Kush and Maya didi argue that having ducks would be a very good project: “Ducks eat rice and worms (no need to buy them food), they like water and therefore they will have no problems with summer rainfall (monsoon) and eggs are highly valued (three times more expensive than chickens’) especially Nepalese New Year, mid-April.

So this time we go to Hetauda with the mission of bringing six ducks, 2 males and 4 females. It seems a fairly simple task, but with the experience we had with hens, we don’t want to be overconfident, although we have been told of a place where they sell ducks.

We take an electric tricycle. Oh, it is farther than I thought, after 15 minutes we’re not there yet. Finally the tricycle goes in one way next to a huge pool. Ram tells us that it is a fish farm. At the entrance of what appears to be the office, a woman welcomes us. We ask where we can get our six ducklings. She looks at us as if we were asking for hummingbird chicks… but in every street in Bhimphedi or Hetauda chickens and ducks are walking all around… it can’t be that hard getting 4 females and 2 males… Ram insists that they must have ducks in this center, we have heard that someone had purchased some here… “No, we only have fish” she says…

We go back with the same tricycle stopping and asking. Everyone looks at us like we were asking for hummingbird chicks… I think we will not fulfil our mission today…  What if we go again to the same place where we bought the chickens? 15 minutes more of electric tricycle.

We reach our destination and ask whether we can buy ducklings… Nothing, just like if we were asking for hummingbirds… how can it be so difficult? We enter to one of the courtyard, no one there, but from one corner 5 ducklings come running, all together. Oh! We go out excited and ask where the owners of the courtyard are (and what is more important, of the ducklings). From a dark room comes a didi. We almost have it! She says that chicks cost 175 rupees each (one euro and a half). “Deal! We take all five!” (we wanted 6, but 5 is pretty good!). “Oh, but how many of the five ducklings are females?”. Well… we can’t know yet¿? They are too small to differentiate … No matter, we put them in a box very fast before she can change her mind and we go back home!

We arrive at the Children’s Home and everyone is excited. To avoid stress for the ducklings, we don’t allow the small children come near the animals, so they have to watch from the distance. We put the ducks into their new home. I turn and I see none of the small kids… Maybe they got angry…

After a while one of the kids come with a plate. Behind him all the other kids with expectant faces. The child shows us the dish, it’s full of worms for the ducks! “Ok, you can come to see the ducks”. Kush, our expert on animals, feeds the ducks and the others look at it from the door.

But a few days later we realize that something is not right… two of the ducklings do not walk with others as they used to. They just sit and rest…

We only have three ducklings… Was it too cold for them? Perhaps they were too young to get wet… Or maybe we touched them too much… Children decide that ducks need a box like hens and from now on only Kush will take care of them.

Fortunately, two weeks later we still have three ducks, and they have grown a lot! I think they will give us eggs after some months! if there is any female… if not at least we will eat “duck à l’orange”!

After the arrival of hens and fixing the henhouse door, kids decide they want to further expand the family: Saturday we will go to fish! Kul and a couple of assistants repair the old eating place in the area of animals, to use it as a fish tank.

Saturday we eat breakfast, consisting of a huge bowl of rice with fresh seasonal vegetables and lentils (this is called “dalbhat”, all Nepalis eat it twice a day, and we are not exception), and we gather the expeditionaries to fetch the fish: 19 children and two adults, will it be enough to catch any fish?

In Nepal, winter is the dry season, almost no rain at all in half a year. So the river next to the Children’s home does not have water, and we go about 3km away, where there is another river with some water, near there is a small dam where children are convinced that we will find fish, and bigger kids will swim for a while in this wonderful sunny day.

Older children walk ahead, and once Edu and I arrive to the place the kids have already caught a few small fishes. After one hour, they have 10 fishes and three crabs. Now we eat the picnic and return home trying to leave no plastic behind…this will be more difficult than collecting the fish…

The cement of the “tank” is not dry yet, so the fish will stay in a bucket for a day. We leave the bucket at the door of the room of the volunteers, but the next day it’s not there! Weird… It’s 7 am and I go to wake up the kids with a “good morning”. I go room after room, some smiles and some sceptical faces not believing it’s already time to wake up. In one room, surprise, I find the bucket with the fish. One child say “it’s too cold out there” … Okay, but today we put them in the tank.

Finally time tells us the kid was right… one day after putting them to the fish tank all the fish are dead! Some have jumped out of it, other lie inert… Small failure… Why has this happened? Children make their hypotheses: the water is too cold in this tank, or perhaps we should put a net so they can’t jump out, or perhaps the cement needs some extra days to get dry…

We decide to forget the project until it’s not so cold, but in the same evening kids have already another idea. “This idea is really good!” they say. Even one of the caretakers, Maya didi, looks eager for it. We have to bring ducks!

Hetauda is about 20 km south of Bhimphedi. Bhimphedi is still in the mountains, but Hetauda is already at the entrance to the plains of southern Nepal. This area, which in some regions the forest, elephants and some tigers are still preserved, is known as Terai. We take the 8am bus, and just over an hour later we are already there. We’re very lucky because Bhimphedi is the first bus stop, so we can find a seat (although knees hit the seat in front, even though we are not very tall…). There are thirty people sitting in the bus, but in the corridor there are thirty more… the more people enter in the bus, the more comfortable our seats seem. The “kalasi” walks through the crowd collecting the money from all the passangers. Everyone just seems confortable! it’s a common day, “garné ke” (Nepali expression that means “what to do”).

After about fifteen minutes walk from the bus stop, we arrive to the hens “shop”. They show us some chicks, but they tell us the chicks are all booked… In any case we do not want chicks, because it would take months them to grow and give eggs, plus the risk to die in the cold nights. Then, they show us some chicken with the perfect size. But after a while they say they are just for meat. Why can’t we use them to get eggs?? They are all cocks… It seems today we will not succeed…

Finally, when we were about to lose all hope, they bring us to another house, and yesssss! They have some young hens, about three months, only a month to give eggs. They are big and strong, we will take ten of them! It’s two euros per kilo. We tie them from the legs and we go.

In the next house we buy some food for hens, we put it all in one electric tricycle, and we go to the bus stop! The poor hens will still suffer quite a lot before they reach their new home, but once there they will have a couple of years to be happy, well-cared and provide eggs for our children.

After leaving the chickens near the bus station we go to do some shopping. We have to use the days we go to the city. We buy three bags of rice husk in the mill so the hens can be very comfortable. We buy seedlings of onions and we go to the Hetauda office of Nepal Telecom to request for the installation of phone line and Internet, but that is another story…

Finally, we head to the bus stop, we load the hens and sacks on the roof of the bus and we sit at our reserved seats. After an hour of a bouncy road (poor hens… will they be alive?) we reach to Bhimphedi after a long day in the city, without having had time even to eat (neither we nor hens). In the Bhimphedi “bus stop” there are 7 eager children ready to help with all the load and bring it to the children’s home. At the door of the center, the younger children receive us shouting: “kukhura aayo!” the hens have come!

So fortunatelly the hens arrive home healthy and save. Kush brings them some water with sugar so they can slowly recover, and he leaves some feed so they can eat when they are strong enough. The Edu’s torch will be with the hen tonight. From tomorrow they will start the routine. Let’s hope that within a month the hens will start giving us eggs!

Everyone is very happy with the success of the mission. Kul, one of the most helpful kids in the center, ensures us that they will fix the henhouse with some more cement. And younger children of the center, who are very eager with the new “farm” are already thinking about the next project! But I do not spoil anything, you will have to wait for a while…

The henhouse is ready, but we have to think about what they will eat as well. We need crushed corn. Fortunately we collected some few months ago from our kitchen-garden and we left it drying in the attic of the volunteers’ house.

Shelling the cobs, cleaning the grain, bringing it to the mill. It’s not as fast as it sounds…

Hens will also eat the organic foodwaste and a little bit of mixt-cereals that we will have to buy.

Everything is ready to welcome the hens. Everyone is eager and excited, tomorrow we will go to Hetauda to buy hens!

Before the hens come we have to have ready their home. We have a space that is very appropriate in the north part of our land. There are three houses where some time ago thre pigs lived. Two of thte houses are quite demolished, but one remains standing, just like the story of the three little pigs. Next these pigs houses there is another house, a little bit bigger, it just needs a door and a few minor improvements. We decided to use this 5m2 house to accommodate our future hens! So let’s work!

Edu, with the good help of Papu, begins to build a door out of nothing. An old bed frame, a hammer and a few rusty nails become miraculously a door frame. Then, with a plywood and a piece of metal net, they build a door foxproof and hopefully childproof as well… because none of the kids misses any of the project events, and some children are very curious and some times some things are broken.

The older kids, eager to work on the project, find in the store-room a bag of sand and another of cement (left over from old reparations), and start working to seal the frame of the door and put a patch to the henhouse.

Meanwhile, Edu has already learnt to love to work with rusty nails, wooden slats and rickety chairs, and he has already built two boxes where the chickens will feel very safe to lay their eggs.

Advantage that we Hetauda, the city closest to the people, to bring a child to become a medical test and buy all the materials we need to take a manger and buy a water dispenser. The chicken is now nearly ready!

With 30 children in the center, and even more that will come next April, most of the budget is going to buy food. But in Bhimphedi Childen’s Home we are fortunate to have about 9,000 m2 where we have a nice garden that gives many vegetables. Now we also want have some animals! We will start with ten hens to get enough eggs for all the children and staff! In addition, the hens will eat the organic waste and we will get compost so it can be used to fertilize the kitchen-garden (nowadays we have to buy it).

All the kids are very excited about the idea of having a small farm. They keep asking when we will bring the hens, how many we will have, if we will bring also a cock… But there are still many things to do before we can bring the hens from Hetauda (the nearest town from Bhimphedi).

This month we have a volunteer from Lleida, Edu Juanati. He is leading this project. Kush, one of the children studying in class 7, is also an expert about animals. he helps everyday an old woman to take care of her hens, ducks and goats. So, surely we will succeed with our new project!