Volunteering in Nepal: prematurely left the orphanage

Yesterday, after consulting with the representative of VSN in Pokhara, I decided to leave the orphanage where I was staying prematurely. Originally the plan was to stay there until I would leave Pokhara again at the 30th of April, but I ended my stay there after ten days since I moved to the orphanage at the 31st of March. I will write about the reasons which compelled me to leave the orphanage, but I will not mention any names of either the orphanage or the people involved with it; I love the children, the mother (J) who runs the orphanage and the people (I shall mention L) on the board of advisors who work in the best interest of the orphanage.

Basically, the sole reason for me to leave the orphanage is the behavior of the man (C) who founded the orphanage and runs it. He has some serious issues and I tried my best to keep up with him and keep a positive mindset, but in the end I realized it was no longer possible to avoid getting involved in the conflict between him, J and the advisory board.

When I visited the orphanage for the first time, a few days before I moved in, I met the previous volunteer, Charlotte. She had been staying there already for a few months and would return to the England after a few days. When she left her room became available, so for a few days I could sleep in C’s room together with C before transferring to her room.

The volunteer room Charlotte was occupying was a lot more convenient because I actually had sufficient space for unpacking my bags available there. C’s room had so much stuff and clothes lying around everywhere that I did not have enough space for my stuff, I thought I wasn’t the best at keeping my room clean and tidy, but my room is a cleanroom compared to C’s room. This surprised me because Chandra told the VSN representative that he had to clean his room before I could share it with him, if that is true I don’t even want to know what the room was like before I came.

It also had a nasty smell of mushroom coffee and toothpaste, C told me frequently about how they were miraculous medicines that were great for your health and that I should use them too. After trying some coffee I figured out that I still don’t like the taste of coffee and certainly not mushroom coffee, so I kindly declined his offer to try the toothpaste. Normal coffee and toothpaste contain ‘chemical’ and his mushroom-based ones don’t. On the other hand C was very nice to me when he switched beds with me. His bed had a mattress, whereas mine didn’t. Lying sideways on my bed would make my hip hurt and it was a bit too hard for my back as well, when I mentioned this he offered to change beds. I didn’t complain about the state of the room however, I would merely have to wait a few days before I would move to Charlotte’s room, and I expected that my stay in Nepal wouldn’t meet Dutch standards for luxury.

Charlotte and I talked a lot while she was spending her last days at the orphanage. She worked at a school in Pokhara, to which she also introduced me at my request so that I might possibly continue teaching there when she left. The children however were probably as old as second graders or a bit younger, and I experienced that second graders at the CBIA in Kathmandu were already difficult to teach. When the very large differences in the command of the English language, general development and poor education were added to that I realized quickly that the last thing I would want to do is teach these children. Most of them didn’t even understand that they had to copy sentences from the chalkboard and fill in the blanks such as ‘My age is…’ The class was a zoo and Charlotte was quite satisfied when she managed the children to make drawings. I respected her ability to work with children, but this was obviously not what I wanted to do.

Charlotte also introduced me to her friend Eline from Norway, and we had interesting conversations. Charlotte also shared her experiences about her stay at the orphanage, and when the three of us were eating out in Lakeside they told me about their experience with the orphanage in more detail. They warned me, because Charlotte had a fallout with C after she criticized his management of the orphanage. C wasn’t even talking to her anymore for the last weeks of her stay. She also noted that C was being really friendly towards me, probably because I was a man and he wanted to win me over as his friend because he had already antagonised many people with his behavior.

He wasn’t taking good care of the orphans either, was often away from home and didn’t give his wife J sufficient money to buy supplies and healthy food for the orphans. At one moment his oldest son from his first marriage had almost strangled his stepmother J, with C seeing it and not intervening. According to Charlotte his son also beats the other orphans. From what I’ve seen his own son was okay, but I believe Charlotte.

What was possibly contributing to his state of mind – it seems he wasn’t always like that – is the impostor running a fake website for the orphanage (with the fake one using the .com domain and authentic one using the .org domain) to fraudulently receive donations for the orphanage. This contributed to financial issues for the orphanage. At the time I arrived at the orphanage I participated in a meeting of the advisory board, who handled this issue well. They decided to take the case to the police, and later on a generous donor from France who visited the orphanage had decided to donate the required school fee for all the children, which could not be paid earlier.

During the first days of my stay C seemed like a very nice person. He taught me how to make chapatis which we then ate for breakfast, something which I appreciated because my attempts to create them with the help of a cookbook back in the Netherlands hadn’t given me as good a result like when he made them. He also took me out for eating dal bhat a few times, introduced me to some friends and we both went on a day trip to a remote village higher in the mountains near Pokhara to celebrate a festival. These were his gifts to me. I should also note that soon after my arrival I decided to buy a whiteboard for him as well to be able to teach the orphans more effectively. Yet he still was a bit worried over the finances of the orphanage and told me that my organization VSN wasn’t paying enough for my stay. He asked me to find other volunteers who could stay at the orphanage to bring in more money, and he would also approach people to do so. I could share the volunteer room with a possible new (male) volunteer. I thought this was a bit strange, but didn’t protest.

A few days after Charlotte had left J and I had a talk. She told me that Chandra hadn’t been buying vegetables for the children. Without vegetables the children eat dal bhat without the tarkari, the vegetable curry, so it’s just rice and dal which isn’t a healthy diet. He hadn’t bought soap either. If I understand correctly she expected based on her experience with previous volunteers that I would have given her some money to pay for my stay so she could buy food with the money, but the VSN representative had been paying Chandra directly instead. Explaining that to her was difficult because of the language barrier, but a talk between me, J and L of the advisory board removed this misunderstanding a few days later.

Before talking with L, I had already asked C about the vegetables and asked the VSN representative if he had already paid C any money or would pay C at the end of my stay. The representative told me he had already given C an advance payment. However, C had asked the representative to not tell J about this advance payment, which my representative thought was strange. When I talked with C about the problem he played stupid and denied that he hadn’t been buying vegetables. J was unreliable he told me, and I should not be talking with her. He was not pleased that I had discussing the financial issue with my VSN representative either, again he told me I should discuss problems with him. I felt his demand was not fair since he had been working behind J’s back in the first place.

By this time I had realized that C had his financial priorities wrong. At the expense of the orphanage he paid a few hundred rupees for me and him eating out a few times and he spent a few hundred rupees for the bus needed for the day trip. While at the same time he was complaining how VSN wasn’t paying enough and that he needed a second volunteer to provide income. That’s why after the day trip I told him that I didn’t want him to make expenses in showing his hospitality towards me any longer, and paid him for my bus ticket. I think all alarm bells should have startled ringing when he took me for eating out and that I should have noticed it sooner, but L told me I couldn’t have known and shouldn’t blame myself.

The talk between me, J and L later prompted me to ask my representative again how much he was exactly paying for my stay, after the advance payment. After consulting with my representative we agreed it was undesirable for me to get involved in the politics of the orphanage, and that VSN wasn’t going to send any volunteers over to my orphanage in the future. He also confronted C about the issue again. After that C spoke to me to express his displeasure at me discussing C’s problems with others more strongly. He was running the orphanage and no one else, I should not talk about the problems with J or L and stop complaining. At this point I merely took notice of his anger at my actions, and tried to keep up appearances that I was his friend and didn’t know any better. I felt C was getting more unstable every day, and that angering him even more would do me, J and the orphans no good.

He also forbade me to take the children to the playground near Lakeside. Me and J had done so the day before to let the children have some fun, and we also met L there to talk about the problems. His reasoning was that the children would drown in the lake, and the way to the lake was dangerous, with criminals hanging around there who might harm the children (in broad daylight along the busy roads in Pokhara!). It would also be too tiring for the children to go there. In fact, the day before it turned out the children were still full of energy even after being busy with playing on the playground. His arguments were nonsense, but I decided against arguing with him because I knew the man was not to be reasoned with.

Just a few days before I decided to leave C decided to cut the hair of the orphans, because they had head lice according to him. Rather then letting J do this who can actually do it well, he decided to do it himself. The result was terrible, and a painful experience for the children as well. They are now ashamed and shy because of their appearance.

At that stage I drew my conclusion, I had to leave. I and my representative had been gravitating towards this idea a few days earlier already, but I was reluctant to do so. I like J and the children and didn’t want to leave them, and that was also the reason for Charlotte to stay. Also, without a volunteer J doesn’t get any money to pay the expenses for the children. For now I’m staying temporarily in the same hotel as when I first got here again, until my representative can find another place for me to stay. I really like D.B. and Rekha, but they just got some new volunteers who occupy the room there. Tomorrow I will probably know more about what’s going to happen next, but at the moment I still plan to visit J and the orphans to help them, while avoiding C as much as possible.

I don’t blame VSN for placing me at this orphanage without knowing about these problems, as it was apparently the first time they placed a volunteer there. The VSN representative is a very nice guy and has been of great help to me. While I appreciate the relative luxury of the hotel room have now, it is not a good change. The hotel is located next to a bar, where they have music on until late at night and a lot of people are talking loudly. This is not good for my sleep, so I hope to be able to buy earplugs around here somewhere or move out soon.

Recently I was asked if I was bothered by the fact that I haven’t been able to teach English here. Fortunately this has changed. While the cop and the waiter I met still haven’t gotten back to me in spite of my attempts to ask them if they were interested in me teaching them English for free, I did find another opportunity which worked out well. I was introduced by C to Mina, who maintains the website for the orphanage. When at some point during our conversation I asked here what work she does, she replied that she studies a bachelor in IT and that she teaches English at some kind of private school early in the morning. Immediately I asked if I could help with teaching. This was possible, and the next day I could accompany her to the school.

We met very early in the morning at 6:00 and walked a long distance to the school. The school is along a busy road close to the center of Pokhara and our class starts at 6:45 and lasts about one and a half hours. Of course, this is Nepali time, so I wasn’t surprised to see that it started it 7:00 because some students are late. We teach a small group of six to eight adults with varied backgrounds. One of them wants to study in the UK and needs to improve her English for that, another is a taxi driver who wants to work in Poland (strange, because many Polish people look for work elsewhere in the European Union to make a better living) and two others are students pursuing a bachelor of Sociology at a university in Pokhara. The reason they need more training in English is because their education in the government schools was not good, and they apparently were taught in Nepali rather than English like at the CBIA. I have been doing this for two days now and I really enjoy it, I would like to continue doing it even if I have to rise so early and walk so long.