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Oanh Vovan feeding hungry dogs in Swayambhunath, Nepal.
Oanh Vovan has taken on the responsibility of feeding dozens of desperate dogs and monkeys in Kathmandu, Nepal. Some meals are offered on a daily basis and there are two weekly trips to Swayambhunath where dogs and monkeys receive food. Each offering involves nearly 100 pounds of home cooked food (meat and rice) as well as fruits, vegetables, and bread for the monkeys. About 100 animals are fed at a time. International Merit Box grants were offered the past two years to Oanh to help with her compassionate activity. Here Oanh Vovan shares her story.
Some monkeys who are the beneficiaries of Oanh Vovan’s kindness.
I started feeding the stray dogs in Bombay, India, on my way to school while serving as the head of foreign languages at the American School there. I have continued offering food to stray animals for the past eight years in Kathmandu, Nepal.
It never occurred to me, before living in Asia, to feed animals. Coming from my hometown of Paris, France, the only dogs I would see in the streets were all pets—spoiled and cherished. In India and Nepal you oftentimes encounter “walking skeletons,” which are dogs that have gotten so skinny you wonder how long they have been suffering from hunger and thirst.
Some of the prep required to feed dozens of hungry animals.
I usually go twice a week to Swayambhunath Temple so I wake up around 6 A.M. and cook forty-five to sixty-five pounds of meat and bones, and fifty-five pounds of rice for several hours for the dogs. The monkeys are vegetarian, so I buy some vegetables, fruit, and bread for them. Once ready I book a taxi and feed all the dogs along the way from my apartment in Lazimpat to Swayambhunath Temple.
Often I meet angry shopkeepers who complain that feeding the dogs dirties their street, but after twenty minutes the food is totally gone because once the dogs have eaten, the crows and pigeons clean up the leftover food, so there’s no waste. On rare occasions people give me a thumbs up and once in all these years a couple stopped me to contribute some money toward the food.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has advised on what mantras to recite and play while cooking the meat and feeding the animals. Eventually, I aim to feed the dogs vegetarian food.
Oanh Vovan first arrived at Kopan Monastery as a young trekker from Paris a few months after the passing of Lama Yeshe in 1984. She lived at Maitreya Institute in the mid-1980s and also worked for International Office (then called Central Office) at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa before Lama Zopa Rinpoche advised her to go to Nepal for five years. After her time in Kathmandu she studies at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in McLeod Ganj, India. She became head of the Foreign Languages Department at the American School of Bombay, India, where she worked for nineteen years. When she retired in 2014 she began designing for Mandala Silk Design. She has been feeding stray animals, starting in India, for nineteen years. She lives in Kathmandu.
Through the generosity of Merit Box practitioners around the world, the International Merit Box Project has awarded US$1,154,905 in grants to Dharma projects and communities since 2001. Grants are awarded for FPMT centers, projects, services, and study groups, and for initiatives managed by FPMT International Office or initiatives elsewhere that further the mission of FPMT. Read the full list of 2021 Merit Box grant recipients and learn how to join in Merit Box practice.
There are many ways one can help care for vulnerable animals and also to help animals create merit and purify negativities to help plant the seeds for enlightenment. Students can access our Benefiting Animals page to learn about how to complete animal liberation practices; perform animal blessings with mantras and holy objects; make charity to ants; bless oceans, seas, lakes, and other bodies of water; benefit insects and other small beings; stop animal sacrifice in Nepal; and benefit turkeys eaten during Thanksgiving, among other ideas for benefiting animals in the short and long term.