Nepal diary

Fruit bats

2011-01-08T15:27:00.003+05:30

Just about the only attractive element of the Social Welfare Council building and grounds in the midst of Thamel, Kathmandu, was the rather attractive mature trees that lined either side of the entrance road. They were home to a large colony of fruit bats, no doubt providing just about the only safe haven to these lovely creatures in the midst of the clutter of Kathmandu. Driving past today, as has been my custom, I looked up to see the enchanting shapes of the fruit bats hanging from the trees to be horrified by the sight of bare trunks, reminiscent of the pictures of the battlefields of Ypres. I have seen this kind of behaviour before where it seems that many local people are averse to the sight of greenery and prefer trees to be brought firmly to heel quite needlessly.

By contrast in yesterday's Himalayan Times there was a front page headline trumpeting that the Kathmandu ring road was about to go green with a green belt to be developed either side of that filthy thoroughfare. No mention of controlling the disgusting vehicles that ply along the road churning out thick exhaust fumes that no one seems to bother much about. Oh, and the article said that there was no budget for this new scheme. That'll be the end of that then.

Nepal Tourism Year baloney

2011-01-02T20:51:00.002+05:30

2011 has been declared as Nepal Tourism Year (NTY) by the Nepal Tourism Board, with its official launch due to happen on the 14th January. However everyone has been getting very excited by NTY months in advance and over the weekend we have seen pictures in the press of rather bemused, no doubt jet-lagged, tourists being greeted and garlanded at the airport as the first visitors of this auspicious year.

Nepal attracts around 600,000 tourists per year by air and by land although that baseline figure is far from clearly established. Some put the figure as high as 900,000, possibly - and most likely falsely - to give the impression that only another 100,000 tourists need to be attracted to reach the lofty 1,000,000 target. So how have the rhetoric and aspirations been translated into actions on the ground?

In the run up to NTY significant preparations have been hard to discern although political parties have stated that they will do their bit to make the initiative a success by, er, not calling protest strikes in 2011. If they hold to this that will provide some relief to a country that saw strikes on 125 days out of 365 last year. Over the past couple of weeks and rather belatedly (due to the delayed release of a budget for NTY) some tourist attractions have been getting a last minute face lift. These gestures overlook the fact that such dollying up has little or no impact on tourists who book what are expensive trips to Nepal months in advance and that many visitors from previous years, who could have been excellent prospects for revisiting the country, have probably vowed to never set foot in the country again having felt the inconvenience of previous strike actions.

Setting this aside, there are infrastructure problems to circumvent like the chronic failure of Nepal's one international airport to cope with existing throughput of tourists. Also, they will certainly not be ferried into the country in great numbers by the national flag carrier airline, Nepal Airlines Corporation with its one serviceable aircraft and 1,400 somewhat disgruntled staff. Once in country travellers between Kathmandu and Nepal's second main tourist city, Pokhara, have to contend with a deeply-rutted highway that is almost impassable. Alternatively they could fly but with three fatal domestic aircrashes in 2010 that carries a risk that some might baulk at.

So how will these ambitious targets be achieved and who can save the day? Step forward Mr Sunil Pant, Founder of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersexes (LGBTI) organisation The Blue Diamond Society and Chairman of the Pink Mountain travel and tour agency. The admirable and normally very level Sunil has joined the frenzy and poppycock by suggesting that of the 1,000,000 no fewer than 200,000 will be made up of LGBTI visitors. It is hard to imagine what could attract so many tourists of this sexual orientation who are unlikely to be excited by a few spruced up temples. One wonders also how his claims could possibly be verified in due course unless the level of information that is sought on disembarkation documentation becomes unpleasantly intrusive.

Anyway, let's hope that this initiative makes Nepal a pleasanter, more fun place to be in 2011 in spite of the political clouds that are now hovering well above the horizon.

Spot the New Year resolution

2011-01-02T15:21:00.003+05:30

Oh yes, I am back after a short silence. I abandoned this blog in late 2009 as the pressure of work had become just too intense for me to continue to write this and still enjoy it. I don't believe the workload is going to be any less this year but it seems likely that it will become more focussed on Nepal and India and I'll feel that bit less stretched. It feels great to be writing this journal again - I have really missed it.

I have a number of goals for this year, some personal, some public. One of the latter is to run the London Marathon on the 17th April. This will be my first marathon event, my greatest previous competitive distance being 10km. At 51 I am aiming to be more of a tortoise rather than a hare but I am sure I will complete the course even if lasting the full 26.2 miles is a matter of pride mentally or through resort to hands and knees physically. Training is well underway and today I passed the psychological barrier of running for over two hours for the first time when I ran two hours two minutes around the Bhaisepati planning area on the outskirts of Kathmandu. This is a perfect training area as it is flat, has clean(ish) air and very little traffic to contend with. The only downside is to reflect upon how Mother Nature is losing out to the "planning" with fields surrendering almost by the day to new - and rather grotesque - buildings that seem to be sprouting up everywhere. In just a few years time this last little patch of green just outside the ring road will have gone for ever.

The running effort will be all worthwhile though as I am now half way (when gift aid is included) towards achieving my fundraising goal of raising £20k in sponsorship for the charity I founded in 1999, The Esther Benjamins Trust. You can add to my total with ease through my online sponsorship form. Thanks for that in anticipation.

I wonder how long my New Year resolution will last for?

School mosaics

2009-08-25T20:51:00.011+05:30

During my holiday on the Scilly Isles during July I couldn't help but notice the little school on the island of Tresco. The outside wall was covered with mosaic, and although the mosaic work wasn't technically so well executed it was very sweet indeed. The children had clearly had a lot of fun going hands on with the piece and embedding in the mosaic ceramic inserts that depicted various aspects of island life.

The concept is actually not so remarkable as mosaics are increasingly popular in schools in the UK. It got me thinking today about how we could be innovative in developing education and school development projects here in Nepal. I can see the potential for school-based fundraising in the UK (which is lucrative) being used to support named schools in Nepal. And a share of the funds raised could be dedicated towards making a mosaic at the schools which would not only give work to some of the Trust's beneficiaries but also provide an eyecatching feature at what would probably be otherwise very grim schools.

I am now in contact with a mosaic artist in the UK who has good links with a large number of UK schools and is willing to help. Nepal will be a more colourful place in future and some of its poorest children a little better educated.

ITC

2009-08-24T20:29:00.003+05:30

When I first came to live in Nepal almost five years ago I attended a month long language course at the rather grandly named Intercultural Training and Research Institute in Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu. In spite of its two staff members it was a great course and my teacher, Parbati, was brilliant. The problem was that I forgot all my Nepali within a week or two of starting work here as English is the lingua franca within the development sector.

Today I returned to ITC for the first time since then and once again Parbati is my teacher. From now on I am determined to have a two hour session at lunchtime every other day until I have a working knowledge of the language. Hmmmm. Today, at my request, we started with the Nepali alphabet which consists of 11 vowels and 36 consonants. At the end of class I took a picture of Parbati's whiteboard. This in on the right.

Wish me luck.

Resignation

2009-05-04T16:35:00.002+05:30

This afternoon the (Maoist) Prime Minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka "Prachanda", resigned in a televised address to the nation. This followed his attempted sacking of the Army chief yesterday (see yesterday's post) being overruled by the President, Ram Baran Yadav. I imagine other Maoist ministers will follow suit later on today.

I do have some empathy for Mr Dahal. Last year he stated that he'd found it easier to manage a conflict during the "People's War" than to run the country in peacetime. Nepal can be a very frustrating place to try and get positive results or to attempt to move quickly with any kind of initiative. It's a shame that there is such inertia as underneath it all the economic possibilities for this country are huge in spite of this being the world's fourteenth poorest nation.

Caterwauling in Kathmandu

2009-05-03T19:28:00.004+05:30

Today the Maoist Prime leadership in the coalition government of Nepal decided to sack the head of the Nepalese Army, General Rookmangud Katawal.

This controversial move was the culmination of deliberations over the last couple of weeks as to what to do with a General who had, on the face of it, taken decisions in what he saw as being in the best interests of the Army but that went against the wishes of the government as the ultimate authority within a democracy. The dismissal has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons with Maoist opponents believing that the Maoists are pursuing an agenda of securing supreme control through the emasculation of the Army (along with the judiciary and the media).

These national concerns are reflected in India, whose ambassador to Nepal has been shuttling between Kathmandu and Delhi in a bid to convey the displeasure of the Indian government at the prospect of Katwal's removal. For India has its own Maoist insurgency and the authorities there are very concerned about a sympathetic regime in Nepal supporting that cause. The Nepalese army has been seen by the Indians as a bulwark against a Maoist takeover and they made it known that they would oppose the sacking of Katawal which they could not acknowledge as being an internal matter for Nepal. It remains to be seen how India will retaliate.

Meanwhile, the other main parties in Nepal have all objected to apparent Maoist high-handedness and this evening one of the coalition government partners, the mainstream communist party, pulled out of government. As for Katawal he has refused to accept his dismissal.

So this Sunday evening everything is up in the air. It is quite predictable that the coming week will see widespread protests and demonstrations both for and against the decision to fire Katawal. Of course I have no view one way or the other, but this kind of disruption doesn't help with us trying to get on with the task of making Nepal a better place for its children. This is the worst that the situation has been in Nepal for a very long time.

Oh no, it's the breeding season....

2009-05-02T19:18:00.006+05:30

...for snakes. Our snake in the garden problem became worse today as we spotted two of them, writhing and intertwined in ecstasy. Soon we'll have a real infestation. All we need now is an outbreak of snake flu to compound the problem further.

Concerned by the possibility of the snakes being venomous I had bought a couple of days ago the definitive text on the subject "The Herpetology of Nepal" by Dr T K Shrestha.

It didn't help much as many of the pictures were in black and white and the descriptions included statements like "the females lay eggs" and "the pupils are round". I wasn't going close enough today to find out the shape of the pupils of the snake in question but I imagine that they were fairly dilated. My best guess is that this is a common rat snake which is only aggressive when attacked, so sooner or later my dog Bryher is in for a shock.

Today marked the start of my two year old's sex education - "what is those snakes doing?" she asked. This must be Nepal's variation on the birds and the bees.

Missing the point

2009-05-01T09:03:00.003+05:30

One of our partner NGOs in Nepal, the Nepal Child Welfare Foundation (NCWF), is based in Bhairahawa which is just 20km from the birthplace of the Buddha at Lumbini. The Lumbini Garden, which measures 7.7 square kilometres, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been developed over the years by the Lumbini Development Trust. It includes the spot where the Buddha was born in 623 B.C. and incorporate within its large area a number of temples that reflect the differing temple architecture of Buddhist nations around the world.

As part of my charity fundraising this year, I had planned to complete my fourth 10km run at a new event we'd set up ourselves as "The Lumbini 10km". The concept was to have an early morning run one Saturday in November that would take sponsored runners through the park area (away from dangerous Nepali traffic) with the event all over and done with by 9 a.m. This would raise badly-needed funds for the NCWF's ongoing childcare and allow me to hit my personal £40k fundraising target. Initial approaches to the Lumbini Development Trust (LDT) were encouraging and included discussions of possible routes with one Board member, Mr Hari Rai. However two days ago our team at last managed to arrange a meeting with Mr Parma Syangbo Sherpa, the Board Secretary. Dressed in his monk's yellow robes he flatly refused permission to allow the event to go ahead, saying that it would disturb the serenity of the place.

I have now written to the LDT, questioning Mr Sherpa's authority to take such a unilateral decision, that has such far reaching consequences, without consulting the Board. Moreover I have pointed out that his stance seems to be at variance with the remit of LDT to develop the site (sensitively and sustainably) as a national and international tourist site. We'll see what the Board says.

But sometimes I feel some of those who are central figures within organised religions are so immersed in their religious practices that they miss the point and forget the (almost universal) central calling to help the most needy members of society.

From a Kathmandu garden

2009-04-30T21:26:00.003+05:30

Here's a picture I took this morning. The snake seems to be resident judging by the number of appearances that it makes in a day, each being accompanied by frantic barking from my two dogs. I don't think it's venomous (only 20 of Nepal's 80 snake species are in that category) but I will buy a book tomorrow so that I can identify the beast and be certain....

My year from Dental School

2009-04-30T21:14:00.003+05:30

Thirty five of us graduated from Queen's University Belfast Dental School in 1982. I am only still in touch with one of the group who continues to serve in the British Army (which I resigned from in 1999). One of the 35 took his own life a couple of years' ago. This evening I picked up this story in the Northern Ireland newspapers about another one of my former fellows:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/accused-dentist-on-suicide-watch-in-jail-14283908.html

An earlier press report suggests Howell also faces charges of drugging and sexually abusing four women who where all former patients. I couldn't have imagined a more benign chap from my peers but I suppose that's what you hear so often said of the worst criminals after the event.

How not to compose a photograph

2009-04-29T20:24:00.005+05:30

I love the imagery that appears in the largest English language paper in Nepal, The Himalayan Times. On the right you see a picture that appeared in today's edition of a presentation of a token of gratitude at a ceremony in Kathmandu yesterday. I love the stoical face of the security guard in the background who just looks like he's involved in someone else's photograph. Or participating in a magic trick.

Too honest

2009-04-28T16:16:00.003+05:30

I've been eyeing up an interesting-looking Indian restaurant just off Pulchowk in Lalitpur called "Masala". But driving past it today I noticed that they are turning a necessity into a virtue with a sign on the door announcing "We care for your health. Closed for pest control". So that one has been dropped off my already very short list of suitable eating out spots in Kathmandu.

Donkeys

2009-04-28T13:18:00.004+05:30

Much has been written in the Nepali press in recent weeks about how NGOs and INGOs may soon to be brought into line by the Government, with greater transparency and contribution towards the "national agenda". No one can challenge the desirability of NGOs showing clearly their sources of income and expenditure; many if not most don't measure up in this regard. I know of one or two NGOs out there who source their funds by withdrawing cash directly from their overseas' donor accounts through an ATM card that they've been given by their funder. That can scarcely be considered to be best practice. I do have problems though with any suggestion that NGO funds, non-governmental funds, might be harnessed towards the greater good as determined by a local governmental agency that might take precedence in decision-making over donor charity Boards and NGO committees. These suggestions - which seem to be strongest in "letters to the editor" sections of the papers - reflect an ignorance of the nature of public giving abroad and that any attempt to hijack funds that are given for a specific purpose, entrusted to Trustees, would undermine the ethos of charitable giving. It is the individual member of the public's right to give their own hard-earned cash towards whatever cause that is dear to their hearts, be it children, animals, the arts, medical research etc. If a donor country doesn't want to receive funds towards what might be seen as fringe issues then all that has by national government is to decline the charity's proposal. The funds can go to another country where the perceived need is as great or greater and where the contribution is welcome even if it doesn't go towards meeting development priorities.

Also, one of the tasks of a charity can be to identify and highlight something that isn't already on "the national agenda" but that most definitely should be. For example, six years ago when The Esther Benjamins Trust began working with the problem of trafficking of children to circuses no one knew anything about this particular problem. Had our modest resources been channelled into paying for other worthy things like providing rehabilitation and training facilities for trafficking survivors (this is high on the national agenda) then Nepali children would still be languishing, abused in the circuses. Instead we were able to get on with the challenge of sorting the problem out and now that child trafficking route is closed down.

Other causes like animal welfare seem to be of only academic interest to many of the decision makers within Nepalese society. Thank goodness for those few good people out there, Westerners and Nepalis, who have made stray dogs and working donkeys issues that need addressing and thank goodness for those overseas who give money that supports the animals' relief. I hope nothing is done in the future that will restrict the activities of such people who may be seen as "eccentric". It is such people that are the bedrock of charities.

Pictured right is a donkey that was rescued from a brick kiln last week by my friend Kit Spencer, Managing Director of the Summit Hotel.

How a two year old sees the world

2009-04-28T08:39:00.003+05:30

Last week I showed my two and three quarter year old daughter, Alisha, this newspaper picture of the Nepalese Prime Minister emerging from a conference. "He's blowing out candles" she declared having enjoyed her parents' birthday celebrations that fell within recent weeks. I sometimes test her on what things are for. One day I took her through body parts - what are ears for? (A. hearing), what are teeth for? (A. eating) etc. When I asked her what fingers are for she answered "noses". She also told me on another occasion that the fridge was "for taking the white wine out of". Hmmm.

She's also become a great animal lover and can identify an amazing range of animals through her visits to the zoos and study of books. But she floored Bev the other day when she asked if she could have some "armadillo crisps" as a snack. Then she pointed to the packet of tortilla chips.

Kusum (see previous post) has just arrived at my house ready to be taken off to a toddlers' library group by Bev and an adoring Alisha. She's coming along really well since she arrived at the Esther Benjamins Trust children's refuge and is now starting to talk and smile. Heaven knows what vocabulary Alisha is going to teach her.

Martin Cheek

2009-04-27T07:36:00.004+05:30

One of the big names in the international mosaic scene, Martin Cheek, has agreed to come out and give us some consultancy between the 5th and 13th May. I got to hear about Martin first through my wife Bev who attended one of his weekend courses about fifteen years ago. I ended up going to his summer course in Greece five years ago and then the following year, with Bev, to another of his courses in Florence. As you can see from his website his work is not only very artistic but full of humour. But be warned that if you attend one of his classes you'll have to endure the other side of Martin's humour - his really grim, very old jokes. You'll find one or two pictures of me looking remarkably cheerful under the circumstances on his website's courses page.

Anyway, Martin will be providing training support to the trainers who are running the integrated art workshop in Bhairahawa and helping with design input. He'll also be helping us to prepare for a photographic/mosaic exhibition that we'll be running at several venues later on this year to mark the Trust's 10th birthday.

One of Martin's other students is leading British journalist Libby Purves who has shown some interest in following up his visit and our work. And I discovered last week that one of the charity's Trustees, Sue Duncan, has also been on a Cheek weekend course. Small world!

London Marathon

2009-04-27T07:25:00.004+05:30

Yesterday was the London Marathon and this year The Esther Benjamins Trust fielded a record 15 runners. Most were made up of two teams from two of our leading corporate supporters Ramboll Ltd and Joules Clothing Ltd. One of the individual runners was James Caulfield, the youngest participant of the day, who was celebrating his 18th birthday in fine style. I am still awaiting news on the times but I gather from one runner that, as usual for the Marathon, it was a scorcher in London so the times are likely to be on the slow side.

My paltry contribution to running yesterday was an early morning 10km training run in Kathmandu which I completed in 50.5 minutes. That is seven and a half minutes faster than I ran in Hong Kong in February.

Kusum

2009-04-18T16:30:00.005+05:30

In my post of 24th February, "Raw Poverty", I described my visit to a trafficking-prone community in Makwanpur District which had left me profoundly shaken. This followed my seeing a little four year old girl, Kusum, hiding under a quilt inside a grubby hut. Her mother had died three months previously and she was refusing to speak and hiding from all visitors. We had the dilemma of what to do with this acutely traumatised child. Many aid organisations would maintain that this child should be supported within her community and kept close to her remaining family. That's easier said than done in a Nepalese rural community. On top of that her father had little time to dedicate to his daughter; he had to labour during the day and Kusum was keeping company with a young couple who had their own children to look after.

We decided, with her father's blessing, to bring Kusum and her ten year old sister Anisha to our Kathmandu refuge and I saw her there on Friday, the day after she arrived. She's still not speaking but is in the loving care of the refuge staff, surrounded by curious and exuberant refuge children. This is the first traumatised child we've admitted to the refuge in a long time and her rehabilitation is going to be a challenge; my daughter Alisha is looking forward to doing her bit and plans to buy her a teddy before going to see her again on Monday. Within a month Kusum will be a totally different child. The cost of care for the two girls will be £1080 per year but that's a small price to pay.

Any sponsors out there?

2066 and all that

2009-04-14T09:00:00.003+05:30

It's New Year's Day in Nepal, today being the first of 2066. There has been some controversy in recent months over a government proposal to reduce this calendar year from 12 months to 11 months to bring the year into line with astronomical realities but in the end it was decided to stick with a full year. I imagine if there had been any perception within the populace that their collective lifespans would have decreased by one month there could have been a wave of strikes and protests. Now let's hope for a bright 2066 and a less disruption to daily life than we experienced in 2065.

Happy New Year!

Dhanyabad

2009-04-13T07:42:00.006+05:30

Around thirty of the children that The Esther Benjamins Trust is caring for at its refuges in Kathmandu and Bhairahawa in the southwest are the dependents of prisoners. I prefer to call our facilities "refuges" rather than "homes" as, in the ideal, they provide full time care only on a temporary basis. In the case of prisoners' children this is pending their parents' release. It's important to keep tabs on the prisoners as, in spite of what they agree at the time we admit their children, it is common for them to vanish into the ether after they are freed in the expectation that we will continue to care for their offspring. For our part we are proactive in reuniting the children with parents as soon as they have found work and can provide a family home but we give the releasees a little leeway after release to sort themselves out. Moreover we are happy to help with some short term financial support (e.g. for educational costs) to smooth the reunification path. This approach is in the best interests of the children and ensures that our refuge facilities can be extended to other, more needy, children.

Two brothers, Raju and Rajesh, came to us back in 2001 after their father was jailed in Tulsipur prison in the far west of Nepal. They have been staying at our Bhairahawa refuge ever since. Towards the end of last year the father was released and it was easy to see how keen the boys were to go home and resume family life. However, this had to be delayed as he needed to find work. Two days ago one of our field staff went with the older brother, Raju, to trace the father. On arrival in his village it transpired that he had remarried and was building a house. He was not at all keen to take the boys back - prisoners enjoy the prospect of a totally fresh start - and would have been more than happy for us to continue to look after the boys to a standard that's better than he could ever afford. But he will take them back; as I see it if he's sufficiently well off to build a house then his finances are good enough to fend for the children.

One of the disappointing things that I see about the parents that we have to deal with is a lack of responsibility (often fuelled by alcohol abuse) and an unwillingness to take ownership of their children. We have to be careful not to indulge these unhealthy sentiments. But the other thing that gets me is the lack of appreciation. Purely in monetary terms, the cost of daily care for Raju and Rajesh over the years has probably been in the region of £8.5k but dear old dad will never say thanks. Instead he clearly expects more off us. This thanklessness is not unique to him by any means. The word "dhanyabad" ("thank you") is a fairly recent addition to the Nepali language. This grates a bit but then you have to remind yourself that what we do we do for the children, not for the parents.

Shailaja has just phoned me to say that gymnast Aman Tamang, who was one of our two refuge children taking part in the National Games last week, has been named as one of the top nine athletes from the games. This means he has won a purse of 25,000 rupees (£210) which equates to six months' salary at the national minimum wage.

10km musings

2009-04-12T11:52:00.002+05:30

This morning was my first full ten kilometre early morning run in Kathmandu as I train for my competitive fundraising 10km events of this year. And I ran the course this morning in 53 minutes which is five minutes faster than when I competed in Hong Kong two months' ago. Extrapolation of this improving performance would indicate that in 20 months time I should be able to complete the distance in 3 minutes, which would surely be some kind of record?

En route at 6.30 a.m. I met a squad of Nepali armed police out on their own training run. Rather bizarrely they were running with rather than against the flow of traffic; maybe they know something that I don't. They were also running in their boots, a practice that is all good macho stuff, but one that was abandoned by the British Army about 25 years' ago. That followed the realisation that running in boots wrecks knee joints creating long term disabilities that were usually compounded by well-intentioned attempts by cack-handed military surgeons to repair the damage. Fit young soldiers were being turned into cripples. It is all very well running in boots (very quickly) when the bullets are flying, but the rest of the time it makes much more sense to wear trainers.

There are two sources of aerial pollution to contend with in early morning Kathmandu. The first is the clouds of dust that are swept into the air by Nepali women whose obsessional use of brooms seems to rival my current obsession for training. Given how common spitting is over here and the incidence of pulmonary TB this must constitute a major health hazard. The second pollution source is the smoke from the burning of rubbish which in Nepal tends to be done at the beginning or end of the day. One of my friends who is visiting at the moment deals with proper waste management back in the UK. He said to me that it would be so easy to use a modern incinerator to replace these bonfires, filtering out the toxins (apart from the CO2) and generate some badly-needed electricity for the city. That is something for me to chew upon - much like the free range cows of Kathmandu view the piles of combustible rubbish by the roadside.

Good Friday in Nepal

2009-04-11T07:38:00.004+05:30

Yesterday I attended a children's picnic for the 100 kids who are at our Kathmandu refuge. A picnic consists of a trip to a park in the surrounding hills, music, dancing, games and of course (copious) amounts of food. Meanwhile eleven older children from our Bhairahawa refuge in the south were rounding off a five day trek in the Annapurnas, north of Pokhara (for those who know the area this included Ghorepani, Chisopani, Pun Hill, Tadopani, Ghandruk). This is a super challenge for the kids and all part of our overall aim of not just providing for children's basic needs but, quite literally, going an extra mile or two.

These kinds of activities are funded through our "recreation sponsorship" where we invite sponsors to contribute £5 per month for a named child; I can't think of a better way of spending 17 pence a day. We also invite supporters who have a little more cash at their disposal to consider an educational sponsorship of £15 per month or a general sponsorship of £25 per month. To commit to one or more of our children in this way please visit our website.

Socially responsible

2009-04-10T15:00:00.002+05:30

I read in today's Nepali Times under the headline "Socially Responsible" that the NMB Bank has launched a social responsibility campaign which includes helping renovate and maintain temples. Recently the bank put marble flooring in the Hanuman Mandir (temple) and has introduced a scheme to clean it frequently.

Pictured right is the home of one of our Kathmandu refuge children in Makwanpur District.

Something to smile about

2009-04-10T14:48:00.004+05:30

Our two Kathmandu refuge kids who have been competing in the 5th National Games in Nepal (see my post of 8th April) completed their gymnastic events with no fewer than seven medals to their credit. Aman Tamang won three golds while Bijay Limbu won a gold, two silver and one bronze. Next stop for the lads will be the next South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) games in December but I'd love to see them at the London Olympics in 2012. That's unlikely to happen as the training here would be inadequate and Nepal historically hasn't entered a gymnastics team to the Olympics. I've considered sending them abroad (specifically to Hong Kong where there is a large Nepali community) to continue their education and training but that doesn't seem to offer the appropriate standard of training either. Does anyone out there have any thoughts?

Palden (see 1st April post) seems to be recovering in hospital and is now conscious and off his ventilator. Yesterday one of our staff managed to coax a laugh out of him for the first time. He is recovering quickly but it remains to be seen how complete that will be.

Holi in Bhairahawa

2009-04-09T15:34:00.004+05:30

In my post of 9th March I wrote how the Hindu festival of Holi was my least favourite of the year with anyone being liable to find themselves sprayed by revellers with water or with coloured dye, whether they like it or not. A picture I received today indicates that our UK volunteers in Bhairhawa seemed to enter into the spirit of it with more enthusiasm than I could muster.

The Esther Benjamins Trust newsletter

2009-04-09T10:33:00.002+05:30

One of my charity tasks is to assemble a six monthly newsletter. Following my efforts, complimented by design and editorial support from our London office, the Spring edition has just been published and you can see the online version here:

http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/images/newsletter/Newsletter_spring_A4.pdf

The National Games in Nepal

2009-04-08T21:23:00.003+05:30

The Nepalese National Games started on Monday, the first time these have taken place in five years. Two of our Kathmandu children's refuge boys, Aman Tamang and Bijay Limbu, were taking part in the gymnastics events using skills that they learned the hard way through their time inside an Indian circus. After we freed them in January 2004 they chose to continue to train, attending the National Stadium in Kathmandu each morning before going to school. Today their efforts were rewarded with both boys picking up gold medals in the group event, and Aman winning a gold, Bijay a bronze in individual events. Two more gold medal events take place tomorrow so it's fingers crossed....

Measuring up

2009-04-07T08:58:00.004+05:30

I read in the UK papers that there is to be a new drive against obesity with general practitioners screening patients in the age group 40-74 and prescribing weight management and exercise for those who are overweight. Not before time as Britain turns into a nation of slobs, but it takes time and willpower on the part of not only the patients but also of the doctors to see this campaign through.

In my post of 11 Nov ("Not so vital statistics") I gave my baseline measurements prior to embarking upon training for my 10km running events in 2009. Worryingly I found that these indicated that I was in the high risk bracket for a coronary or a stroke, so I was determined to do something about it. Today my dimensions are quite different from then, with my weight having dropped from 80kg to 73kg. That gives me a Body Mass Index of 24.11, down from 26.42 and bringing me into the "healthy" bracket of between 18.5 and 25. I'll be more comfortably within the bracket after I've shed another 3-5 kg. My hip measurement has reduced from 101 cm to 97 cm and waist from 99 cm to 91 cm giving me a waist/hip ratio (which is apparently a better guide of health) of .94, down from .98 last November. So things still aren't quite so good as they might seem as a ratio of above .90 puts you in the death zone.

The thing that amazes me is that last November I visited a GP who diagnosed me as having hypertension (high blood pressure) and prescribed ACE Inhibitor medication. Over the last couple of days I have been testing my blood pressure without taking this medication and I am now enjoying a normal blood pressure reading. Tablets are perhaps too often the easy way out and I'd have been better managed if he'd called me a "fatty" and shamed me into making the lifestyle changes that in the end I decided to embark upon unilaterally. It's the doctors who need the guts if their patients are to shed them.

The slums of Butwal

2009-04-01T12:07:00.003+05:30

Last month our volunteer photographer Jonny Cochrane recorded a visit by some of our Bhairahawa refuge children to their home area in the slums of Butwal, which is half an hour's drive away. It proved to be a very bleak visit and I have now uploaded Jonny's pictures to Flickr.

We are now researching how we might provide support to the children who are in the midst of this urban poverty which is every bit as grim at the rural poverty of Makwanpur District. We're aiming to launch a new project in Butwal in the middle of this year.

Palden

2009-04-01T11:45:00.002+05:30

On Sunday one of our field workers from Hetauda, Palden, was knocked off his motorbike by a truck. He is currently on a ventilator in a Kathmandu hospital and it seems likely that if he survives he'll be left with brain damage. The truck belonged to a major haulage company and the company agreed to fund Palden's immediate care and, if need be, long term family support to his wife and children.

When I first came to Nepal I was told by my driver during a road journey that the immediate action in the event of an accident was to get out and run for it. Irrespective of whether or not the fault lies with the driver, a mob of locals can form very quickly and summary justice meted out. I remember on one occasion as we were driving along seeing someone up ahead fall off his bicycle. My (Nepali) driver was insistent that we shouldn't stop for if we had we'd most likely have been blamed for whatever had happened to the cyclist and there'd be a demand for compensation. Nepal's roads are no place for a Good Samaritan.

Compensation to the victim of a traffic accident is the norm in Nepal, if the victim survives. I have heard it said that it is common for a victim to be "finished off" in a bid to avoid a life-long bill to the motorist concerned.

Sunday Life

2009-03-30T07:41:00.004+05:30

The work of the Trust had some useful coverage yesterday in "Sunday Life", the Sunday edition of The Belfast Telegraph. I hope this leads to some additional sponsorship and a few fellow runners when I embark upon the Third World Run in Belfast on the 31st May.

Colour at The White House

2009-03-29T09:24:00.003+05:30

The Esther Benjamins Trust's first children's refuge, the so called "White House", was set up in Bhairahawa southwest Nepal in 2000. It is currently providing a temporary home for 30 schoolgoing children. Most are children of prisoners but there are also some former street children and conflict affected children in their number. Over the last couple of months the refuge has received the support of eight gap year students. Volunteer photographer Jonny Cochrane visited the refuge last month and I have just uploaded his striking images to Flickr.

Childcare at the refuge costs in total £45 per month and we need sponsors to help us meet this cost. Sponsorship can be at three levels; £25 per month to cover general care costs, £15 per month for educational costs or £5 per month as a recreational sponsorship. Let me know if you can help.

How to defuse a crisis in Nepal

2009-03-28T20:02:00.008+05:30

This week The Kathmandu Post published a front page article explaining how over the past year a number of commissions had been appointed to investigate pressing issues ranging from natural disasters to the causes of unrest on the streets. Essentially these inquiries, which each cost around £10k (good expense claims for the board members), lead nowhere as the recommendations are never implemented. The implementation of recommendations is not what these activities are all about. Instead the setting up of a commission takes the heat out of a particular crisis and settles down protests and disorder on the streets. Invariably the media reports that a "top level" board has been appointed and the rioters go home. By the time the commission reports chances are the original problem has become history and no one notices or cares much whether anything useful has emanated from the process.

Just above this report on the front page of Wednesday's Post there was another report saying how the private education sector had finally caved in to government pressure to pay tax that could be directed towards the benefit of the (poor) government schools. After a lot of wrangling the private schools had agreed to pay subject to the tax being retitled "Education Development Support Fund" from the original "Education Service Tax". And to the appointment of a "high level" National Education Service Commission to define how the taxes would be spent...

Returning to the real world, I have just uploaded to the Trust's Flickr collection a batch of pictures taken this month by our volunteer photographer Jonny Cochrane. They show our integrated art workshop activities in Bhairahawa where deaf students work alongside child trafficking survivors whom we've rescued from the circuses. As well as learning mosaic techniques the students learn English and IT. It's been a great success and unlike commissions of enquiry the Workshop delivers real results.

Jim Edwards

2009-03-26T08:47:00.004+05:30

Long term resident of Nepal, Jim Edwards, passed away on Monday. Originally from Jersey in the U.K. Jim came to Nepal in the early 1960's as a big game hunter but metamorphosed soon afterwards into a leading conservationist. He set up a company, Tiger Mountain, that inter alia managed exclusive holidays in Chitwan National Park ("Tiger Tops") and at Bardiya National Park where guests could indulge in tiger spotting from the safety of the back of an elephant. He'd a great sense of fun and introduced Nepal - and the World - to the sport of elephant polo which is now also played in Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Jim was very supportive to the work of The Esther Benjamins Trust through Tiger Mountain and has channelled support and sponorship to us, while allowing our refuge children to enjoy an occasional free holiday at his centres. This very distinguished and charming man will be missed by the British community in Nepal within which he was such an enormous presence. And as I read in the papers of how the endangered Asian one horn rhino population has been almost eradicated from Bardiya National Park through poaching, I can only reflect upon the scale of the loss of Jim to the conservation scene. His full obituary can be read here.

Outside my window I have just heard the first cuckoo of Spring announce its arrival.

Iron gate

2009-03-26T08:16:00.006+05:30

The School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations have just started in Nepal, which equates to the GCSE examinations in the UK. It should in theory be taken by students when they're around 16 but older candidates present themselves who are re-sitting the exam or who have missed out on education for whatever reason. This year quite a few "People's Liberation Army" (PLA) personnel who are veterans of the recently-ended conflict are taking the exam. SLC is a critical qualification and is known as the "iron gate" for without it there can be no progression to higher education, to decent vocational training or much of a chance of finding a good job. In this very poor country there's always a great deal of hype around SLC and each year there is usually the tragedy of a few suicides that follow exam failures.

We had a very different experience of an iron gate last week. My mosaic art workshop "Himalayan Mosaics" moved out of its old premises in Godawari, just outside Kathmandu. It transferred just a mile or so up the road and is now sited in purpose-built rooms on the roof of my partner Director Shailaja's new home. The problem was that two of our dogs had to move with the workers and Shailaja's compound had to be suitably secure to prevent these former street dogs from exploring their roots. That meant a gate had to be fitted and we took a chance and allowed local staff to install this for us. The outcome was the placing of an expensive monstrosity of a metal gate that looks quite incongruous and ostentatious in the midst of a rather poor hillside village. Fitting the gate took a long time as the chap who was supervising the work didn't think to measure the available space so they ended up having to cut away a lot of adjacent bank to make room for this expanse of metalwork. Shailaja, who is currently in India, is blissfully unaware of these goings on and will have a fit when she gets back.

I have seen this behaviour pattern many times over my years of being in Nepal - something I call "catastrophic decision making". Local workers can come up with the most bizarre solutions to problems the thought processes behind which just defy comprehension. Recounting the gate saga to a friend of mine the other evening she put it another way, referring to the "I" and "J" words. These stand for initiative and judgement and to her mind the two do not go hand in hand in Nepal. It takes quite an effort for a show of initiative to be displayed by a local worker, but one's delight at this is shortlived as it is rarely balanced with good judgement.

In my own display of folly this week I have registered for The Third World Run in Belfast on the 31st May, taking me back home to Northern Ireland for the first time in 13 years. This will be my fourth 10km run for my charity, The Esther Benjamins Trust, in its 10th birthday year. I have increased my sponsorship target to £40,000 and with £26,660 raised so far I am sure I can get there. If you'd like to support me either join me on one of my runs. Or, if you are blessed with better judgement than to do that, please visit my online sponsorship page.

Quixote's Cove

2009-03-16T14:08:00.001+05:30

Nepali friends of mine have just opened a delightful bookshop called "Quixote's Cove" which is in the grounds of the New Orleans cafe in Jawalakhel, Kathmandu. If you go there you'll find a superb collection of classics and best sellers concentrated into a few shelves and a conducive environment to sit, relax and browse for a while. The proprietor, Pranap Singh, also knows his books very well and is well placed to give you a recommendation or two.

I am very happy to give the bookshop a well-deserved plug as Pranap and his friend Abinash Pradhan were kind enough to commission their logo from Himalayan Mosaics, a job that was completed very nicely by former circus girl Chameli. You can't miss that on the right of the door as you go in.

Hatemalo e.V.

2009-03-10T09:52:00.004+05:30

Five years ago two German clinical psychologists, Katharina Tomoff and Micha Luedecke, volunteered for us at our Hetauda centre. They came as unknown quantities, but made a huge impact during their time with us, returning to Germany fired up to help us further. This is easier said than done as people return to their busy lives back home but last evening I heard from Katharina that she has now managed to register a supporting NGO in Germany. Her charity is called Hatemalo e.V.; Hatemalo is Nepali for "garland of hands" and e.V. indicates that this is a German registered charity.

Katharina will now have her work cut out in setting up website, literature and presenting plans to potential supporters. But this process has received an unexpected boost from Spain from where a translation agency, Uyngo.com, wrote to us out of the blue a few days' ago offering to translate documents and videos into a language of our choice as a free service out of respect for our work. Katharina's English is perfect but I have taken them up on their offer of subtitling one YouTube video which would otherwise have presented a technical problem. I will post the video on this site once it has been translated,

I love it when things come together like this and how marvellous are our worldwide volunteers!

Holi

2009-03-09T12:48:00.004+05:30

Tomorrow is the Hindu festival of Holi and my least favourite time of the year. Once it was a time for good natured fun, with celebrations consisting of devotees throwing powdered dye and squirting water at one another. It used to be that this took place between families and friends with consent to becoming a victim being implicit in the merry making. In recent years though this behaviour has gone out of hand and become indiscriminate with anti-social behaviour being tolerated for a few days either side of the festival itself. You can't walk down the street without risking someone water bombing you. During the present water shortage one shudders to think where the water is being sourced from. Yesterday a water bomb narrowly missed my two year old as we went for a Sunday afternoon stroll in a back lane near our house. This kind of terrorism leads to the closing of schools for several days as teachers try to avoid the antics of the street being transferred to the playgrounds and classrooms - just as the end of year examinations have got underway.

The coal mines of Meghalaya

2009-03-08T08:54:00.012+05:30

This past week I went on a five day research trip into northeast India, joined by my colleagues Nick Sankey, Shailaja CM and Dilu Tamang. As our Circus Children Project draws to a successful close we have been looking at various other situations that could be considered as having a negative impact on Nepalese children who have found their way, by one means or another, to India. Over Christmas I had picked up a press report which suggested that there were trafficked Nepalese children working in the coal mines of Meghalaya, the Indian State which lies on Bangladesh's northern border. We decided to look into the mines (so to speak) and sent a research team there last month for a preliminary visit to meet the NGO Impulse and its dynamic Founder/Director, Hasina Kharbhih (who was named in the article). Upon receiving their intriguing report I felt that I wanted to see the situation for myself.

The target area for our visit was the Jaintia hills in the eastern part of the State, this being the main coal mining area. I suppose that this could once have been considered to be an area of outstanding natural beauty with considerable tourism potential but it seems to have suffered from years of environmental indifference that probably even pre-dated the mining which started just a generation ago. Driving into the area I noticed the almost total absence of bird life, including even the common scavengers that you see in the Himalayan countryside such as crows and myna birds. I suspect this is through a combination of hunting, the planting of sterile pine forests and burning of scrub which seemed to be going on all around. On top of this there is now the uncontrolled mining which is open cast, pit or "rat hole" - small tunnels that lead to seams in the hillside.

We had heard before our visit of the existence of a "coal mafia" which dominates the mining industry and of the risk to life and limb of nosing around and asking too many questions. However when we got to the area of the mines we were made most welcome and families were quick to share with us details of their lives. OK, perhaps we were being misled but the impression we gained was that we were in the midst of a community of Nepalese men, women and children - families - who were economic migrants, earning good money and living a decent domestic life. That's more than can be said of the rural areas of Nepal whence many of the families originate. Undoubtedly there are health and safety issues at the mines. Unlike Dilu Tamang (pictured bottom right) I elected not to descend a pit on a rickety ladder where the handrail consisted of no more than a branch. I am sure deaths and injuries go unreported in this isolated part of India into which the authorities or police allegedly fear to tread.

For now our jury is out as to whether or not we are looking at a trafficking problem as opposed to economic migration of families. We are assured by Impulse that unaccompanied children are trafficked there and that there are worse coal mines than those we visited. That is good enough to merit further research both in Meghalaya and in Nepal in the coming few months.

During our discussions with Hasina the issue of what constituted a "child" was raised. From Hasina's point of view the answer was simple; it is as per the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) which has been signed by all the countries in the world with the exception of the USA and Somalia (strange bedfellows) i.e. under 18 unless national law puts the age of majority at younger than this. That is fine in theory but in practice it is a different story altogether. For if that criterion were to be accepted we would most likely have to end child labour and remove thousands of "children" who are in their mid teens from the coal mines. This would be tricky if the teenagers were there, desperate to work to avoid starvation for themselves and their families with no alternative social support in Nepal. And if you were to extract these teenagers it would be not only traumatic and violent but also probably a total waste of resources as they'd be back at the mines within a week of being repatriated back to Nepal with all its economic woes.

It takes a brave person within the development sector to risk becoming a pariah by challenging the widely-accepted truths of CRC but, very sadly, to me there seems to be a huge gap between its provisions and the needs of the real, impoverished, world.

Uranium and urinals

2009-03-07T09:35:00.011+05:30

I returned yesterday evening from a five day research trip to Meghalaya State in northeast India. The reason for my visit is that the State, which lies on Bangladesh's northern border, is home to coal mines which are reputedly a destination for trafficked Nepalese children. I will post on that subject tomorrow. There are also significant uranium deposits in the eastern part of Meghalaya and, as India flexes its nuclear muscle, this has become a highly important national resource. The deposits though lie in tribal lands and there have been strong local objections to the potential for mining to leave a legacy of lasting environmental damage and a very long term health hazard. It appears that these objections have been largely overcome recently, most likely through local leaders being bought off at the expense of the environment and the poor people the leaders are supposed to represent. Mining will start soon.

It is a cliche to write that the "incredible" India of the tourist brochures is a land of contrasts but I am constantly amazed by how this new world power can have such ambitious national and international goals while showing so much disregard for the basic needs of its population. These include provision for essential bodily functions. On the trip down to Meghalaya I stopped off in Siliguri and after a light meal in a cafe opposite the railway station decided to use the lavatory at the rear of the premises. Beyond the door pictured top right lurked the worst toilet that I have ever used in my life. It consisted of nothing apart from a tiled room with two foot pedestals. Essentially the toilet receptacle was the floor around these comparatively dry islands with drainage being through seepage from around the floor margins. When you see an indoor facility like this you might justifiably prefer a simpler al fresco solution but later on in the trip I was warned that this option can come at a price. See the picture bottom right.

It was with some relief that we reached the Nepal border late yesterday morning. However this was short-lived as upon arrival we were advised that there was an ongoing "bandh" (strike) that was paralysing the south of the country and potentially preventing us from getting to the domestic airport and catching our flight from there home to Kathmandu. The strike, which started five days ago and is indefinite, has been called by the indigenous Tharu people who have objected to being grouped with the ethnic Indian (Madhesi) population in the discussions that are underway about the shape of the future all-inclusive "new" Nepal. During bandhs roads are blocked with rocks and fallen trees to prevent vehicular movement but we made it through by hitching a ride in an ambulance. The ambulance disgorged its patient at the airport, an unfortunate young woman who was clearly very seriously ill; she had no medical carer and all that the airport could provide was a wheelchair that didn't have any brakes. My colleague Dilu Tamang went off to find a couple of bricks to put behind the rear wheels. The woman's accompanying relatives were doing all that they could to try to get her on to the earliest flight possible, through showing her hospital notes and a doctor's letter to the airport staff. I imagine that they succeeded in the end but Nepal is no country for sick young women.

I read in the papers this morning that three people were killed yesterday because of this unrest. The police opened fire on protesters at a road blockade killing two and the locals retaliated later by hacking a policeman to death. If this strike continues it will add significantly to the national problems as much of Nepal's food and fuel supplies have to come north by road from India through this troubled region. As if the country hasn't enough to think about - as predicted in my last post the energy crisis deepened while we were away. We now have just four hours of electricity per day.

Money going down the drain

2009-03-01T12:32:00.007+05:30

Water and electricity are currently at a premium in Nepal. The two are quite inter-related as the country depends upon hydroelectric power. And this electricity is in turn required by those of us who live in Kathmandu valley to pump to the surface the ground water needed for domestic use. The problem is that Nepal is now experiencing its worst drought in 20 years; last monsoon season was not as damp as usual and this winter's rains have failed totally. Normally the rivers and reservoirs get topped up in the Spring with melting snows in the Himalayas but the drought has meant that there's not much snow on the mountains. The 16 hours of power cuts per day means that whatever groundwater is available in Kathmandu valley remains largely untappable.

One solution to the water difficulty is the water tankers that shuttle between the springs in the hills around Kathmandu valley and the town centre (which is where our house is located). A tanker can fill our domestic water tank and that gives us a supply of reasonably clean water for about a week. It seems though that the springs are drying up, queues of tankers are forming at the springs and households all over Kathmandu are struggling to find a friendly water tanker that is prepared to deliver water. We've now been without mains water and had an empty tank for the last four days. I am having to flush the loo using mineral water which costs fifty pence a flush.

Essentially a full blown electricity and water crisis is about to break upon us as there is no prospect of significant rainfall until the monsoon begins in three months' time. And one of the main reservoirs that has been providing electricity to Nepal will only be operational for another week. Tourists who stay at decent hotels will be largely oblivious to this as the hotels have good generators and sound contracts with the tankers. The rest of us are in for a very difficult time indeed. I learned the other evening that the charity "Concern" is about to leave the country and no doubt others will follow.

Yesterday the Prime Minister attended a function where he took the oath as patron of the Nepal Scouts Association. He looked dapper in his uniform.

Burning bright

2009-02-27T14:19:00.005+05:30

For the past few months our students at the Bhairahawa art workshop - a mixed group of deaf school leavers and girl trafficking survivors from the Indian circuses - have been working on a large mosaic of a jungle scene with a sinister tiger. It measures 5 feet by 8 feet and the original design was by our volunteer art teacher from this time last year, Rebecca Hawkins. The work has just been completed and now it is on its way to an appreciative wall in Kathmandu. We hope this beautiful piece with spark some orders from discerning customers in Nepal.

A good day in the courts

2009-02-26T07:29:00.004+05:30

Three years ago our field staff were directly involved in the arrest of leading child trafficker Kajiman Shrestha (pictured right). He was responsible for the trafficking of scores of Nepalese children into the oblivion of the Indian circus industry, condemning them to a miserable existence of abuse and de facto imprisonment. He has been in jail ever since he was picked up. Yesterday he was convicted and sentenced to a further 15 years imprisonment.

Meanwhile in a court in India yesterday it was the fourth hearing in the trial of Indian circus owner Lakhan Chaudhary. Once more we provided a witness (one of his victims) for the prosecution. We expect there to be one more hearing next month and then hopefully justice will be done.

Raw poverty

2009-02-24T21:35:00.011+05:30

My two day visit to Hetauda left me profoundly moved and with an image that I will never forget.

The aim of the journey was to accompany one of the charity's Trustees, Chris Haworth, on a factfinding trip to the rural areas around Hetauda which have been the main source of trafficked children to the Indian circuses (and elsewhere). On top of that I would be able to catch up on the circumstances of some of our beneficiaries' families through being guided by Shailaja, my partner Director in Nepal. And photographer Jonny Cochrane was with us, tasked with documenting the poverty.

Yesterday I went to visit the homes of several girls, including that of the girl who has just given evidence against the circus owner who (allegedly) raped her before we intervened to secure her release from The New Raj Kamal Circus in January 2007. She is one of eight children and we met the latest arrival to this very dysfunctional family - a babe in arms. The family home, pictured right with two of this girl's younger siblings, wasn't even made from wood; a lot of it seemed to consist of bark held together with mud. This and other village abodes, although sad to see, didn't shake me as much as one might imagine. I have seen this kind of hut many times before in Nepal and in other parts of the world.

This morning though I was taken unawares. We went to a very different kind of community where families were living in regimented brick-built cottages that had been constructed for them by a major international aid agency. We wanted to meet Basante and Hari, a couple whom we had freed from a circus in April 2004 (two of 29 releasees) who had subsequently got married and are now parents to two little girls. On the way to their cottage I was impressed with the layout of the buildings and their adjoining gardens and when we got there, the cottage looked fine as well. Then we went inside. It was then that I realised that we were still in the midst of raw poverty; it was only the walls and roof that surrounded it which were different from yesterday's experience. Somehow the juxtaposition of solid walls with the emptiness and grime within seemed to accentuate the hardship that the two families who were sharing the premises were having to endure. Indeed, the solidity of the walls even made it feel like a prison. A baby girl lay on the bed, with flies crawling around her eyelids. She was unresponsive to my attempts to connect with her.

Then came the haunting, surreal image. Shailaja beckoned to me to look inside one of the back rooms. There she indicated a lump on the bed. The lump was Basante and Hari's older child, a four year old girl, sitting upright, who had hidden herself under a quilt, something that she does for all visitors. It reminded me of the game that I play with my two and a half year old daughter - "Where's Alisha", as she hides in really obvious locations. But this wasn't a joke. The child was clearly traumatised by her environment, and harboured a terror that had been exacerbated by the death of one of the young women in the house a month ago. Another woman who was sharing the cottage told us how her brother had taken his own life by hanging a few months previously, an occurrence that was quite common within this desperate community. Eventually we coaxed the girl out from under the quilt and she posed with her parents for the picture on the right (the girl with the red collar). She was but one of a handful of similarly aged children who were just loitering at home, totally unstimulated.

Afterwards we visited a local school and discussed with the Headteacher how we might provide some community upliftment through broadening the educational provision available for the local children. This currently goes to only Class 5 (9-11 year olds). We discussed the possibility of introducing a creche for the kind of children that we had just seen and how education could be extended into Class 6 and beyond. He was very receptive and I believe something useful and positive has emerged from that meeting.

Nonetheless I came away from the village deeply saddened and wishing that those toddlers could be just scooped up out of there and given an infinitely better chance in life in the developed world. I am sorry, that's not very politically correct and quite naiive but that's how I felt.

Aid International

2009-02-24T15:58:00.009+05:30

I've just returned from a two day visit to the rural areas of Hetauda and will reflect on my findings overnight before posting on that subject tomorrow. It was sobering stuff though - a bleak contrast to the insobriety that I witnessed in some parents of our beneficiaries.

On Sunday an article appeared in The Kathmandu Post entitled "Aid International" the content of which echoed some comments that I have made in previous posts. In it the author "S. Gurung" mocks the world of the International Non Governmental Organisation, its sycophant locally-recruited staff (of which she claims to be one) and its disconnection from the needs of communities in the impoverished rural areas of Nepal:

"Aid International (Al) is a nonprofit, non-political, non-sectarian, humanitarian organisation that provides handsome salaries, perks, trainings and foreign exposure to a massive crew of personnel. Its target beneficiaries are the poor and marginalised, but its real beneficiaries are the staff who run the organisation: Head Office staff in a faraway continent, country staff in Kathmandu, partner NGOs in program districts, and the dazzling array of local and globe-trotting consultants. Its beneficiaries also include the luxury hotels, resorts, travel agencies and airlines it patronises.

Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, most Head Office staff think all developing countries are the same. Donors are busy people burdened with alleviating poverty, managing conflict, fighting HIV/AIDS, raising gender awareness and setting Millennium Development Goals across the globe. So they imagine the world in templates and measure progress with global indicators. For them, the strategy for developing a village in east Africa will also fix the problems of eastern Tarai [south Nepal], and vice versa.

Al’s primary concern is to amass more and more money for, well, helping people. As soon as a major donor announces funding for, say, ‘community empowerment project in the Mid West’, Al hires a consultant to write a ‘strong’ proposal. The proposal must prove that Al is the most eligible and fund-worthy organisation for implementing the project. Beneath the heap of pseudoscientific jargon, the message of the proposal runs to this effect: “The community in the Mid West needs empowerment because you say so. You may never have set foot there, nor read a thing about its people, but you have the funds so you know better. So just give us the dollars; we will follow all your guidelines, achieve all your targets, and meet all your deadlines.”

Al has global solutions for the most localised problems. Say, Som Kumar in Shripur, Saptari quit school and went to lay bricks in town because his father can’t work (he was hit by a bus while pulling his rickshaw) and his mother just had a baby. How will Al help him? It will send Som Kumar, along with all other beneficiaries in his village, to participate in its Multimillion Transnational Awareness Raising Programme. Al’s strategy is not to respond, but to ‘implement’ pre-made, pre-packaged, mass-produced solutions to specific, evolving, complex problems.

Under its Operational Plan, say, Al decides to provide iron tablets to all its beneficiaries in the Far Western region. Then, in a village in Achham, Gita is suddenly taken ill with typhoid. Al’s partner NGO in the region can do nothing but give her iron tablet; for typhoid medicine is not in their Operational Plan. While Gita’s condition worsens and her parents borrow money for her treatment, an NGO staff sits in his office and composes a success story about the miraculous effects of iron tablets on Gita’s life. This, along with a smiling photo of Gita, will be included in the annual report for donors who can then pat themselves on their backs - and get more money for bigger projects.

The chain of command in Al is so glaring that its pet terminologies - ‘bottom-up’, ‘local partnership’, ‘community-based’, etc. sound like self-irony. All Head Office staff are bosses to the Kathmandu staff, who in turn are bosses to the NGO staff. Every interaction and correspondence between them reinforces this hierarchy. As for their ‘target beneficiaries’, in whose name the show runs, their job is to listen, accept, smile in front of the camera and provide information for reports and success stories.

For all their weaknesses, district-based NGOs have one solid advantage over Kathmandu and Head Office staff: physical and cultural proximity to the local community. If Al were truly committed to its professed aim, its top brass would ensure that these local NGOs voiced, defended and engaged with the community’s real interests at all cost. But at every ‘capacity building’ training of NGOs, Kathmandu staff hammers the same message into the heads of NGO staff: the donors’ command is unquestionable, inviolable.

Behind the backs of their Kathmandu bosses, NGO staff often admit how useless and at times damaging Al has been for its ‘beneficiaries’. But at meetings and conferences, amid smart, English-speaking Kathmandu colleagues and white experts, these district-based people feel so insignificant that they are reduced to head~nodding dummies. Yes, the project has failed miserably, they think, but we must do as we are told. We can’t mess with the hand that feeds us.

The Kathmandu staff, of course, could have changed this reality if they really willed it. They could at least speak out, reject readymade tools and solutions, decide where the funds would be spent and how, and refuse to endorse the donors’ misconceptions. But they will do none of this because we don’t want to risk anything - not our salary, not our comfort, nor our chances for promotion and international travel. Which leads me to confess that, yes, I am a staff member of Aid International. As an ordinary middle-class woman in Kathmandu, I realised sometime ago that the surest means to secure my financial independence, live comfortably and give my children the best education is to work in an INGO. Besides, I belong to a nation whose leaders bow to the wisdom of donors where even principled citizens are forced to reap the harvest of dollar kheti [dollar girl] every now and then. How, then, could an average person like me, with average dreams and desires, resist its pull? I have thus sold myself to Aid International. I, like many others, have surrendered to the inescapable power of aidocracy."

S.Gurung fails to understand how projects are funded but broadly speaking I found most of her comments entirely valid. I wish more would speak out against the racket that I see going on around me.

I do love The Kathmandu Post. In today's edition it advises us that tonight is the night to witness Comet Lulin. After informing readers that the Comet follows a parabolic course through the universe that takes 50 million years the journalist - without the slightest hint of irony - says that it won't be visible again for "the foreseeable future".

My running hero

2009-02-21T10:31:00.003+05:30

It's not an Olympic athlete like my namesake Dame Kelly Holmes. It's Trust supporter Cliff Simm, pictured right at our Kathmandu refuge on a visit to our Kathmandu refuge last month. Cliff runs every day and races once a week, with a 10km running time of 56 minutes. That's two minutes faster than my run in Hong Kong. The thing is, Cliff is 78 and an inspiration to all of us. I am sure I'll beat his time at my next 10km event in London on the 25th May. I am training hard and shedding weight rapidly. The first five days of my fat-burning diet this week led to a loss of 2.3 kg which I won't miss.

A greatly overused word in Nepal is "hearty". You see it a lot in banners bidding visitors "hearty welcome" or in newspaper ads that say "hearty congratulations" on a certain individual's achievement. It conjures up quaint images of bonhomie and back-slapping. It didn't work in one newspaper ad that I saw this week where a family was offered "hearty condolence" on the loss of a loved one. Perhaps they meant heartfelt.

Sophie's choice

2009-02-18T09:29:00.006+05:30

The Trust attracts all kinds of volunteers for its work in Nepal - varying in age, experience and nationality. Last year was a bumper year in both quality and quantity with more volunteers than ever helping us out. 2009 has got off to a similar start with no fewer than 12 volunteers in country. These workers usually come to us well in advance but sometimes they just stumble upon us, an example being Tasmanian Sophie Shugg who volunteered at our art workshop in Kathmandu last year. Sophie has just described her experience in "The Advocate" magazine:

http://www.theadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/news-features/mapping-out-a-future/1437006.aspx

We very much look forward to Sophie's return later on this year when we can hopefully make even better use of her services as the programme evolves.

Ohio is on the up

2009-02-17T20:58:00.004+05:30

Today marked my six monthly pilgrimage to the Indian embassy in Kathmandu to renew my visa. It takes nerves of steel to join the smoking hobos at 7.30 in the morning to queue for two hours in the cold before the office even opens. A survival ploy is to take a book and I thought Andrew Marr's (outstanding) History of Modern Britain would be as good a shield as any. No such luck. I found myself fourth in the queue behind an American girl who was in the company of a couple of geeky German kids. The girl's incessant chatter - interspersed every fifth or sixth word with "like" (one of my pet hates) - ensured that I was prevented from making any significant inroads into the social history of Britain in the 1960s. At one point she was asked where she came from and she confided that originally she was from "boring" Ohio. I reckon that Ohio must be less worthy of this slur now that she is over here.

OK, OK, I'm feeling a bit grumpy today and that's all down to my latest strategy to improve my 10km running performance. That involves the fat burning diet and at the end of day two of cabbage and onion soup and nothing bar water to drink the novelty has already worn off. Only five days left to burn, and this morning I'd lost 200g through day one's efforts.

Last week I reported on how the rescue team had gone to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh to free three boys from domestic slavery. The team took along the boys' two sisters (former circus girls) to try and identify them in the bustling Moslem district of town. This was potentially quite dangerous but the girls were provided with a method of concealing their identity. See the picture on the right.

Failed veterinary care

2009-02-15T10:17:00.002+05:30

I read in this morning's paper that the rhino which had its horn removed by poachers a couple of weeks ago died on Friday evening in spite of "round the clock" medical care. And a very sombre Bev has just returned from the vet's to tell me that the owl has died too. Injured animals such as these must go through such stress and pain and I know from experience of living here how the smallest of wounds becomes readily infected.

A new hardline Maoist party has just formed in Nepal based around prominent revolutionary Matrika Yadav who left the main party accusing its leaders of nepotism and of being revisionist. Over the weekend many have deserted the mainstream Maoists to join his party. It seems that there is a great deal of discontent in the rural areas, some of it ethnic but some also arising because those who fought in "The People's War" feel overlooked and betrayed by their former leaders who are now in power. This is but another problem to add to those that are besetting the new republic and it echoes the difficulty that has arisen with the peace process back in my home country, Northern Ireland. There too we are now witnessing renewed attacks on the police and security forces from diehards and the biggest obstacle to resolving residual disquiet seems to be time.

Jonny Cochrane

2009-02-14T14:10:00.006+05:30

Photographer Jonny Cochrane (http://www.jonnycochrane.com/) joined the team yesterday, after volunteering his photographic services for the coming 2-3 weeks. I took him up to the Godawari refuge this morning where we challenged his photographic skills through inviting him to snap our two resident gymnasts, Aman and Bijay. Both these boys learned some of their gymnastics inside the circus. After we rescued them they continued to develop their techniques through training at the National Stadium in Kathmandu. They attend the Stadium every morning before school. Pictured right is Aman in flight.

Hopefully Jonny's images can be incorporated not only into our literature but also into exhibitions that we'll run later on this year. Tomorrow he heads to Bhairahawa, then Hetauda and then will undertake an assignment for us in India.

Further to my post of 11th November - "Not so vital statistics" - I reckoned it was time today for another weigh-in. I am now down to 76.7 kg and a 96 cm waist which gives me a BMI of 25.33 (only just in the "overweight" category) and a waist/hip ratio of 0.96 which is still above the desired ratio of .90. But I am getting there...

The very wealthy Dr Thapa

2009-02-13T09:36:00.008+05:30

Dr Thapa of Lalitpur, Kathmandu is undoubtedly the wealthiest vet in the whole of Nepal if not in Asia. I am quite convinced of this for I know just how much of our personal money my beloved wife Bev gives him in the cause of street dog rescue, relief and rehabilitation. I went with Bev this morning to see the latest two puppies that she’s scooped off the mean streets of Kathmandu. They’re doing well and Dr Thapa’s eyes glinted as he told us of how one of them had got the day off to the best of starts by passing worms this morning. Nice.

The reason for my visit though was to see a bird that he is currently treating. Someone had picked up a barn owl with a broken wing and brought it to Dr Thapa who, aside from being ridiculously wealthy, is, I suspect, quite clever. He has managed to splint the broken bone with a steel rod and he told me that when he removes the rod in a month’s time the bird will fly once again. Meantime he’s lovingly forcing meat down the bird’s gullet to ensure it lasts the course.

Afterwards I consulted the internet to find out the lifespan of a barn owl. In the wild they live for 1-5 years whereas in a more sheltered environment like an owl sanctuary they can last for 20-25 years (I noted in the papers this week that the converse applies to zoo animals). But I also found out that barn owls largely hunt by hearing, not by sight; apparently their hearing is so acute that they can pick up a mouse’s heartbeat in a 30 square foot room. Just imagine how this morning’s owl must have been deafened by Dr Thapa’s pounding heart as Miss Moneypenny arrived at his practice.

Yesterday I met up with my partner Director, Shailaja, in Bhairahawa. She was fresh back from India with the three boys that she and her Deputy Dilu Tamang had rescued on Tuesday evening from domestic slavery in Varanasi. She was in buoyant mood as she told me that circus owner Lakhan Chaudhary, the defendant in Wednesday’s court hearing in Gorakhpur, had placed a 50,000 rupee (£700) price on retrieving our key witness against him. Shailaja said that this girl, who alleges that she was raped by him, gave a perfectly clear – and brave – statement in court as Chaudhary yelled at the Judge to listen to his voice as well as to hers. He was also screaming at his relatives and unsavoury friends in court for having let him down – presumably in part through failing to find this girl.

They didn’t find her because she’s been safely in our care ever since the rescue in January 2007.

Child rescue

2009-02-11T09:24:00.005+05:30

I was actually quietly kicking myself at being in Hong Kong over the weekend as it prevented my taking part in a child rescue operation that occurred in Varanasi, north India last evening. The date of the Standard Chartered 10km event was inflexible as was that of a court hearing today in India that the rescue was linked to. In essence the story started with a circus rescue in January 2007 at the New Raj Kamal Circus in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh which was reported on by Tom Bell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTs1NQOS9_I

The only inaccuracy in Tom's otherwise excellent report is that it turned out subsequently that we had found all of the girls who were at the circus. And the circus owner, Lakhan Chaudhary, went to jail where he has been ever since, pending trial. The trial started last month and the third hearing is due today. At that hearing we wanted to present two girls as witnesses, including the one who was interviewed at the start of Tom's film. The snag was that the girls were unwilling to speak as they each had one brother still in India in a bonded labour situation and potentially at risk from Chaudhary were they to give evidence. Last evening these boys and another one were rescued in a joint operation with ChildLine India and other partners. My colleagues Shailaja and Dilu, who were on the operation, are attending court with the girls later on today.

This is a big case for us as, if convicted, Chaudhary will be the first Indian circus owner to be sentenced. I will report in a future post on the details of what happened yesterday (once I have them) and how the legal case is progressing.

On a more mundane level, my official time on Sunday was 58 minutes and 22 seconds placing me at 1702 out of around 35,000 runners. I am thrilled to be so close now to my £20k target with the sponsorship now at £19,385. If you'd like to congratulate Shailaja and Dilu by adding to that total you can do so through:

www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

Thanks....

Sue and Bill Thornton

2009-02-10T09:21:00.005+05:30

Sue and Bill Thornton were two excellent and very popular volunteers at our Bhairahawa art workshop in November/December. Between them they extended the range of the tuition to incorporate lessons in IT (Bill's area of expertise), English lessons and "Iris folding", a craft technique favoured by Sue. I write belatedly about them as I have just found a film that they shot during their time there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-BQ2LZuoU

I found this through Sue's fundraising page (hint, hint) as she and family members will be joining me on the BUPA 10km run in London on May 25th. Visit:

http://www.justgiving.com/susanthornton1

By the look of Bill's chin he must have had to leave us in December to carry out duties elsewhere as Santa.

Film of an English lesson in Bhairahawa

2009-02-08T08:39:00.002+05:30

Last week I filmed an English lesson at our art workshop in Bhairahawa. This would be nothing special were it not for the fact that the workshop - and the class - is an integrated one with some students being deaf and others able-bodied trafficking (circus) survivors. Normally I can post my film directly from YouTube to this blog but there seems to be some kind of a glitch preventing me from doing so. This being the case, here's the link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOzWnkGR-7I&feature=channel_page

I won!

2009-02-08T08:13:00.003+05:30

Yes, I managed to beat the clock and get out of bed at 3.30 a.m. this morning. I was then placed fourth in getting to the start line at a ridiculously early time; I'm like that with timekeeping. I felt rather bewildered to be in the "warm up" zone, given that there was a healthy breeze blowing in off Causeway Bay. Then I saw others adopting pre-race contortions that I couldn't possibly emulate and the penny dropped.

Of course with the 5.15 a.m. start time that meant we would be running in the dark. But at least the fireworks which were set off as the race began worked to their best effect. Within 300 metres I realised that I was highly unlikely to win this race as scores were already racing away ahead of me. I was gratified to note though that one participant was already walking, so I certainly wasn't going to come last either. The route was a good one, following the eastern corridor motorway 5km out and 5km back; the organisers having had the good sense to ban traffic for a few hours. There were a few undulations to be dealt with but the marvellous views of Hong Kong were a welcome distraction during the run.

My (unofficial) time was 58 minutes and I was pleased to complete my first ever 10km event inside one hour. Now I have a target to beat at the BUPA 10km run in London in May. If I shed a little more weight I am sure that I can improve upon today's effort.

I believe I can probably claim one other victory. I would be surprised if any other runner this morning had the backing of £18,834 in sponsorship. If you played a part in helping me reach this amount, thanks very much! If you didn't you're still not too late to contribute. See:

www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

The Esther Benjamins Trust is offering guaranteed places for the BUPA run. Drop me a line please if you are interested.

Things you didn't know about Hong Kong

2009-02-07T12:35:00.004+05:30

Well, first off, it was where The Esther Benjamins Trust effectively took off back in 2000. That's all thanks to my friends Ronnie and Carol Ford who at that time were teachers at Sha Tin international school. Ronnie, who has since become an accomplished professional artist (http://www.ronnieford.com/), staged an art exhibition as a fundraiser for the Trust. That was reported on by The Hong Kong Standard newspaper with its report of the charity's origins and early work in Nepal being hijacked by the South China Morning Post. A press visit to Nepal led to a feature making cover story in The South China Morning Post Sunday magazine; the very powerful story that was written by journalist Fionnuala McHugh then moved sideways to the UK's Daily Telegraph and we had the initial publicity we needed to ensure that the Trust didn't go the way of so many other new charities and wither on the vine. So Hong Kong is a very special place for me and it feels good to be back.

Other interesting, but fairly useless, facts from Hong Kong:

Tomorrow's Marathon and associated running events will attract 54,272 runners.
Of these 32,907 will be joining me in the 10km event.
The record time for that event is 30 minutes 19 seconds, a target that has gone unbeaten since it was set in 2002.

I am not impressed with this time; I am sure that I can double that. That is if I can get out of bed early enough to be there for the 5.15 a.m. start.

There's still time to sponsor me and win a beautiful work of art from Nepal:

www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

I hate Twitter

2009-02-06T13:10:00.003+05:30

Having tried it I empathise with this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfG2Em8SHk4&feature=dir

Twitter just seems to trivialise things and limit explanation potential. It's not right for my subject material and I am dropping the link from this blog.

So there.

Endangered species

2009-02-06T12:04:00.005+05:30

This morning’s (normally excellent) Nepali Times cover story is based on the national tiger census that has been taking place over the last couple of months. The article claims that the tiger numbers are “bouncing back” however later in the piece I read that the number of tigers actually identified is about the same as in the last census of 2000.

In spite of this apparent good news it has been a bad week for Nepal’s endangered species. In Chitwan, for the first time ever, a rhino had its horn removed by poachers without them killing the animal. One shudders to contemplate the agony that this animal must have experienced and continues to suffer. The incident took place near one of the Nepal Army checkpoints that guards the National Park’s animals and many believe that this was an inside job.

Elsewhere there was short-lived excitement at three freshwater Gangetic Dolphins being rescued by Army personnel after they had become trapped in a pond adjacent to the Koshi river. The dolphins were returned to the mainstream but one has since died. It seems that brainless locals got there first and put poison into the pond. And they got there first because conservation officers who should have conducted the rescue operation were off attending a meaningless “bird festival” somewhere.

When I read of all of this I am struck by how Nepal’s beautiful and fragile wildlife is so at the mercy of wicked, heartless people and hostage to the ineptitude or indifference of those who should be its protectors. Just like Nepal’s children.

The integrated mosaic workshop

2009-02-05T08:56:00.003+05:30

I returned last evening from an overnight visit to our project centre in Bhairahawa in the southwest of Nepal. Bhairahawa is a mere stone's throw from the Indian border and a slightly longer chuck from Lumbini, which is the birthplace of Buddha. In December we collocated our two mosaic workshops, transferring the child trafficking survivors at the Kathmandu workshop to join the deaf school leavers at the Bhairahawa workshop. This has proven to be quite fascinating and highly successful as disabled young people and able-bodied girls work side by side in an integrated workshop. The girls have all learned sign language and joining in their party games on Tuesday evening I really had to remind myself that most of the group was deaf. I found it lovely to witness the joy of it all.

A large part of the magical atmosphere of the place stems from the volunteers, past and present, who have given so much of themselves in inspiring and training the students. The workshop is currently managed by American artist Carol Hummel (http://www.carolhummel.com/om/) whose good humour and sense of fun is quite infectious. She has just recently been joined by a second artist, Hazel Fullerton, and the group is complemented by two gap year students over from Cyprus, Alex and Jade. The scope of the training has mushroomed - literally - with training in mosaics being complemented with English and IT classes and, er, growing of oyster mushrooms in a shed at the back.

With its proximity to Buddha's birthplace we hope that we can find a market for appropriate mosaics that can be offered to tourists who pass through the area. These are now being made in a range of dimensions from life size (that would work well in a local building) to small portraits that can be squeezed into a rucksack. My Presbyterian roots mean that I am not a particular fan of religious imagery (such things are banned from the kirk!) but if this theme gives jobs to marginalised young people I am all for it.

Vulnerability

2009-02-03T10:58:00.002+05:30

Four and a half years ago we rescued Anita (name changed) from The Great Roman Circus which was playing in Lucknow. She was one of seven minors who were hidden away by the circus at the time of the rescue and were only retrieved through court action and habeas corpus. Anita came to our refuge in Bhairahawa, southwest Nepal, delighted to be free. My wife Bev, who was working for the Trust at that time, became very close to Anita and those other little children. She remembers how Anita would touch her own skin and say "naramro" (bad) and then Bev's and say "ramro" (good). The lighter your skin in Nepal the higher your status or caste. Anita came from the untouchable (dalit) caste and their skins can be very dark as an ethnic group.

Two years later Anita moved to live at the Kathmandu refuge with many of the other children who had been in Bhairahawa. A few months later she was excitedly pointing out how her skin colour had lightened a couple of shades by the move to the cooler north. Anita wasn't an academic girl but had a lovely extroverted personality and this translated into dance which had become a passion for her.

Anita's family background was very poor. The family lived in a wooden hut by the side of the road just outside Hetauda in the central south of Nepal. Like many of the rural poor, alcohol abuse dominated the family's day to day existence. At one point the father was found to be dismantling his hut to sell the wood to buy alcohol. Anita had become very concerned about her younger sister and brother who were at high risk of being trafficked and with the father's consent we took them into our Kathmandu refuge as well.

Last year Anita's father died and Anita, like many of the refuge children, went home for a few days around the festival of Dashain in October (this is the main Hindu festival and a time for family get togethers). It is also a time when the families who messed the children's lives up by trafficking them in the first place get a chance to spoil their lives yet again. But we are supposed to encourage reintegration to family and community and although Dashain scares the living daylights out of me we still comply with the children's and families wishes to be together for the festival. After a week or so at home Anita announced that she wanted to stay on with her mother and not return to the refuge. This was her decision and as a 16 year old there is very little that can be done to make someone change their mind. Shortly afterwards I was disappointed to hear that she had become married and that would be the last we'd probably see of this lovely girl.

Yesterday I heard that it seems her uncle has in fact trafficked her to India and Anita is now in Mumbai (the epicentre of the sex trade) or possibly even in Saudi Arabia. Once a girl goes down this route she becomes almost untraceable. We will find the uncle though and see what can be done.

This sad story reflects just how vulnerable trafficking survivors are, not least because their yearning to be back with kith and kin and have a sense of belonging puts them in such a high risk situation. It is also a stark reminder to us as to how little we can do to protect girls who can be whisked away so quickly down a path to an existence that is beyond our comprehension.

Local journalism

2009-02-01T15:05:00.003+05:30

Hmmm. I have tried Twitter and I am not convinced it's my style. But I'll give it a chance.

I couldn't resist posting this photograph that appeared in today's Himalayan Times. Interesting isn't it?

Back again - sort of...

2009-02-01T10:46:00.004+05:30

Regular readers will have noticed that my Nepal blog has fallen by the wayside; this is entirely a feature of having been just too busy over the last couple of months with business planning and desperate fundraising to try and beat the recession. Finding time when I felt sufficiently relaxed to write - and enjoy the activity - became almost impossible. Blogging came to feel like a chore. So I stopped.

Now I have restarted through using Twitter (see the link on the right) which allows me to still stay in touch with friends and charity supporters through short, more manageable, bursts. These will complement blog posts that will perhaps be a little less frequent than before.

Now off to do some twittering....

Not so vital statistics

2008-11-11T07:37:00.005+05:30

I have just measured myself up to provide baseline figures for the fitness drive I am going to embark upon in the lead up to my participation in the BUPA 10km run in London next year. The data are not impressive.

Height - 1.74m
Weight - 80kg
Waist - 99cm
Hips - 101 cm

Oh dear. Consultation with the BUPA website indicates that it's currently not looking good for my prospects of avoiding a heart attack. My Body Mass Index (BMI) which is calculated by dividing weight in kg by height in metres stands at 26.42; a figure of between 25-30 is considered "overweight". Encouraged by the recent medical evidence that BMI is a less reliable measure of risk than Waist to Hip ratio I calculated that one enthusiastically. My optimism was short lived. The ratio works out at 0.98 - a figure of greater than .90 takes me into the high risk zone.

Anyway, encouraged by a family member's contribution of £2k towards my sponsorship page this morning the fitness drive begins today. As I am nearing my first fundraising target of £1k for every km of the run I am going to set myself a real challenge. I am no athlete, decreasingly so as the years go on, and have little chance of realising my idle boast to friends of being first across the line. Instead I am going to try to set a record for the amount raised by an individual and maybe also by a charity running team in this particular event. I am awaiting information from the event organisers as to what the highest sponsorship has been in the past.

Guinness Book of Records here we come!

The banality of evil

2008-11-10T08:00:00.005+05:30

When Adolf Eichmann, the infamous architect of Hitler's "Final Solution" against the Jews, was finally captured and presented in an Israeli court in 1963 the public was in for a surprise. For his was not the face of an ogre. Instead a very ordinairy, diminutive, bespectacled bureaucrat was being accused of the most horrendous of charges. This experience led to a book being published called "Eichmann in Jerusalem" with the subtitle "The banality of evil". My mind turned to this last evening after I received this picture of Kaajiman Shrestha, a Nepali who is currently facing charges of trafficking children to the Indian circuses. He was apprehended by Esther Benjamins Trust staff after allegedly having been involved in sending scores of children to a living hell that masqueraded as circus life. He's of course not remotely in the same league as Eichmann, but he looks a fairly benign kind of a chap, one that you wouldn't look twice at if you met him in the street. If convicted he faces twenty years in prison.

Flickr

2008-11-03T08:37:00.004+05:30

I have just embraced "Flickr" which allows me to share Trust photographs through an online album and that automatically places pictures onto this blog, Facebook and to my charity run fundraising page (hint, hint). I have uploaded a few pictures from our circus rescue in June, but I would recommend that you have a look at the trekking collection that I have uploaded this morning. Essentially the older refuge children who are taking part in the International Award scheme become involved in a range of activities from community work to adventurous training that develops them as well-rounded citizens, even the leaders tomorrow. Thanks to the Body Shop Foundation we were able to purchase trekking and camping equipment which has allowed the children to go off on regular trips with their carers and with guides.

The images of the happy children in the trekking collection belie the grim backgrounds that they've all come from. It is so common for our work to attract comment about "institutionalisation". Do these children look institutionalised to you?

Feet of clay

2008-11-01T13:01:00.013+05:30

I have just returned from Saturday lunch with the children at the refuge. It's a lovely sunny day in Kathmandu and I was pleased to see upon arrival at the refuge that Shailaja, typically, was not lazing in the sun. Instead she had put the sun to work for her with two solar ovens up and running, baking bread for the children's lunch. And very good it was too. We are working towards using the larger, trailer mounted, solar oven commercially as it bakes more bread than even our voracious children can eat. That could provide a handy income to the local organisation, albeit a modest one.

Next week will see the start of an external evaluation of our work and yesterday I was revisiting a previous evaluation from 2005 which needs to be taken into consideration by a different evaluator, Jason Hoke, who will be conducting a more in-depth review. The evaluator at that time was very naive, surprisingly so since he'd lived for 20 years in Nepal and spoke the language, taking pretty well everything that the (then) local staff said to him at face value. Much of his report still grates with me. But one particularly unfair comment that was made was that by teaching children independent living and how to fend for themselves we were erroneously bringing them up in a Western way. In Nepali culture there is a great deal of interdependence within the family and the community. These links are reinforced through religious practice and festivals like the ones we've just had, Dashain and Tihar, when parent/child and sibling/sibling relationships are re-affirmed. Undoubtedly these practices can add a great deal of strength to family life, an inherent strength that we could indeed learn from in the West.

However that which can lead to intrinsic strength can also foster the weakness of dependence. And what happens when these social and family bonds fail and children end up sent to prison because there is no one prepared to bear the stigma of caring for the children of prisoners (even if they are relatives) or when children get sold and are trafficked into modern day slavery in the Indian circuses? Usually this represents an irretrievable breakdown of those bonds as families dissolve around the trafficking victims. The only answer surely is to "empower" (a grossly overused word within the development sector) the survivors and prepare children and young people to face the adult life in a tough country without being solely reliant upon support that may well be founded upon feet of clay.

Bailo

2008-10-31T21:38:00.004+05:30

During the festival of Tihar Nepalese children perform "Bailo" going around people's houses singing and dancing in return for a donation and some treats - a bit like "trick or treat" in the Western world. Yesterday the refuge children came to my home and I recorded a short video of their trip. I have just now posted that footage to my charity run fundraising page in the hope that any viewers will contribute something to my online sponsorship in appreciation, just as I was pleased to put my hand into my pocket yesterday:

http://www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

A donation can be modest and I don't expect many to compete with the gentleman who added £5k to the kitty yesterday!

I hate mobile culture

2008-10-29T11:41:00.005+05:30

It became a running joke with my friends that I didn't possess a mobile until I reluctantly accepted one a couple of years ago. And then only because one of them bought me one out of exasperation at being unable to reach me. My problem was not with the technology per se - I love communications and ease of accessibility, particularly when trying to run a UK charity from Kathmandu and to stay in touch with friends and supporters. Instead I was troubled by becoming part of mobile culture, within which those who own the confounded things feel compelled to use and answer them, however inappropriate, wherever they may be and whatever the occasion. Take a look at the picture I received this morning of former circus girl Maya who I have mentioned in a previous post as being a talented distance runner. She's just 15 but yesterday came 9th in a 3km run against national adult athletes. In the picture she's receiving a prize from the local MP but just look at the geezer in the background who is so subtley (not) concealing his use of his mobile.

I am considering bringing Maya over to London for a future running event if my Trust can find some sponsorship for her nearer the time. That would be the chance of a lifetime for her and well deserved.

On the subject of which, don't forget my online sponsorship form for the BUPA 10km run:

http://www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

Sponsorship is developing nicely as is interest from fellow runners. Two of my London-based staff, Chris Kendrick and Nadia Kamel, will be joining me, as will six other supporters (so far). If you would like to come too, registration for the race opened yesterday:

http://www.london10000.co.uk/site/?pageID=200

Laxmi

2008-10-29T07:04:00.003+05:30

We are in the midst of the Nepalese festival of Tihar which is equivalent to Diwali, the festival of lights in India. Yesterday prayers were being offered to the goddess of wealth, Laxmi. It's remarkable how theologically opposed this is to Christianity which rejects prosperity - at least in principle. In bygone years devotees would place an array of little oil lamps around their houses to attract Laxmi to their hearth but these days they drape buildings with huge lengths of fairy lights for the same purpose.

Last evening was one of the three evenings per week of scheduled power cuts. The electricity went off at 5.45 as per normal but to my surprise it came back on again half an hour later (normally the power is off for three hours). Then I realised that someone somewhere must have realised that the cut would have meant no fairy lights and no enticement of Laxmi.

This morning it was back to "normal" with no power when we awoke, the reality of Nepal's poverty and our getting up in the dark with a screaming Alisha who is now firmly in "the terrible twos".

Jane and Olwyn go to Hetauda

2008-10-28T08:50:00.007+05:30

During their volunteer attachment with The Esther Benjamins Trust in Nepal, Jane McKears (pictured right with Programme Coordinator Binod Bhujel) went with Olwyn Cupid to assist at our branch office in Hetauda. Hetauda is the principal town in Makwanpur District which before our work had its positive impact was the main child trafficking area to the Indian circuses. This is what Jane wrote about her time there:

"Olwyn and I came to Nepal to do five weeks voluntary work over the Desai holiday period. Both of us are widely travelled, and Olwyn in particular has seen most of the world.

We were drawn to the project by a number of things. I had briefly visited the project at Bhairahawa and was attracted to the positive and optimistic attitude at the centre. It quickly became clear to me that this really is a charity which is here for the benefit of the children and not the Directors. With my having a background in Health Visiting and Child Protection, and Olwyn being an Inspector of schools, we soon recognized the project as being totally child-centred. Our first few days were spent at Godawari, which is five miles outside of Kathmandu. In this gentle oasis, we picked oranges from the trees in our garden [I wondered where those had gone to...] and enjoyed views from our rooftop towards Everest. Outside in the road, goats and hens wandered amongst brightly painted lorries.

After a couple of frustrating days when we did not even know where the children were, we were able to join them at last. It was such fun, teaching them to play "What's the time Mr. Wolf" and other games. They actually screamed with excitement. It was only later that we discovered some of the "children" were 19 years old, but having had their childhood destroyed, they were learning to play. I gave an impromptu First Aid Course with an almost empty First Aid box, but the children appreciated practicing covering an open wound.

The following week we were transferred to Hetauda. Nothing in our previous travels prepared us for the ten hour bus journey there. Cramped into the small back seat which we shared with 2 men, we could not move our legs at all, but felt more fortunate than those sitting on the roof…especially when the late monsoon flooded our road. The 14 seater bus conveyed 26 of us along, not counting those sitting on the roof. It was stifling hot, and the pot-holed road was emphasized by the lack of suspension. Bouncing along as though we were horse-riding, I was once bounced up so high I banged my head on the ceiling of the bus. Respite came with a loo stop. Looking out through the large hole, which replaced a window, I was able to enjoy beautiful rural views whilst having a wee. Naturally when we unpacked our cases, which had been strapped to the roof throughout the downpour, the entire contents were soaking!

So why did the morning find us relaxed and contented? Nepali people are amongst the friendliest in the world. And the children at our project were welcoming and helpful. By lunch time I had had my toe nails and left hand finger nails painted scarlet by the children, and Olwyn had enjoyed showing them how to use her camera. Plentiful meals of dhal bhat were provided, which were delicious but mountainous! We had great fun singing English and Nepali songs together, and then had ball games which reminded me how much fun childhood can be. It wasn't all fun of course. The regular water and electricity cuts were frustrating, but we followed the lead of the children who took it all in due course. Neither did we like the mosquitoes which seemed particularly attracted to us.

Highlights for me included, taking a pregnant girl to hospital for a check up, where it was interesting to see the ante-natal check up. We both loved visiting the families of circus returnees to see if the girls had settled well back at home. Seeing families live in 2 roomed mud huts was not a new experience for us, but gaining insight into the social causes of child trafficking was an eye-opener. It is not just simply illiteracy that leads families to believe their children will be transformed into film stars, but a simplicity which is associated with the geographical limits of their lifestyles. One family we visited, were of the Chepang tribe. They are the poorest tribe in Nepal and live their entire lives in the jungle, eating only what can be found there. They live in houses of mud and branches, and never leave the area. Imagine how tragically simple it would be to fool them that their daughter was about to be given a great future in the circus. As Hetaudu is prone to child trafficking, the staff have been out with loudspeakers , conducting awareness campaigns. Let's hope this reduces the incidence.

Our time at Hetauda was also used to conduct a research project to find the current state of the circuses in India,. This will inform the future direction of the work of the Trust.. most of what the circus returnees, and ex-circus managers told us, only reinforced knowledge already available to the Trust. It was extremely painful for us to hear the girls describe their treatment, but this just served to strengthen our commitment to supporting the work of the Esther Benjamins Trust.

If you are thinking of coming here as a volunteer, please bring with you an open mind. Nepali culture is complex and diverse. Would I recommend that you come here as a volunteer? Well, yes – if you have the skills and knowledge which are useful to the Esther Benjamins Trust. Remember that the volunteer experience is primarily to benefit the children, and our own enjoyment is secondary. For both of us this has been a wonderful experience, peppered with a great sadness at suffering which we cannot erase."

Table Tennis

2008-10-28T07:50:00.006+05:30

Yesterday I opened a mini youth club at the Trust's children's refuge at Godawari, Kathmandu and inaugurated the table tennis table. The facility isn't lavish - it's all we can afford - but it will mean a lot to the kids who are getting older and more energetic by the day. Afterwards I welcomed new volunteer Carole Swithern and bade farewell to outgoing volunteers Jane McKears and Olwyn Cupid. This has been a record year for the number of volunteers who have come to help us out and quantity has been matched by quality.

I now have seven runners (self included) pledged to take part in the BUPA 10km run for which online registration opens today. We are planning to do the run with clowns' (sad) faces with the message that the Indian circus is no laughing matter. I am those who have been very quick off the mark to sponsor me. I have been so encouraged that I have upped the fundraising target to £10,000, aiming to raise £1,000 for each kilometer that I run in the year of the Trust's 10th birthday. New runners and sponsors most welcome!

I am very proud of our new look website, which has had a total makeover and went live at the weekend.

Dashain fall out

2008-10-25T07:44:00.005+05:30

Earlier this month I described in a post how most of our refuge children go back to their villages to stay with family members for the main Hindu festival of Dashain. On the face of it our sending them back makes good sense as it's fulfilling the wishes of children to enjoy some semblance of family life and it keeps them in contact with families. Family bonds are very important in Nepal. However, this practice carries huge risks and once again we've had our annual raft of disasters. I met with the children's carer, Shailaja, yesterday to discuss the fall out from Dashain and the non return of a few children and teenagers.

It seems from our discussion that a large part of the problem comes from children leaving the structured routine of our refuge in Kathmandu to the unstructured (indeed chaotic) lifestyle back in their villages. Unsupervised by parents, the children are free to roam around the place, make acquaintances (some of which can be very unhealthy) and develop alternative naive visions for their short term futures. And so they come to the decision to drop out of education or training and in the case of at least four of those who are not coming back to us, to get married. Needless to say, the education and training that we offer provide a real future, but the children/teenagers don't necessarily see it that way and their families are too ignorant to counsel them otherwise.

Shailaja was clearly saddened during our discussion as she is very emotionally involved with the children. She has known some of them for years and it was she more than anyone who turned a few of them around after they emerged as basket cases from the abuse of the Indian circus. She's also upset in the knowledge that the children haven't realised their full potentials and won't get another chance or as good a chance again. And she knows that, after making a personal visit to the see the children at their homes this week that they won't be persuaded to come back to us. We have to therefore console ourselves in the knowledge that we have provided a stable emotional bridge between the circus and return to the community. Without that bridge the returnees' reintegration would have been difficult, if not impossible.

The vacant places at the refuge will be filled again soon; there are plenty of other young children - vulnerable siblings of returnees - who could use those vacancies and be offered a chance in life. However we decided yesterday that in future we will obtain a commitment from children and their parents that in the final four years before taking the all important School Leaver's Certificate examination (at age 16) refuge children will not return to their villages for Dashain or any other festival. Parents can come to see the children if they so wish. We have to ensure that expensive charity refuge/education places are used to their full potential and that children don't find themselves in the village environment which is so conducive to taking wrong decisions at a critical time for their future.

It's very hard to strike the right balance in this kind of work but if you keep at the forefront of your mind what is in the best interests of the individual child then you won't go far wrong.

A long time in charity

2008-10-20T08:24:00.004+05:30

Former UK Prime Minister, the late Harold Wilson, once said that "a week is a long time in politics". After my fundraising experiences of the past week I am inclined to the view that it can also be a long time in the charitable sector. For at the start of the week I was quite bullish about our chances of being able to balance The Esther Benjamins Trust's books next year through a new raft of funding applications to grant making foundations that we have just issued. However last week we received rejection after rejection, including from traditionally generous historical funders. I can only infer that those foundations are as worried about donating as has become the general public in the present global financial crisis.

On Saturday I wrote to my Trustees to share my concerns and propose that we cast the fundraising net even wider than before in the coming year. One of the new initiatives that I have suggested is the Trust's participation in the annual BUPA 10km run in London on the 25th May next year. Online application will open on 28th October but the Trustees have agreed that we will purchase an additional 30 guaranteed places to ensure that we can field a good team. And I have decided to put my feet where my mouth is and join the run myself. I'll be inviting supporters to join me but if you can't do so please sponsor me through the online form that can be accessed through this blog.

All things to all people

2008-10-17T09:18:00.002+05:30

Many of the local NGOs in Nepal seem to think that their best chance of securing overseas funding is to try to be all things to all people (potential donors). Take for example this bid that I received yesterday from an NGO that I had never heard of before. In spite of having a very broad range of NGO interests (objectives) that cover just about everything imaginable within the development sector, the activity in this "proposal" comes down to nothing more than indiscriminate spraying of village houses with pesticide (not sure that I'd care for that much around my home):

"Proposal for the Pest Control

Main Objective of the NGO:

A.) To launch the various activities for the development of Agriculture & Veterinary Sectors.
B.) To implement Rural Water Supply & Sanitation and Toilet Construction Programme.
C.) To implement world charter of child rights and their development.
D.) To implement various activities for the people under natural disaster.
E.) To improve the living standard of deprived lower caste & scheduled tribe by mobilizing them into groups.
F.) To implement various activities in health sector.
G.) To assist in poverty alleviation of low income families.
H.) To disseminate knowledge about education & conduct training for self employment.
I.) To improve internal infrastructure of tourism. And
J.) To mobilize women into groups to improve their living standard, skill development and income generation.

B. Project Details:

Name of the project: Pest Control
Project Site::District: Dhanusha VDC: Nanupatti, Pachharwa, Sonigama, Chakkar, Aurahi, Duhabi, Bafai, Lakhauri, Dhabauli, Hattipur Harwara ,Sabela, Satokhar, Kharihani, Deori Parbaha & Dhanauji.
Project Duration:Date of Commencement: Jan, 2009
Date of Completion: Feb, 2009
Project Status: NewProject
Sector: HealthProject
Selection Criteria:
I) Pest Control is the basic need of all living being. Like cockroach, mosquito & flees are spreading the disease in to the life. As the people of these areas highly demanded to have pest control spray in to their home from donor based organization like us.
II) Cholera, Malaria & Viral Fever like disease are attacking to the healthy people due to heavy attack of flees & mosquito.
Project Objective: Get rid off from the pest attack and spreading disease.
Project Implementation Process:We will hire the expert in the field and then by spray the dilution of DDC Chemical in each village by door to door at the pre-information to the house holder.
Target No. of Beneficiaries: More than 50000 people
Expected Out come: 100% result oriented based on pest control.
Monitoring & Evaluation of the Project: The work will be monitored by the joint committee from the NGO, District Health Organization and local community.
Preparation and submission of progress report: At the end of Project (one copy to the Donor Agency and One copy to the Social welfare council).
Sustainability of the project: Every year we have schedule to inspect the areas whether pest control is required or not if yes we will conduct the project on the donation basis of donor agency.
Proposed Amount: Total Proposal of amount for the project: NRS. 11, 00,000 (Financial) Cost of Programme: 650000 Cost of Administration: 450000 (Including Over head)
Personnel Required: No Of Local Staff: 15 people Inspection Team: 3 People"

I can think of better ways of spending £10,000 in Nepal.

Goose-a-laying

2008-10-10T16:30:00.007+05:30

My charity's Christmas cards are now available for purchase. The cover shows a mosaic entitled "Goose-a-laying" (as per the 12 Days of Christmas carol) that was made by Kumari, a former circus girl who is a graduate of the art workshop that we've been running in Kathmandu this year. The cards sell at £3.99 for a pack of 8, with postage and packing costs of:

Up to 4 packs - £1.65
Up to 6 packs - £1.75
Up to 8 packs - £2.00
Up to 10 packs - £2.55

Once again, through the kind sponsorship of leading London-based engineering company Ramboll Whitbybird, 100% of the purchase price represents a donation to The Esther Benjamins Trust (EBT). Recipients of the card will be able to order an original of the mosaic - which is from a limited edition - that will ensure trafficking survivors are kept in work making them well into January. So beat that for a charity Christmas card offer!

You can place your order by contacting EBT through e mail - info@ebtrust.org.uk - by telephone - 020 7600 5654 or through placing an order via the Trust's website - www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/home.htm

Vijaya Dashain

2008-10-09T21:23:00.004+05:30

Today was Vijaya Dashain, the tenth and main day of the festival of Dashain. Normally it's when young people visit family homesteads to receive a blessing and "tika" mark on the forehead from the family elders. Also included in the package is a few barley shoots tucked behind the right ear of the recipient of the blessing and a gift, that usually involves a small amount of money.

I went to our children's refuge this morning to act as the "family elder" for about 50 children who had nowhere to go to this Dashain. They included children who were HIV positive that had been rejected by their families but probably also a few of our older boys and girls who had given up on their natural families and preferred their friends' company rather than attending a shallow family celebration. Often these same family members had trafficked them to the circuses or wrecked their lives through alcohol abuse and various misdemeanours that had led to prison sentences.

The occasion went well and it was as moving for me as ever. For the first time five of the older boys (aged 16-18) after receiving my blessing (which is of rather dubious merit) bent down and touched my feet with their heads as a mark of respect. This leaves you feeling very awkward but it brought home to me just how much these kids realised what had been done for them, not just by me but by the charity as a whole - trustees, staff, volunteers and supporters. At times I rant about the trials and tribulations of working in this very difficult society - including in this blog - but today all the effort felt very worthwhile.

Vehicle worship

2008-10-08T11:24:00.004+05:30

I returned to our children's refuge in Godawari this morning to continue with my experiments in smoking food. The results of yesterday's fish smoking looked very appetising but might have been a little overcooked. The taste was great though and received the thumbs up from the local staff members who'd helped me with the smoking yesterday. Today I am trying to produce tandoori smoked chicken in advance of letting the refuge children try all the products when I attend the main Dashain ceremony there tomorrow.

Driving through Kathmandu it's very quiet at the moment with most shops closed and few vehicles on the road. Dashain is the main Hindu festival and it's really a time for being at home with family or going back to one's ancestral village to visit relatives, hence the deserted streets. There are quite a few homemade swings ("pings") made out of bamboo poles to be seen in open spaces (including one at the refuge) that are designed to take the child literally and metaphorically heavenward and away from earthly things. However to my eye this doesn't quite fit with some of the other, more material, devotions. As I left the refuge today the staff were decorating the NGO's vehicles - bus, jeep and motorbike - with garlands and sugar cane leaves as part of a worship procedure while children were playing on a ping in the background. The Director, Shailaja, who is a practising Roman Catholic, smiled indulgently and told me that if she didn't allow this then if there were any future breakdowns she'd be blamed for not have allowed "puja" or "prayers" to have taken place. So she's gone with the flow which is actually a very Nepali thing to do and this easy going, tolerant approach I suppose is part of the charm of this place.

No way to treat a filing cabinet

2008-10-07T15:40:00.005+05:30

In August I attended a one day course at "Smoky Jo's" near Shap in the English Lake District, learning everything that you could ever want to know about how to smoke meat, fish, vegetables - anything really. My picture appears on the Smoky Jo's website gallery:

http://www.smokyjos.co.uk/Smoky%20Jo

The purpose of my attending the course (which I would highly recommend) was to establish if I could learn some basic skills that could be transferable to Nepal as a form of income generation for the girls we've rescued from the Indian circuses. Jo and Georgina were fantastic and very knowledgeable hosts and I came away all fired up (so to speak) with enthusiasm for the technique.

Last month New Zealand expatriate volunteers in Kathmandu, Sarah and Ian Broughton built a smokery to my guidance. This isn't exactly rocket science; essentially you can convert a metal filing cabinet to meet the demands of smoking. All you need is to cut a hole in the top of the cabinet and add a chimney. The bottom of the cabinet becomes a heat source, one drawer up from that is where you do your hot smoking and the top drawer is reserved for cold smoking. Delightfully simple.

Today I trialled their smoker for the first time, cold smoking a drawer full of fish (salmon, trout and king fish that I had suitably primed beforehand). I'll see what the results are like tomorrow morning before continuing the experiment with a hot smoke of chicken.

No one in Nepal is smoking any foodstuffs to the best of my knowledge and early indications are that there could be a lot of mileage in refining this technique for an increasingly discerning local market.

A home in Makwanpur

2008-09-28T07:51:00.005+05:30

In a previous post I reported on how one of our teams last month intercepted a child trafficking agent with nine children who was on his way to The Rambo Circus in India. The agent is now in custody while the children are staying at our Godawari refuge. The mother of one of the children has since left her home to find work in Kathmandu but it's more likely that she is under pressure from the agent's family to help get him off the hook. Meanwhile the siblings of the child that we rescued have been placed with their maternal uncle. Our Programme Coordinator in Hetauda has just been to visit the uncle's home in trafficking-prone Makwanpur District and sent me the adjacent picture. Following that visit we have agreed to admit the two youngest sisters, aged 5 and 6, to the Godwari refuge. So the arrest of that agent last month has led to not just nine extra children to care for but now eleven.

This is one of the greatest underlying problems in our work against child trafficking; the abyss of poverty that child survivors or potential victims originate from.

A home in Butwal

2008-09-25T20:11:00.005+05:30

It's coming up to the Dashain festival, a time for family reunions and one occasion in the year when we endeavour to get our refuge children back to stay with relatives, including parents, for some semblance of family life. Today my colleague Gunraj Gurung visited the home in Butwal of one of the boys at the Bhairahawa "White House" refuge to check that all was in order for this temporary reunification. The house is pictured right.

Inside the house Gunraj found the boy's mother lying in some kind of a stupor. A neighbour told him that her husband had died eight months ago. No one had advised the organisation. So her son, who was of course in ignorance of this, would have had the most traumatic of returns instead of a happy festival. Gunraj also found at the house the boy's sister dressed in filthy clothes. He has asked if we can admit her to our refuge and I have agreed.

So often organisations like ours can be criticised for providing "institutional care" for children who would surely be better off with their families. Those dewy-eyed critics can't have had much exposure to the downright misery that goes with rural poverty in Nepal.

Seasonal visitors

2008-09-23T21:40:00.006+05:30

The birdlife of my garden and continues to fascinate. Considering how close I live to central Kathmandu it's amazing what passes through. The other day I had a white-throated kingfisher in one of the trees but it seemed even less willing to pose for a photograph than Shankar Basnet (see my previous post). Other recent arrivals have been grey-headed myna birds which are seasonal visitors that have descended in flocks to feast on the nectar in the flowering shrubs just outside my study window.

This afternoon I went up to visit The Esther Benjamins Trust's art workshop in Godawari to see how recently arrived volunteer artist Margaret Fehn was getting along. Under her supervision a couple of girls were engaged in painting a still life of flowers, with one of them, Bunnu, creating a very lively interpretation. Next door Rina was working on a butterfly mosaic based upon a photo that I took in my garden a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile in another room girls were busy painting exquisite figurines of village women that they had designed.

Tomorrow three more volunteers will join us, Jane McKears, Olwyn Cupid and Jill Hamilton. Their arrival is very timely on the eve of the main Hindu festival of Dashain next month when those kids at our refuge who have absolutely no family members to go to will need some spoiling.

The Thinker

2008-09-23T20:31:00.007+05:30

Shankar Basnet, (alleged) child trafficking agent, has now been charged and is awaiting trial. Apparently he is now protesting that he doesn't even know the girl who has given evidence against him. So we'll have to strengthen our case by gathering further evidence against him however he's probably preparing the way for a longer sentence for himself by not pleading guilty. Today I was sent a picture of Basnet, wearing handcuffs and not looking terribly happy in a pose that is rather reminiscent of a Rodin sculpture. By the look of it I am not sure that my colleague, Binod Bhujel, had the subject's full consent before taking the photo.

Meanwhile, the report issued by the Nepal Central Child Welfare Board last week on the state of Nepalese circus children (based loosely upon our work) has received publicity right around the world. Yesterday its publication in Australian papers led to my giving interviews to two Australian radio stations. You can hear my broadcast on Radio Australia through this link:

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/programguide/stories/200809/s2371567.htm

Sadly, because of the editing of a non-commercial radio station, the report sounds more upbeat than it ought to. I made it clear that the biggest obstacle to future success wasn't lack of commitment or organisation but the economic struggle between us as a charity (who have to scrabble around for what funds we can get) and the traffickers who have plenty of ill-gotten financial gains to draw upon. We may yet fail solely because of this financial imbalance.

A circus owner speaks out

2008-09-21T15:21:00.004+05:30

Last week, for the first time, I received an e mail from a circus owner in India. Sujit Dilip of The Rambo Circus, India's second largest, wrote to me taking exception to our negative comments about his circus that appeared recently on the Trust's website. This followed our arrest of child trafficking agent Kirta Tamang who was on his way to the Rambo Circus last month with nine Nepalese minors. Mr Dilip has asserted that his is a good circus that looks after everyone very well and he has invited me to visit the circus to find out for myself.

From what I can gather, based upon intelligence gleaned from returnees, the Rambo Circus is one of the better circuses in India, employing overseas artists (including British ones) and paying local and Nepali performers for their services. However, there is still the problem of its use of performers who found their way to the circus through having been trafficked to enter employment on the basis of illegal contracts. On top of that, although Mr Dilip advised me this morning that his performers receive proper education and training within the circus, he will have been preventing children from receiving the full education that their peers outside the circus receive. A full education is a fundamental human right. In doing so he is also denying the children a future for when after the circus is finished with them.

That said, Mr Dilip is clearly not a villain as per some of the other circus owners and I will take up his offer to pay him a visit. Back in 2003 we tried to persuade the circus owners of the time to change their ways and begin operating legally and after their non-compliance we began the process of raids in 2004. Maybe now at least one circus owner is ready to move in the right direction and that is to be encouraged. Perhaps Mr Dilip can lead the way.

The Times of London, 20th September

2008-09-21T12:13:00.001+05:30

The Times published this article on the situation of circus children yesterday:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4790779.ece?Submitted=true

Success for Maya

2008-09-20T18:35:00.004+05:30

Three years ago I took a very controversial - and in some quarters highly unpopular - decision to relocate the children who were in the care of The Esther Benjamins Trust from rural Bhairahawa in the southwest of the country to Kathmandu. Although this increased our running costs significantly, my reasoning was that the transfer was very much in the best interests of the children, presenting them with opportunities that they would not otherwise enjoy in the comparative backwoods of Rupendehi District.

Since then the children's academic progress has improved dramatically but on top of that, three athletic kids, two boys and a girl, attend daily training at the National Stadium before going to school. The boys, Aman and Bijay, are now number one and two in gymnastics in Nepal, while the girl, Maya, has become an accomplished distance runner. All are former circus children.

Today Maya came first in an inter school running tournament, completing 3km in 13 minutes 25 seconds. She picked up a medal, a certificate and 3000 rupees (about £25) the latter equating to almost a month's wages in Nepal for an adult and certainly more than the monthly income of her impoverished father. Maya is such a self-effacing little girl that this will come as a great boost to her growing confidence. She's not good at smiling for the camera though, a common trait in Nepalese people who seem to spend all of the rest of their time smiling.

Rule of the mob

2008-09-18T18:31:00.005+05:30

When I first visited Nepal back in late 1999 I was advised during the course of a car journey what the best approach was in the event of the vehicle being involved in an accident that led to injury or fatality. It was to run and to run like blazes. For in Nepal a mob of enraged locals forms at the drop of a hat and, irrespective of who might have been at fault, one's life is at risk.

In today's Himalayan Times I read of an incident of similar mob justice yesterday in Uttar Pradesh, the lawless state (which the Indian circuses love to operate in) just across the border. Two men went took a mobile phone recharging coupon from a shopkeeper without paying for it; when he protested they shot him dead. They made off on motorcycles but a mob of villagers went after them, eventually felling them through a barrage of stones. Once grounded they were beaten to death and their motorcycles were set on fire. Without the slightest hint of irony The Himalayan Times reported that their bodies were about to be burned but that "timely intervention" by the police prevented that from happening.

There was an instance of attempted mob rule yesterday that impacted upon our staff in Hetauda, south Nepal. For most of this week our staff members have very courageously been trying to press for the charging of an (alleged) child trafficker, Shankar Basnet. Yesterday no fewer than 100 people who were supporting the agent blocked our staff's access to the police station and the Deputy Superintendent of Police was loath to proceed with the case. Following intervention last evening by Shailaja, our local Director, who spoke with the local inspector the case was finally filed at the District Court today.

If Basnet is convicted he faces a 20 year prison sentence. This has been nice news for us to end the week on.

A day of frustration

2008-09-18T18:31:00.004+05:30

All the ducks were in a row by lunchtime today, ready for our raid on a circus in the south of India. Paperwork had been prepared, flights booked, media alerted....and then at 1.30 p.m. Kelvin Symon of ChildLine India Foundation phoned me to say that the circus had moved location. So the trip was off, postponed until the circus arrives at its next location in early October. My expectations of a major success were thwarted, at least for now. The most I could do was revisit Interpol in Kathmandu this afternoon and present the paperwork that should be enough for the circus owner to be extradited to Nepal to face trafficking charges in the very near future.

Meanwhile in Hetauda, there has been apparent stonewalling on the part of the police in the pursuit of the case against alleged trafficking agent Shankar Basnet who was picked up by our field team on Monday evening. Statements had been taken against him from a witness who was trafficked by him to end up being allegedly raped at the circus. The case should have been lodged within one day of this at the District Court and all seemed done and dusted to us. Four days later we were appalled to learn that the police have still done nothing and we gather that the girl is being summoned to the police station again tomorrow. In short she is being put under a great deal of mental pressure (perhaps in the hope that she will retract her statement). The pressure is exacerbated by the incident having attracted the attention of local media who have been at the police station. Moreover Basnet's idiot neighbours have been adding to the intimidation by protesting at the station - trafficking really is something that can involve conspiracy and collaboration by whole communities.

Tomorrow we will take firm action to protect this girl who has been so courageous as to give evidence before her trafficker and we'll ensure that her will doesn't break under this unacceptable pressure. The local police are effectively treating her like a criminal and they should be ashamed of themselves as police officers and as men.

Faces on a hillside

2008-09-16T20:00:00.006+05:30

This afternoon I went once again to the Nepal office of Interpol in Kathmandu where I had a very useful discussion with Superintendent of Police, Dhiru Basnyet, regarding our plans for next week's circus rescue. I was joined by colleagues Shailaja and Dilu who brought with them statements from parents of missing girls who may be at the target circus. These statements are often accompanied by pathetic pictures of the child trafficking victims sometimes pictured with their impoverished parents. One such picture from today's file of statements is shown right. The poverty stares out at you as the child and the father stand on a barren hillside in rural Nepal with the father's vest having a gaping hole worthy of a rabbit. I hope we find this little girl next week.

While we have been working hard for Nepal's children a fraudster was busy last week trying to take vast sums of money out of our bank account. Three very amateur cheques for around £13k, complete with spelling mistakes of the bank address, were picked up very readily by our bank.

It's not really such a funny old world.

Closing down child traffickers

2008-09-15T12:09:00.003+05:30

I learned this morning of the arrest of two more (alleged) leading child trafficking agents who have been taking children to the circuses. The first, a man called Shankar Basnet who has been operating in the south/southeast of the country, was picked up by our staff in Nepal and is now being held at Hetauda police station. I gather that, bizarrely, Basnet has been under the protection of the wife of one of our own former staff members so she may well soon find herself under arrest too. The other, a female called Tamang, has been arrested on the Indian side of the border from where she was (allegedly) sending children to circuses including The Raj Mahal, the one that we raided in June. Our Indian partner, ChildLine India Foundation, instigated that arrest. She has now been charged and awaits trial.

Our next circus rescue operation will take place next week. Details to follow, but for security reasons I will report these after the event.

Melange

2008-09-14T19:46:00.004+05:30

Yesterday marked a significant milestone in my not-for-profit business initiative in Nepal, Himlayan Mosaics. For the first time the girls' exquisite products were on sale in a retail outlet, a new shop called "Melange" in the upmarket Durba Marg area of Kathmandu. The shop was packed with friends and well wishers to shop owner Pratima Thapa on her first day of business. We managed to sell eleven mosaics yesterday with the most popular one being of koi carp, a design by former volunteer art teacher with the Trust, professional artist Rebecca Hawkins. Most intriguingly I was approached by a visitor who has the responsibility of re-designing one of Kathmandu's leading hotels which has 80 bedrooms and who is interested in talking about mosaic possibilities. Often these things come to nothing but if it did this would give the new company just the boost that it needs and work to a LOT of our beneficiaries.

Himalayan Mosaics presents a great opportunity as it gives my circus survivors rewarding employment and an income but I still have the need to fundraise significant amounts of funds for the Trust's ongoing work as the credit crunch is already starting to bite hard. With my about to go on another circus rescue next week, I feel the need of those funds very acutely.

The Last Dance

2008-09-10T20:46:00.002+05:30

When I first came out to live here in 2004 nightlife in Kathmandu seemed pretty tame, with pubs calling for last orders at around 10.30 p.m. as the shutters came down on adjacent restaurants. Then with a breakdown in society's values - or a liberalisation depending upon your point of view - Kathmandu went through an entertainment revolution. Dance bars and massage parlours appeared on the scene and, as I wrote in a recent blog, recently you'd even see signs advertising "Striptease". Those of us in the development sector were very concerned at this deterioration as we witnessed Kathmandu becoming a sin city, a new venue for the sex tourists and final destination for naive and vulnerable girls trafficked from their village areas.

Last evening over dinner a friend of mine told me that apparently Thamel has changed within the last couple of weeks with it reverting to its former benign self. I hadn't noticed this - I don't go for nightlife so much as I once did - but his impression was confirmed when I read in the papers today that the new Government has vowed to shut down all dance bars within a few days. I think this reflects the conservatism of the Maoist-led government and this decision will go far to prevent Kathmandu's descent into becoming a cess pit.

Enjoy your telly

2008-09-09T13:28:00.006+05:30

If anyone out there is unhappy with the content of your television programmes just count yourself fortunate that at least you can switch your set on as and when you feel like it.

Nepal, potentially one of the largest sources of hydroelectric power in the world, suffers under regular scheduled power cuts or "load shedding". Last dry season this peaked at 42 hours of cuts per week. Then with the onset of the monsoon in June the power cuts dwindled but, very unusually and ominously, didn't entirely go away. Last week load shedding was unexpectedly increased to 17.5 hours with the rationale being that the reservoirs were unseasonally low and, ironically, that the grossly mismanaged surplus of water that caused extensive flooding in south Nepal and north India had destroyed a vital electrical link with India. Today it has been announced that the load shedding burden is to be doubled to 35 hours with immediate effect - and we are still two weeks short of the end of the monsoon. Heaven alone knows how things will stand at the peak of the coming dry season. But we'll not be able to turn on our TV when we feel the urge for quite some time to come. Predictions are that in the absence of plans for any new dam constructions these power restrictions will continue for another five years, paralysing the nation's development and degrading its quality of life.

On a lighter note, I noticed the other day a huge advertisement for insurance cover that appears in the car park of our local department store, Saleways in Lalitpur. It offers substantial pay outs in the event of a range of unforeseen calamities that might occur as you browse the supermarket shelves oblivious to the dangers that may lurk behind them. However the compensation paid is linked to how much you have spent in the store over the preceeding twelve months and, hilariously, after the deduction of the cost of your shopping on the day of the injury or untimely death. I wonder how this compares with public liability insurance at Tescos?

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

2008-09-07T14:31:00.003+05:30

Driving past Nepal's Central Bureau of Statistics in Kathmandu I often think of that old quotation from Benjamin Disraeli and amuse myself by reflecting on what must go on inside this not insubstantial edifice and what whoppers must emerge as a result of its staff's creativity. But in today's Himalayan newspaper there was a hint of the sound value that the these good offices deliver. At a conference held in Kathmandu on alternative toilet technology the Bureau contributed the statistic that fourteen million of Nepal's twenty five million population defecate in the open. I wonder how they arrived at that little nugget?

Marketing for Dummies

2008-09-01T16:42:00.007+05:30

A couple of weeks' back I advertised for the post of Marketing and Sales Manager with Himalayan Mosaics. The process for applicants involves complying to an instruction to download and complete an application form from a website. This avoids my being swamped with CVs and cover letters from candidates who are unqualified and feel inclined to take pot luck at job advertisement that appears in the papers. Hopefully this approach also attracts candidates who are capable of some fresh thought. Of the 21 responses, only six elected to complete the form, the remainder hoping erroneously that their CVs alone would carry them through.

One of those who did see fit to complete the application form one wrote winningly in his personal statement:

"Whenever I observe to my marketing executive during the field work, they always prejudge the people. They have a bad concept why they will buy our produce because might be they are old, too young but these are all bulls**t. Marketing is all about the create the demand and give best ideas to your client. According to me anyone can buy your product if you make him/her realize it could be useful for you. It was my practical knowledge of marketing. During my official session I took lot of interviews for the position of marketing executive but I did not get a single person who really knows the mean of marketing. I believe marketing is a kind of work which we can comparison with this quotation “Monkey see Monkey do” ."

The job interviews promise to be interesting.

Today I found my mind wandering to higher things and to reflecting upon the marvellous holiday I enjoyed just a month ago on the island of Bryher in the Scilly Isles. With a population of 80 it was just right as retreat from Nepal. Bryher is home to one of our regular Nepal volunteers, Marian Bennett, who seems to be a regular feature on television programmes about the islands and is a splendid host through her holiday lets. It is also the location of a delightful little church which has four splendid modern day stained glass windows by local artist Oriel Hicks. Their subjects based around local flora and fauna are set off beautifully by the backdrop of the island landscape outside and represent a wonderful piece of contextual art.

Cry, The Beloved Country

2008-08-28T22:00:00.003+05:30

In recent months I have been working my way through some literary classics. It has to be said that many have left me cold, perhaps through heightened expectations beforehand that would be dashed. Nobel Prize winning "The Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway is an example of one recent read that in my humble opinion is a very overrated book. However, a notable exception has been the novel by Alan Paton, "Cry, The Beloved Country" which I finished reading this evening. Set in the South Africa of apartheid it is a very stirring story indeed, yet written without sensation and all the more moving for it.

Reading that book and the emotions that it generated took me back to my honeymoon in South Africa in 2002. After covering The Garden Route, doing some whale spotting and the like I went with Bev at the end of the trip to visit Robben Island, the former prison of Nelson Mandela. I had gone there really as a tourist but was impressed with how rather than its being a museum it had become a living testament to reconciliation. The staff numbered amongst them both former prisoners and guards working side by side. I will never forget how one former inmate, who had become a guide, described with such dignity the indignities that had been visited upon him and his fellow prisoners. He told in a measured way of the harsh punishments that would be meted out by the prison regime for the most trivial of misdemeanours. A very rare thing happened to me then as I listened to him; tears came to my eyes as I really felt for the first time the pettiness and inhumanity of apartheid.

There is talk now of Nepal having to go through a "truth and reconciliation" process in the post conflict situation. That should be difficult given that in my experience the truth of any situation seems to be very difficult to arrive at in Nepal and reconciliation, shaking hands and moving on, certainly doesn't come naturally to the locals. I hope the Trust has a role to play in that overall process, focussing on picking up the pieces of children's lives that have been broken through the violence. This month we have taken our first three "conflict affected children" into refuge care - all lost their fathers through their being killed by the security forces for being Maoists or suspected Maoists. A huge legacy of child trauma must lie out there, unrecognised, and if we can manage at least some of that then we'll be continuing to make a worthwhile contribution towards humanity.

Artistic creativity

2008-08-26T11:08:00.006+05:30

At the start of this year when volunteer sculptor Rebecca Hawkins joined our art workshop for trafficking survivors she expressed interest in encouraging the girls (who have mostly been rescued from Indian circuses) to produce some items to their own design. I was deeply sceptical at the time as Nepal is very much a copycat society where "artists" have a tendency to copy the ideas of others or work from photographs. Indeed, when she prompted the students to design their own mirror frames in mosaic she found that they did so only under extremes of protest. But they produced results nonetheless and I was appropriately humbled.

Last week the latest volunteer sculptor from the UK, Denise Bryan (pictured right), was very proud to be able to show off to me little figurines that the girls had made in private after banning her from the studio for a couple of hours! These represent village women and each figure has its own identity reflecting the work of an individual artist - so the girls hadn't been copying from one another. I believe these figures can now be turned into very marketable ceramics that have a very ethnic, almost aboriginal, feel to them.

Reflecting on this surprising outcome, I can only attribute this to the success with which we have developed a relaxed "creative space" at the Godawari workshop and in how the girls have grown in self-confidence. The aims of the workshop have been achieved and I am sure much more success - and surprises - lies ahead.

Nepali deaf art students demonstrate how to mount wall mosaics

2008-08-25T21:05:00.001+05:30

Last Friday I called down to Bhairahawa to see how British art tutor volunteers Dan Newnham and Zoe Childerley were getting along. They have been supporting the art workshop for deaf school leavers for the past month and I was treated to a demonstration of how to mount wall mosaics. I was particularly thrilled to see the first ever mosaic that is specific to Bhairahawa!

There are now 25 deaf young people on the course and they're loving it. I believe that there are clear local income-earning opportunities for these young men and women after they complete their training.

We owe so much to Dan and Zoe for their amazing contribution; I hope to be able to raise the funds to cover their costs for a 6-12 month attachment in Bhairahawa next year. That will give the initiative the boost that it needs and merits.

Press report on our last circus rescue operation

2008-08-25T11:11:00.003+05:30

In my post of 27th June I described how Sunday Times journalist Dean Nelson had visited Hetauda to meet the girls that we rescued from the Raj Mahal Circus on 13th June. During my holiday last month his report appeared in the Sunday Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4364184.ece

I was very pleased with Dean's coverage even though it seems to have led to just one or two donations, although more journalistic interest has followed. But maybe someone out there was considering writing their Will around the time that they read the article. One never knows and you can only keep trying.

A funding challenge

2008-08-25T06:32:00.006+05:30

In my last post I mentioned how my blogging had lapsed in part due to being a little preoccupied and distracted by a funding shortfall. The truth of the matter is that while we are enjoying remarkable successes on the ground in both Nepal and India, the rapid growth of our work is starting to outpace our income. On top of that we are having to find funds at short notice (when lead in times to securing those elusive grants are measured in months) to meet unexpected and unpredictable new commitments.

An example of this is the interception of a leading child trafficking agent, 68 year old Kirta Tamang, earlier this month. We had received a tip off from a villager in the south of the country that Tamang was heading to India with nine children that he was taking to the Rambo Circus. My partner Director in Nepal, Shailaja, responded immediately by leading a team of our field staff in hot pursuit. After a lot of searching at two railway stations in the northern state of Bihar, they found the agent hiding in bushes with the children. He was apprehended and the party returned to Nepal with the children. It transpired that Tamang was grandfather to two of the children that he was trafficking; it is not unusual for traffickers to be related to their victims.

Kirta Tamang is now in police custody (the adjacent picture shows him handcuffed and in the back of a police vehicle) and he now faces a trial that could lead to the maximum prison sentence of 20 years. The children have come to our refuge in Godawari, near Kathmandu, as they are at risk of being re-trafficked or, more imminently, of being influenced by Tamang's family members to concoct a story as to what they were doing in India. Perhaps some kind of a family excursion with dear old grandad?

The fundraising challenge that was dropped on me was to find the additional care costs of the children (pictured right with Shailaja, centre back). This amounts to £45 per child, per month. That's means a total of £405 per month or £4860 per year has been suddenly added to the budget. And of course there is every possibility that these children will stay with us until they come of age so multiply the total annual figure by 10 and you're getting close to the actual long term costs. Already one kind supporter (and blog reader) has responded by covering the first month of costs.

The fight against child trafficking comes at a price. Any takers for another month?

Don't buy Wai Wai noodles

2008-08-24T13:09:00.008+05:30

I have returned to blogging after a respite of five weeks. The prolonged break was due to a combination of having been on holiday and of being over-worked ever since my return. I have become most concerned at the fundraising need that is increasingly out of step with our growing project needs; more of that anon.

Last Monday the Koshi river in south Nepal burst its banks. This led to a war of words between India and Nepal as to who was behind the mismanagement of this water resource that led to 50,000 people being displaced, destruction of homes and farmland and the loss of many (an as yet unquantified number) lives. There has been an immediate and significant response to this national disaster with the European Commission donating a million euros in emergency relief. There has been a local response too, however in many cases the contribution from various corporates has been for me too much of a public relations exercise as photographs appear in the papers of comparatively modest amounts being donated at ostentatious cheque handover ceremonies.

But today I was disgusted to see one corporate, Wai Wai noodles, offering through an advertisement in The Himalayan newspaper to donate 10 paisa (a fraction of a penny) for every packet of their noodles that are sold over the next month. To me it seems obscene and insensitive that this company should be using the floods with their associated loss of life as a marketing ploy.

Passing through Bhairahawa domestic airport on Friday I found myself with an excess of time awaiting my Buddha Air flight that allowed me to study the advertisements in the departure terminal. Don't believe everything that you see in Nepali advertising. In the midst of uninspiring advertisements for cooking oil and dry cell batteries there's a board there pushing the dubious delights of the Hotel Maharaja Palace which is on the airport road in Kathmandu. The architecture, as you can see from the adjacent picture, could best be described as neo-Stalinist however note the backdrop of the Himalayas which is surely a strong point in the hotel's favour? It would be if this wasn't a doctored image. In reality there isn't a mountain in sight.

It's felt good to have been blogging again. More to follow.