The slums of Butwal

Last month our volunteer photographer Jonny Cochrane recorded a visit by some of our Bhairahawa refuge children to their home area in the slums of Butwal, which is half an hour's drive away. It proved to be a very bleak visit and I have now uploaded Jonny's pictures to Flickr.

We are now researching how we might provide support to the children who are in the midst of this urban poverty which is every bit as grim at the rural poverty of Makwanpur District. We're aiming to launch a new project in Butwal in the middle of this year.

A home in Butwal

It's coming up to the Dashain festival, a time for family reunions and one occasion in the year when we endeavour to get our refuge children back to stay with relatives, including parents, for some semblance of family life. Today my colleague Gunraj Gurung visited the home in Butwal of one of the boys at the Bhairahawa "White House" refuge to check that all was in order for this temporary reunification. The house is pictured right.

Inside the house Gunraj found the boy's mother lying in some kind of a stupor. A neighbour told him that her husband had died eight months ago. No one had advised the organisation. So her son, who was of course in ignorance of this, would have had the most traumatic of returns instead of a happy festival. Gunraj also found at the house the boy's sister dressed in filthy clothes. He has asked if we can admit her to our refuge and I have agreed.

So often organisations like ours can be criticised for providing "institutional care" for children who would surely be better off with their families. Those dewy-eyed critics can't have had much exposure to the downright misery that goes with rural poverty in Nepal.