In the first week of May, I embarked on a trip to Nepal. As a part of my class, to do service and charity in and for Nepal and the people living there. The fact that this trip, code-named Windows on the World (WoW), is part of the school curriculum is irrelevant, though. The main motive of WoW is to touch lives, but to be honest, our lives were equally touched as we tried to touch others’ lives.
Moving on to the major events, our story of service began with the children of Early Childhood Development Center, shortly ECDC, which is located in the outskirts of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Our contribution were pretty much limited to painting the gates, decorating the walls with poster colours and our palms. The last part was quite fun. Other than all the healthy interactions we had with the children there. Ms Pushpa Basnet, the humble founder of ECDC, is a huge source of inspiration for me and it convinced me to help others in my own unique way. In what way, I am not sure. Yet. If you want to contribute to their noble cause, you can visit their website here for further info. (Yeah, even I find it amazing that such poor institutes serving the needy do have websites of their own. Talks volumes about the proliferation of Internet.)
Our journey of service in Nepal continued with Sri Janakalyan Lower Secondary School, which was rather precariously placed on the edge of the cliff. The mountain school, which is near the hill station Nagarkot, can only be accessed on foot and the path is very tedious. That is the unfortunate part. But, in the school, our service were mainly physical. From building staircases using sand piles and drilling holes to plant poles for fences on the mountain ledge, it was all very back-breaking. At least, it was a good exercise. And, it helped in improving the teamwork and coordination in our class.
Overall, the accommodation and the food we got in Nepal was well beyond what I had expected. And I still can’t imagine how I managed to live an entire week without access to newspapers, Internet and the like. The sacrifice is worth the experience.