Since I arrived to Bhimphedi, three and a half months ago, until two weeks ago I hadn’t seen how a normal school day is for our kids. Just when I arrived big ones where starting final exams and I helped small children to prepare their exams that started one week after. After that, they had holidays that were supposed to last less than one month, but finally lasted more than two months. So I was asking myself if I would experience how is like the life of these kids when they go to school. As you can read in our last post, finally the schools have started but during these free weeks we have been using our time in different things.
The orphanage has a very big compound with lots of potentials and during these holidays we have been working to improve the center. When we are only two working in the house things evolve at a very slow pace, but when we are thirty we easily finish things that at the beginning seemed impossible to do. And still we have had lots of time to play to old and new games.
During the holidays, we have adopted a new pet in Balmandir. We found an owl without mother and the children have been taking good care of him, and even now that he is able to fly free, it comes back when it’s hungry.
When I arrived here already there was the idea of getting a sewing machine, because very often the kids had to bring the clothes to the tailor and they wanted to improve the bed sheets and curtains… But it’s not very useful to have a sewing machine if you don’t know how to use it. So Kush give the idea to send some interested kid to do classes with any of the tailors of the village. So Binita, Sita and myself started a course without knowing anything, but after making almost 30 pieces of clothes now we are “experts” according to Binita’s point of view.
On top of having fun for the long earthquake holidays, the girls have got an interesting skill that may be useful for them in the future.
After the earthquake the volunteers had to change our headquarters, but in the new room we had all the materials, clothes and tools in boxes on the floor. So we needed a place to put all this things. After asking prices of furniture we decided it was too expensive and we came with a great idea: why not to make our own furniture? Quickly Love, one of the most active kids of Balmandir, made of this project his biggest priority, and he didn’t stopped till he had very nice shelves. This is what we can call “learning by doing!”
And this has been only the beginning, because after finishing it he continued reappearing tables and benches.
I believe it’s very important to promote the interests of the kids, because it keeps them active and learning new usefull skills for their future.