Lending a helping hand on holiday in Nepal

'Voluntourism' is a good way to give back to, and learn more about, a community, though trips must be chosen carefully. Here's an account of a volunteering stint at an orphanage in Nepal.

A morning scene at the Chitlang Organic Village Resort, Nepal. Afshan Ahmed / The National

In recent years, more and more visitors to Nepal have begun to include community service in their itineraries. When I planned a trip to the landlocked South Asian country, I decided to follow suit.

Twenty volunteers from Australia, the United States and Asia convened at the Kathmandu Peace Guest House in the heart of Thamel Bazaar the night before we left for our assignment. The trip was organised for our group by International Volunteer HQ (IVHQ), a New Zealand-based organisation set up by Dan Radcliffe in 2007, which collaborates with a local registered partner (such as the Kathmandu-based Hope and Home) to provide education, community development and medical and wildlife conservation travel programmes in about 30 different countries.

The next morning, sandwiched among backpackers I had met only a few hours before, I travelled through the south-western Kathmandu Valley in an open jeep, en route to our volunteering assignment at the Bhaktapur Self-Sustaining Orphan Home.

Last year, the number of tourists to Nepal grew to 800,000, with a sizeable percentage adding volunteering to their trip. While the influx in visitors is certainly positive for the country as a whole, particularly in a place where tourism is the second-largest source of foreign income after remittances, the influx has caused concern with the growth in child trade and bogus orphanages set up to dupe foreigners.

Bijen Aryal, the programme director at Hope and Home, says that it works with 12 orphanages registered with the welfare council in Kathmandu, Pokhara and Chitwan. “We do a thorough check of where the children come from,” says ­Aryal. “Because of widespread poverty and the number of foreigners that visit, families in villages send their children to the city to act as orphans in return for a financial guarantee by fake orphanages. These orphanages just make money off tourists.”

My decision to trust IVHQ came after vetting other companies and going through numerous testimonials and suggestions online, along with IVHQ’s recent decision to hire an independent social-­responsibility adviser to conduct research on the effects of the ­volunteer programmes in the local communities.

The duration of a programme can vary, from short-term (one week, in our case) to a full year. My week-long programme cost about Dh4,000, excluding airfare and visa charges. Service fee aside, the amount covers accommodation, meals during the placement, airport pickup, orientation, programme supervision, volunteer support and in-country administration expenditure.

During our journey to the orphanage, we are informed of a few basic words to remember during our stay. “‘Huzur’ is a useful word,” explains Yuzeena Sheretha, our cultural instructor at Hope and Home. “It has multiple meanings, including ‘yes’ and ‘OK’. You should also answer with ‘huzur’ when someone calls out to you,” she adds as we sit down in the rest houses. We are also advised to avoid eating with our left hands as it’s considered unclean.

Two hours later, we arrive at Chitlang, caked with grime and having inhaled far too many pollutants despite wearing dust masks. The village, nestled in the Mahabharat range, is located in Nepal’s Makwanpur District, and has only recently been added as a tourist spot, boasting the largest man-made lake in Nepal, named the Indra Sarovar, or what the locals call the “Kulekhani” lake.

Our orientation on the first day includes a breakdown of Hindu traditions, practised by the majority of the population in the country. We are seated in the common hall after dinner to listen to Dohori music, Nepali folk songs with classical undertones, and Bollywood tunes, which are preferred by the younger crowd.

Once finished, I decided to spend some time outside, enjoying the stillness of the evening – devoid of the air pollution and chaos of the city, a welcoming way to de-stress following our gruelling trip earlier.

After spending the night in a quaint aluminium-and-wood cabin, where the temperature can drop as low as 2°C, I’m awake at 7am to trek to the settlement of Markhu near the Kulekhani Hydropower Project. Our group of trekkers opts to tread the goat trail along the cultivated terraces of the village. At Markhu, we take a canoe ride across the artificial lake. It was constructed to generate hydropower and serves some of the electricity needs of the country. We make our way back over a swing bridge and take the village route to acquaint ourselves with the locals. Many of the men, dressed in earthy kurtas and the traditional Dhaka topi teamed with sneakers, drop their chores to welcome us with a “namaste”.

We leave for Kathmandu that afternoon to meet our host family, the Thapas, and ­assume the duties of volunteers at the Bhaktapur Self-Sustaining Orphan Home. On the second leg of this trip, I’m with two other volunteers to Sipadol, a village in the Bhaktapur district. We are urged to arrive before sunset due to part of our journey taking us through a forest and all-round low visibility. “There have been some leopard attacks around here,” warns our taxi driver. “You can never be too careful.” We arrive at our host’s home just in time for tea.

In Nepal, nothing spells welcome quite like offering guests the staple dal bhat. Copious amounts of rice, lentils and sabzi, or vegetables, mashed up in the plate is presented to us for lunch and dinner and acts as our fuel over the next week. After a generous serving, plated up by “amma” (grandmother), I’m shown to my room to unpack. With no other outdoor recreation possible after sunset, I’m content to catch up on some reading.

We arrive at the orphanage early the next morning and the house mothers brew us milk tea. We learn that the businessman Rupak Thapa and wife Riya set up the orphanage in 2007. They look after 20 children and fund their private-school ­education with the support of local and international donors whom they have connected with through their participation in the “voluntourism” network. The children live in a three-storey building, 500 metres from their residence. Three house mothers are hired to look after the children and tend the fields where potatoes, rice, pumpkins and chillies are grown – this is part of an effort to make the orphanage financially independent. Currently it relies on donations and personal funds.

The village falls under the make-up of a village development committee, a type of government practised in Nepal that allows better ties between the people and governing bodies, and fairer distribution of state funds in rural areas. It does not come as a surprise that the Thapas’ property and fields aren’t always demarcated.

School isn’t in session, so we have the entire day with the children. Riya explains that the children at their orphanage have experienced anything from being abandoned at birth to abuse, death of a parent and more. Riya came in contact with these children through various children’s rights associations and relatives who approached her for support. The children all now carry the family name Thapa.

The children are clearly familiar with the drill during the volunteer introduction – as they line up, each one says a little bit about themselves. Once the introduction is over, it’s clear that the young ones are excited about what is to come – the anticipation of more activities leaves them tugging on our clothes and quizzing us about our hometowns.

Activities can be just about anything – even a kick-around game using a bundle of rubber bands or pebbles – and we find they are easily occupied. The group engages in play until the afternoon heat forces us back in. The children bring out their books, many of which have been donated. We lay out a carpet and read with them. One of the volunteers has even packed arts and crafts material, which we bring out every day during activity time. The children get involved in making paper flowers, painting balloons and colouring competitions. The craft projects bring out the artist in even the young, bashful ones in the group.

English language study time is also factored into the schedule, utilising the workbooks available in the orphanage. The children are eager to learn and insist we read to them, even outside of study time. One of the older boys, Sudeep, approaches me to discuss what he has learnt at school, reading from his textbooks and checking to make sure that he’s pronouncing the words correctly. Always eager to learn, Aashis and Sudeep spot my camera one day and ask me to teach them how to use it. Sudeep quickly masters some of the settings and tries to capture everything he sees through the viewfinder. Aashis, on the other hand, prefers his subjects to be in the centre of the frame before taking the shot.

As it is the harvest season, the older children are assigned to picking potatoes in the fields. We accompany them in the morning to sort out the produce. When they are not studying, they are responsible for looking after the livestock and helping with chores around the house. They head indoors by 6pm for a yoga session before bedtime and we walk back with Riya to clean up for dinner. The children are well-behaved and take our lead without much resistance, making this an undemanding first attempt in volunteering abroad.

Over the next few days of working with the children, I am subconsciously stripped of pretensions, while the modest living dials me into a lifestyle that is integral to Nepali culture. I was surprised to find how quickly I became accustomed to the unhurried life in Sipadol.

After spending an afternoon in Sanga – the location of the world’s tallest Shiva effigy, called the ­Kailashnath Mahadev statue – I leave for Thamel the next morning to catch my flight to Sharjah. But before I return home, I visit the orphanage one last time to say goodbye and agree to a final request of crooning some of the children’s favourite songs.

While the state of many of Nepal’s orphanages would be considered deplorable, a few authentic organisations, such as the one run by the Thapas, are trying to change that. Being able to support the lifeline that this orphanage has given to a few children with limited opportunities makes this otherwise short holiday hugely fulfilling.