Following 'Day of the Dogs' on Saturday and 'bailo' on Sunday, today was 'bai tikar' day where sisters worship their brothers and shower them with gifts. There is no equivalent 'bahini tikar' day for brothers to demonstrate their appreciation of their sisters so you can imagine my opinion of this tradition! But it was another lovely day up at the refuge. My boss gave a presentation to a group of Americans who are currenty visiting several projects in the country. Following this we went up to the refuge where the children gave a repeat performance of their repertoire which I feel like I have seen countless times now! The children were tikared and received some sweets and gifts. Above is another picture of me and my tikar and marigold garland which smelled lovely. One of the staff spent hours making over a hundred of the garlands. You cannot really see but the tikar was a lot more intricate this time with various colours dotted down a central white line - it was really beautiful.
Afterwards I finally got to visit the mosaic workshop up in the hills of the town. Several of the older resuced girls have been trained to make mosaics to give them the ability to be self-sufficient and earn a good wage. Several professional mosaic artists have visited and trained the girls involved and the results are stunning. I don't think you can really tell from the photos above so you'll have to take my word for it. To finally give you a bit of context to the work out here please have a look at this clip from a television programme explaining the reasons behind the charity and its early days (although this is quite old), there is also a newspaper article in the Nepali times chronicling the most recent rescue mission along with the current website for more information.
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