Balloon animals

A previous volunteer here at the Annapurna home had left about two hundred modelling balloons, some of which had been injudiciously handed out to keep the children amused. Of course, you need a pair of lungs like an opera singer to inflate the things unassisted (note to self: ask Kate Spence if she can blow up a modelling balloon), so they found their use chiefly as sling-shots. They make very good sling-shots, by the way, and the children – being the destructive geniuses they are – made clever use of things like lolly wrappers and sticks to improve their weapons. (The balloons also make great water-bombs. You can fill the entire thing with water, over a metre long, creating the water-bomb equivalent of a bunker-buster). Dried corn, it was decided, makes the best ammunition for the sling-shots and produces terrific welts at close range.

Sristi – a Nepali fly-girl. She has nothing to do with this post, she’s just such a cutie I can’t resist sticking her picture in. We get on so well that if there was a Mrs Vaughanbo, Sristi would be coming home with me.

Meanwhile, from the safety of the rooftop, I had noticed what looked like a balloon pump lying on top of a nearby building (not as improbable as it sounds – I suspect it came with the balloons and got thrown there by a child. Or a frustrated volunteer, come to think. Its location should have perhaps set some alarm bells jangling, but I had the idea stuck in my head by now). So I determined to retrieve said pump and put the balloons to their rightful purpose in order to keep the children entertained and reduce the casualty list and the risk to the neighbourhood dogs.

(At this point wiser heads than mine will be reading this and gently shaking themselves in a presentiment of the tragedy to come. All I can say in my defence is that I had the best of intentions. Let history be my judge).

First off, I climbed up and got the pump. It wasn’t specifically a balloon pump but I tried it out and it did the trick. I then retreated to the seclusion of my room and  inflated a few experimental balloons and tried to remember how to make some animals. My entire repertoire consisted of a doggie, a swan and a sword, which I didn’t think would suffice, so I extemporised a hat and even managed to pull off a four-balloon bicycle. Right then. Satisfied that my skills were as sharp as ever (which is about as sharp as a balloon, coincidentally), I was ready for an audience. I could hear the children raising merry hell in the kitchen as Hari and Sita – the two helper mothers who live here – were attempting to organise a meal. I stuffed my pockets with balloons and placed the pump under my arm, cocked my balloon-hat on a jaunty angle and walked to the kitchen, doggie, sword and swan in hand.

“Righto. Who wants a balloon animal?”

Examples of my mutant balloon animals. Prizes if you can guess which is which.

The pièce de résistance, a bicycle. In case it wasn’t obvious.

Looking with hindsight at the equation of two hundred balloons, twenty one children and one pump it doesn’t take a genius to realise I was asking for trouble. Nevertheless, I weathered the initial storm and managed to drag everyone outside where I began inflating, tying and twisting for all I was worth.

Balloon mayhem ensued for the next hour. The loud reports of exploding balloons echoed around the neighbourhood and the locals must have thought the Maoist insurrection had reignited in Pokhara.

After the carnage, amidst the crying children and shredded rubber, I surveyed the wreckage of my brilliant idea. A number of doggies had to be put down. Several swans were horribly maimed and vicious sword fights had erupted over purloined hats. There had even been an attempted escape on the balloon bicycle (I didn’t get very far).

Of course, all I had really achieved was to increase the availability of weapons-grade rubber, and it was now that the violence started in earnest.

Bushan, wearing his balloon hat with style.

The sophistication of the sling-shots evolved rapidly and some of the high-power versions were using four balloons (that’s two dead doggies and a brace of swans), and my repeated warnings about not aiming at each other were having little effect. One too many crying kiddies rubbing a welted back and it was time for a crack-down. I opened another front in the War on Terror and the balloon went up (so to speak) on Operation Enduring Freedom (Nepal).

Secret footage of a terrorist training camp, deep in the Ureweras.

A baby-faced assassin taking aim. At me.

Martial law was declared and civil liberties were trampled left, right and centre amid a number of unlawful search-and-seizures. The result was the recovery of a number of weapons and a large amount of ammunition, with minimal losses to our own forces. The operation was a complete success and we expect to effect a full troop withdrawal any day now. Any day.

Confiscated weapons and ammo.

Although it was not an Iran-Contra sized blunder, the irony of being the supplier of the weapons I was now confiscating was not lost on me. If anyone had been injured and questions asked about who the idiot was who had given balloons to the children, I would have relied on the vaunted Ollie North defence: “I have no recollection of that event.”