This reminds me of a situation this March. The travel group which had so happily joined us in celebrating the inauguration of our Centre gives us their farewell and boards the coach. We are standing in front of the hotel, waving our hands.
Suddenly, one of the participants has the idea that she could leave her solid sandals in Nepal – she could easily do without them in Dortmund. She gets off the coach again and gives me her sandals.
Next to me is Manosh, a boy of 15 years or so. We just had had operated his club-foot, enabling him to walk almost normally. I give him the sandals. They are just his size, and   Manosh is happy! He owns two matching shoes for the first time in his life!
His radiating face lightens up the entire travel group, and our friends leave for the airport deeply moved and happy.
Again and again on our home journey, Manosh proudly looks at his feet, hardly believing it, and all the other boys and girls in the Centre are delighted with him.  

There are many other people at Shanti who are currently happy:
all of those for whom the new Centre is a real home now.
The removal of furniture in September was incredibly turbulent, and not everybody and everything has already found its final place.
In the summer, we already had a foretaste of the chaos of moving to come.
Our Centre is designed with so much love that external investors were interested in it, especially the Clinic. One of the investors even saw himself as the future director.
When the patients noticed this, you should have seen their immediate reaction, defending their home! Within one single day, an open-bed truck drove to the new station and back to the old one again every hour - with its hazardous load of mattresses, chairs, tables, workshop utensils etc. Every room was somehow occupied in the evening of that day.
The investors had apparently not thought of the clinic not only being a building, but a home for hundreds of people, who defended it - peacefully, but purposefully.
The investors have understood in the meantime: you cannot deprive more than one thousand people of their home. They do not dare come to our territory any longer. We are happy to see that!
The patients, both women and men, are feeling secure now, and we are also sure of one thing: The Centre does belong to those for whom it was really built.

They are proud of making it THEIR Centre by decorating it with all their efforts:   Jogendra, one of our most talented painters, had the idea of painting the most important Gods from their Hindu religion on our doors. In the clinic and the workshops, people coming in and going out are greeted by Ganesh, Shiva, Krishna, Laxmi and all the other Gods and Goddesses, giving them a feeling of safety (we only have a few Christians here, the same as with Buddhists and Muslims).   

As a whole, the station is marked by a refreshing spirit of optimism.
It is with a fully new conception that the team has reformed itself, having pleasure in the design work. It is a pleasure for me to see the women gradually daring to introduce their own ideas, and in a more and more natural and creative manner. This is (unfortunately) rather new and unusual in Nepalese society to date. 

A special enrichment is Mompta. She is a qualified dancer from a family of artists: her mother is also a dancer, and her father is Hom-Nath, one of Nepal’s best tabla players of Nepal. He and some other musicians helped with the organization of our inauguration ceremony.
Mompta lived in Germany and Switzerland for some years before returning to Nepal. In Germany, she succeeded in converting a poorly frequented restaurant into a cultural café with much effort and imagination. In Switzerland she worked in a home for the elderly.