There, Sharada Basnet attends to the needs of two dozen children. Each morning, she wakes the children up, makes sure they say their morning prayers and do their morning yoga. [break]She makes them breakfast and gets them ready for school. She spends the rest of the day preparing food and cleaning their clothes.
Basnet has been following the same routine for the past four years now. Yet, the 32-year-old is far from being exhausted.
“Even though I didn’t give birth to them, these children are my own,” relates Basnet in a serious tone. She takes a child in her lap and asserts, “It’s not their fault that they were brought into this world. Those who abandoned them are the sinners.”
Basnet makes no discrimination between her two biological children and those at the Home. With the support of her husband, Ganga Bahadur Basnet, who is currently studying abroad, her in-laws and neighbors, she has been running the Home, which has become self-sufficient in many aspects since its establishment in July 2006.
When Dipendra KC opened the Home, Basnet joined as a volunteer. “We had only four children then,” shares Basnet, who completed her Intermediate from Kanya Campus.
Initially, her family was not happy that she was cleaning the defecation of nameless babies, some illegitimate. Turning a deaf ear, she continued her tasks.
When the founder of the Home decided to go abroad, all the responsibilities fell on Basnet’s shoulders. “How am I going to raise these little children now?” was the question that worried her the most.
“But I’m a mother, too,” she says, recalling the four-year-old incident. “I told myself that if there was no doubt in my motherhood, I could raise them as my own,” narrates the gutsy mother. Determined to manage anyhow, she began to run the Home all by herself.
Basnet decided to take in more children. As soon as she learned of abandoned babies in nearby hospitals or localities, she reached there with her husband and took the infant under her wings.
Basnet is currently the proud “mummy” of 12 sons and 11 daughters at the Home. And all of them have been given the last name of ‘Basnet’.
“I look after the younger ones all day while the bigger kids go to school,” she informs as she caresses the child sitting on her lap. She remembers the day when she brought home a six-day-old baby who was left by a young unmarried couple at the Western Regional Hospital. Today, the child has grown up to become three-year-old Shristi Basnet.
Most of the orphans are from in and around Pokhara while some are from Syangja, Tanahu, Myagdi, and even Dhading.
Four women come in daily to help Basnet. With rising expenses, it was difficult for her to manage food, medicines and school materials. Basnet, therefore, leased a three-ropani land and started an organic vegetable garden. The children not only got to eat fresh seasonal vegetables but the Home became self-sustainable in vegetables.
“A balanced diet is very important for children, so I also started a poultry farm,” says Basnet, who then acquired a cow and a buffalo.
“We had 200 chickens once and served meat to the children twice a week,” she says. The money made from selling leftover milk, chicken and vegetables also helped the Home financially.
It wasn’t feasible to buy new clothes for the children, nor was it easy to go around asking for clothes all the time. Keeping that in mind, Basnet decided to open a Sewing Center.
“Occasionally, we had foreign volunteers staying with us,” she says, “Some of them got together and bought 10 sewing machines.”
Basnet gathered 10 women from economically poor backgrounds and gave them work at the Center. The children now had clothes to wear, and the extras were sold in the market. Hence, the Home also became self-sustainable in clothes.
There are thousands of children’s homes in Nepal, and most rely on foreign funding. Several people, with negative intentions, even make money out of it. However, Basnet was never after money. Perhaps it is why she receives help from several people, voluntarily.
“Volunteers have built four bathrooms, a biogas plant, and even a solar panel. We use cowdung in the biogas plant and are thus self-sufficient in cooking gas as well,” she elaborates.
After learning about her altruistic services, the Manipal Teaching Hospital also offered to provide free medical services to the 23 children. Similarly, books, stationery and
basic articles such as toothbrushes and toothpastes are donated by well-wishers, on the occasions, say, of their birthdays and wedding anniversaries.
Foreign individuals from Australia, Germany, and the UK are currently sponsoring the education of 14 children. “We get around 400 Euros for the 14 children, which I use for everybody’s education,” she reveals.
With important basic needs such as food, clothing and education met for at the Annapurna Self-Sustaining Orphan’s Home, Basnet’s wish now remains to make her children economically independent.
“After that, like any other guardians, I want to see them get married and settle down in life,” expressing her wishes.
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