When we first came to live and work in Nepal in late 2004 my wife Bev acted in close support to the “Blue House” children’s refuge in Bhairahawa, southwest Nepal. Bhairahawa was hot, sticky, mosquito-blown, snake-infested, remote, socially and professionally isolated, but notwithstanding all of this Bev found her Blue House experience quite electric and well worth any “sacrifice” that we might have made. For the children there were little boy and girl survivors whom The Esther Benjamins Trust had just freed that year from some very dangerous and vicious Indian circuses. The challenge she shared with the children’s prime carer, Shailaja, was to bring them back into the real world, showing them love and affection in the process. Bev would go there just about every day, take classes, play with them, develop and restore their interests and personalities. Some video footage, narrated by Bev, shot inside the Blue House at that time can be found on the EBT YouTube channel.
This morning as I was reading Cinderella to my little daughter Alisha, I commented to Bev that the subtleties of a “wicked stepmother” would surely be lost on our 21 month old. Interestingly Bev remarked that those children in the Blue House had been transfixed by the story, wanting her to read it to them again and again. For most of those children were themselves unwanted and unloved, and had known cruel stepfathers or, more likely, stepmothers. Marriages break up frequently in their communities, elopement or early death of a parent is commonplace. Children from first marriages are often not wanted within a family unit (especially when it’s a very poor one) and that’s how they ended up being sold into the circus. For them Cinderella was no fairy story but they can expect few fairy godmothers to come to their help.
