23 Jan Orphanages in Nepal: Rich and poor at the same time

By Juan Hahn

During the months of January, February, and March 2014, I traveled to work and study in India and Nepal. I spent almost 100 days there, where I had the great fortune to work as a volunteer in the emergency department of the Sahid Memorial Hospital and in the Aama Ghar orphanage in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is a thin strip of land, like a slice of ham, sandwiched between the two huge pieces of bread that are China and India. Nepal’s only resources are tourism and minimal agriculture. When India closes the border, the supply of basic commodities is interrupted. In Kathmandu alone, there are more than 4,000 orphans who do not have access to any health services.

Faced with this reality, it seems logical that these people would be deeply unhappy. But this is not the case. The children in the orphanage are joyful, offering a perennial smile and sense of solidarity which should be inspiring to us all.

These children do not even have their own shoes. In the orphanage, there is a mountain of shoes that they must choose anew each day. Beds have to be shared by three children, and the only toys for these more than 70 boys and girls are cardboard shovels and a rope ball, which they share in harmony.

They have no vaccination schedule or birth certificate, nor any kind of identification document. Their only possession is their name. And yet these children, who play in a yard full of garbage and live in extremely unsanitary conditions, have made me see how deeply sick our Western society is, impregnated with a consumerism that makes us feel that nothing is ever enough.

Their way of life is much more human and spiritual. They attach importance to the interior, not appearance or possessions. This is what I will always remember from this fascinating country.

I will always owe a debt of gratitude to the people of Nepal. I went with the idea of giving and doing what I love most: being a health care provider, acupuncturist, and manual therapist. However, for everything I gave, I was rewarded tenfold.

There must be some law of the universe that whenever you give, the universe will give back to you much more. But from down here in our Western world, busy as we are in accumulating and accumulating material goods as if we were going to live forever enjoying them, we have become blind to the essential. We are lost in our “every man for himself” society.

As Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince said, “Here is my secret. It is very simple: you can only see with your heart.”