And then there were 15............. Every morning as I'm walking to the orphanage I always wonder what could possibly happened in the short space of time between me leaving at night and me arriving the next morning. Will dal bhat uncle have finally flipped? Will I be needing to make a trip to the hospital? Well, sunday morning brought with it a new child. Thats right we now have 15 children. He had turned up the night before in the middle of the rain bouncing down with nothing but the clothes on his back and dal bhat uncle, as accomodating and sweet natured as ever attempted to kick the boy back out into the night and the gutter. The boy, Rupesh (Helen he's back!) is actually an old child of GPPM, who left last year, his Aunt had taken him for Dashain (Nepali equivalent of christmas) and never returned with him. Since then he has been forced to work as a temple conductor (he's 10 years old) and eventually he said he wasn't working anymore and was going back to the orphanage. Now GPPM moved into the new house with 15 boys. Since then one boy Bikash has left, leaving 14 boys. You would think that Rupesh's return would not be that much of a deal, as it returns the number of boys to 15, however he is not listed as one of the boys who can stay in the house so we will have to wait and see if he is allowed to stay. There is supposed to be a meeting this week between us and the board to sort out all the issues but so far nothing has been booked as we cannot get in touch with the board. The problem is that this meeting can't happen soon enough, true our situation is not as desperate as some of my friends but we are frequently running out of rice, dal, cooking oil and it is getting to the stage where nearly every day we are having to hunt for someone to buy supplies for the boys. VSN have a motto: 'Helping others to help themselves' but rarely do the 'others' hold up that end of the bargain and so we are all feeling a little frustrated and tired from being drawn into disputes and petty and political games that our orphanages throw at us. There is a fine line between helping themselves and trying to let us do everything for them and sometimes that means us engaging in their games and refusing to buy rice because we know if we buy it then that is one more thing they dont have to buy as they know they can hold out til a volunteer caves in. Sometimes you feel guilty not doing it butits the only way, as the nepali's say, ke garne? So I'm feeling a little frustrated with Nepal today, recently there have been protests at the rise in price of fuel so that means you can't go anywhere, as they are burning things - usually tyres- on the roads so its best to just stay away. Then after 3 painful hours writing a report for this meeting (thats not possibly not going ahead this week grr!) we had a powercut as I was trying to save it on the computer which has a virus. Once again we have ran out of rice and also cooking oil this time so Joe and I are getting tired of having to chase up people who have chosen to take on these responsibilities but have trouble fulfilling them. Our Euroguard which is supposed to clean the contaminated water is also not working in the orphanage, the water is coming through cloudy and a little yellow. We are finding that this is becomng the case with other orphanages as well, they are all faulty, some don't work properly after 6pm/in the rain/at the weekends and under other strange circumstances. So we have taken to boiling the water which will kill most of the germs but it doesn't change the appearence of the water.... try handing it to one of the kids and see if they drink it, we already have de-hydration problems so this is another little hurdle. I have managed to phone the euroguard company to get them to send someone out today to check it (although apparently you should not need to do maintenance) as its needs to get fixed asap. Had a fairly quiet weekend took the boys to Charity fields again everything was going well until Tajendra, our most malnourished boy took a well-kicked football straight to his stomach, cue him screaming bloody murder for me and lots of tears so that ended the football game pretty quickly. That said since I started giving Taj vitamen supllements he is perking up a bit, he is still unbelievably think but his eyes aren't as dark and he has more energy so here's hoping! So todays entry is relatively short as i'm sick of typing and running out of energy, i'm sure there is lots more to tell but I can't think of it right now! Hope everyone back home is well, was actually talking about how long we all left in Nepal, as Wye and Luke are leaving this week, I have to say I'll miss seeing them around as Joe and I have gotten used to seeing them alot in our little village so we are coming into Thamel tomorrow night to say goodbye over a pizza and a few beers. As for everyone at home, I'll see you in 17 days! Scary how little time I have left! Take care and much love Lauren xxxxxx