To improve the performance of the kitchen Garden of Balmandir and protect plants from torrential Monsoon rains that break the fruits before time, it seemed interesting to build a greenhouse, or more accurately a tunnelhouse, whose function is to work as a giant umbrella. We searched information on similar constructions in Nepal and found out that the most used material is the wired bamboo covered by a plastic. So we started the project!

First we chose the location in the garden and we decided on a barren plot that allowed us to make a 20m x 5m greenhouse. We were conditioned in terms of width by the size of available plastics. There was only one problem: in the middle there was a tree that was used as a support to a cucumber that was in full production. The garden is full of giant cucumbers.  Every day a child or two walks around with a plate with a chopped cucumbers offering to the other children, staff and volunteers.

After several conversations, on the same day in the afternoon, the cucumber and the tree that were in the desired plot had disappeared: Santamaya didi had taken the decision. We started the adventure of buy the required materials. For that we had go to Hetauda (around 26 km from Bhimphedi on a bus). Finding the right materials and transportation is not so easy. The most complicated was to carry the sixty 6-8 m long bamboos. But luckily the roof of the bus works for anything so we put them there. Unloading was easier when we reached to the Children’s Home because everyone took part in the event. We also cleared the ground of grass with the collaboration of everyone. Pere, a volunteer who came for few days, helped us in that as well. We built the six goals that should support the entire structure, cutting and painting the bases to protect them from the moisture, and began to put the first bamboo. On the goals and the central pillars we fixed the rest of the structure, working as often as the Monsoon rains allowed us.

But what the monsoons didn’t take into account was the arrival of Esther, an expert in agriculture and management of greenhouses, who gave us the push we needed to complete construction of the structure and the following steps till finishing the works. After placing some wire to prevent rainwater to make small pools on the roof, it was time to put the plastic. It was an exciting time since it was a real team work. Three people pulling the plastic and other three people, with the help of three sticks with sacks on top, were accompanying the plastic to prevent it from tearing with any of the obstacles. After testing the roof with the torrential rains of recent days, we fixed the plastic roof areas where water stayed.

Meanwhile two teams dealt with the two rooted trunks we had to take out of the middle of the greenhouse. We still had some works in mind: to refill the holes left by the rooted trunks, to kill grass and works of the soil using a plastic and the powerful sun of this latitude, add a fertilizer and finally to grow tomatoes, strawberries and other tasty vegetables.

All this would have not been possible without the participation of all including the new volunteers Mireia and Jordi and also the help of the two days visitors, Laura and Pol (volunteers two and a half years ago). Bernat, a volunteer who has passed like a lightning, has really helped us with the construction of a germination table and with the works of high-altitude while assembling the structure of the greenhouse. On the table we have already some seedling growing of Moringa. In addition, Bernat has left, as well, the workshop as if it was professional workplace. Once children filled the holes of land, the smaller kids take the lead on the sealing of the solarization plastic. A great team effort! With good outcome! Only wait 3 or 4 weeks and already we plant! Thanks to the information provided by Maya didi we can now prepare a good program for planting in the greenhouse.

We look forward to the first harvest! Written by Marcel, Bhimphedi’s children home volunteer.

Last May 14th a tractor came to Balmandir to help us with the plugging of the kitchen garden. It was easier than ever!

The children were delighted by this visit and they were the whole time near the tractor looking how it was working. In fact, when it finished the work, without any hesitation, they mounted on it and began to play as if they were actually driving it.

This visit was a great help for us, because the corn that was planted has been growing and growing very much, we will have a good harvest this year, though you can not say till it’s done.

Meanwhile, the smallest of the house have prepared to the volunteers a delicious dish, they cook for us some kind of grass (“sagh” in nepali) that was growing wildly in some of the margins of the kitchen garden. The most delicious grass we have ever tasted! Ricardo, a member of the board of Friends of Nepal and regular in Bhimphedi volunteer has returned to Nepal for the fifth consecutive year. Ricardo is the creator of TaperNepal project, in which resources for the Children’s Home of Bhimphedi are collected through selling handicrafts made in Nepal.

This year Ricardo has come from India where he was doing a course related on his profession: Yoga trainer. But he is also a gardener by profession, which has been extremely useful in Bhimphedi every time he has come. Thanks to his energy, good mood, willingness to work, his knowledge and he himself being a handyman, every time he comes to the home things that seemed impossible are achieved.

This year I went to pick him up in the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the country’s only international airport, located in Kathmandu. And as you might expect, Nepal never fails to surprise you. While I was waiting, watching if he appeared down the hall, suddenly a monkey pops! There are monkeys all over the city (the rooftops, on the millions cables hanging on the streets, temples…) but inside the airport?

It was not a little monkey, but from behind the glass everyone was watching him with a smile. Suddenly, it jumps up and hangs on the glass, and then it lands on the floor near all the people with amazing ease and tranquility. People are surprised but not get so nervous. It goes next a man who is sitting. He takes a bottle of Fanta beside his bench… he looks it without much unease… the monkey looks menacing to him blowing. But the man ignores it, and the monkey sits facing his prize. Suddenly he bites the bottle and the drink jumps pressed by the pressure. The man now runs. The monkey knows what it is doing, is not the first time… it slowly drinks its Fanta and doesn’t look up and go till the drink is over. Ricardo finally arrives. This country is great. A disaster in many ways… but great. Back to Bhimphedi for fourth summer consecutively. This year was more necessary than ever to come to help; Because of the earthquake, for the kids, for Dani… for Nepal.

And to my delight, the Children’s Home is more beautiful than ever and full of life. The garden has lots of flowers, there is a shelter with chicken and ducks, the kitchen-garden is well maintained and Kali (the dog of the house) is about to give birth. Balmandir overflows life.

Just when I enter to Balmandir, Maya comes running to put a “tika” (red dot on the forehead). Maya is a wonderful “didi” (elder sister). I visit the orphanage and I see that the workshop I left last year with all the tools of the house organized is not there. Well… then I’ll have to do it again. Fortunately Kul has taken care of almost all the tools so, we just have to find a new place for them (because the older place is not so good after the earthquake).

Sort, clean, burn what is not worth… Next morning we have already finished the task and even I’d time to organize one room for me. Then Kul and I made an inventory of what we have and what we need, one of these days we will go to Hetauda to buy and improve our tool collection, thanks to the money collected by TaperNepal of Bilbao and Zaragoza.

Many people have made possible that I can go back, again, to be with these kids and enjoy helping in Nepal. Thanks to everyone! In the third terrace of the garden, the largest of all, we grow three types of vegetables during the year. In June we plant corn, in September beans and in December potatoes. So now time for potatoes!

This time we have decided to cover more area than ever with potatoes. Will we succeed? First we get rid of the huge grasses occupy the entire field, some are really annoying and leave your hands and clothes covered with spikes.

The second step is to plow. So we called the “man of the oxes”. After trying few days, finally, one morning, he appears. Everybody is happy! But at twelve o’clock he has to go to another field… but he has almost finished the work, we will do it ourselves.

On Saturday there is a group of children who help in the kitchen-garden and extend a bit the area to plant potatoes. Everyone is happy enough. For now we will leave it like this.

Is it time to plant? No… we need to put fertilizer so potatoes can grow well… For now we have some buffalo compost, but it will not last long.

The next day we go in search of fertilizer, this time chicken fertilizer, it is more expensive, but they say it is better. We decide to go to bring it ourselves. After walking for about ten minutes we arrive at a house made of mud and stone (like many of the houses), we go to the rear where there is a chicken farm. Further there is a pile of manure in rice husks. After some months we will also have fertilizer from our hens.

They give us ten sacks and two shovels and we start loading. All older children have come to help. They load the bags as much as they can, same price! Even two of the didis have come to encourage us, these two women are wonderful (all kids call them “didi” which means elder sister). Maya is very sweet and always smiles. She does not speak English but cooks wonderfully. Every day after eating we tell her “mitho chha” (the food was delicious) and she answers with a shy smile “thank you”. Beli didi is the caregiver who sleeps in the center to take care of the smaller kids. She is very energetic and has a powerful voice that can be heard from anywhere. The two women take care of their children as if they were their own kids. They are  the best “didis” we could have. Children and Amics del Nepal are very lucky to have them in the children’s home, taking care of children, helping to cook, cleaning everything, helping the responsible of the kitchen-garden…

Come on! Let’s carry the sacks! Two boys per sack. We are 10 people, so we can carry five today and five tomorrow, I propose. Ashok Siwakoti, the only kid of the Children’s Home studing class 10, laughs and says that they will come back quickly for the second sack just after leaving the first. He adds slyly, “the question is whether you will also come back for the second sack…”

Once my sack is ready, Rojan and I take the sack and move. A minute later we have to change position… After ten minutes we have tried the 10 different ways to carry a sack, and we have proved that there is no good way to do it… Finally we arrive and empty the bag! It was hard, but we did it!

But suddenly… what???? We see two sacks with legs coming by themselves. It is dark and I don’t wear my glasses, but finally the sacks are close enough and I’m absolutely astonished. They are the two “didis”, each carrying a sack tight with a string loaded on the forehead (this road is called “namlo” in Nepali). They hadn’t come to encourage us…

Didis leave the sacks on the floor, look at me and smile. Rojan tells me: “They used to do this when they were kids… we would not be able to use “namlo” properly, you need practice for that”. I’m still shocked, Maya, a woman over 50 years, had transformed into super-woman and had loaded, apparently without effort, a sack of over 50 kg…

Now, we can plant potatoes! The next Saturday, a group of children help to plant potatoes. And after a few days with didis, volunteers and occasionally a boy or a girl who shows up to help, we have 1,000 square meters field of planted potatoes! Across the center there are all kinds of trees: blue and red mimosas, mangos, lychees, lemon, pomegranate, a kind of apples / pears (“aru” and “naspati”), banana… The easiest way to know when a picture was takes is looking what fruit the kids are eating. Now it’s time for the grapefruit.

The third terrace where we are planting potatoes and burning the non-organic waste, there is still some space to use. In that land there are some small lemon and banana trees planted last summer that Ricardo, a super-volunteer from the Basque country who has been working to improve the kitchen-garden for the last three summers. We will protect them better because we have one of the walls of the center has to be rebuilt, so some goats use to come in to eat everything they find. But we will fix it!

With the kids we decided that we would put more trees to get more fruit in a few years. The surprise was that one day, when we came back from a trip to Hetauda, we found a dozen brick circles protecting the newly planted mango and “Aru” trees. Next to the cercles two kids with a proud smile from ear to ear: D: D One of the jewels of the center is its magnificent kitchen-garden. In total is about 5,000 square meters, divided into four different terraces. In the two higher terraces (in the south) all kinds of vegetables grow. These vegetables we eat with the two daily plates of rice. Now, in these two areas of the kitchen-garden, we can find ginger, cabbage, parsley, spinach, pumkin, garlic…

Now is the time to grab the onion seedlings and plant them, but our seedlings have not grown enough yet, so we buy some in Hetauda and plant them. Every step very manual…

Once we have planted all the onions I’m exhausted, but the three “didis” of the center don’t think it’s enough… so next time we go to Hetauda we will have to buy many more seedlings of onions, three times more than last time, to finish filling the piece of land.
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