Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

In Part 1, the author introduces himself as a young, 20-something American man, who has been living and working in Prague since graduating from college in the United States. Bored and ready to shake things up, Grennan happens upon a brochure asking volunteers to come to Nepal and help at an orphanage. Grennan decides rather spontaneously to travel to Nepal and volunteer at the orphanage for three months. He plans his time at the orphanage to be his first stop on a year-long tour of the world. Grennan admits that his primary motive for wanting to volunteer in Nepal is that it will impress his friends, family, and any attractive women he might meet at a bar. Far less of a concern to Grennan is the danger and magnitude of caring for orphaned children in a war zone. While Grennan understands that a civil war is currently unfolding in Nepal, he downplays the problem. “No organization was going to send volunteers into a conflict zone,” he reckons.

Immediately upon arriving in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital and largest city, Grennan is shocked at the appearance of soldiers and armored vehicles at the airport and lining the city’s streets. From the airport, Grennan travels within Kathmandu’s district of Thamel, which is an embassy-run compound that attracts tourists, such as backpackers. While in the district, Grennan attends a short volunteer training program. Before beginning his volunteer work at the orphanage, he also treks to Mount Everest’s Base Camp.

The orphanage where Grennan will volunteer is in a town called Godawari, located six miles from Kathmandu. The orphanage in Godawari is called the Little Princes Children’s Home, named after the children’s book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). The orphanage was founded by a French woman named Sandra. In Grennan’s book, “Little Princes” comes to refer to both the physical orphanage and the 18 children who live within it.

Grennan becomes closely acquainted with another volunteer, Farid, who is a 21-one-year-old Frenchman. Farid displays a calm, dependable demeanor that Grennan greatly appreciates. The orphanage also depends on the work of multiple Nepalese villagers who help with the cooking, cleaning, and house management.

At the orphanage, Grennan becomes better acquainted with Nepal’s most common dish: daal bhat. Daal bhat is rice with lentils that is eaten for both breakfast and dinner. Despite feeling overwhelmed by how to help care for the home’s 18 children—16 boys and 2 girls—he immediately adapts to life at the orphanage and becomes fast friends the kids, who love to jump on him and invite him to play. “As it turns out,” he writes with humor, “wondering what you’re supposed to do in an orphanage is like wondering what you’re supposed to do at the running of the bulls in Spain—you work it out pretty quickly” (16).

Unlike other areas of Nepal, Kathmandu Valley, including Godawari, is still under the king’s control and therefore relatively safe from attack or occupation by Maoist rebels. Somewhat separated from the war raging outside of Kathmandu, Grennan and the children are able to carry on relatively normal lives. The author describes life at the orphanage, including the children’s routines of waking, eating, washing, going to school, bedtime, and his amusing conversations with them.

When one of the boys, Santosh, becomes ill, Grennan and Sandra take him to the hospital where Grennan is shocked by the filthy conditions and the lack of staff and supplies. “As nervous as I felt now, in this strange Third World hospital,” Grennan writes, “I realized this was not the time for me to be afraid. I was the parent now” (50). Grennan’s feelings of insecurity dissipate when he sees that the children depend on his help.

When the author’s three-month volunteering stint comes to a close, he plans to leave Nepal and keep traveling around the world. Unlike most of the orphanage’s volunteers, however, he promises the Little Princes that he will return in a year.