I've finally got round to blogging about my placement!

The Rainbow Cay Care centre is for 1 to 5 year olds. Its aim is to care for children from 10am to 4pm so that their parents can work. There are about 28 children at the day care. It is run by the Indreni Ministry. I'm not entirely sure what they are but they run weekend programmes for children all over Pokhara.

The day care is run by two women, and, as one of them has to prepare the food for the children, for a lot of the day there is just one woman with the children. They have almost no structure to the day. The only otyss they have are a basket of worn soft toys, some plastic toys like bricks and pots and some very broken duplo (so borken that it won't even stick together). There are no toys with which you can really DO much, only the bricks which they can build into towers ( and which even I find hard to keep together). It seems that these children have never been set a task before. Even the older ones don't seem to understand if I try to get them to sort the bricks into colours.

When I bring in activities for the children (like colouring, crafts, playdough), the women aren't exactly enthusiastic but they do help out a lot. However, the man who runs the whole thing has basically told me that they don't want new ideas. He says they have no agenda, they simply want to provide a safe place for the kids to play, instead of on the streets. That's a very nice idea but they could do so much better. There is no reason these children shouldn't be offered activities they have no chance to do at home. Without activities the children actually get bored and end up fighting over the toys a lot. It is also nearly impossible to distract a child who is crying for their parents because there is nothing there to interest them with.

At around 1pm we feed the children (usually dal, noodle soup or some kind of porridge thing) then they have a nap. After that there isn't much to do (I've started napping with the kids now it's so hot!). We eat. Nepalis don't have lunch, they eat dal bhat (rice, dal and veg) twice a day so juts eat a snack at lunch time. Our snack varies from a few biscuits and Nepali tea to a full rice and curry meal. the children are woken at about 3.30pm, then we get them ready to go home and wait for the parents and siblings. A lot of children are picked up by siblings barely older than them. Some even carry the little ones on their backs like the mothers.

I'm enjoying my placement but it wasn't really what I wanted to do in Nepal. I expected to be teaching english but these children are too young and not used to be taught anything (I have tried). I love working with young children but I would prefer to be in an orphanage working with this age. The only good a volunteer can really do in a day care centre like this is bring in new ideas and activities for the kids. I have tried this but they've made it quite clear that they don't really want new ideas. I very much doubt if they would do anything similar to the activitied I've done after I leave.

Even so, I really like the kids and enjoy playing with them. I suppose that even if they don't carry on the activities after I leave, at least the kids will have experienced something different.