How does a mother feel when she gives birth to a child. It’s the same feeling every time a child is brought”

Kathmandu:

She says she stopped counting after her two-hundreth child. And Elizabeth Mendez is against the thought of calling her home an orphanage. Hundreds of children have found a safe haven in her home and many have had better lives because of her.

To everyone she is Mummy Mendez.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know my own name anymore,” she says.

Mummy Mendez’s journey started way back when she was 12. “When I was 12, God spoke to me and said that I should go to an eastern country to help children,” she says.

Later she got involved with the Salvation Army in her hometown in Canada, which mainly focused on social work in third world countries. It was through this she came to Calcutta (now Kolkata). She befriended Tom Mendez during her stay then and later married him.

Of snake charmers and dentures

She came to India at a time when the Westerner’s idea of the country was one of snake charmers and elephants. As a young woman in her late twenties with braces on her teeth, her only concern was that she would not find a dentist to take care of the braces. So before venturing on her lifelong journey, she convinced her dentist to pull out all her teeth and replace those with dentures.

But as fate would have it — after reaching Calcutta, she found that a German dentist lived just a few houses away from her.

Life begins in Nepal

The Mendezes moved to Nepal on February 25, 1956.

“My husband opened the Snow View Hotel, the first hotel in Nepal,” she says.

And Elizabeth was happy working as a hotelier’s wife looking after guests. However, one day she fell into and went into a coma for three days.

“God spoke to me then and said your work is not finished. I will send you children and you will look after them,” she says.

And of the children who have been sent to her she says that almost everyone has a sad story. She has never gone in search of a child, people who have heard of her have brought the children to her.

“How does a mother feel when she gives birth to a child. It’s the same feeling every time a child is brought,” she says.

Her kids’ stories

Mummy Mendez remembers each and every child who have found shelter in her home, and has experienced touching moments with many of them in her 50 years of taking care of them.

“There was a baby girl, just six months old, in a basket left at a temple to die. I picked her up and took her to the doctor. The doctor asked me, ‘If we take her to the hospital and fight for her life, then what?’ I will take her, I answered,” she says.

Then there was a child who whose parents had been burnt by Maoists. The child cried for 24 hours. “But now he is my joy,” says Mummy.

Then she remembers another boy whose kidneys had stopped functioning.

“We let him do whatever he wanted. After living with us for two years, he died. But in those two years he was very happy,” she says.

A boy with paralysis was brought in. He refused to walk. But gradually he started walking and even rides a motorbike with training wheels now.

All over the world

Unlike other places when a child is 16, s/he is sent out, they look after him/her till they become self-reliant. Today her children are studying in places like the US, Germany, Australia and many keep writing back to her.

She has also married off her daughters and attended her sons’ weddings.

“I feel very very happy and thrilled to see most of them doing so well,” she says.

Today she 70 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren (two from her

own son).

Raising so many children has certainly not been an easy task.

“Of course, there were problems, but God took care of us. I was obedient to the Lord and he has blessed me,” she says. “I am satisfied with what I have done. Most of these children would have been dead, but now they are looking after others,” she adds.

Happy Birthday Mummy Mendez

On special occasions like Mother’s Day, her birthday and Christmas, children who have found their own home drop in to wish her.

“We never know how many may turn up, but we always have to be prepared,” she says.

And this year she will surely have to be fully prepared as her children come to wish her a Happy 90th Birthday on September 30.