Thank-you to a new friend for inspiring me and for sharing some beautiful poetry. Here is one I would like to share with all of you:

The children write at least two or three times a year.

“Dear sponsor, Nancy and Tom,

With sweet remembrance.

How are you? I am fine here and hope you are also good or fine there. I am reading in Grade 8. I have finished first term exam and our result is coming nearer. I expect to be under the 10th position or rank (in my class). In Kathmandu it is hot due to summer season. But in summer season more fruits are grown like: mango, guava, etc. There is basket-ball court in our school but not maintain, and there is no coach. Our school do (does) not participate in all basket-ball tournament.

In early 2007 I wrote this email to a new sponsor:

I am home again and at last able to sit and write you a bit about your sponsored child.

Her name is Shanti BK and she is 6-7 years old. Ages in Nepal are often indeterminate because villagers rarely record the date of birth. She will probably enter school in Nursery (her Grade or Class).She has likely had no previous schooling.

She is from the Dalit caste (formerly called untouchable). BK stands for Biswa Karma, or Iron Workers. Her Father is Lal Bahadur BK and her Mother is Dahn BK. They are kamyas or bonded laborers.Yes, it is amazing but this kind of thing still exists.

Fager wanted to go to school so badly but her parents could only scrape together enough to send her older sister. Fager waited. She asked her father not to buy any more chicken (a rare luxury) for the family but instead save that money to help pay her school fees. It broke her Father’s heart that he could not fulfill this simple desire of his bright and motivated little girl. Each year she begged to go to school and her Father had to tell her there was no money.

Starting this journal is an opportunity to reflect on the 13 years that have passed since I sponsored my first child, Punya Lama, in Kathmandu, Nepal. At the time it seemed the most natural thing to do... help a child get an education. Share my good fortune. Make a contribution in Nepal, a country that I had come to love deeply and whose people had captured my heart. I had no way of knowing that this would evolve and grow and take me places I could never have envisioned.

Now we sponsor 40 children and have plans to support many more. Punya has grown up, graduated and is finding his footing as an adult. We still email and chat regularly and I have a special affection for him… he was my first “child”.