Stichting Veldwerk at Nepal

Secretariaat: Stichting Veldwerk Postbus 163 1850 AD Heiloo The Netherlands

Tel:+31 (0)72-5339585 veldwerk@wlink.com.np IBAN nr. NL51ABNA0543703266 Attn. Stichting Veldwerk, p/a Egmond binnen Bank: ABN-Amro 543703266

With thanks to all Santa Clauses ….

Because...it was time for Santa Claus. And people assumed I wouldn't be bothered with that in Nepal? On the contrary!

The story goes like this. Last year around the same time we had 2 Belgian trainees Ophelie and Leen and they introduced this Dutch/Belgian festival. Santa Claus is a good holy man from Spain that, so the children are told, travels the world on his white horse the night before December 5 to give all the “good” children a present. Every child puts his or her shoe in front of the chimney filled with carrots for the horse and drawings for Santa Claus and they sing songs just before they go to bed. At night Santa's helpers climb down the chimney (so they look black) and leave the presents. Imagine this festival in our home. The trainees even got the children to sing “Sinterklaas kapoentje” which is a song in Dutch! I wasn't that pleased to start with but why not!
This year of course the children were wondering if Santa Claus would come. So we celebrated again.

In the meantime the Dutch Consulate in Kathmandu requested if I would be willing to act as Black Helper at a Dutch School. That was okay but only if Santa Claus would drop by our home too! So that's how it all started.


The days before the event the gifts were wrapped, the children studied on more songs and made drawings. December 4 we baked “pepernoten” (like small cookies). All in all a lot of fun.


Saturday December 6 Santa Claus would stop at our home and on the night of December 5 all 27 children put their shoe in front of the door. During the day the children bought carrots and hay at the shop nearby (I brought the stuff there myself a few hours before). Than they wrote down on a piece of paper what they would like to get from Santa and all that they put in their shoes. Before bedtime they sang a song and the Didi would check if Santa was really coming.


They were surprised the next morning to see their shoes filled with balloons and candy. That night they saw Santa and his black helpers and they knew a lot about the children, when they were naughty or good. Above all they enjoyed the “pepernoten”.


And all these gifts?
They were brought by our volunteers and other visitors to the children home. For example napkins from Univé a insurance company, (who would think that?) and belief me, we can sure use them for our little ones. We also got a box with drawing pencils and other material, watches, a calculator, small cars and so on.


We had to buy a few extra gifts but that money too we got from generous people. For instance a cassette player for our dance teacher who complained about the bad quality of the old one. Not only that, Santa also brought a brand new cd player.....isn't it a lovely person?





So thanks to all Santa Clauses in name of our children of Hamro Niwas in Kathmandu,

René Veldt, Stichting Veldwerk, Nepal.