Day 24: Lil Buddha

Trip Start May 20, 2008

Trip End Aug 19, 2008

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Flag of Nepal Kathmandu, Nepal
Sunday, June 15, 2008

A good day, spent nearly all of it at OCRC (the orphanage) with Melissa and Ladina. Due to the Bhaktapur-bound bus's extreme crowdedness and the likelihood that the next bus would be no different, we did something I've wanted to do since arriving here: we rode on the roof! It was a most excellent adventure, only twice was I nearly decapitated by low hanging power cables. Upon arriving at our destination, we distributed the candies we'd bought for the orphans and began the day's play sessions.

It didn't take long for me to make the two biggest errors of my orphanage career thusfar: I revealed the fact that I was carrying a camera + revealed my bag of muesli. Dead batteries and 100 pictures of nothing resulted from the former (this one boy named Rajip fancies himself a photographer), and an emptied bag of what was supposed to be my lunch for the next week resulted from the other. One kid asked for a handful of muesli, I poured him some, and within seconds the entire orphanage had huddled around me in a mad muesli-craving rage. Kids were pushing each others hands away to get a few extra oats; blocking others... it was a mad, vicious stampede that couldn't be turned away or tamed. I'm a bit concerned about the sufficiency of their food supply now though. While plain, dry muesli certainly doesn't taste bad, it's not the sort of food you'd expect children to go bonkers over and try to snatch as much up as possible. Even Sushaan has to get his dal bhat practically forced down his throat 'cause there aren't any Cadbury bars melted into the beans (which btw is hysterical to watch.) 5-10 year olds craving food with actual health value makes me think they aren't getting enough food in general. I shall investigate this matter.

I've also picked out my favorite orphan. I forgot his unpronounceable name, but he's a stubby round little fellow with a necklace of Buddhist prayer beads, a priceless smile, and a bad habit of using large Lego bricks as drinking goblets. I have nicknamed him "Buddha," hopefully that isn't offensive around these parts. Rajin is a riot as well, he likes to string his spotty English into rap-form. "Hello, I'm chillin... chillin... chillin!" while bobbing up and down. Snicker. The next few days of orphanage work shall involve painting and transporting their new swingset, getting some chicken pox medicine to them (they've all caught chicken pox), and other fun stuff. That's all for now. Oh, Sudip is back in town! And I'm going to a Nepali wedding on Monday.