Nepal

Aug 30, 2024  •  General

Nepal Volunteering Trip

In August, we travelled to Nepal on an NFYFC volunteering trip. We met our fellow YFC travellers at Heathrow Airport, before flying to Singapore and onto Nepal, giving us all plenty of time to get to know one another. After landing in Kathmandu, where we got our first glimpse of the hectic streets and traffic in the capital, we spent our first night in Nepal exploring the city, and sampling a few of the bars. The next morning, we started with an induction to the programme, learning about the Nepalese culture and our projects for the two weeks ahead.

For our first week, we were based at EduFarm, an educational farm that is open to children, schools and families to give them experience and education of where their food comes from, with a focus on healthy diets and nutrition.  

We spent most of the days during our first week working at Olga Puri, part of the Nepal Youth Foundation. Their site includes a children’s home, vocational school and farm. The children’s home houses 80 orphaned children from 14 months old to 18 years, while the vocational college teaches those over 18 years, and out of education, skills to help with employment opportunities including woodwork, welding, electronics, plumbing and tailoring. 

During our time at Olga Puri, we helped with a variety of farming activities including; preparing seed beds, planting a variety of vegetables (including broccoli, spinach and beans), weeding and harvesting produce, which the centre uses and sells to local people, making compost and fertiliser, and milking. 

We also enjoyed spending time with some of the children living at Olga Puri, including a game of football, running races, games in the play area, and for Hector even a competitive strength test with some of the older children.

We also spent time working at EduFarm, helping the farm workers and local women in the rice fields. We spent two days barefoot and at least ankle deep in mud, trying our best to identify the weeds within the rice, and luckily being followed by the local women who were able to see what we had missed! 

At the weekend, it was time to say goodbye to EduFarm and leave for Pokhara, Nepal’s second largest city. The journey to Pokhara was long and bumpy, including a delay while we waited for a landslide to be cleared. The roads varied from tarmac to mud tracks but 9 hours later we final arrived in the city. 

Our first full day in Pokhara started at 4am, with the intention of enjoying the sunrise and a glimpse of the Himalayas. We headed off towards Sarangkot, however a landslide had caused the road to fall away and with the road to Sarangkot unpassable, we instead visited the World Peace Pagoda, unfortunately the low clouds prevented us from enjoying the sunrise, however we enjoyed a tour of the temple and then a trip to Devis Falls, a waterfall that goes underground. After a quick stop for breakfast, we then headed to the Bindhyabasini Temple, where we enjoyed the views across the city.  The afternoon was free time, so we went shopping, hired scooters and enjoyed a boat ride on Lake Phewa. In the evening, we got to experience the Pokhara night life, before another early start for the 9-hour bus journey back to Kathmandu, a quieter trip back with most catching up on some much-needed sleep.

Our final project of the trip was at Zing Boarding English School where our first task was to create a vegetable garden for the children. We got to work planting seven beds of vegetables, using the skills we had been taught earlier on in the trip. For our second day at the school, we organised some activities with the children. We split into groups and spent time teaching classes about agriculture, showing the children pictures of our farms and agriculture at home, reading books we had brought from home with the younger children, and we also painted a mural on the wall of the classroom.

Throughout our time in Nepal, we also had chance to experience a number of different cultural activities including a language lesson, Momo making class (Nepalese dumplings), Yoga, meals with cultural performances, and a cultural dance demonstration by a group of school children. We also paid a visit to some of the temples in Kathmandu; Bagalamukhi temple - the Hindu temple of love, the Golden Temple and the Monkey Temple.

We have both had a fantastic time in Nepal, learning about farming, religion and culture, whilst making new friends with Young Farmers from across the country. We would both like to thank NFYFC and Projects Abroad for the fantastic opportunity, and to have experienced Nepal with such a fantastic group of members.

 

Abigail Graham (Walton YFC) and Hector Meanwell (Eden Valley YFC)