On one of these house visits, Jacques was faced with a boy, being locked up in a cage. A heavily retarded teenager, locked up like a dog as the only sollution to protect him from himself. It immediately reminded me of a case in Holland (The Jolanda Venema case) causing an outrage amongst the Dutch people when it became public she was chained naked inside one of the mental clinics in 1988. For the parents of this boy, it is the only way that the can have him with them and make him see a little of the life outside the house, that is within their power. Too many times I came across a situation here, where the parents were in denial of their handicapped child, locking him or her away on a dark addict or in a cellar. So through this perspective you could say that at least these parents accept their child's condition and thrying the best they can.

There are too many cases of weak, underfed and handicapped children in the village where Jaques is active as a volunteer. Basanta Raut is another example, he broke hisarm on three points, duet o falling out of a three when he was little. Since there was no money for hospital treatment he got fixed by a local medicin man, causing his bones to disfigure, making it impossible for him to use his arm in a normal way. We took this boy to the orthopedic hospital in Kathmandu, where Doctor Pierre Soete broke his arm in order to place rightly position the bones. Basanta is at the moment recovering from the surgery back in his parents' place and we're going to follow up on him to ensure that he's doing ok.

Other cases in the village are a little girl, which has the syndrom of down. She is covered with filth, walking naked around in the village, a girl with a skin disease which disfigured her face as if she has been seriously burnt, and a multiple handicapped boy, suffering from a type of Cerebral Palsy. Furthermore, this area is only populated with poor people, often sending their children way too young to the city for labour since they can not support them.
Also, children are sold to 'brokers', selling them on to perform child-labour under horrible circumstances against low or no salary. Often these kids escape from the carpet- and stone factories and the junkyards in order to find a better life in the city. In reality this means they end up on the street, begging, selling themselves as prostitutes, sniffing glue and sleeping with the street dogs.

The girl pictured below roams the streets every morning around 06.00 for garbage that she can recycle. She became good friends with the garbage men, who let her ride along on their truck, while her mother is waiting a little further down the road to collect today's profit from her. When she says goodbye to the men it is sad to realise that she is likely to meet them again in some time, when she becomes 15 she will make a forced career move, like the many other girls in her position, which does not include garbage but is as least as filthy.





So in short, Nepal is a beautiful country with an open and friendly population, but it is not all gold that glitters!
At the moment we are building a daycare centre next to our new children's house for the poor children of the area. In this school the children, of whom girls get priority in the admission selection, receive free education. Students that do well are provided with a scholarship for secondary education on regular schools. All of this, in order to break the vicious circle of poverty that these children are in.
For allready some time now, Stichting Veldwerk in the Netherlands is working together with the Liliane foundation from Den Bosch, the Netherlands, to see what we can improve in the life of handicapped children here.

For helping these children, we still need your help!

With Regards, Rene Veldt,

Stichting Veldwerk, actions speak louder than words.