Sunday 16 October 2011

Anupam, the younger brother at the Hub came home yesterday from spending Dashain festival with his family, who live down near the Indian border. Caught up about what has been happening & he said he would take me for a day out today but told him I had to go to the home this morning. He then said we’ll go to the zoo in the afternoon – I said ok if we take 3 children with us

Karan, Dinesh & Pushpa had told me a couple of weeks ago about the school project they had to do about amimals and asked if they could go to the zoo, but had said no it wasn’t fair to take just 3 children.

So Anupam gave me a lift in on his scooter this morning to see where the children’s home was, came in with me to get permission to take the three children to the zoo & arranged to meet again at 1:30 for the outing.

When I told them that we were going that afternoon you should have seen their faces. Said they must have a good wash, put on clean clothes & have lunch early

A young man came to inspect the two computers and said that one needed a new part to make the monitor connect & they both needed increased memory etc, they are 4 years old and very low spec, but for children to learn on they will be fine – I think they are only used for games most of the time. He is going to email me with a price to upgrade and supply new keyboard & mouse for each. Forgot to ask about gamepads too!


When time to go walked down the street to meeting place outside a shopping mall, where there were food stalls & I ordered something that I didn’t really know what it was. Turned out to be a veg patty with thick lentil soup/sauce over it and curd, spices and crispy flakes of some kind over the top - big portion so I picked up 4 spoons and we all had some.

Anupam arrived in a taxi so the 4 of us got in the back – these are small Suzuki 1.1 – bit of a squash for me & three 12-14 year olds.

Good having Anupam there as got fare half I would have been charged and he explained to the children in Nepali about the animals.


Very poor zoo compared with ours but it served its purpose as there was an information board beside each cage/pen with all the info they needed: habitat, place, food, life span. Started to copy this down but then decided easier to take photo of the boards & they each took it in turn to take photos of the animals.

Bought them an ice cream as we were leaving and bags of candyfloss to take back for the other children. Their behaviour was perfect, polite, no trouble, above all happy & I did notice - they never once said 'Can I have'.
 Another good day to make up for the frustration I sometimes feel when things don't happen 'like now please!'


Tomorrow I will take my laptop in so we can look at the photos and decide which they want to use for their projects.