My visit to an orphanage- An introspection

Back then in high school, we got course credits for doing social works. We had to do it for 120 hours to get a full credit. Usually, our seniors visited orphanages and old age homes. So, we also decided to visit an orphanage and do something significant. We never before had such heartbreaking and amazing experience at the same time.

So, one of my friends visited an orphanage and analyzed the condition there. It turned out that the condition there was quite pathetic, so we decided to help them as much as we could. We collected tons of clothes and books from students of our school.

So, I along with my classmates visited the orphanage like we had planned. There were around 30 kids in the orphanage of age group 5-14 . The kids were from different districts of Nepal and some of them spoke different languages and they didn’t understand Nepali. So, that had created a problem in communication; even the owner of the orphanage had problem in communicating with some kids. And not everyone's parents were dead, some kids had parents but either their mom had eloped or their parents just couldn’t raise them up and ended up leaving them there.

The orphanage didn’t have a name so we named it “Angels’ Home”. The woman standing behind in the picture is the owner of the orphanage. She has a son and a daughter-in-law. She lives in the orphanage with the kids while her son and sister in law live in an another house. There aren’t good donors for them and because one person’s earning is not sufficient to feed too many people, the condition of the orphanage and the children was not good.

We were totally surprised when we heard that they hadn’t eaten anything since last night because of shortage of gas cylinder. That kinda broke my heart. It reminded me of the times I denied to eat food which mom fed me. We are used to eating varieties of food of our choice but we never realize how lucky we are to get that much of choice to eat. I have always been very choosy when it comes to food. There are a lot of things I don’t eat and there are a lot of times when I’ve thrown food. I felt very guilty after that. I never had lack of food at my home; I got to eat whatever I wanted and seeing those children deprived of food made me very sad.

Thankfully there was firewood and we decided to cook for them with firewood. We cooked rice, pulses and potatoes for them. The amount of food they ate surprised me. The little kids ate at once more than I could eat in 4 days. No wonder they were so hungry.

We distributed the clothes and books among them. The happiness on their faces was priceless. It felt absolutely amazing to have been able to bring happiness on someone’s face. Little help from us meant so much to them and their priceless reaction was equally important to us.

There was this little guy who had broken his arm and he was not treated because they did not have sufficient money for the treatment. So, we took him to the clinic and had him treated. Because he couldn’t eat on his own, my friend fed him.

We sang, danced and played football with them. They seemed very happy and excited. We taught them new things because only few of them went to school and they were quite poor in their studies. And throughout the time, I had a massive realization about how lucky I was to get good education facilities. They didn’t have the kind of life I had but they never complained about it while I often had dissatisfaction with my life.

After that visit, we went there for next few weeks and taught them regularly. We helped them with their studies and it felt great to know that they were improving in their studies. Because of our exams, we couldn’t visit frequently but we did visit them on children’s day and on some other occasions with chocolates, gifts and books. And every time we visited them, they would be so happy; they would hug and kiss us and shower us with love.

As you can see in the pictures above, they have bald heads. It was because they had some kind of communicable skin disease and had to get their heads shaved for preventing it. It was because of lack of clean water and lack of sanitation.

The visit wasn’t only about a short-term happiness; it was about a life-long lesson about how we should never take things for granted. We are so fortunate to have got luxurious lifestyles, but they have no choice about it. Despite having parents many of them were left in that situation. We have parents, relatives; we have a family. But they have no one besides themselves. Happiness for them lies in little things while we complain about even the good things we get. They have their own happy little world.
And we have a lot to learn from them.