of orphanage and how it is like in Nepal. A foreigner volunteer can contribute a lot during her stay if you buckle down and really bridge the gap between you and the culture of the orphanage. You must not be fussy while working and you must take things in your stride. There will be times when you won’t understand the whole rationale behind some of the things happening in the orphanage but you’ll have to understand this is Nepal, not back home.

For instance, in Nepal it’s normal to beat children up when their naughty. You’ll might think such a thing is inexcusable. It’s simply not allowed back home. But in Nepal, everyone will turn a deaf ear when you complain. The children are used to the beating - the staffs beat them to bring some discipline in them, and even Social Welfare Council approves of milder form of beating.

When you volunteer, you’ll face many issues like that.

Good luck!

And oh, if you’ve got any questions regarding this, leave a comment.

My next post will be about the kind of volunteers that come to Nepal.

What Orphanages in Nepal Are Like - Part I

Working in Orphanages is a very popular volunteer program in Nepal. You’ll find plenty of orphanages in most major cities of Nepal but most are located inside the Kathmandu Valley. The Valley is where the wealth of Nepal is concentrated, it’s also the place where many poor people arrive to get rich and but end up living in dreadful conditions in the hope of one day becoming rich.

For wanna be volunteers in orphanage, I have a word of warning – it can be a tough place to work but it’ll also be the most rewarding and personally very satisfying.

It’s not the children or the staff that’ll make working in the orphanage tough, it’s the working conditions itself. Most orphanages in Nepal don’t have their own building and rent the property. They often choose dingy buildings with cramped rooms and with lack of playing area. The rent is cheaper in these buildings. Orphanages in Nepal are resource poor and they try to save as much as possible on rent. While working in the orphanage, if you live and work in the same building, it’ll be pretty difficult. But there’ll always be children to cheer you on and staffs of the orphanage to pull you through it.

Opening Orphanages in Nepal

Opening an orphanage isn’t an easy job. If you want to do it, you’ll have to write the constitution and clarify such points like objective, write name (both in Nepali and English), provide a stamp, and include names of committee members. At least 7 members are required for the committee. You’ll have to disclose the president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and members.

The orphanage will be registered as a social organization at the district office. Before the district office gives a go ahead to open the orphanage, they’ll send the names of committee members to police, who will search for records of the members and see if any of them have any criminal records. When the police do not find anything, they’ll advice the district office of this. Only after this the district office will give a go ahead to open the orphanage.

You’re then free to rent the room or buy a property and establish an orphanage.

After you move in your orphanage into a rented property, you’ll need to register with Child Welfare Organization. It’s the duty of the Child Welfare Organization to make sure the orphanages are following the rules set out by the government. They’ll visit orphanages and conduct surveys to see if the orphanage fulfills criteria set to them.

According to Child Welfare Organization, an orphanage must have:

· play ground for the children to play
· The building must be in an open area
· Room must be large, spacious and well ventilated
· Depending upon the size of the bed, not more than two children can sleep in the same bed
· The children must have individual blankets

There are many more criteria like this which an orphanage must fulfill. If they fail to do so, they can be closed down. If any volunteers working in an orphanage encounters poor living conditions, they can take up this issue with Child Welfare Organization if the orphanage fails to improve the situation.

Ask your placement organizer to follow up the matter if you don’t want to be personally involved. It’s their responsibility to make sure the orphanages they are sending their volunteers to are following all the rules.

Family Run Orphanages

You’ll find many orphanages in Nepal run by a family, who stay inside the orphanage and raise their own kids along with other children. These families mostly have migrated to urban centers like Kathmandu from remote villages and it’s easier for them to run the orphanage and sustain the orphanage and their family like that.

This is not a bad setup. But many families running these orphanages something eat different meal and treat different meals to other children. I’ve discovered several cases where these families live in a luxury inside the orphanage, while the orphaned children live in very poor condition. There is nothing wrong to have a more luxurious bed for yourself than for the children but if you’re eating better food, watching TV, your children are wearing better clothes, while the children of the orphanage are deprived of such things, this is wrong.

Often, it’s these kinds of families who frequently complain to foreign volunteers who are working in the orphanage that they lack of fund to improve children’s working condition. They’re directly hinting to the volunteers for money. There is compulsion on volunteers to contribute, as the orphanage receives money from placement organizers who place volunteers in these orphanages.

If you feel like giving, provide the orphanage with material goods, e.g. blankets, mattresses, beds, instead of money. In Nepal, the orphanages are not supposed to take any money from volunteers. They’re supposed to pay any money to the volunteers also. Your placement organizer will donate the money for hosting to a volunteer in an orphanage as a contribution. It’s not a fee.

I’ll write more in my next article about the orphanage. If you have any questions on any of them, please feel free to leave a remark and I’ll answer them.