Fruit bats

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.

Spot the New Year resolution

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?

Too honest

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.

Quixote's Cove

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.

The Last Dance

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.

Continuing violence

Nepal is a land where conspiracy theories abound where apparently all kinds of dark forces are at work to scupper progress and those who are on the side of what is right and good. The best illustration of this is probably the plethora of these that followed the massacre of the Nepalese royal family in 2001. Conspiracy theories make for intriguing speculation by the man in the street but they also are a way that for example a political party can prepare its constituency for failure. The Maoists are no exception in this respect and there have been many statements from them since their landslide victory in the Constituent Assembly elections suggesting that plans are afoot to deny them their destiny to govern and form the "new Nepal". I am sure that they are, at least in part, quite correct however it could well be the case that the biggest threat to the Maoist agenda coming to fruition lies from within. For it would appear that some from the ranks of the People's Liberation Army have not grasped yet that murder is no longer an acceptable activity in the post-conflict Nepal.

Last week some PLA fighters abducted a Kathmandu business man, Ram Hari Shrestha, and took him to one of their cantonment camps near Chitwan. It was alleged that he had been involved in theft and for that he was beaten to death. A PLA brigade commander has been arrested and two others are at large. The Maoist leadership has been quick to condemn the outrage. For Shrestha was not just any old member of the public. He was prominent within the Kathmandu community and his family had given shelter to the Maoist fighters during the People's War. Such was his connection to the Maoists that the Maoist chairman himself, Prachanda, went to the widow's home to tell her of the vicious circumstances of her husband's demise. There have now been street protests against the Maoists and today in Kathmandu there is a "bandh" (strike) that will close down the city and all transportation. This has been a Maoist shot in the foot if ever there was one but maybe Shrestha's death will not be in vain given the impact that perhaps the public revulsion will have on ensuring that the Maoists stick better to a non violent path in future.

More difficult to read has been the bomb attack on the Norwegian Embassy last weekend, a discrete establishment which is within ready walking distance (earshot) of my home. It is hard to imagine why the affable Norwegians should be the target of anyone's aggression. Unless perhaps someone from the European community is giving them a taste of their own medicine for the atrocities inflicted upon their ancestors by marauding Norsemen a thousand years' ago. More likely it is a protest by a disgruntled Nepali tourist who has been on holiday in Norway and is making a statement against the cost of the basic essentials of life over there. I visited Norway way back in 1984 and the cost of beer was ridiculous. I haven't been back since.

Kathmandu massage

The most common search words on Google that lead researchers to my blog are "Kathmandu", "Nepal" and "massage". For some reasons the sex tourists never use the words "prostitute" or "brothel". So for those visitors to this post who are considering to travel all the way to Nepal for a "massage" I thought I would post a picture of the kind of facility to expect; these salubrious premises are just around the corner from my home. If this doesn't make you review your plans then reflect upon the circumstances of the girls who are involved in the "massage" industry. They are often coming from desperately poor village areas and broken homes to be ruthlessly exploited by pimps - oops, proprietors. And if that doesn't bother you particularly you might be interested to learn that many of the girls who have been trafficked to India into the sex trade are sent home after they contract HIV. They duly enter the domestic sex trade and carry on their activities out of desperate need for an income.

Maybe best to stay at home?

Establishing identity

One of the first projects that we give new arrivals at the Esther Benjamins Trust art workshop in Kathmandu is for them to make their own names in mosaic. After having been rejected and sold by their families to subsequently spend years as non-persons inside the Indian circuses this is an important opportunity for the girls to re-assert their identity. This week I extended the idea by encouraging the workshop girls to visit the 24 residents (or as they are termed by their carers the "inmates") of the nearby Karuna Bhawan hostel for HIV infected infants and women (see my post of 11th April), establish relationships and make them name plates as well. The girls have enjoyed this immensely and it has the added benefit of giving real purpose to their training. This afternoon I visited the workshop and photographed the students, touchingly absorbed with their task. The next project will be to make a mosaic of a flower as a follow on gift. I spent some time yesterday photographing flowers in my garden to provide sufficient inspiration to ensure that each of the 24 mosaics will be different, again allowing an expression of individuality. I will publish some of the results on this blog next week.

On the way home I called in to see our refuge children in Godawari. I was thrilled to see seven year old Juna Titung again for the first time in two years, she being one of the four children that I mentioned in my post of 5th May. She was practically wriggling with delight at seeing me again and I felt strangely flattered, an emotion that I don't experience that often or for that matter have any time for. But after that I felt a lot better with myself for having taken the decision to reunite her and her siblings with their family two years ago, inadvertently causing them such hardship and distress.

The working donkeys of Kathmandu

I met my friend and portrait artist Jan Salter at an art exhibition the other evening. She is the founder of Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre (http://www.katcentre.org.np/) which is now a registered charity in the UK. Over a glass of red she told me that she was now looking into the circumstances of working donkeys in Kathmandu, as if she hadn't enough on her plate with the city's stray dog population to sort out.

On the way back from my Godawari arts centre this lunchtime I passed a donkey grazing by the roadside, clearly with an open sore on its bank. On returning home I opened this e mail and adjacent pictures from another animal welfare activitist:

"I took these pics at a brick factory site in Siddhipur. The donkeys carry unfired bricks from the place where bricks are made from mud to the factory and back. According to the staff (many of whom are children) the boss hardly cares for the donkeys. So many have died already. One donkey's ears were cut off when it was young, no idea why. Half of the donkeys have open sores which go untreated."

I am now looking at how I might extend my children's charity work beyond the immediate facilities we operate and out into the community that straddles the Godawari road that runs southeast out of Kathmandu. Whilst our expenditure of course will continue to have to go on children and young people, sights and messages like this make me think of what we might do for young people that can offer some parallel advantages to domestic animals and wildlife. And one day soon I am going to have a look at the brick kilns and their child labour for myself.

Sometimes it feels like one is living in a kind of mediaeval hell hole over here and no one seems to care that much.

A short drive across Kathmandu on a Wednesday morning

After visiting the Social Welfare Council (our local regulatory body) this morning I had a blog post-provoking drive across town.

I found myself drawn to a billboard advertising a new brand of alcohol with the slogan "You don't need an occassion (sic) to celebrate with passion”. With my hard-learned knowledge of the 3R’s, the outcome of an old-fashioned Irish education, I dislike bad spelling - with a passion – and it is doubly shocking when even major displays (as opposed say to quick e mail exchanges) exhibit spelling errors. Oh, and the alcohol brand in question was called “Passion Cooler”; this is probably clinically accurate but I’d have thought that the product’s marketing people would be trying to push this stuff as offering exactly the opposite effect.

The final sight, just before I arrived home, was that of an election jeep from the Nepal Rastra Party winding its way in front of us along the back streets. The blaring loudspeakers were bad enough but to my horror Party workers were throwing leaflets out of the back adding to Kathmandu’s already gross litter problem. Such conduct would be anathema these days apart from anywhere else but here. I expect the paper hadn’t been recycled either.

Garden of Dreams

The taxi that picked me up from my hotel in Allahabad yesterday morning arrived on cue at 7.00 a.m. Jumping into the back seat I noted immediately the absence of female connections for the seatbelts. Pointing this out to the driver (who was already wearing his) I received but a shrug in return. The porter who had escorted me to the car assured me though that I would be OK sitting in the back. This didn't seem logical given the presence of the male parts of the seat belts and that there are accidents on Indian roads as per anywhere else in the world; the only difference being the biblical scale of the carnage that occurs on roads in the subcontinent. Anyway, he seemed a reasonable sort of a chap and I elected to chance it on his reassurances. And sure enough he was right. Three bone-rattling hours later I arrived at Varanasi airport, still alive and well. Oh me of little faith...

On the flight I met an Argentinian tourist who was visiting Kathmandu for the first time and he asked my advice on what should be his holiday priorities within the scope of a four day visit. Inter alia I recommended two old favourites of mine that I visited myself just this afternoon. The first was the superb Chez Caroline restaurant in Baber Mahal which is a great place to while away a Sunday lunch, even with a restless Alisha. The other is Garden of Dreams in Thamel, a nobleman's fantasy garden from the 192o's that was re-discovered in 2000 in a very dilapidated state and restored to its former glory over the ensuing six years. It's a delightful place and I am particularly fond of the inscribed tablet with a verse from the Persian 12th century "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam". I would love to use this poetry as inspiration for a mosaic project in due course.

Reading the plaque though one is reminded of a major risk that is attached to living in Kathmandu for down the middle of it runs a crack that dates from the last great earthquake of 1934 that flattened much of the town and killed 8,000 people. A major quake is due again, if not overdue, and deaths next time around are expected to be in the region of 40,000. When you see the current chaos that permeates daily life in Kathmandu one wonders just how the city will manage when the "Big One" hits.

Polluted cities

This visit to the UK has been very revealing. I realise how, although this "developed" nation is a great one, in so many respects (that could so readily be sorted out) it is very similar to the "undeveloped" Nepal.

If there is one thing that could drive me out of Nepal (a country that I love so much in spite of my frequent rants on this Blog), it wouldn't be the corruption, the endemic ineptitude, the lack of basic amenities (the nation is now experiencing 48 hours of power cuts per week), the growing violence or a feeling of general ennui; it would be the pollution. It is bad enough that Kathmandu is rendered disgusting through traffic fumes, brick kiln smoke and uncontrolled effluent into the "holy" Bagmati river; worst of all is the apparent indifference to the problem in a land where people superficially claim to love their nation so much. The ease with which the silence of those who should be regulating such problems is bought through bribes condemns them, us and, worst still, the next generation to residing in a planet that seems to be fast spiralling into a polluted oblivion.

Then I read today (to my surprise) that one and a half million Londoners are living with air quality that is below acceptable levels for pollutants and the prevalence of asthma is on the increase. In response most of the city has today been declared a "Low Emission Zone". This means that vehicles that pollute will be charged £200 to enter the zone or face a £1,000 fine. Some small companies are up in arms saying that they can't afford this and that it will drive them into liquidation. As far as I am concerned, with the future of our children at stake, these arguments - which are entirely money-driven - are just not valid. Sad to say, these businesses will have to be able to afford to move with the times, or go under.

Tomorrow Bev, Alisha and I go off to the Suffolk coast to enjoy three nights in a National Trust cottage. That will give Alisha her first sight of the sea. Never mind her, how exciting that will be for me! I will send this Blog a picture from what will no doubt be a very windswept beach. But at least the air will be clean.

Hanuman Dokha Police Station

I have spent most of today "watching the paint dry" in this central Kathmandu police station, but it has been time well spent.

On Sunday we received a call from our Indian partner, ChildLine India, that a girl trafficking agent, two other adults and three girls had been picked up by them at the railway station in the northern Indian border town of Gorakhpur. The group, all Nepalis, were on their way to Mumbai, from where the girls would be sent on to the sex trade in Kuwait. We agreed to their call for help immediately and last evening Shailaja CM, Director of our Nepal partner organisation, Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation, took a flight to the border crossing near Bhairahawa. There she linked up with the ChildLine co-workers and the trafficking party to begin a seven hour road journey home. They got back to Kathmandu at 2 a.m. The adults went straight to the jail at Hanuman Dokha Police Station while the girls went to our Godawari refuge.

It appears that the two adults in the group were a father of one of the girls and a husband of another. They were accessories to the work of the female agent, who is notorious for operating out of the southwestern Rupendehi District. She protects herself with threats of violence from the Maoists, with whom she claims to be associated. We felt that if we tried to register a case against her in her home district it would most likely fall between the floorboards as relatives - or possibly local Maoists - might intimidate the police into not pressing charges. The key would be to get the case registered in Kathmandu first (away from threats) and then transferred back to Rupendehi District for prosecution. The case would then be followed up from Kathmandu in due course. Today we seem to have been successful in our aim and the group will appear before a Kathmandu Judge tomorrow morning before being sent back to Bhairahawa.

It is actions like this that make the greatest impact against trafficking. I suspect that there are quite few major agents responsible for the trade in human lives and taking them out of circulation would turn off the flow almost overnight.

I look forward to the outcome of the hearing tomorrow. Chances are that the individuals who were due to send their beloved daughter and wife off into the sex trade will get off eventually but I can just about cope with the reality of that if the agent is put away for life.

Decision making in Nepal

We are planning to move house into central Kathmandu at the end of this month. It's been pleasant living in the hills of Godawari but we are very isolated as the only foreigners for miles around and the daily 20km trip in and out to Kathmandu has become quite a chore. Oh, and it gets bitterly cold here in the winter in a house that, typically for Nepal, has no central heating.

A couple of months ago we found a suitable house. It's a little old fashioned but it had the attraction of being a few minutes walk from one of our favourite watering holes. And it had an idyllic secluded garden that gave a lovely sense of peace perched high above hectic, noisy, polluted Kathmandu. I went to the house last month with Bev and the owner to discuss what works needed to be done in advance of the move. Surveying the garden, the owner pointed out a rogue tree which had to be removed as its roots were undermining a wall. That was of course fine with us but within my earshot I heard Bev confirming with him no less than three times that the other mature trees would be spared. He agreed to that and we left quite happily.

Last week Bev returned to the house to find the trees had been chopped down. Horrified she challenged the owner as to why he'd broken his promise. He answered "Oh, I thought you'd like a nice panoramic view of Kathmandu". Bev protested that this was exactly what we didn't want but of course it is now too late. Perhaps if the owner had told the truth he might have said that he just wanted the firewood.

You come across this kind of behaviour all too commonly in Nepal. People say yes, yes and then run on their own agenda often taking the most bizarre jaw-droppingly stupid decisions. It leaves you feeling at times like you're surrounded by drunks whose irrationality goes a long way towards making life miserable and risks turning you into the horrible expat.

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.

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.

Kathmandu sex lady

I am interested to note that my Blog which has now been running since July has had a total of 1,156 visits. The feedback I receive indicates that a good few of these hits are from readers who are probably researching sexual liaison potential for a forthcoming visit to Nepal. The tell tale sign is the search words that they use in Google which leads to my site; one reader from Delhi has just googled the words "Kathmandu sex lady". So I now make good use of such words in my labels in the hope that those with unhealthy intentions (in every respect) just pause to think for a nanosecond on the consequences of their actions. I hope they think of the vulnerable village girls who are being so ruthlessly exploited by pimps and gangs. I hope they think of the children who are now being criminally abused in Kathmandu massage parlours. And I hope they think of the burgeoning HIV/AIDS crisis that hangs over Nepal and the contribution that they might be making towards that. If they want a fuller picture then I refer them to my Blog post of 6th September.

Above all, I hope they stay at home.