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.
