Serki Sherpa grew up as Heike's godchild at the Buddha Memorial Children's Home. After successfully completing his studies, he worked as a teacher for several years. In 2015, he rented a house with his wife Laxmi and founded the Yamuna Children's Home. Since then, they have been looking as a family after their own and 30 other children from poor backgrounds, most of whom come from small mountain villages.
The school is only a 3-minute walk away and teaches from Nursery to LKG, UKG to Year 10. As is usual in Nepal, school lessons are from Sunday to Friday, 8am to 3pm.
The food at the children's home is simple but healthy. They usually eat the Nepalese national dish Dal Bhat (rice with lentils) with vegetables from their own garden. Once a week it is enriched with egg, once with chicken. For breakfast, mostly chapati (flatbread), occasionally noodle soup (thukpa) and rarely fruit, as this is quite expensive.
On Saturday, the day off school, it's time to clean the house together, do the laundry and help in the garden. The remaining free time is often used for playing, with the boys preferring to go to the nearby football pitch, while the girls tend to have fun dancing, jumping rope or playing Gummitwist.
