RAFA SERRANO - Spain
Chitwan - Ganganagar
March - 2005

The first mission that I was sent to was to go with Dinesh, from INFO, and with the two little girls Dolma and Chyambarani to their little village in the mountains of the Lantang National Park.  The purpose of the visit was to asses the family situation in which they were living, in order to decide if they were good candidates to join in the new INFO Nepal orphanage project called the Happy Home, set in Kathmandu.

We started the trip going by local bus which I had to admit it was such an experience, over a hundred people in a bus with capacity for forty-five, at the beginning the road was pretty flat but as we were going up the mountains it got funnier, it was a good opportunity to interact with the locals. After  many hours we arrived, and the two girls literally ran to their houses.

First we went to the house were little Dolma was living with her grandparents, it was one of the traditional beautiful houses made out of stone and curved wood,  in a tiny village called Thulibharkhu in the district of Rashuwa, Langtang. She lived with both grandparents after her parents disappeared following a rupture in their marriage, she was brought up speaking Tamang, the region dialect, and living in this remote village and not going to school resulted in her not speaking nepali. This was obviously going to make difficult her settling in Katmandu, with a new environment, far from her family and the big challenge of learning a new language, in the case of being chosen.

The family situation of Chymbarani was different, her father died not long ago leaving her mother and grandmother with seven children, struggling to raise such a big family, this together with the very basic knowledge of hygiene made this family a choice to consider when choosing the people for the Happy Home. From among the seven brothers and sisters, Chymbarani was the chosen one.

In reality, the levels of health and personal hygiene in the whole village were low, as you could see by the look of the kids and their houses, as they were they levels of education.

So while Dinesh talked to the families and villagers I carried on taking pictures of the kids and their environments. We left the place after our work was done, in order to do some days of trekking in this area of breathtaking landscapes, at an altitude of 3.500 m. Dinesh and I started to do this trek until we had to stop on the third day due to unexpected snow, blocking the road, for which neither of us was prepared for.

However the trip was enjoyable enough till the point we got to. After this we came back to Kathmandu to get ready for the next programme.