Descriptive essay: My volunteer trip to nepal

My visit to the orphanage house in Nepal

  It was a sweltering afternoon with a burning sun above and the chimney smoke in the air. We were walking along a narrow meandering footpath, nearly hobbling. Can it be called a footpath with all those rough-and-tumble rocks, fractured bricks and cracked glasses? I couldn’t help thinking about the famous saying of Lu Xun, ‘Originally there is no path on the world, but when there are many who walked upon it, then a path came into being.’ My feet hurt as sweat was trickling down my forehead. The mottled walls on either side just like brought me back to the old time. An old Nepalese lady raised her head as we walked by —— a gaunt wrinkled face in an orange Nepali babushka. I could feel the astonishment in her eyes. To her, we were all foreign faces with T-shirt and jeans of who they called ‘the people from the outside world’. Her view followed us until we arrived at our destination, a worm-eaten orphanage house.

The door opened with crunchiness, the sight of several kids leaped into our eyes. It was not until they started to speak that I have realized some of them were girls, as they had them all crew cut so that it is easier to take care. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Are you here to teach us new things?’ As they gabbled with their broken English, I looked around —— there was nothing in the room but variegated walls. That moment, I was too surprise to speak even a single word, so did my friends. That was all they had, a broken carpet which they can lie down, four empty walls where they can draw on and several volunteers who can tell them something about the outside world, a world beyond the walls.

‘Wow, beautiful long hair.’ Without my notification, a little girl was standing beside me, trying to touch my hair on tiptoe. I crouched and smiled to her, ‘you can have it when you grow up.’ She fondled my hair carefully and muttered, ‘nice, nice hair.’ Suddenly, I felt a lump in my throat, trying to hold back the hot brimming tears. Never can I deny that what I could bring to her was just my pygmy effort. When I looked into her eyes, all I wanted was to bring her as much happiness as I could. ‘Girls with long hair can dance, can you? I want to learn to dance.’ She took up my hands with her little rawboned ones.

I started to teach her some basic ballet steps. A few moments later, another four girls joined us, ‘what kind of dance is it?’ they asked. ‘Ballet.’ ‘What is Ballet?’ They seemed confused. ‘It is a kind of dance that only princesses can do.’ Upon hearing the word ‘princess’, I saw smiles on their sallow small faces. They were trying so hard to stand on their toes, to follow my motions, to act like little princesses. The ponderous atmosphere in this empty room was brought back to life. Even though the country is impoverished and backward, kids have their own rights of pursuing happiness.

That evening, I went back through the same narrow meandering footpath. I turned my head and looked at the orphanage house over my shoulder. Under the setting sun, I could only recognize the silhouette of the building. ‘It is your castle, my little princesses.’ I said to it.