Donkeys

Much has been written in the Nepali press in recent weeks about how NGOs and INGOs may soon to be brought into line by the Government, with greater transparency and contribution towards the "national agenda". No one can challenge the desirability of NGOs showing clearly their sources of income and expenditure; many if not most don't measure up in this regard. I know of one or two NGOs out there who source their funds by withdrawing cash directly from their overseas' donor accounts through an ATM card that they've been given by their funder. That can scarcely be considered to be best practice. I do have problems though with any suggestion that NGO funds, non-governmental funds, might be harnessed towards the greater good as determined by a local governmental agency that might take precedence in decision-making over donor charity Boards and NGO committees. These suggestions - which seem to be strongest in "letters to the editor" sections of the papers - reflect an ignorance of the nature of public giving abroad and that any attempt to hijack funds that are given for a specific purpose, entrusted to Trustees, would undermine the ethos of charitable giving. It is the individual member of the public's right to give their own hard-earned cash towards whatever cause that is dear to their hearts, be it children, animals, the arts, medical research etc. If a donor country doesn't want to receive funds towards what might be seen as fringe issues then all that has by national government is to decline the charity's proposal. The funds can go to another country where the perceived need is as great or greater and where the contribution is welcome even if it doesn't go towards meeting development priorities.

Also, one of the tasks of a charity can be to identify and highlight something that isn't already on "the national agenda" but that most definitely should be. For example, six years ago when The Esther Benjamins Trust began working with the problem of trafficking of children to circuses no one knew anything about this particular problem. Had our modest resources been channelled into paying for other worthy things like providing rehabilitation and training facilities for trafficking survivors (this is high on the national agenda) then Nepali children would still be languishing, abused in the circuses. Instead we were able to get on with the challenge of sorting the problem out and now that child trafficking route is closed down.

Other causes like animal welfare seem to be of only academic interest to many of the decision makers within Nepalese society. Thank goodness for those few good people out there, Westerners and Nepalis, who have made stray dogs and working donkeys issues that need addressing and thank goodness for those overseas who give money that supports the animals' relief. I hope nothing is done in the future that will restrict the activities of such people who may be seen as "eccentric". It is such people that are the bedrock of charities.

Pictured right is a donkey that was rescued from a brick kiln last week by my friend Kit Spencer, Managing Director of the Summit Hotel.

The National Games in Nepal

The Nepalese National Games started on Monday, the first time these have taken place in five years. Two of our Kathmandu children's refuge boys, Aman Tamang and Bijay Limbu, were taking part in the gymnastics events using skills that they learned the hard way through their time inside an Indian circus. After we freed them in January 2004 they chose to continue to train, attending the National Stadium in Kathmandu each morning before going to school. Today their efforts were rewarded with both boys picking up gold medals in the group event, and Aman winning a gold, Bijay a bronze in individual events. Two more gold medal events take place tomorrow so it's fingers crossed....

A good day in the courts

Three years ago our field staff were directly involved in the arrest of leading child trafficker Kajiman Shrestha (pictured right). He was responsible for the trafficking of scores of Nepalese children into the oblivion of the Indian circus industry, condemning them to a miserable existence of abuse and de facto imprisonment. He has been in jail ever since he was picked up. Yesterday he was convicted and sentenced to a further 15 years imprisonment.

Meanwhile in a court in India yesterday it was the fourth hearing in the trial of Indian circus owner Lakhan Chaudhary. Once more we provided a witness (one of his victims) for the prosecution. We expect there to be one more hearing next month and then hopefully justice will be done.

Raw poverty

My two day visit to Hetauda left me profoundly moved and with an image that I will never forget.

The aim of the journey was to accompany one of the charity's Trustees, Chris Haworth, on a factfinding trip to the rural areas around Hetauda which have been the main source of trafficked children to the Indian circuses (and elsewhere). On top of that I would be able to catch up on the circumstances of some of our beneficiaries' families through being guided by Shailaja, my partner Director in Nepal. And photographer Jonny Cochrane was with us, tasked with documenting the poverty.

Yesterday I went to visit the homes of several girls, including that of the girl who has just given evidence against the circus owner who (allegedly) raped her before we intervened to secure her release from The New Raj Kamal Circus in January 2007. She is one of eight children and we met the latest arrival to this very dysfunctional family - a babe in arms. The family home, pictured right with two of this girl's younger siblings, wasn't even made from wood; a lot of it seemed to consist of bark held together with mud. This and other village abodes, although sad to see, didn't shake me as much as one might imagine. I have seen this kind of hut many times before in Nepal and in other parts of the world.

This morning though I was taken unawares. We went to a very different kind of community where families were living in regimented brick-built cottages that had been constructed for them by a major international aid agency. We wanted to meet Basante and Hari, a couple whom we had freed from a circus in April 2004 (two of 29 releasees) who had subsequently got married and are now parents to two little girls. On the way to their cottage I was impressed with the layout of the buildings and their adjoining gardens and when we got there, the cottage looked fine as well. Then we went inside. It was then that I realised that we were still in the midst of raw poverty; it was only the walls and roof that surrounded it which were different from yesterday's experience. Somehow the juxtaposition of solid walls with the emptiness and grime within seemed to accentuate the hardship that the two families who were sharing the premises were having to endure. Indeed, the solidity of the walls even made it feel like a prison. A baby girl lay on the bed, with flies crawling around her eyelids. She was unresponsive to my attempts to connect with her.

Then came the haunting, surreal image. Shailaja beckoned to me to look inside one of the back rooms. There she indicated a lump on the bed. The lump was Basante and Hari's older child, a four year old girl, sitting upright, who had hidden herself under a quilt, something that she does for all visitors. It reminded me of the game that I play with my two and a half year old daughter - "Where's Alisha", as she hides in really obvious locations. But this wasn't a joke. The child was clearly traumatised by her environment, and harboured a terror that had been exacerbated by the death of one of the young women in the house a month ago. Another woman who was sharing the cottage told us how her brother had taken his own life by hanging a few months previously, an occurrence that was quite common within this desperate community. Eventually we coaxed the girl out from under the quilt and she posed with her parents for the picture on the right (the girl with the red collar). She was but one of a handful of similarly aged children who were just loitering at home, totally unstimulated.

Afterwards we visited a local school and discussed with the Headteacher how we might provide some community upliftment through broadening the educational provision available for the local children. This currently goes to only Class 5 (9-11 year olds). We discussed the possibility of introducing a creche for the kind of children that we had just seen and how education could be extended into Class 6 and beyond. He was very receptive and I believe something useful and positive has emerged from that meeting.

Nonetheless I came away from the village deeply saddened and wishing that those toddlers could be just scooped up out of there and given an infinitely better chance in life in the developed world. I am sorry, that's not very politically correct and quite naiive but that's how I felt.

Sophie's choice

The Trust attracts all kinds of volunteers for its work in Nepal - varying in age, experience and nationality. Last year was a bumper year in both quality and quantity with more volunteers than ever helping us out. 2009 has got off to a similar start with no fewer than 12 volunteers in country. These workers usually come to us well in advance but sometimes they just stumble upon us, an example being Tasmanian Sophie Shugg who volunteered at our art workshop in Kathmandu last year. Sophie has just described her experience in "The Advocate" magazine:

http://www.theadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/news-features/mapping-out-a-future/1437006.aspx

We very much look forward to Sophie's return later on this year when we can hopefully make even better use of her services as the programme evolves.

Jonny Cochrane

Photographer Jonny Cochrane (http://www.jonnycochrane.com/) joined the team yesterday, after volunteering his photographic services for the coming 2-3 weeks. I took him up to the Godawari refuge this morning where we challenged his photographic skills through inviting him to snap our two resident gymnasts, Aman and Bijay. Both these boys learned some of their gymnastics inside the circus. After we rescued them they continued to develop their techniques through training at the National Stadium in Kathmandu. They attend the Stadium every morning before school. Pictured right is Aman in flight.

Hopefully Jonny's images can be incorporated not only into our literature but also into exhibitions that we'll run later on this year. Tomorrow he heads to Bhairahawa, then Hetauda and then will undertake an assignment for us in India.

Further to my post of 11th November - "Not so vital statistics" - I reckoned it was time today for another weigh-in. I am now down to 76.7 kg and a 96 cm waist which gives me a BMI of 25.33 (only just in the "overweight" category) and a waist/hip ratio of 0.96 which is still above the desired ratio of .90. But I am getting there...

The very wealthy Dr Thapa

Dr Thapa of Lalitpur, Kathmandu is undoubtedly the wealthiest vet in the whole of Nepal if not in Asia. I am quite convinced of this for I know just how much of our personal money my beloved wife Bev gives him in the cause of street dog rescue, relief and rehabilitation. I went with Bev this morning to see the latest two puppies that she’s scooped off the mean streets of Kathmandu. They’re doing well and Dr Thapa’s eyes glinted as he told us of how one of them had got the day off to the best of starts by passing worms this morning. Nice.

The reason for my visit though was to see a bird that he is currently treating. Someone had picked up a barn owl with a broken wing and brought it to Dr Thapa who, aside from being ridiculously wealthy, is, I suspect, quite clever. He has managed to splint the broken bone with a steel rod and he told me that when he removes the rod in a month’s time the bird will fly once again. Meantime he’s lovingly forcing meat down the bird’s gullet to ensure it lasts the course.

Afterwards I consulted the internet to find out the lifespan of a barn owl. In the wild they live for 1-5 years whereas in a more sheltered environment like an owl sanctuary they can last for 20-25 years (I noted in the papers this week that the converse applies to zoo animals). But I also found out that barn owls largely hunt by hearing, not by sight; apparently their hearing is so acute that they can pick up a mouse’s heartbeat in a 30 square foot room. Just imagine how this morning’s owl must have been deafened by Dr Thapa’s pounding heart as Miss Moneypenny arrived at his practice.

Yesterday I met up with my partner Director, Shailaja, in Bhairahawa. She was fresh back from India with the three boys that she and her Deputy Dilu Tamang had rescued on Tuesday evening from domestic slavery in Varanasi. She was in buoyant mood as she told me that circus owner Lakhan Chaudhary, the defendant in Wednesday’s court hearing in Gorakhpur, had placed a 50,000 rupee (£700) price on retrieving our key witness against him. Shailaja said that this girl, who alleges that she was raped by him, gave a perfectly clear – and brave – statement in court as Chaudhary yelled at the Judge to listen to his voice as well as to hers. He was also screaming at his relatives and unsavoury friends in court for having let him down – presumably in part through failing to find this girl.

They didn’t find her because she’s been safely in our care ever since the rescue in January 2007.

Child rescue

I was actually quietly kicking myself at being in Hong Kong over the weekend as it prevented my taking part in a child rescue operation that occurred in Varanasi, north India last evening. The date of the Standard Chartered 10km event was inflexible as was that of a court hearing today in India that the rescue was linked to. In essence the story started with a circus rescue in January 2007 at the New Raj Kamal Circus in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh which was reported on by Tom Bell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTs1NQOS9_I

The only inaccuracy in Tom's otherwise excellent report is that it turned out subsequently that we had found all of the girls who were at the circus. And the circus owner, Lakhan Chaudhary, went to jail where he has been ever since, pending trial. The trial started last month and the third hearing is due today. At that hearing we wanted to present two girls as witnesses, including the one who was interviewed at the start of Tom's film. The snag was that the girls were unwilling to speak as they each had one brother still in India in a bonded labour situation and potentially at risk from Chaudhary were they to give evidence. Last evening these boys and another one were rescued in a joint operation with ChildLine India and other partners. My colleagues Shailaja and Dilu, who were on the operation, are attending court with the girls later on today.

This is a big case for us as, if convicted, Chaudhary will be the first Indian circus owner to be sentenced. I will report in a future post on the details of what happened yesterday (once I have them) and how the legal case is progressing.

On a more mundane level, my official time on Sunday was 58 minutes and 22 seconds placing me at 1702 out of around 35,000 runners. I am thrilled to be so close now to my £20k target with the sponsorship now at £19,385. If you'd like to congratulate Shailaja and Dilu by adding to that total you can do so through:

www.justgiving.com/philipholmesbupa

Thanks....

The banality of evil

When Adolf Eichmann, the infamous architect of Hitler's "Final Solution" against the Jews, was finally captured and presented in an Israeli court in 1963 the public was in for a surprise. For his was not the face of an ogre. Instead a very ordinairy, diminutive, bespectacled bureaucrat was being accused of the most horrendous of charges. This experience led to a book being published called "Eichmann in Jerusalem" with the subtitle "The banality of evil". My mind turned to this last evening after I received this picture of Kaajiman Shrestha, a Nepali who is currently facing charges of trafficking children to the Indian circuses. He was apprehended by Esther Benjamins Trust staff after allegedly having been involved in sending scores of children to a living hell that masqueraded as circus life. He's of course not remotely in the same league as Eichmann, but he looks a fairly benign kind of a chap, one that you wouldn't look twice at if you met him in the street. If convicted he faces twenty years in prison.

A home in Makwanpur

In a previous post I reported on how one of our teams last month intercepted a child trafficking agent with nine children who was on his way to The Rambo Circus in India. The agent is now in custody while the children are staying at our Godawari refuge. The mother of one of the children has since left her home to find work in Kathmandu but it's more likely that she is under pressure from the agent's family to help get him off the hook. Meanwhile the siblings of the child that we rescued have been placed with their maternal uncle. Our Programme Coordinator in Hetauda has just been to visit the uncle's home in trafficking-prone Makwanpur District and sent me the adjacent picture. Following that visit we have agreed to admit the two youngest sisters, aged 5 and 6, to the Godwari refuge. So the arrest of that agent last month has led to not just nine extra children to care for but now eleven.

This is one of the greatest underlying problems in our work against child trafficking; the abyss of poverty that child survivors or potential victims originate from.

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

A day of frustration

All the ducks were in a row by lunchtime today, ready for our raid on a circus in the south of India. Paperwork had been prepared, flights booked, media alerted....and then at 1.30 p.m. Kelvin Symon of ChildLine India Foundation phoned me to say that the circus had moved location. So the trip was off, postponed until the circus arrives at its next location in early October. My expectations of a major success were thwarted, at least for now. The most I could do was revisit Interpol in Kathmandu this afternoon and present the paperwork that should be enough for the circus owner to be extradited to Nepal to face trafficking charges in the very near future.

Meanwhile in Hetauda, there has been apparent stonewalling on the part of the police in the pursuit of the case against alleged trafficking agent Shankar Basnet who was picked up by our field team on Monday evening. Statements had been taken against him from a witness who was trafficked by him to end up being allegedly raped at the circus. The case should have been lodged within one day of this at the District Court and all seemed done and dusted to us. Four days later we were appalled to learn that the police have still done nothing and we gather that the girl is being summoned to the police station again tomorrow. In short she is being put under a great deal of mental pressure (perhaps in the hope that she will retract her statement). The pressure is exacerbated by the incident having attracted the attention of local media who have been at the police station. Moreover Basnet's idiot neighbours have been adding to the intimidation by protesting at the station - trafficking really is something that can involve conspiracy and collaboration by whole communities.

Tomorrow we will take firm action to protect this girl who has been so courageous as to give evidence before her trafficker and we'll ensure that her will doesn't break under this unacceptable pressure. The local police are effectively treating her like a criminal and they should be ashamed of themselves as police officers and as men.

Faces on a hillside

This afternoon I went once again to the Nepal office of Interpol in Kathmandu where I had a very useful discussion with Superintendent of Police, Dhiru Basnyet, regarding our plans for next week's circus rescue. I was joined by colleagues Shailaja and Dilu who brought with them statements from parents of missing girls who may be at the target circus. These statements are often accompanied by pathetic pictures of the child trafficking victims sometimes pictured with their impoverished parents. One such picture from today's file of statements is shown right. The poverty stares out at you as the child and the father stand on a barren hillside in rural Nepal with the father's vest having a gaping hole worthy of a rabbit. I hope we find this little girl next week.

While we have been working hard for Nepal's children a fraudster was busy last week trying to take vast sums of money out of our bank account. Three very amateur cheques for around £13k, complete with spelling mistakes of the bank address, were picked up very readily by our bank.

It's not really such a funny old world.

Closing down child traffickers

I learned this morning of the arrest of two more (alleged) leading child trafficking agents who have been taking children to the circuses. The first, a man called Shankar Basnet who has been operating in the south/southeast of the country, was picked up by our staff in Nepal and is now being held at Hetauda police station. I gather that, bizarrely, Basnet has been under the protection of the wife of one of our own former staff members so she may well soon find herself under arrest too. The other, a female called Tamang, has been arrested on the Indian side of the border from where she was (allegedly) sending children to circuses including The Raj Mahal, the one that we raided in June. Our Indian partner, ChildLine India Foundation, instigated that arrest. She has now been charged and awaits trial.

Our next circus rescue operation will take place next week. Details to follow, but for security reasons I will report these after the event.

Melange

Yesterday marked a significant milestone in my not-for-profit business initiative in Nepal, Himlayan Mosaics. For the first time the girls' exquisite products were on sale in a retail outlet, a new shop called "Melange" in the upmarket Durba Marg area of Kathmandu. The shop was packed with friends and well wishers to shop owner Pratima Thapa on her first day of business. We managed to sell eleven mosaics yesterday with the most popular one being of koi carp, a design by former volunteer art teacher with the Trust, professional artist Rebecca Hawkins. Most intriguingly I was approached by a visitor who has the responsibility of re-designing one of Kathmandu's leading hotels which has 80 bedrooms and who is interested in talking about mosaic possibilities. Often these things come to nothing but if it did this would give the new company just the boost that it needs and work to a LOT of our beneficiaries.

Himalayan Mosaics presents a great opportunity as it gives my circus survivors rewarding employment and an income but I still have the need to fundraise significant amounts of funds for the Trust's ongoing work as the credit crunch is already starting to bite hard. With my about to go on another circus rescue next week, I feel the need of those funds very acutely.

Artistic creativity

At the start of this year when volunteer sculptor Rebecca Hawkins joined our art workshop for trafficking survivors she expressed interest in encouraging the girls (who have mostly been rescued from Indian circuses) to produce some items to their own design. I was deeply sceptical at the time as Nepal is very much a copycat society where "artists" have a tendency to copy the ideas of others or work from photographs. Indeed, when she prompted the students to design their own mirror frames in mosaic she found that they did so only under extremes of protest. But they produced results nonetheless and I was appropriately humbled.

Last week the latest volunteer sculptor from the UK, Denise Bryan (pictured right), was very proud to be able to show off to me little figurines that the girls had made in private after banning her from the studio for a couple of hours! These represent village women and each figure has its own identity reflecting the work of an individual artist - so the girls hadn't been copying from one another. I believe these figures can now be turned into very marketable ceramics that have a very ethnic, almost aboriginal, feel to them.

Reflecting on this surprising outcome, I can only attribute this to the success with which we have developed a relaxed "creative space" at the Godawari workshop and in how the girls have grown in self-confidence. The aims of the workshop have been achieved and I am sure much more success - and surprises - lies ahead.

Press report on our last circus rescue operation

In my post of 27th June I described how Sunday Times journalist Dean Nelson had visited Hetauda to meet the girls that we rescued from the Raj Mahal Circus on 13th June. During my holiday last month his report appeared in the Sunday Times:


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4364184.ece


I was very pleased with Dean's coverage even though it seems to have led to just one or two donations, although more journalistic interest has followed. But maybe someone out there was considering writing their Will around the time that they read the article. One never knows and you can only keep trying.

A funding challenge

In my last post I mentioned how my blogging had lapsed in part due to being a little preoccupied and distracted by a funding shortfall. The truth of the matter is that while we are enjoying remarkable successes on the ground in both Nepal and India, the rapid growth of our work is starting to outpace our income. On top of that we are having to find funds at short notice (when lead in times to securing those elusive grants are measured in months) to meet unexpected and unpredictable new commitments.

An example of this is the interception of a leading child trafficking agent, 68 year old Kirta Tamang, earlier this month. We had received a tip off from a villager in the south of the country that Tamang was heading to India with nine children that he was taking to the Rambo Circus. My partner Director in Nepal, Shailaja, responded immediately by leading a team of our field staff in hot pursuit. After a lot of searching at two railway stations in the northern state of Bihar, they found the agent hiding in bushes with the children. He was apprehended and the party returned to Nepal with the children. It transpired that Tamang was grandfather to two of the children that he was trafficking; it is not unusual for traffickers to be related to their victims.

Kirta Tamang is now in police custody (the adjacent picture shows him handcuffed and in the back of a police vehicle) and he now faces a trial that could lead to the maximum prison sentence of 20 years. The children have come to our refuge in Godawari, near Kathmandu, as they are at risk of being re-trafficked or, more imminently, of being influenced by Tamang's family members to concoct a story as to what they were doing in India. Perhaps some kind of a family excursion with dear old grandad?

The fundraising challenge that was dropped on me was to find the additional care costs of the children (pictured right with Shailaja, centre back). This amounts to £45 per child, per month. That's means a total of £405 per month or £4860 per year has been suddenly added to the budget. And of course there is every possibility that these children will stay with us until they come of age so multiply the total annual figure by 10 and you're getting close to the actual long term costs. Already one kind supporter (and blog reader) has responded by covering the first month of costs.

The fight against child trafficking comes at a price. Any takers for another month?

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.