A very hot summer has already started in Birgunj so a lot of siestas for everyone in the afternoon.
But it has been incredibly good for our garden - it's full of aubergines, pumpkins, beans, tomatoes, chilies and other vegetables. Apart from a few things, we have managed to provide all vegetables to the boys from our own organic garden for the past two months. They are all enjoying it a lot and are very proud of the garden.
Two amazing new volunteers have built proper foundations for new large chicken run so soon we should have a lot of new chickens running around and fresh eggs everyday.
The boys are getting more skilled in the kitchen too - they made us delicious, although quite different and interesting, veg burgers and pancakes this weekend.
We also transformed our study room thanks to some generous donations - the walls and window frames were repainted, new flooring put in and new decorations. Now, it's even much easier to get the boys to study!
Thank you so much for all the support so far! Please share the details of the project amongst your contacts. In the next report we should be able to show you some new handsome chickens!
The winter this year has been particularly cold in Nepal, and especially in Terai, where our children's home is. During the day you don't get any sunshine but a very strange thick fog that makes it impossible to see things even two metres away from you. So that was fun for the boys and everyone else! But good news is that it has finished now and the spring is starting and all the boys are very happy with that.
The boys received a lot of prezzies from our supporters in the UK which is amazing - new pyjamas, stationery and toys have been the talk of the winter. They are all very very happy. Thank you to everyone who contributed.
We have been growing our veggies but a bit slower due to lack of sunshine. Now, new seeds have been planted so we're waiting for more delicious results of our gardening work. The green house is working very well - loads of chillies and tomatoes!
We had a few volunteers who built a new chicken hut and a small run and we are planning to build a larger area and keep quite a few chickens shortly.
We have been very lucky with new volunteers helping with many things - including constant repairs of bicycles. Now the boys are enjoying their rides but we are sure new repairs will be needed soon again..they just go crazy on them.
We are going to visit the boys this weekend with another volunteer and looking forward to seeing everyone. We will update you all on more progress and will take more photos of all the recent improvements at the home. And if anyone would like to visit our boys in Nepal and teach them new skills, you are always welcome!
And as always, thank you so much for all the support!
Some amazing news - our mamma buffalo has given birth to a beautiful baby boy! Both mum and the baby are fine and enjoying each other's company. We were all quite anxious over the past week and had a few false alarms when we thought the baby was coming. Somebody had to stay with her day and night for the past few days. Boys are really happy and are now deciding on the name for the new addition to the family. The buffalo had her leg broken a few months ago so that added additional stress but all is fine and she is walking easily now.
With the help of new staff and volunteers, we have made major changes to our garden. We redid the green house to make it a bit more durable and have allocated more space for the climbing vegetables - so soon fresh cucumbers and beans are awaiting us!
Our amazing cook Sarita who used to work with us in Dhading joined our team again and the boys are soooo happy. She loves her chillies so a lot of these growing in the garden now.
We have been very lucky to meet some amazing people at our cafe in Kathmandu. One lovely couple, Reda and Jasmine, donated some beautiful clothes for the boys so now we can't take off the new tops and jeans off them! We will also have new volunteers shortly at our children's home - a teacher and later a speech therapist/social worker. Our staff at the cafe always give information about Our Sansar and thanks to them, so many skilled and passionate people have been helping us on the ground.
Thank you again for all the support!
This summer we are having really huge amounts of rain - that causes a lot of landslides, so our journeys from Kathmandu to Birgunj are always tricky - sometimes it takes 5 hours to get there, sometimes 20. Whenever there is a landslide on the way, all cars stop and people manually remove the stones and mud from the road. This can take hours on the narrow mountain roads. But once we manage to get to Birgunj, it's always a big celebration as we feel like we've achieved a lot by just getting there in one piece!
The rain and hot weather are doing wonders to our vegetable garden though. We have a new security guard who is taking gardening very seriously and with the help of the boys, we have a proper veggie farm at the moment. You can find there almost anything needed for typical Nepali meal. Boys are very happy and healthy thanks to that.
Our mamma buffalo is huge now - she is due in 3 months and we are all looking forward to welcoming a new family member soon! The boys are looking after her as well and she gets a lot of cuddles on a daily basis. Her broken leg managed to heal very well, despite local vets initially telling us that we'd have to put her down. But we put all our efforts into bringing her back to health and it worked!
Another danger of the rainy season here - snakes. And there are a lot of those (all kinds) in Birgunj. Luckily we haven't spotted a cobra or a viper yet at our home but they do exist in the area. One of our boys got bitten by a snake a few days ago so we rushed to the hospital but luckily he is okay as it wasn't a poisonous one. We are trying to grow more lemon grass and lemon trees to keep the snakes away but even that doesn't protect us 100%.
The boys got new colourful raincoats for this rainy season so they are all very happy and keep marching in those to school everyday at 6am. We are going to visit them this weekend so more stories and photos coming up after that.
Thanks so much for all your support, it means a lot.
New year (2074) has started in Nepal and the summer has come and it is incredibly hot in Birgunj again - you need at least 3 cold showers a day to survive. But that's definitely better than being cold so we're not complaining.
Unfortunately, we had a huge hurricane recently and the whole buffalo house got damaged and flown away so we're now have to rebuild that and the chicken hut and their runway. All the animals had to stay in the house for a day or so until we built a temporary shelter so that was a lot of fun for the children.
We now have thousands of tomatoes growing - very tasty organic ones so our Chachi is very happy and cooks even more delicious meals for the boys. We finished harvesting our potatoes so now we're planted other vegetables in their place. The garden looks very green and the boys love helping with growing veggies - nice to see great results of the team work.
Our buffalo's belly is growing with the new baby - however because of her broken leg we are very worried about her and we are hoping she will survive. The boys are helping every day to look after her. Our baby chicks are getting a lot of attention too - a few months of love and care and they will be providing us with delicious eggs.
We now have 20 boys living at the home and 1 of them will be linked with his mum in a couple of weeks which makes us very happy. We will support his education and we will be there to support him in the future with skills training and anything else that he might need.
We have just formalised our plans to open a small day care centre for the children living on the streets of Birgunj. That should happen within the next 3 months so we will update you on the progress in the next report. Thanks to that we should be able to help more children and hopefully make Birgunj street children free in the next few years.
As always - thank you all so much for the continuous support. None of this would be possible without her help.
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