by Beverly Bronson on Saturday, September 17, 2011 at 4:00am

Today Dev Kala, one of our staff members, came rushing into the house saying Mummy Mummy, come quickly. You must help!

She took me to a small room where there was a two day old baby girl and mother sleeping on the floor in a tiny room lived in by a drunkard and her two kids.  The mother gave birth in the room and has not seen a doctor. She planned to throw the baby away today and go back to her village.  I have promised help but all she wants to do is throw/give away her baby.  I am checking with my lawyer whether or not we can take her into our home.  The state orphanage has stopped taking in new children.  The baby needs to be seen by a doctor, but the mother refuses to take her to the hospital.   Baby was naked, wrapped in a shawl.  She has an eye infection and not eating.  Mother is trying to feed the baby cold milk with a spoon out of a cup. The ignorance here is appalling.  I bought some meat and milk for the mother, and eye medicine and bottle for the baby and promised to return tomorrow.

How can I take more kids when I am struggling to support the ones I have?  How can I leave her there to be thrown on the rubbish pile on the mother’s way out of town.  Tragic,  when there are so many people wanting to adopt and so many babies thrown away and left to die.

Baby rescue in progress.

We have the baby and had her checked out at the hospital – she weighs 3.1kg. Just now there was an earthquake here. We are all OK.

Baby Ghar SIta Mutu

by Beverly Bronson on Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 9:40pm

What a night!  It is 6.30 am and guess who is sleeping like a baby – not me, for sure. I wonder if our new baby slept better in her pile of rags on the floor of that dirty room-she certainly didn’t sleep much last night here in her warm clean blankets and her too large clothes. We went to pick up the baby yesterday morning (still no name decided) and took her straight to the hospital. Can you imagine walking into a hospital with a naked baby wrapped in rags, dried blood all over her and eyes shut tight with pus. Believe it or not the doctor declared her healthy, weighing 3.1 kg. They gave her a bcg shot (TB) and after I asked them to they bathed her eyes and sent us home.

We brought the mother to our home too but she hasnt changed her mind and shows no interest in her baby.

Our lawyer was drawing up the papers for her and some witnesses to sign, and Rajina just left to pick up the three witnesses we need.  Then the mother is free to leave.  Her name is Bina, 24 yars old,  and she says she is getting married soon and obviously the new man does not want her baby. She is divorced from a man in the army living abroad and receives a portion of his salary every month – so she was not even as desperate as we thought at first.  She just doesn;t want another baby and to discard a baby here in Nepal is a fairly common practice.  Most mothers who do this though, feel they cannot take care of a baby – as opposed to will not.  When the witnesses arrive and sign the documents the mother will be on her way.

Unfortunately for those of you who have asked, we are not an organization that is allowed to put children up for adoption and the Nepali government doesn’t let parents choose their babies anyway, they are assigned at random.  We do however look for sponsors for our children, and those sponsors receive photographs, updates and drawings/letters from their children.  And of course they are welcome to visit us here.

A big thank you to those of you who have offered financial help at this crucial time. I really appreciate your kindness. Will keep you posted and let you know when we have decided on a name for Baby GSM.

Bina left without a backward glance.  The owner of the house where she was staying and another neighbor came to be witnesses.  He was very angry with her.  He told us she gave birth in the outside toilet and then tried to kill the baby.  At that time he  told her that if the baby died he would report her to the police so actually he is responsible for saving the baby’ s life.

My friend Mike suggested the name Ananta – a Hindu word for the snake god with a thousand heads. When he moves his head an earthquake happens.  I like the name but it didn’t go over well here. For one it is a boys name with no female equivalent – I liked Ananta =and also Ananti (my female version of it)– but as it is not a real name meaning anything the consensus was no.

For now Baby GSM will suffice.  She is still sleeping peacefully and I fear she will be one of those babies that sleeps all day, when I cannot, and stays awake all night,  when I cannot.

Are there any new mothers out there with any hints for me?    She took 5 bottles last night, drinking about 30 – 40 ml formula.  After 20 minutes she cried a lot, possibly wind, and then lay there staring at me.

The internet has gone caput as I write this, and now I am going to take a nap while I can, before I go out and buy BABY GSM some clothes.

I stopped in the UK on my way to Nepal to visit my family and travelled  to Scotland with my partner Mike to his gigs in Lanark and Market Harborough, and  to Perth and Henley on Thames.  Lots of fun.

Had an offer of help from Julie Craddock who works in the International Education Dept. of Cambridge University.  Last week she mailed us some books care of the British Council here, and we look forward to receiving them.  She is also contacting Microsoft on our behalf.  Fingers crossed they will donate some computers for our use.  Badly needed here. I met with  some GSM supporters in England. and also shopped like crazy for merchandise for my antique shop as I have to buy for the Christmas season – then shipped the stuff to New York. Great new things will be on the shelves in November.

I have not felt really well since I arrived in Nepal and it turns out my blood pressure is pretty high.  Have been working on alternate therapies (most of them really foul tasting) to try to lower it and tomorrow will see a cardiologist – something I cannot afford to do in New York!

Spent hours deleting files from my overworked and over full computer  in order to upload more photos and was rewarded with a neck pain that won’t go away.  Now I don’t want to go near it. Apart from that everything is fine here.

It was Teej – the women’s festival – the week I arrived, and we had a small dance party with the women from the training program.  Women fast all day, and then sing and dance in honour of their husbands, whilst praying for their good health.

Happy to say that all the children are fine and as energetic as ever.  Most of them are doing fairly well in school but math seems to be the subject they all fail.

We were lucky to have Monica Witt – a math and science teacher from Friends Academy in New York, volunteer here with her husband Abe,  for three weeks this summer.  Monica worked non- stop with the children at home and also went to school with them each day to observe and help the teachers.  She was not impressed with the teaching methods.   Abe worked with the children on carpentry and computer and all enjoyed their visit – especially Monica’s storytelling talents.

It is still the monsoon  season which is very dramatic but also really hot which doesn’t help my energy level.  Roads (if you can call them that- are muddy and slippery, making walking a chore rather than fun.   I have loads to do apart from spending time with the children – thinking of ways to raise money for next year.  I must plan for our tenth anniversary celebration in December – hope to get a date set at Theatre for the New City soon, and hoping others will organize fund raising parties of their own to support us.

We are also working on  setting up a new program – a wellness centre for women offering complementry therapies from  both local and visiting volunteers.  We will kick this program off with a health camp which we have scheduled in two weeks time.  Desperately needed here.  Almost one million women suffer from prolasped uterus alone! A problem that is very uncomfortable, easily prevented,  rarely discussed and easily treated. Rajina, our manager, has had great success helping Laxmi Sapkota recover from many years of  illness and depression  - am posting a photo of her dancing at teej.

The women in our training program are busy making items which will be for sale in November – we have a few new puppet designs, lovely scarves and pretty necklaces.  We are also making a few Christmas stockings this year.

Today is Indra Chatra – yet another festival and the children are home from school again. This is the day when the Kumari, The Living Goddess is allowed out of her house and carried around the town in a chariot.  Her feet are never supposed to touch the ground.

I met a young Nepali girl on the plane, her name is Jotsna and she is in college in the U.S.  She offered to volunteer and started to help tutor the chidren last week.  She grew up in an orphanage here in Kathmandu. I was very impressed with her determination to get an education abroad.

Feeling more positive about my health – had an ekg/ultrasound/chest x rays and blood tests today.  I go back to the hospital at five to speak to a cardiologist.  Ultra sound showed all organs OK.  Blood pressure today still high. Hope I don’t have to go on meds, but will follow the advice of the doc.   Got all the tests done for about $60, and thanks to GSM’s Dr. Bibek, I was whisked through all of them like a VIP. Also got a 50% discount when they found out I have been working in Nepal for 12 years. This was the first hospital I have been to that was really clean with no blood on the walls or beds!

Celebrated my birthday this week with a fun dance party at our house.  We have started a new program called ANgels with a Heart .  We hope to find Angels who will commit to raising $1000 for GSM next year. We will provide slide show/brochures and items to sell.

Who will be the first Angel? It would help us tremendously.

That’s it for now folks.  Thanks for your interest and PLEASE – help spread the word about Ghar SIta Mutu if you can.

Imagine an emergency room where there are two and three patients in one bed, where the doctors contradict each other – one gives oxygen, the other rudely disconnects it while shouting at the patient. Laxmi shared her bed with a patient with kidney failure, Rajina kept her temper in check and took a few mobile photos before coming home with Laxmi who was given a tranquilizer .

Today I took Laxmi to a different hospital and they have admitted her. They say she has a conversion disorder, and it is not life threatening and we shouldn’t make such a fuss over her when she collapses. Hard not to when she is screaming and thrashing about. I insisted on another cat scan – results tomorrow. Her 14 year old son will stay with her tonight. Heaven help Nepal if there is a National Disaster, their hospitals are not equipped to deal with much. I witnessed one lady and her son struggling to push her half dressed husband on a trolley up a large ramp with oxygen tank attached. Perhaps they were going to have to operate on him themselves – not sure.

First night with the baby was not so easy, hoping for a better one tonight. She started to run a fever and had a nasty cold when she arrived. She seems to like me and Manu only, as well as her doting Papa, and hasn’t yet mustered a smile for us. She is very petite and sweet.

We took her to the hospital this morning. Another horrible experience.   We arrived at casualty (the ER) early in the morning and were shown to a bed with dirty sheets and bloodstains on the wall.   Puspa was screaming – afraid of doctors since her broken leg  – who could blame her.  Last night she slept with me, and every time she woke she was crying and holding her ears, but the doctor wouldn’t check her ears until he had ruled out pneumonia, and had an x ray and taken blood.  She screamed throughout, especially when they tried to take blood twice from her tiny hands. (Nurses not wearing gloves!) They failed. While we were waiting for her to calm down, a young lady died, from kidney failure, despite the doctors’ attempts to resuscitate her.  Her family members started screaming and crying which was very distressing since I had foolishly given into Sujita’s pleading to come with us to the hospital, so I walked her home and returned.  We waited for a while and then were told to come back in the morning so the doctors could check her ears.  They did start her on meds so hope she will soon feel better.  On our way  back to the hospital now to get her ears checked.

Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Branka Pavic, who has raised over $3800 from two Rotary clubs in Italy, along with money donated from fundraising parties held by Bill Boland in Arizona, and Colleen Boland in Ithaca, New York, we are now able to move forward with the first stage of our Solar Back Up Project.  Once this is up and running, we will no longer have to worry about how our children are going to study in the evenings, or how we are going to pump water and cook our food.  Many thanks to Branka, Bill and Colleen and all their friends who donated to this project.

Our young cook Deepak has become a father.  Last night we received a call from him after dinner.  Could we come to the hospital quickly as his 22 year old wife, Asha,  had just given birth a month early, and they had nothing they needed for the baby, and no money for medicine and no food to eat.    The power had gone and the roads were dark and menacing, so our guard walked us to the main road.  We picked up Hem (our co-manager) on the way along with his wife and three year old daughter. I couldn’t believe that a hospital would allow such a young child to visit a newborn baby – but I was wrong.  When we  arrived  the ward was crowded with visitors and not a nurse in sight.

In hospitals in Nepal, the patient has to have someone with them at all times to take care of their every need.  Fetch medicine, cook food (yes in the wards if no one is bringing them food) change beds and whatever else is necessary. The baby girl weighed only 2.5 kg and was wrapped in a blanket, being held by a friend of the mothers who had arrived before us.  She sat cross -legged on the bed of the new mother who was still wearing the clothes that she had arrived in.  I am chuckling to myself as I picture the face of an English Matron doing her nightly inspection, but the situation is far from funny.  Asha, who had given birth two hours previously, was paying no attention to the nine visitors she had and showed little interest in the baby.  She was still on a drip, and had not held or nursed the baby. We had brought an old sheet with us to be cut up for diapers, and I asked when she might be going to nurse the baby.  This was going to be difficult for her as her dress had a high neck and there was no privacy on the ward, which was noisy and crowded. Her bed was across from the bathroom and the sink – which was still not in use ( I had been to this hospital two years ago when Bimala was hospitalized after her home delivery,  the bathroom was overflowing  and the sink didn’t work then).

A foreigner in a hospital ward is great entertainment, and I became the focus of everyone’s attention. People stared and giggled when they heard me speak in Nepali, and giggled when I spoke in English.  They whispered among themselves when I held the baby and when my doctor friend read me the information on Asha’s chart.  We only stayed about half an hour but no medical staff came to check on her during that time, or even looked at the baby, who by the time we left was swaddled in enough blankets to battle the elements at the top of Mount Everest.

15 month old Puspa has just been adopted by a couple from Vermont. Her new daddy is here with her but has to leave on Saturday after a two week visit.  He is worried about the conditions in the orphanage she is currently staying in, three young girls taking care of 20 babies, and the baby already had a badly broken leg at 9 months, possibly due to rough handling.  The problem is she has not yet been given a U S Visa  because the  U S laws have recently been changed so he is unable to take her home.  Many families are in this same predicament.  Ghar SIta Mutu has offered her a temporary home and she arrives today.

I heard yesterday that all the bus fares have risen because now it is Dashain and everyone who can goes to their village to visit their family. Every town or village they go through charges a tax, so the poor get poorer and the rich get richer!

Two boys, aged 15 were kidnapped on their way home from school. Parents couldn’t pay the ransom – and one boy was found beheaded. The other parents paid but the boy not returned as yet.
 In another  shocking case a boy was beaten so badly in an orphanage he died. The manager tried to fake his suicide by hanging him from a beam in his room. WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO! When will all the violence end.

The other abducted boy was found dead two days later, even though the parents paid the ransom. What is also shocking is that the Western Command in Charge of the Tarai, along with a head constable were involved, and the chairman of the management committee of the school masterminded the abduction and killings. A rights activist was also arrested for taking the ransom and assuring the boys safe release.

Thank you           a poem by Kamala Lama

Thank you Mummy

For everything you’ve done

Even for the help of which I’m unknown

Also for this beautiful life of mine

And obviously for all your valuable time

Thank you Mummy

For your presence in my life

For your blessings upon me

For your motivation towards me

And for your wishes and dreams for me

Thank you Mummy

For making me feel the love of a mother

For making me proud to be a daughter

And to be thankful for what I have

But not to be sad of what I lack

Thank you Mummy

For your encouraging suggestions

For your precious never ending love

For the new life you’re giving me

With lots of beautiful things to see

This poem is not to impress you but to make you feel the gratefulness

I have for you and for having you in my life

with love from Kamala

Luckily the internet exists, and I am able to stay in almost daily contact with the staff and children at our home in Aarubari,  timing the SKYPE calls to when we have electricity.  Challenging, but rewarding when we connect.

I was out walking with my 8 youngest girls today and ran into Goma, the lady I gave our goats to. ( The goats were eating all our vegetables and flowers so I had no choice). Goma now has a healthy herd of eleven, with several pregnant females . Her children are sponsored by my sister Georgie 
so this family’s future looks a lot brighter than before.

On Friday afternoon Australian Rotarians, and members of Eyes Wide Open came to Ghar SIta Mutu to play with our children. Some of them worked with the smaller children making crafts, some played ball games, two helped the boys paint murals in their bedroom and two gave a cooking lesson.

Off to Parents Day today where I am supposed to give a speech. Not my favourite thing to do, especially when the other parents don’t understand English. Hope they don’t put me on the stage in the baking sun – this often happens. Strange because we VIPS!!! (their words not mine) get to sit behind the performers wearing giant rosettes (like we are the winning horses in a show ) – and we can’t see anything.

A big thank you to Fred Uncle (Ripley) from Nashville for his recent donation, some of which was spent on new shoes – 27 pairs in total. The note with the donation said “be frivolous” so they are shoes for outings, not the plastic shoes which we wear in the garden, nor school shoes. We have enjoyed ice cream a few times too and several trips to the swimming pool. All a big treat for our kids.

We are  now buying all the supplies for the new school year – nothing is free here – the schools have raised their fees, the books are more expensive, the school bus costs almost as much as the monthly fee.! I wish we had our own van. One day I hope.

Many thanks to Colleen Auntie and her brother Bill Boland for their donations towards our future solar power. I have spent $300 of it on an invertor – which provides one light per room back up during power cuts. What a treat it is too. It was not so easy to begin with and we broke the first one on the second day (it was under warranty and replaced). Now there is no excuse for not studying and for poor grades.

Our Govinda did well in his exams only failing in one subject instead of the usual five! and his behaviour has improved tremendously. Manisha failed in three subjects and will stay back in class 4 and Babu didn’t do so well either, failing in two. The other kids passed but some just scraped by. Perhaps it was changing schools yet again that affected them – we certainly have enough tutors and extra help for them so we will have to see what happens next year when there are no excuses.

There are 27 children here in total during the holidays including Laxmi’s three children, Kamala’s three brothers and the cleaning ladies two.  And I wonder why I am tired at night. Tired but happy I might add. Today we celebrated  small Maya’s and  small Rojina’s birthday – and cut one cake into forty slices. Better a small bit than none at all.

Last weekend Rajina and I went to another children’s home with the Dynamic Heart Project to work with children who had been traumatized, victimized, abused and sometimes tortured by both Maoists and Army. Several children saw their parents killed; some saw their teachers beheaded, and their schools blown up. One poor girl had been kidnapped by the Maoists, raped, and forced to join their ranks.  She reluctantly took part in several skirmishes, and one day, whilst carrying  grenades, she fell back and ran away into the jungle.  This was the second time she had run away, and the first time she was caught and severely beaten.  This time she managed to run all day until at nightfall, she had to stop when she reached the river’s edge.  As it was during Monsoon, the river was swollen, so she climbed a tree and clung to it all night.  In the morning she prayed to be allowed to cross the river, but decided she would rather die than be re captured and forced to fight with the Maoists.  She made it across the river and surrendered to the Army.  The story does not end there however, as she was tortured by the soldiers and forced to confess to deeds she had nothing to do with.  Luckily for her she was released and then taken into care, but the horrors she lived through will haunt her forever.

Many of the children we worked with looked seriously disturbed, but by the end of our visit some of them had opened up a little, and many enjoyed themselves a lot.  Many thanks to The Dynamic Heart Project for their time and caring. I hope we have helped these poor children in some way to  begin the healing process.