Two pieces of good news

The first long-awaited news that I heard today is that the international adoption committee has now met (I think yesterday) for the first time in months to process the 442 pending adoption case files, including my own. At this meeting the first 20 files were processed i.e. up to file number 1970. I gather that in some cases documentation may need updating since the files having been collecting dust for most of this year. I have no idea when the committee will meet again, but at least a start has now been made.

The second piece of good news is that my not-for-profit business Himalayan Mosaics was finally registered today. So we can now sell handmade mosaics all over the world. I just need to get the website done now and identify international customers. But that doesn't stop us from selling at fairs in Kathmandu this Saturday and the following Friday. I am very excited for my work to be evolving from charity into not for profit business which seems to be the only way to go that assures beneficiaries of not only an income but also of retrieving their self confidence and dignity.

For both news items the bottom line is that nothing happens quickly in Nepal. Least of all international adoption.

Suraj

Suraj came to see me at the weekend. He is the elder of two brothers whom we had rescued back in November 2000. They had been found sleeping rough outside Tansen jail, obtaining scraps of food through the bars of the prison gate courtesy of their imprisoned mother. The two boys came to our refuge in Bhairahawa where they quickly began to blossom. Both are very good all rounders - academically, musically, at dance and sport. Suraj took the lead role in a community play that we organised at the refuge a couple of years ago. His part in the play's "dream sequence" (pictured) is very memorable.

His progress took a jolt when his father turned up out of the blue a few months ago. He had been in different prison from his wife but freed after the Maoists burned down the jail at the end of last year; he is technically on the run but apparently had joined the Maoists himself. He arrived at the refuge on his motor bike, flashing money and showing off to his sons. Although told to go away he has been around the neighbourhood ever since. This put us in a doubly difficult position as Suraj's mother was insistent that the boys should never be handed over to their no-good father. And the boys had been signed over to our care by her, not him, and she expected them returned after her release.

Last week Suraj announced that he wanted to leave school (he's now 16 and very close to taking his final examinations) and if he couldn't work for us (not an option) he wanted to join his father. The local staff couldn't persuade him otherwise so he came to Kathmandu where he met the local Director here, Shailaja CM, and she talked him into changing his mind. By the time he got to me it had become an easy interview. He gave me a big hug before he left the room. This is another example of how our refuge children's parents mess their children's lives up leading to their coming to our care in the first place. Thereafter, given the chance, they continue to do so.

The news on the international adoption process has been encouraging this week. It appears that the files at our District office (Lalitpur) were due to be sent off yesterday and there is a prospect of a committee meeting this week to begin to look at all the files. That's what I heard from the refuge where our child came from. But the locals would tell you anything to make you happy....

Sunday in Godawari

I shot this footage this morning of girls in my mosaic studio, peacefully chipping away at their artworks in advance of our forthcoming UK exhibition. They are working on subjects ranging from Saints (as depicted in the Irish Book of Kells) to UK football club logos. All of these girls are trafficking victims, sold once by their families into a life of every kind of abuse as “performers” inside Indian circuses. Now they are proving to everyone their real worth and they’re very happy. See:

This afternoon I paid a visit to our refuge just down the road to see four newly-arrived children. They are siblings of two girls who were already in our care, both circus returnees. One girl, Bipana, had been working in my mosaic studio but hadn't returned from the Dashain holiday (see earlier post on "Dashain problems"). Apparently she comes from a very poor family with very inadequate, drunken parents and she had felt compelled to stay at home to look after younger siblings. So our field staff retrieved Bipana along with the two siblings meaning that Bipana can return to the work that she loves and her two young brothers can go to a decent school. The other two children are brother and sister to Pramila. Their father has just died and the mother has been very ill, so again, in the absence of a safety net we have responded to a genuine need that will allow Pramila to continue her studies at school in Kathmandu. When I arrived at the refuge I found the children having a haircut. The girl looked worried. Given that the amateur hairdresser was refuge carer Dilu, I think her concern was probably justified.

Resurrection

In my 16th November post "Rural Education in Nepal" I showed a photograph of a Lime Swallowtail butterfly that I had found dead outside my house. Laxmi, whom we rescued from an Indian circus in April 2004, has brought it back to life in mosaic. I wonder if she sees a parallel with her own situation, the resurrection she has experienced in becoming a mosaic artist after the living death she must have endured inside the circus?

Kathmandu Zoo

My posts will be rather thin this week as Bev has had to go back to UK for a few days and I am left literally holding the baby. At fifteen months Alisha is quite a handful but a very delightful one at that. I have vowed that I will never complain about having a child. It used to rankle with me hearing others in the past sharing their difficulties with their children unaware of how greater was the pain of childlessness in some in their audience. One particularly thoughtless woman once told Esther that she was lucky not to have had children.



Today I distracted Alisha with a trip to the zoo, this being her first ever. I am not a fan of zoos at all but I do still remember clearly my first trip to the zoo and the positive impression it made upon me. Maybe this visit, and subsequent ones, will serve to imprint upon Alisha an awareness for animals at an early stage. The zoo was nowhere near as bad as I had expected it to be. OK, it was very Nepali with some animals in the wrong compounds - the buck deer (as depicted on our Christmas card mosaic) were labelled as being "barking deer". Other compounds had no guide signs at all. There was a very splendid mountain partridge (chukka), which I recognised from a previous mosaic that one of the girls had made, wandering around in another cage apparently unidentified. Some signs were in English, some in Nepali and so on...


Most shocking of all was the shrieking of the pupils in the visiting school parties that was potentially so disturbing for animals without any effort being made at teacher restraint. And in spite of the signs outside the zoo asking visitors not to tease the animals, clearly some teenagers were causing some provocation as they went along. Nepal is a very benign and easy-going place to live but this teasing seems to be endemic. It also seems to go hand in hand with stigma and what the animals have to endure at Kathmandu zoo mirrors a cruelty that in our experience disabled kids, street kids, prison kids and former circus kids have to live with in their daily lives.

An Auspicious Day

The first consignment of mosaics left my Kathmandu mosaic studio yesterday en route to the exhibition that we will be holding in Skipton, North Yorkshire, UK on the 4th December. The excitement of the girls was tangible and sweet to witness. It must have been amazing for them to be preparing for such an event so soon after having been trapped inside miserable Indian circuses. The central exhibit will be the eight auspicious symbols of Tibetan Buddhism. For the unitiated, like me, they are:

the white parasol - keeps away the heat of evil desires

two fish - symbols of happiness and utility

seashell - symbol of blessedness to the right

lotus - pledge of salvation and symbol of divine origin

vessel - treasury of all desires

victory - banner erected on Mt Meru, centre of the Buddhist cosmos

wheel - eight spokes represent the eight fold path

endless knot - mystic diagram representing endless rebirths

Whatever one makes of the religious significance of these, or otherwise, I think they look great and the girls have really excelled themselves in subject material that they can relate to. I am very tempted to buy these myself to celebrate the auspicious day when we complete our international adoption process with Alisha. That will be something that she too can treasure in later life and always have as a valued, and no doubt much-needed, reminder of her native land.

Charity Founders meet in Nepal

Whenever you hear of a charity with a personal name attached, it is often the case that there is a tragedy (usually a death) underlying its founding. Such is the case with The Esther Benjamins Trust, named after my first wife who died so tragically back in 1999 (see the link to the story of the Trust in my own words at the bottom of the page). Last evening I had dinner in Kathmandu with Richard Carss who is on a flying visit to Nepal. He founded the Zoe Carss Education Trust after the death of his daughter in Thailand in 1996. Just prior to her visit there she had been teaching as a gap year student (age 18) in Nepal. Uncannily - and we see so many of these overlaps - I discovered that the school that she had taught at is a mere 200 yards from my home here in Godawari.


Richard's UK-based Zoe Carss Education Trust now funds education projects in South Africa (Richard's wife is a South African) and in Nepal. For the last couple of years the Trust has funded our schools' capital development project in Makwanpur and adjacent districts. Funds have been spent on enhancements at under-resourced government schools in villages within those districts. But as I wrote in a previous post, I now have serious reservations about such activities, attractively tangible as they might be in a land where so much development funding seems to vanish into the ether. My misgivings are based upon the pathetic quality of the education in these schools and a fundamentally flawed rote learning system. We can't repair these deep fault lines and providing funds to such schools only seems to condone unacceptable standards. On an entirely personal front, I am no longer convinced that I wish to remember Esther (and now Zoe) through the construction of school compound walls and toilet blocks. Moreover, as charitable organisations I feel we should be at the cutting edge of social change, setting an example for others to follow.


I discussed with Richard my latest idea of setting up a special school in Kathmandu dedicated entirely to serving the victims of child trafficking. This would pull together two of our initiatives that are currently underway as pilot projects. In Bhairahawa we have been running educational bridging courses that are designed to fast track returnees (including the pictured girls) who have no previous education into school at a level appropriate to their age. This course was set up by us last May in response to the returnees' request for a proper education (rather than a half-hearted non-formal education provision) and a wish not to join school and sit in class with infants. In parallel in Kathmandu we have been running an art workshop for returnees that has been teaching ceramics and mosaic techniques to older girls. This started in September and we have been enjoying the support of UK volunteer and professional potter Alex Hunter in this exciting development that will lead to jobs within the arts and crafts sector in Nepal. We see great merit in collocating both activities so that returnees have the option to mix their interests and see which pathway suits them better. A school in Kathmandu would be more readily accessible to Western volunteer teachers, both artistic and academic, and would put an appropriate distance between the students and their families in rural areas who only spoil their daughters' chances in life (again) by interfering in our provision.


I have shared this vision with Richard and we concur on the desirability of moving on to a higher level. It remains to be seen exactly what shape that partnership will take.


Sitting at the dinner table last evening and discussing our respective personal bereavements it inevitably became quite emotional. I was reminded by that once again of how gut-wrenching and fresh that sense of loss remains. But rather than being a pair of sad, inward looking people we find ourselves both here in a foreign land trying to make it a better place for some of the country's most vulnerable children. The human response to trauma can be quite paradoxical and perhaps it is our capacity to rise above this that sets us apart from animals and reflects the divine that is within us all, whether we choose to recognise it or not. The divine that happens to be saluted through the Nepali routine greeting of "Namaste".

Hello to International Adopters

The two or three visitors to my Blog of a few days ago enquiring about international adoption in Nepal (a pleasant change from Google search words like "sexual massage Kathmandu") has turned into a flood. Most notable has been all those readers from the USA who may have been sent the link to my Blog through an adopters' forum.

No doubt like me you were beginning to wonder why it seems to be so difficult and painful to become a parent in every respect, why children (and sometimes aspiring parents) have had to stay in Nepalese children's homes in the meantime and if there would ever be light at the end of this particularly long tunnel. That light seems to be there now.

I now wish you everything that you would wish for yourselves and great joy in your adoptions.

Rural education in Nepal

I am about to host a visit from one of our UK funders, Mr Richard Carss, whose Foundation has been funding some of our work with rural schools in Makwanpur and adjacent districts. While we have been providing scholarships, his Foundation has been funding capital enhancements - classroom builds, toilet blocks, classroom furniture and the like. I intend to be totally frank with him in that I am increasingly of the opinion that we have been misguided in propping up a flawed system. And those who purport to support the existing system are often kidding themselves and others.


In previous posts I have mentioned the problems in village schools with huge classes, chronic under-resourcing and the routine rote form of learning that burdens children's memories pointlessly while stifling their creativity. Therein lie some of the intrinsic flaws. However, as part of a pursuit of the Holy Grail of increasing attendance and reducing drop out rates (especially for girls) incentives are used to motivate the children and their families that can totally backfire. I am currently refusing to fund any kind of a feeding programme in village schools in Rupendehi district as that fosters dependency (which once started is hard to break away from) and provides the wrong motivation to attend classes. I point to an example of how well-intentioned NGOs can get it wrong in an item that appeared in yesterday's Himalayan newspaper. It was reported that in one rural district an NGO has offered the incentive of two litres of cooking oil per month provided per child that attends classes. It seems that this has now become the only pathetic reason that families send their children to school. Children can keep repeating the same year at school over and over again, failing exams and without making any educational progress while continuing to receive oil. One mother said:


"If my daughter fails this year, we could get the oil for one more year. If she passes she will go to a distant school and there will be no one to do the household chores too. I will ask the teachers to fail my daughter this year."


So at the end of this programme (if the NGO can ever detach itself from it) the statistics will point to increased attendance of pupils and everyone, as I stated above, is fooled, including themselves. Indeed the "success" may become a paradigm for managing this endemic problem. Meantime the children will have achieved nothing, exploited by parents who seem to value them only in terms of a few paltry gallons of oil. This is why I believe we need to engage in something different and I will elaborate upon this in a later post.

It appears that the word is getting out internationally about progress on the international adoption situation in Nepal. Over the last day or two I have been obtaining more hits on this site from overseas couples who are suddenly - and understandably - researching the subject. So for those who haven't heard the news, the 440 pending cases are now going to be processed with the case files re-opened last Sunday for the first time in months. Maybe within six months they will all have been cleared, but this latter statement is a guess on my part.

This morning I found the butterfly pictured right lying dead by the roadside. This beautiful creature is a Lime Swallowtail, apparently quite common in this part of the country. In fact, interestingly Nepal has an estimated 850 species of butterflies and over half of them can be found here in Godawari. The aim now is for us to perform an act of resurrection, converting this butterfly into a vital mosaic and presenting it our mosaic exhibition in Skipton, U.K. on the 4th December. How rewarding that will be!

Himalaya and Habula

The weather is now crisp and sunny in Nepal and the clear early morning air affords spectacular views of the Himalayas as I walk the dogs down the Godawari Road. The dramatic scene from my front lawn this morning is pictured right.

Each morning our guard/factotum Habula plays a key role in coordinating the four dogs before they pass through the front gate. He's a very lovely man, probably well past it when it comes to providing strong arm security, but his strength lies probably in his being a local man and in his friends and neighbours who therefore provide local surveillance. This service is vitally important as being Westerners we are automatically considered by Nepalis to be rich and are potential prey to thieves who think nothing of robbing at knife-point. One of my colleague's brothers was murdered in such a theft last year.

Last week Habula was in great distress as his wife was admitted to hospital requiring surgery for gall stones. This simple man sat on the ground outside the house in tears as he talked to Bev, fully believing that his wife was about to die just like the young adult son he lost a few years ago. He was also concerned about the cost of the operation. We funded that in the end for the princely sum of £80 and she's now home and well. However talking to him this morning it emerged that the lady who had been in the adjacent bed to his wife had been sent home as they couldn't afford the surgery. It appears that there is provision for poor people to obtain hospital funding for such eventualities but illiterate rural people don't know how to access the funds. On the other hand well off people cheat their way through the system and get free surgery. C'est la vie in Nepal.

Bev has just spent ten minutes on the phone to the new outgoing Nepalese Ambassador to the UK discussing the adoption interests of the three sets of British nationals, selves included, who are currently living in Nepal. He readily agreed to meet with the three prospective mothers. It then turned out that she had actually been given totally the wrong number and had been making this arrangement with a policeman. No doubt he spotted a possibility to make a few pounds from our intentions and felt that goddess Laxmi had indeed visited his home over Tihar.

Predatory parents

The fall out from the Dashain holidays continues. We had anticipated problems arising for our girls when they returned home for their annual visit to their no-good families. Three have not returned, one of them getting married and another engaged. Today, the mother of a fourth girl turned up at the Kathmandu hostel were the mosaic girls stay, looking for money off her daughter Maya (name changed). Maya had gone home for Dashain with a lot of money in her pocket and now the greedy mother wanted more.

Maya's story began in April 2004 when we rescued her from an Indian circus in Kerala. Her family background was dreadful - no known father and a mother involved in the sex trade. After a great deal of thought we decided to take a risk and return her to her mother (at the time family reunifications being top priority) but we discovered soon afterwards that her mother had promptly sent her off into domestic service (slavery) in Kathmandu. So the field worker who had rescued her from the circus had to rescue her a second time, this time from a house in Kathmandu. Maya then came to live at our children's refuge and attended school for a couple of years before beginning my mosaic training last October. She is a brilliant artist and has been rewarded very well financially for her efforts. Now the mother who has spoiled her life twice stands to spoil it again if we don't take action. Maya is very happy to give her money though, perhaps in an attempt to buy love and some kind of family connection.

After some discussion this morning with fellow carers I have decided that the girls at my studio who will sign contracts with Himalayan Mosaics at the start of next month will agree to how their wages are managed during the term of their contracts. They will pay for their keep and receive a modest amount of pocket money. The remainder will be locked away in a savings account until completion of their contract. If they need anything urgently in the meantime then it will be only by agreement of the employer (me).

It is difficult to anticpate everything over here, but that should keep the predatory parents at bay.

Mosaics at an exhibition

The girls in my studio in Godawari, Kathmandu, are working flat out to meet a mosaics exhibition deadline. Our old friends at Namaste-UK Ltd (http://www.namaste-uk.com/) visited the studio last month and were so taken by the work that they immediately offered to stage an exhibition in Skipton on the 4th December. That is excruciatingly tight, but we've pulled the stops out to not only deliver the goods but also to produce some new designs. These include some Tibetan themes like the jewellry and carpet motifs pictured right. I will be giving a talk at the exhibition and we're crossing our fingers that it will be well attended by potential buyers and give Himalayan Mosaics a great early boost.

But of course these days you don't have to leave home to attend an exhibition. London law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse are now very kindly hosting an exhibition of our mosaics through Second Life. If you haven't signed up for Second Life you can get a flavour of this initiative here:

http://www.ffw.com/news/2007/nov/art-exhibition-realsecond-lif.aspx

Prosperity in Nepal

Last night was a noisy one, with drums and singing going on in the village above our house until daylight (and even a bit beyond). All of this was on the eve of today being the main day of the Tihar festival and no doubt the rumpus represented a final drive to encourage a visit from Laxmi, the goddess of prosperity. Having a goddess of prosperity seems a bit of an odd concept within a religion. It certainly goes totally against the drift of other main religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, that postively eschew wealth (at least in their teachings if not in practice). It also strikes me as being rather simplistic to assess prosperity in terms of rupees; a nation's true prosperity lies in its values and how it manages those at the bottom end of society. From what I have seen here this nation is very poor in that regard. It also seems that it is optimistic in the extreme to expect a goddess to arrive and deliver "prosperity" in whatever form one wishes to intepret that term. Prosperity, be it financial or social, has to be worked for and in respect of the latter a sea change in attitudes within society is an absolute prerequisite.

This was Remembrance Sunday and the occasion was marked at The British Embassy in Kathmandu in spite of the general disinterest of The British Ambassador who, as anticipated, was absent from the ceremony. The service was held in the open air and I was delighted to see extra chairs having to be brought in to accommodate the numbers that attended. The Gurkha officers and soldiers looked splendid in their Service Dress and slouch hats; they were displaying an admirable collection of medals, reflecting a huge amount of service to the Crown. And the padre spoke well, the criterion of that being that he kept my attention from drifting unduly on a day that in its nature lends itself to mind wandering.

That said, I did find myself thinking a lot about a lad called Gordon Turnbull, killed in 1943 at Anzio (south of Rome) while fighting with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers at the age of 23. Gordon was my father's cousin and 24 years ago while on holiday in Italy I made a pilgrimage to his grave. That visit was particularly poignant as at the time I too was in uniform as a young Army captain, I was also 23 and I believe the first member of the family to pay respects at his grave in 40 years. At the time of his death Gordon was unmarried and I had thought that was the end of it all. That is until this year when I dipped into "Genes Reunited" on the internet and found a lady mentioning his name and seeking relatives. I responded and it emerged that Gordon had fathered a girl before joining up; that girl had been adopted out and forgotten about. She had lost her roots, a loss that must have seemed very final after her father's untimely death. She has suffered severe depression and is now in care back in Northern Ireland. However I have been very pleased to make indirect contact with this hitherto forgotten second cousin through her daughter and to start to broker links between her children and their cousins that I do know of from within the family. This all illustrates that a soldier's death sixty four years ago is not necessarily in the past and as well as remembering that sacrifice we must also remember the legacy of loss that so often continues to this day.

On a brighter note, the Kathmandu refuge children came to my house yesterday to perform song and dance ("Bhailo") as part of the Tihar festivities. Seventy of them - former street children, prison children and circus children - turned up along with a few of their carers. It is amazing and hugely rewarding to see how they have matured (some have been with us for almost seven years now) and exude confidence and joie de vivre. For me, that's what the charity is all about. Here's some of the footage that I recorded:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h0CdZ_BWxA

A short film from Bhairahawa

Last evening there were a series of power cuts as a result of the feeble local grid collapsing under the overload of the system by people illuminating their houses for Laxmi. Even if Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, were to be enticed into people's homes and lives it seems that the local power supply's failings could undermine any attempt at their attaining the desired prosperity. The power cuts also prevented me from uploading a video I took yesterday of the children rehearsing a dance. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVpmzyC463A

The boy who is dancing, Akash, is one of two brothers that we found outside Tansen jail away back in October 2000. They were sleeping rough and getting food through the bars from their imprisoned mother. Akash is now a tremendous all-rounder, great academically, at sport and also at dance!

A visit to our refuge children in Bhairahawa

Today I paid a flying visit to Bhairahawa in the southwest of Nepal, close to the Indian border. It's where our work started out eight years ago before it expanded to Kathmandu and Hetauda. It remains home to 28 school age children (rescued from prisons or life on the streets) at the so called "White House" refuge and another 25 former circus children in the "Blue House" and "Red House" who are a little older. This latter group are undertaking a fast track course that will take them from zilch education to joining class 8 (about age 14) in a couple of years, essentially joining school at a level more appropriate to their age.

At the White House I was pleased to meet our four latest arrivals - two girls who are sisters of a former street boy that we'd been caring for and a boy and a girl that we have just brought from inside Tulsipur jail in the far west of the country. Assisted by the Director of our partner organisation, ex British Army Gurkha Gunraj Gurung, I was able to mount five mosaics at the buildings, mosaics that had been made in by Godawari studio and commissioned by supporters in the UK (www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/commissionamosaic.htm). The kids were clearly thrilled by these.

The White House children were all of school today as this is Day Three of the Tihar Festival. Day One and Day Two involved worship of the crow and the dog respectively. Today it was the turn of the nation's cows to receive a tika on the forehead and a garland. And after dusk the goddess of wealth, Laxmi, is worshipped and Nepali houses are festooned with lights (fairy or candles) in an attempt to entice her inside their dwellings. Children go from door to door singing and dancing, the so called "Bhailo", for which they receive modest amounts of money from appreciative neighbours. The White House children were rehearsing this afternoon and are aiming to raise enough pocket money to pay for a picnic for themselves.

Tihar concerns

Today we asked our staff member, former circus girl Anita, to make flower garlands for our four dogs. To outsiders that may seem like evidence that we've finally cracked after three years of living in Nepal and that we are now engaged in eccentricities worthy of Zsa Zsa Gabor or Paris Hilton. But no, this is day two of the five day festival of Tihar which follows hot on the heels of Dashain and is the equivalent of Diwali, the festival of lights, in India. Day one sees the locals worshipping the crow and they leave out food for them to enjoy. Day two, Kukur Tihar, has the nation paying homage to the dog population with dogs receiving garlands and tika symbols on their foreheads. Like many things in Nepal that all feels a bit false given how little interest is paid in dogs for the other 364 days of the year. Worse, dogs are the victims of mange and horrible injuries that everyone ignores. Stray dogs are stoned, beaten and teased. From our own monitoring of the road between here in Godawari and Kathmandu we are all too aware of how many are killed by reckless drivers. I remain haunted by the sight this day last year of a garlanded dog lying dead in the middle of the road.

Birthday mosaics

The Kathmandu mosaic studio re-opened yesterday. Two other girls haven't returned after the Dashain break. One, Bipana, who had been struggling somewhat, has stayed behind with her family. Another, Bishnu, has got engaged. I doubt if either of them will come back to us.

It is quite a challenge to keep the studio girls' interest going, especially if one is working to favourite designs that can become repetitive (sadly a business requirement). So I work hard to give them some variety. Yesterday we held a special children's lunchtime birthday party for the daughter of one of my expatriate friends in Kathmandu. Six children spent about four hours with us making their own individual mosaic pieces to keep. As children's hands tend to be a bit too small to hold the cutters and too weak to cut the tiles the studio girls ended up doing most of the work. Although this is fun it is also a source of income to the organisation. There's no such thing as a free lunch....

Dashain difficulties

Each October we reunite children who are in our refuge care in Kathmandu with their families for the main Hindu festival of Dashain. We see this as being the bare minimum that we can do to maintain the family contacts that are so important in Nepalese society. It´s always a nerve wracking time for us though, for in doing so we expose the children and teenagers to family agendas that may not necessarily be in their best interests. Village families have little comprehension of the progress that their youngsters are making with us and they can spoil that success by pushing children in other disastrous directions. Last year we only just managed to stop a father sending his very talented son back to the exploitation of the circus, no doubt for a few dollars in return. Under our care that boy is now not only doing really well at school but also has become one of the top gymnasts in the country. I wouldn´t be surprised to see him in a future Nepal Olympic team.

This year we had a mini crisis over Priya. She was one of the two girls that I started training in mosaic art this time last year - an initiative that has now been extended to 16 others in my Kathmandu studio. She quickly became a top artist, having the perfect combination of skill and speed at her work. But her vulnerability is a case in point. She had returned from the circus to find both of her parents had committed suicide. Her aunt duly packed her off to another kind of slave labour inside a Kathmandu carpet factory and we rescued her from there in July last year. Last month she, like many other kids, wanted to go "home" for Dashain and of course we couldn´t stop her as she´s a free person. Then we received the news that she´d got married (she´s barely sixteen) to a boy that she knew from the carpet factory. That seemed to be the end of her short career and this otherwise totally uneducated girl appeared to be rejoining the cycle of poverty from which she had so briefly emerged. However it seems that all is not lost as we have since heard that she is very happy to be married and will set up home in Kathmandu. She also wants to continue with her mosaic work and I am very glad to agree to that wish. Hopefully having a good income - no doubt better than her husband´s - will help with the stability of the marriage. In the harsh reality of daily life in Nepal a wife who has economic value will be valued all the more.

This is the last day of my holiday in Spain. It has provided a break from the chaos of living in Nepal and allowed me to find some time to relax. I have also found the creative space to plan the future of my new company "Himalayan Mosaics" and develop some fresh directions for the Trust. It´s really been just what the doctor ordered - or more correctly what my wife Bev ordered. I am now ready for the fray once again.