Missing the point

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.

I hate mobile culture

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

Table Tennis

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.

A long time in charity

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.

The Thinker

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.

The Times of London, 20th September

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

Interview of former circus girls

I returned to Kathmandu last evening after a sobering visit to our branch office in Hetauda in the central south of Nepal. I had been in the company of Dean Nelson, South Asia correspondent with the UK's largest Sunday newspaper, The Sunday Times. Dean wanted to interview five of the girls who had been released from The Raj Mahal Circus (see my post of 16th June) and were now back home in the vicinity of Hetauda. The girls were more relaxed than at the time of their rescue and were now speaking freely. One girl told how she'd gone to the circus at the age of 5 and had spent 12 years inside. After her years of imprisonment the rural poverty of home seemed like a wondrous world to her. Another girl told us how they only received pocket money in return for their arduous and dangerous working routine - she guessed she'd been given a total of about £8 in the ten years that she'd been trapped inside the circus. The girls talked of their performances, the most frightening of which was the act in which they have their hands tied behind their back to be spun around the inside of the big top holding on by their teeth to a piece of cloth at the end of a rope. One of the girls had fallen and was lucky to survive. This accident literally grounded her for three months.

Most sobering was the girls' descriptions of the deaths inside the circus. A girl had died from jaundice and her body had been buried somewhere. A few months later her mother turned up to see her daughter and was understandably distraught to learn of her daughter's fate. She refused to accept the circus' offer of financial "compensation". Two lads had died as a result of a trapeze fall. Their bodies were cremated and that was the end of them. They recounted how one boy had escaped from the circus to later return of his own volition. His punishment was a public beating (used as a deterrent for the rest of the troupe) that left his limbs broken. He was then removed from the circus. The girls believe he was left on a railway track.

The face of modern day slavery is ugly in the extreme. I hope we can continue to break the hold of the circuses over the children that they abuse and I look forward to our next rescue in August. The coverage in The Sunday Times (expected to be on 6 July) will hopefully help us to raise the funds that we so desperately need to continue our fight.

Returning home via Simra airport I was ready for some amusement after three hours' worth of very grim stories. There was some levity when I saw the garden outside the departure lounge. Tiny as it was, a huge and inappropriately-sited noticeboard proclaimed this (rather weed infested) garden's maintenance to be a joint venture between a soap manufacturer (Vatika) and the Civil Aviation Office. Obviously the scale of the task was too much for one of these to be able to fund it in isolation. And the ostentatious signboard guaranteed to undermine any aesthetic improvement that might have gained through the gardener's labours.

Truth and untruth in Nepal

Today my colleague Shailaja was telling me how a young lady that the Trust is about to assist has come up with three very differing stories regarding her background and predicament - no need to go into the details of her case and all the stories are probably rubbish anyway. I report this merely to illustrate how difficult it is to conduct field work in Nepal and get to the bottom of things.

You could unkindly label this as being a problem of endemic lying but never make the mistake of calling a Nepali a liar. That's not culturally acceptable even if the evidence to that effect is crystal clear. This apparently dishonest behaviour seems to be more a case of a question posed receiving a number of different answers to see which is most palatable to the inquirer. Or a process of testing which reply is most likely to be suitable to get someone out of a tight spot even if his or her range of answers undermines belief in any of them. I think this all illustrates a kind of emotional immaturity that seems to be commonplace within Nepalese society and which is reflected in a range of other behavioural patterns (e.g. the rampant teasing of animals and children).

Given this trend it is remarkable that anyone passes a school examination that requires straight answers to straight questions. But today I learn that 64% of Nepalese 16 year olds (ish) passed The School Leavers Certificate (SLC) examination that was sat in April. This examination is the passport to higher education; those who fail are condemned to a life of manual labour and low income jobs. Amongst their number this year was young Bina Paudel, the first of our refuge children to pass the examination, doing so at "second division" (passes are graded into four categories - distinction, first, second and third). Bina has been staying at our Bhairahawa refuge but in recognition of her success and through the generous support of an anonymous UK sponsor she'll now be transferring to Kathmandu to start college. Two years hence I expect she'll set an example to her younger brothers and sisters by progressing to university and the prospect of a profession. I am very proud of her indeed.

Farewell to Holly

Today I invited volunteer Holly Wheaton, who is due to leave the team on Friday, for a farewell lunch. Holly is a gap year student who has been taking a year out prior to going to Warwick University in the UK this September. Many gap year students elect to travel around the world enjoying a prolonged holiday after school. Personally though, I think that this crucial time is better spent in character-forming activities if appropriate challenges can be found. Holly has had just such an experience in that we placed her for several months in a remote part of Nepal (Bhairahawa) and asked her to help teach deaf school leavers mosaic art. She rose to that challenge and has been outstanding; she's enjoyed herself immensely as well.

Everyone will miss Holly over here and we look forward to her keeping her promise to come back to Nepal next Summer.

Pollution and protest

Faced with a growing fuel crisis in Nepal the Government has allowed the State-owned Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) to increase the price of petroleum products - petrol, diesel and kerosene - as of yesterday. The price hikes have been substantial, with increases of up to 28%. However so heavily have the prices been capped by the Government in the past (well below the import price) these increases are still not going to be enough to allow the debt-ridden NOC to even come close to breaking even. The problem is that in the past when prices have been raised street protests have erupted compelling the Government has had to back down and reverse the decision. I think this time around the Government is hoping to increase the cost by stages and hope that no one will notice.

There were protests in Kathmandu yesterday but fairly minor ones and I suspect these will soon blow over as everyone knows that prices can't be held so artificially low. The problem of course is that there is a huge knock-on effect in terms of general price rises which will be felt acutely in a country that is already so poor. The only consolation I can see is that in the UK where there have also been huge price rises at the pumps and long queues apparently petrol sales have dropped by 20% as people make less use of their cars. That has to have a huge benefit for the environment and polluted Kathmandu would certainly benefit from fewer vehicles on the road.

The Maoists as the leading party in the country have always said that they will turn Nepal into a prosperous nation. They have to be given the benefit of the doubt over this pledge, as this is their first time in power and every other party in the past has failed the nation. However these soaring costs of fuel won't help them to achieve their goals. That's but one of the challenges. The major one is to somehow engineer a sea change in people's attitudes to reform society along a healthy socialist agenda. To show concern for others many in the Nepali public have to escape from a "compound wall" mentality where so commonly people keep the confines of the compound wall that surrounds their house neat and tidy, while happily throwing rubbish over the other side. A reflection of this is the pollution of the "sacred" Bagmati river that runs through Kathmandu. Crossing the Bagmati bridge yesterday (I had to abandon my vehicle which had been caught in a traffic jam because of street protests) I took the picture on the right of the rubbish that is blatantly tipped into the stinking river. The Maoist leader, Prachanda, has said that he will clean up the Bagmati but this is a Herculean task which reflects in microcosm the difficulties his party will experience throughout Nepal purely as a result of people's inconsiderate attitudes.

It's not just the Nepalis who need to get real about our obligations to save the planet. Recently I saw a grant application form from a UK Trust that invites applicant charities to state what they are doing to reduce their carbon footprint. Immediately I could think of how The Esther Benjamins Trust has established a biogas facility at the school for deaf children in Bhairahawa and how we are embracing Skype technology (webcam-based internet communication) that may allow us to hold Trustee meetings without travelling from home or my having to return from Nepal. Not all organisations within the sector are giving a due amount of thought to such issues. I was impressed to read that the Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) charity held a fundraising gala dinner in London at the weekend that raised £25 million. Then upon further reading I noted that one of the auction prizes was a private jet flight to a vineyard in France to pick up some cases of wine. There's something worthy of protest.

Land of the Tiger

The girls at our Himalayan Mosaics workshop are now producing smaller and more detailed mosaics. This makes these exquisite mosaics easier to sell to tourists, who might have limited packing space, and cheaper to export. The latest designs of Nepali flora and fauna by my wife Bev seem to have developed along a tiger theme. Pictured right (awaiting grouting) is a tiger orchid, a common tiger and plain tiger butterfly and, er, a tiger. All mosaics are a mere 18 cm by 15 cm. Most excitingly we are now producing our own hand made tiles which are cut up to make the mosaics. This will increase the range of colours that are available. If anyone would like to order a mosaic or mosaics (and give a survivor of child trafficking employment) then just drop me a line.

Recently a supporter in the UK tested what I consider to be a fairly unreliable postal service by sending us a modest consignment of clothes for the children at our refuges. Yesterday the clothes were received in Kathmandu and they were put straight away to good use by the boys in the picture below. This means so much to us as the quality of locally available clothes is poor and the need is great given the 170 kids that we are looking after at the moment. If you'd like to follow this supporter's example (and are prepared to risk the loss of second hand clothes that would be subsequently untraceable) then please post what you've got to:

The Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation

PO Box 26050

Sundhara

Kathmandu

Nepal

Thanks!

Failed family reunifications

Around five years ago we took in four siblings who had been languishing inside Bhimpedi jail in central Nepal. Two boys and two girls, their mother and father were serving life sentences for murder. The children were popular additions to our Bhairahawa refuge and they did very well at school. Then in February 2006 out of the blue there was an amnesty and the parents were released, with the mother coming to Bhairahawa soon afterwards to retrieve her children. We persuaded her to wait for another couple of months until the end of the school year (April) to avoid disrupting her children's education. The children were duly reunited with their parents two months' later along with 15 other refuge children whose parents had been freed from jail or whose domestic circumstances seemed to have improved sufficiently to allow them to care for their children. The reunifications were handled very sensitively by us with the children being given photograph albums as mementoes of their time and of their friends at the refuge, while parents were given our financial support to help with their future education.

Last week one of our field visits to this family found that the father was being conspicuous by his absence from the family "home" in the depths of the jungle while the mother would be away all day tending livestock. The children were malnourished, in poor health and now attending school irregularly. They pleaded to be allowed to return to the refuge and I agreed immediately. They are likely to be with us now until they come of age bringing to 169 the number of mouths that my cash-strapped Trust has to find the funding to feed.

I hate the "children's home" concept with a passion, as children belong in proper family units. It is very necessary though to have such facilities that serve as a vital safety net where there is no state provision for genuinely needy children. Our impetus remains to try to get children back to families, however of the 19 children that we reunited in April 2006 eight have since come back to us. I suppose that remains a success for the other eleven but it reflects the bleak social milieu within which we have to operate in Nepal.

I was very dismayed though to learn that these latest children were last week blaming me for sending them back to their poverty two years' ago. They can of course be forgiven for the child's analysis of the decision that sadly led to their experiencing such grinding hardship. At the time I felt that I was acting in the children's best interests and if I had to do it again (as I do each April) I would make exactly the same choice. Nonetheless their bitterness towards me can't help but hurt after so much of my personal involvement in their welfare which stands in stark juxtaposition to the neglect and indifference of their parents.

Grey-backed shrike

I paid a long overdue visit to the arts rehabilitation centre today; sadly I have been distracted recently by working visits to India and the like. But it was good to find morale so high in both students and teachers. Ceramicist Alex Hunter has been replaced by local potter Hari Govinda Prajapati (Hari Potter?) who is a leading light within the Kathmandu ceramics scene, so that has been a good catch for us. Rebecca Hawkins remains full of enthusiasm a couple of months into her attachment and her regret at having to leave us at the end of the month is quite tangible. She has been really taken with the whole enterprise and told me today of how amazed she had been at the transformation in the students' demeanours even over a few weeks. To me this seems to be an infinitely more successful approach to managing troubled minds than bringing in a troop of counsellors.

I took this photograph this morning of a Grey-backed shrike sitting in the bush outside my office window. It's not uncommon in this part of Nepal but it's a quite beautiful bird, often heard (it has a distinctive shreek) before it is seen. It's beautiful enough for us to have translated it into mosaic in the past.

South China Morning Post (again)

In my post of 3rd February I mentioned that day's South China Morning Post Sunday magazine's coverage of our work against child trafficking in Nepal. The magazine has kindly allowed us to reproduce the article and here is what was written:

http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/assets/pdf/morningpost2008.pdf

Our volunteer sculptor's letter from Nepal

Rebecca Hawkins is a professional sculptor who is coordinating the second of my Trust's Child Trafficking Victims Art Workshops, designed to offer creative art therapy and vocational training to children and young women we rescue from bonded labour in India’s circuses.

She has already made a great impact with the children – many of whom have been mentally, physically and sexually abused over a sustained period of time. Here, in this report I received today, Rebecca describes her experience so far...

"When I arrived here, I had never taught before – and for those of you who haven’t either, I would like to share something with you: teaching is exhausting! I feel compelled to apologise to my teachers for any times I caused them to wish that they’d pursued a different career path. It’s not that I was a particularly troublesome pupil - in fact, I was a relatively quiet girl - but Art was the only thing I was ever really interested in, so teachers of other subjects had to work extra hard to keep my attention.

Three weeks into my 3-month placement here, I already realise how challenging teaching can be. The worst thing is that I know for a fact that as extremely privileged public school girls, we were 100% more problematic than the eager (if a little self doubting) girls I am lucky enough and honoured to be teaching.

Art is not everyone’s cup of tea and positioning myself as the teacher trying to impart my knowledge of the subject to students has certainly taught me how much I take for granted my ability to draw or form something three dimensional without much effort. It has always been that way for me, but for these girls who five months ago were more practiced on a tightrope or a unicycle, being forced to draw a still life and get to grips with the finer points of perspective and form must be totally bemusing and baffling. Especially when the person teaching them is trying to explain it in very poor pigeon Nepali!

What we put our teachers through makes me shudder to remember, and I feel an immense shame at how ungrateful we were for the education we received when I consider by comparison just how much these girls have been through, and see every day how willingly these victims of a very poor society are tackling every challenge I throw at them with a smile - and I have thrown them plenty!

I should point out at this juncture that the main reason for being here is to teach sculpture, but I strongly believe that if you can understand form and perspective by drawing it, then it will benefit everything you turn your hand to. I decided from the start that the only way to work out what they could and could not handle was to chuck them in the deep end and see if they swam.

Not really realising that most of them had never actually drawn before - every child I know grows up doodling and drawing something - I set up a complicated still life consisting of lots of fruit, mugs and a big brass water container. Knowing the culture for copying here, I made sure every angle presented a different picture and that plenty of the fruit overlapped so that they would be forced to actually look at what was in front of them instead of just drawing how they perceived it to be.

After an initial nervousness from both parties (did I mention I had never taught before?), the girls settled down to draw, only to rub out every small line they made. I decided to remove all rubbers, only to discover that a couple of them had their own and were passing them around underneath the table!

An hour into the session, I was so exhausted that I had to send them off for a 10 minute break – I was also aware that they were taking in a lot of new information. However, if by lunchtime they were paddling, then by the end of the day they were well and truly swimming and tackling the art of shading. I was exhausted but totally amazed by them.

The next morning they were horrified to discover that they had a totally new still life. I deliberately placed the girls who had excelled on a side of the table where the challenge was harder, with the task made a little simpler on the other side for the girls who had struggled. Again the girls exceeded my expectations, lapping up my instructions and advice - Nepali phrasebook in one hand and sketch pad to draw examples in the other - leaving me at the end of the day proud and humbled by their achievements and determination.

In the ensuing 2 weeks I have introduced them to relief sculpture, which they are modelling in clay and then casting in plaster. It is a serious challenge for them, and one they are proving that they are more than up to, despite not always believing it themselves! The aim of this is to help them understand 3-dimensional form but without the stresses of gravity. It also introduces them to materials, skills and methods that can be used in conjunction with mosaic and may one day be useful if commissions for bathrooms, gardens and general interiors are undertaken.

Teaching in a foreign language has challenges of its own and there are moments when I feel totally bemused by my inability to express myself. For their patience in these times, as I scrabble through my phrasebook for the closest words to explain myself, I am truly grateful.

My time here so far has been without a doubt the most humbling and rewarding of my life. The enthusiasm and determination with which the girls have battled to understand what I am trying to teach them continues to surprise me every day and I am in no doubt that they will continue to do so for the remainder of my stay. My only hope is that their patience with my lack of Nepali can match the total awe and amazement in which I hold them."

Girl trafficker's travels over

The female trafficking agent who was sent to us by ChildLine India at the start of this week has had charges registered against her in spite of her threats against all and sundry. She is not eligible for bail so can now expect to remain behind bars for up to a year until the case comes to court. So that should keep her out of further mischief. If she is convicted she'll face a sentence of up to 20 years and a fine of up to 200,000 rupees (£1600).

We are already looking after the children of imprisoned traffickers (as part of our programme for help to prisoners' children). It would be ironic if through our determined efforts to get this woman convicted we end up caring for her children, if she has any.

Visitors

One of my more pleasant tasks here is to receive visitors and introduce them to our high quality project work, a role that I have to try to balance with desk work. So far so good...

Today we had two very different visitors. The first of the day was Ivan Broadhead, journalist with Hong Kong's largest English daily, The South China Morning Post. Ivan has been researching cross border trafficking from Nepal into India and his enquiries inevitably led to us. I took him to see the arts centre which is now the main focus of our rehabilitation work with circus returnees. He seemed impressed and I was equally impressed with the sensitivity with which he interviewed a couple of the girls. My mind did go back though to a similar visit from The South China Morning Post in March 2000 that led to cover story in its Sunday magazine the following May. That in turn was syndicated to the UK's Daily Telegraph (see "My interview with the Daily Telegraph" in the link below) and it was that article that more than anything else launched the charity. One never knows what can become of good - and sensitive - journalism.

The second visitor was Carla Bachechi, a political and economic officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu. Timely, as this week I have been working on an application for U.S. State Department grant funding for our arts centre for a three year period starting in September. The application, which includes an element towards purchasing the premises, comes to just over US$300,000, and the deadline is tomorrow. That is when the application has to fall on, er, Carla's desk. But before one gets too excited at funding prospects, it should be noted that a similar application last year was turned down and once more we had to rely on the good old general public to keep our heads above water. So if anyone out there has a few spare dollars, do let us know.

The Fourth of January

Today is the ninth anniversary of my first wife Esther's tragic death. Although I always tell myself that it's "just another day" it does always still loom ahead of me over the Christmas and New Year celebrations that are going on all around.

It would probably come as no surprise if I were to state that it felt like it had happened just yesterday. And if I do sit down and write about the subject (as I did for the link article below "The Esther Benjamins Trust in my own words") then it suddenly does become very raw and the tears can readily flow. However if truth be told it seems like it occurred ages ago most likely because so very much has happened in the meantime. I didn't pause for much reflection in the immediate aftermath of Esther's suicide, choosing instead to take on a huge challenge in her memory. A challenge that has kept me fully occupied ever since. This has given me a great deal of peace and a badly-needed sense of purpose. With hindsight it was exactly the right way to proceed.

The Politics of International Adoption

I read with much admiration an excellent essay that a friend sent me today on the politics of international adoption, as considered by Peter Conn, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania:

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=6&articlepage=1

In my post of 25th July "The Last Resort" I rejected the politically correct statements being made by ideologists like Gillian Mellsop, the Country Representative of UNICEF in Nepal, who at the time had gone on the record as saying that international adoption should be the last resort. Challenging these hollow, fawning viewpoints at the time I gave a short overview of the other options that were infinitely worse for the unwanted, unloved Nepali child - like ending up in a grim orphanage, on the streets, being trafficked or early death. Professor Conn's review complements this analysis, albeit in a much more erudite commentary.

That said, he does remind us that the process of adoption is always accompanied by "disruption, loss and mourning". In the midst of the joy that we new adoptive parents are revelling in at the moment it is appropriate to remember this and give a great deal of early thought to the future needs of our new sons and daughters who will have to cope with these sentiments. I can imagine how in the light of how the recent international adoptions have been so abysmally mismanaged by the Nepalese authorities some, if not most, parents may wish to have nothing more to do with Nepal. The reality we have to accept and work around is that the adopted child, teenager and future adult will always feel an affinity with their homeland. They may even fantasise about it as some kind of Shangri La - which it certainly isn't. As far as my daughter Alisha is concerned, we will be very open with her in the future about her background (what little we know of it) and of the ongoing situation - and desperation - of Nepal. She should never be made to feel "grateful" for what was an act of love on our part, but she should be given every opportunity to understand the pain and hardship of Nepalese society and the context from which she was adopted. Maybe one day she might even feel inclined to follow in our footsteps and put something back; I would be delighted by that but ultimately this will have to be her own choice.

The Esther Benjamins Trust now has a major Indian circus in its sights for a rescue operation within the coming month. Our field workers have already gone to the southeast of Nepal to research the families of children who have gone to that particular circus. Predictably, it seems that the circus has already been tipped off (doubtless by families who will receive a kickback for their collaboration) as I learned today that four girls have just been sent home to Nepal from that circus. Sometimes circuses do that in advance of a rescue to unsettle us or to improve their image. But once again our already acutely dangerous task will be made all the more challenging by tackling a circus that will be ready and waiting, having bought off everyone that matters in its locality.

An abstract philosophical concept

A needless amount of time was spent by us at the bleak Foreign Ministry today in pursuit of Alisha's travel document, a mini passport that would allow us to take her out of the country next month. We were invited to present ourselves at 12.00 noon and, quite predictably, when we got there we were told to come back at 2 p.m. At 2 p.m. we discovered that the staff who were dealing with the documentation would be on tea break for another half hour. They finally turned up at 2.45 p.m. and we were at last issued with her little black book.

Waiting around we speculated on what was going on around us, or not, as the case may be. The young Nepali staff member of Alisha's orphanage who had accompanied us suggested that all Nepalis were lazy. We quickly - and politely - disagreed. Anyway, this is certainly not the case. Bev and I continued the discussion over dinner this evening. She opined that from what she had seen there is a tendency (and let's try to avoid generalisation) for people who have a job to do here to get distracted so that they lose focus and don't achieve their work goals. There is certainly truth in this as you can see it happening in offices across the land, with visitors coming and going all the time, chats taking place and clerks trying to juggle everyone's interests at the same time. Objectives aren't achieved on schedule in this chaos and this is most definitely a land of lost opportunities.

However I have a different take on this. I often reflect on a pearl of wisdom that I read in a tourist guide book when I first came to Nepal in 1999. In a section of the book it stated something to the effect that "in Nepal time is an abstract philosophical concept" with people unable to time their arrival for meetings, meet deadlines etc. That's definitely true, but what I have seen is not just people losing a grip on their own time management but also their making a very good job of wasting the time of others. I wonder how many man hours are lost per week in Nepal through this inescapable and infuriating practice? Herein lies another problem that just cannot be addressed by the development sector - one of many that bedevil our attempts to improve society. Sadly no one seems to care in Nepal, just accepting this as being the norm, which is why this country is going to get left so far behind as its more tuned in neighbours recognise and seize opportunities with alacrity.

Before Christmas The Daily Mail, the leading UK tabloid newspaper, invited its readers to write in and propose their favourite charity for a prize. Generously, the Mail was offering a top prize of £100,000 with 90 runner up prizes of £10,000. I was very touched to read what some of our supporters wrote about us and we published some of these on our website:

http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/testimonials.htm

I was over the moon to learn this evening that we have been selected as a runner up prize winner. That's a very welcome boost just as I was starting to worry again about meeting our rapidly growing commitments.