As per usual it's been an eventful few weeks. It's still the
holidays here, well at least for the Government schools. Most private schools
went back for at least a week during Dashain and Tihar festivals, but for our
schools, they are still on break. So that means we've been spending most of our
time with the Street Kids and Asha Foundation.
The other day we celebrated Halloween with the StreetChildren's Center, although it is not celebrated here we though it would be a
great opportunity to get the kids dressed up, plays some games and have some
fun. You can see from these photos how much they got into it all! We then spent
the evening with some friends having our own Halloween party!
The Bahini Cafe has finally re-opened and we are SO happy
about it. They shut in August for the off season and then due to problems with
the rent and staffing (the manage had a baby!!) they had not been able to
re-open until now. Since the opening we've been in there most lunches snacking
on their club sandwiches and cookies. It's a great little cafe, and it's so
nice to be able to give something back to SOSBahini. They use the cafe as a source of income, but also a place to provide
training to the girls so they can they go on to get jobs in other restaurants
or hotels in Lakeside which provides a good future for
them ;-)
We are currently in the midst of Tihar festival (Dipawali).
So far we've worshiped Dogs, Laxmi & Cows and tomorrow is Bhai Tikka, the main
day where we worship our brothers. On Kukur Tikka (Dog day!) we gave Buttons a
lovely flower garland and a tikka on her head for a blessing, she then got fed
plenty of meat from many families in lakeside. On Laxmi Tikka the whole town
was beautifully decorated with twinkly lights to welcome the Goddess Laxmi into
their houses in the hope for a prosperous year ahead. Bands also set up all
over the place with dancers showing us their best routines...there's a real
party/holiday feel about town at the moment. Tomorrow for Bhai Tikka we are
hoping to go to the Street Kids
Center so we can give all our
little brothers a blessing.
In sadder news, it looks like Dinesh has left us for good. I
wrote a few weeks ago about how Dinesh had come to the center and was finding
it tough to settle in, well after many attempts to run away and people bringing
him back every body has decided it is now up to him. We gave him all the
support we could, talked to him about his future, gave him one on one care, etc
but during the tourist season when people are handing out money and sweets all
the time, there was just too much temptation for Dinesh to run away again. We
hope when the season ends (and it gets colder) he will come back. He knows he
is welcome anytime, but it is still sad when we fail to keep them with us.
That's it for now, the schools are finally open again on
Monday so we'll all be back on placement then and we're looking forward to some
new volunteers arriving in the next few weeks!
For those of you that have been enjoying it, don't worry,
more updates from Elinor will be posted soon!
If you would like to join the team here in Nepal,
then please email Gemma on gemma@podvolunteer.org
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