Day 71 - 72

These blogs will now be boring so if you are looking for some funny anecdotes, just quit now and get on with your day. No stories of snakes or cocktails or heart-thumping journeys. Real life has started and it is mainly as mundane as anywhere else.

We've had a busy few days settling into ex-pat life in Kathmandu. Fern and Clover started school at Riviera International Academy, a mixed school from age 3-16 in the suburbs. It seems to be a 30 minute walk from our house which is sadly unpleasant - smelly and along a major ring road. We did it on day one but day two got a taxi - only £1. Can't do that every day so are considering a number of options including the school bus. The girls really want to do this, it is an American yellow school bus that only takes Riviera children so it should be safe. Fern calls it the Forrest Gump bus. The security at the school is good with a guard at the entrance and big gates. They have made friends, obtained a heavy bag of school books and are waiting for their tailor-made uniforms to arrive. Clover has a boy in her class called Susan which she finds hilarious. She also walked out during the Nepali classes TWICE saying 'I don't do Nepali'. The head teacher took her straight back. Fern is loving learning the language which will be completely useless for the rest of her life but its the enthusiasm that counts. Lunch appears to be a problem - apparently the children don't eat any - and the girls are cracking up at the thought of getting through the whole day with only a banana half way through. The head asked them on the first day 'but you will have had lunch already?' We looked at our watches, 9am. In future, he suggested, have lunch before school - so breakfast at 7am and lunch at 8am. What is wrong with these people? On day two we sent them with their Nepalese Cheezy Balls and two bananas and hoped for the best. They managed fine but were totally starving when they came home. Looks like we have to adjust our eating patterns to fit in with this strange system. So cereal and banana at 7am, eggs on toast at 8.30am, soup and sandwiches at 4pm and then dinner at 6.30. So far so good.

We seem to have a power cut for about two hours every night which is highly irritating. The TV stays on but the fridge goes off. Which means defrosting all the wine and having to make fresh ice cubes. Pain. Rufus walks about with candles and incense like some deranged hippy and I resort to reading my book with a torch. Pollution is bad, I cough a lot and we drift into slumber every night to the calming sound of traffic and a pack of wild dogs tearing each other to shreds. We went out for dinner with a bonkers Aussie who came to Kathmandu in her early 50's to teach English and never went home. She's now 65, wants a motorbike and is building a yurt in the woods. We couldn't decide whether she was a wonderful, interesting woman or a mad old bird with mental health problems. She's certainly a new friend.

Kathmandu is literally crawling with European couples and their new little brown baby. Sitting in coffee shops cooing over their much wanted and no doubt much loved daughter. Big, white people speaking a strange new language at a little Nepali toddler; you can't help think about her identity issues in later life. International adoption is a thriving business/major problem here depending on how you view it. I am hugely influenced by my previous manager who is against inter-country adoption and as I am also completely blank with no original thoughts, her opinions are my opinions. So I am also against it.

Until.....Rufus and I started at the orphanage. A truly desolate and shocking place. And not just the disabled children who rock back and forth in the corridors. 21 babies in a single room, most in cots lined up against the wall, some crying, some dirty, some wet, some hungry. Little stimulation and little physical contact although the staff do try hard. Our employers are amazing people who have basically quit their potentially affluent Aussie lives on the beach to live and work in Kathmandu and run a charity, and they live and breathe this tragedy. We wept real, sad, wet tears. It took extreme effort not to stick a baby under each arm and run for the door. One was only 8 weeks old (I think younger) and had been abandoned. A little girl still at that big eyed, blurry gazy way where she can't quite make eye contact. I wish she was mine. We are now full of ideas, energy and enthusiasm and really want to change this place for the better but it is difficult to know where to start.
We are realistic that we will achieve almost nothing in 6 months apart from build attachments and give ourselves a lot of future heartache. If I'm not back by June, think the worst and one of you will have to come and get me.