City of Life

The road out of Pokhara towards Kathmandu is a narrow, one-and-a-half-lane road crowded with buses and decorated trucks, some of which sound like they have installed mini pipe organs instead of horns. It twists along the sides of the mountains - up to cross a pass, down to nearly touch the water, then up again. The mountains are not simply steep, but sudden, in their jump from roiling river waters to forested tops. As we got closer to the Kathmandu Valley and the day wore on, the heat increased, and we rolled into the noise and pollution of the capital city in the heat and humidity of midafternoon.

Coming back to the city I left in such a rush over a month ago, I realized that Kathmandu is a city of life - all the nasty parts of waste, filth, misery, and poverty mixed together with the wonderful and joyous parts of children laughing, brilliant colors, fruit stalls, the smells of roasting vegetables, God.

A man wheels a bicycle with four big bottles of fresh water strapped to the back around potholes in the road. Two women in brilliant kurtas chat as they brush flies away from their fruit and vegetable stand set up under an umbrella. A young man flies by on his motorcycle, barely missing a taxi and two buses. A woman in a red sari ties her goats in a small patch of grass and burning garbage by the side of the road. Colorful laundry hangs from a balcony against a sky of watercolor-smudge clouds. Two children in torn t-shirts kick a soccer ball back and forth over the head of a sleeping street dog. Taxis weave around a cow standing morosely in the middle of the road. Girls in blue and gray uniforms laugh as they walk to school, clutching their books to their chests. Old men with tikka on their foreheads sit quietly in their doorways, staring interestedly at everyone who passes on the street and regularly spitting into the dirt. Life is everywhere on display. The simple act of families eking out an existence for themselves in this world is nowhere more apparent or more miraculous.

In the few days I have left in Nepal, I've been volunteering at perhaps the largest orphanage in the city. Bal Mandir, which means "baby temple", was founded by a member of the royal family in the 1960s and housed in old palace. Now that grand beginning is all but gone - it is a non-governmental organization that struggles to find private donations, and the palace is now a testament to the dilapidated grandeur of chipping plaster and dry fountains - it is dim and crowded and smells of pee. Over 200 children, infants to 18, call this place home, and nearly three quarters of them are girls. Most were abandoned either at the hospital or on the street; when they turn 18 they must leave, but they are given money for further education or training, and a stipend each month for a year to help them become independent adults.

We work in the baby room where there are over 20 babies, infant to maybe 1 year old, and only three didis ("older sisters", i.e. caretakers). The didis obviously love the babies and do what they can, but there's only so much attention three women can give to 20 crying children. We hold the babies as much as we can, despite the remonstrances of the doctor who says that if we hold them too much, they cry too loudly when we leave - well, what does that tell you? these babies need the attention, and I told him so. We play with them, we feed them, we change their diapers. One baby is a premie who we think might be blind, one has large pus-filled welts all over her head, one has a terrible cough, many have dark spots or skin rashes all over their bodies. They all have bald spots or matted hair on the backs of their heads from lying in one position too long, and many aren't strong enough to sit up, even though they should be old enough. Some beg constantly for attention and bounce up and down in their cribs, but most are good-natured and calm. They are all beautiful. Unlike the other volunteers, I have not given any of them names. I don't want to think of them individually because I'm afraid that I won't be able to stop myself from crying in anger and frustration and pity that these children were abandoned and now lie neglected on an orphanage floor.

I've realized now that I never wrote about the orphanages associated with the organization I'm here with. This organization is called Nepal Orphans' Home, and it operates four houses within a radius of about a quarter mile of where I am staying. The first house is called Papa's House, and it is run by the organization's founder, Michael. A brother and sister, Vinod and Anita, run two homes - one for boys and one for girls. The last house is called Sanctuary - specifically for girls rescued from the kamlari system of selling girls into slavery. (Read the book Sold, by Patricia McCormick, if you want to know more.) Other girls have come here to escape poverty and get a chance at a decent education. Some of the boys are brothers of the girls, and some were sent here by their families to keep them safe from the Maoists. Whenever I have seen the children, they strike me as sweet and funny and smart and motivated and so good to each other. Michael has done amazing work building up this family, and yet he's a mystery man - no one seems to know much about his life before he came here, except that he was once a carpenter. Symbolic, no? More information can be found on their website.