School mosaics

During my holiday on the Scilly Isles during July I couldn't help but notice the little school on the island of Tresco. The outside wall was covered with mosaic, and although the mosaic work wasn't technically so well executed it was very sweet indeed. The children had clearly had a lot of fun going hands on with the piece and embedding in the mosaic ceramic inserts that depicted various aspects of island life.

The concept is actually not so remarkable as mosaics are increasingly popular in schools in the UK. It got me thinking today about how we could be innovative in developing education and school development projects here in Nepal. I can see the potential for school-based fundraising in the UK (which is lucrative) being used to support named schools in Nepal. And a share of the funds raised could be dedicated towards making a mosaic at the schools which would not only give work to some of the Trust's beneficiaries but also provide an eyecatching feature at what would probably be otherwise very grim schools.

I am now in contact with a mosaic artist in the UK who has good links with a large number of UK schools and is willing to help. Nepal will be a more colourful place in future and some of its poorest children a little better educated.

Martin Cheek

One of the big names in the international mosaic scene, Martin Cheek, has agreed to come out and give us some consultancy between the 5th and 13th May. I got to hear about Martin first through my wife Bev who attended one of his weekend courses about fifteen years ago. I ended up going to his summer course in Greece five years ago and then the following year, with Bev, to another of his courses in Florence. As you can see from his website his work is not only very artistic but full of humour. But be warned that if you attend one of his classes you'll have to endure the other side of Martin's humour - his really grim, very old jokes. You'll find one or two pictures of me looking remarkably cheerful under the circumstances on his website's courses page.

Anyway, Martin will be providing training support to the trainers who are running the integrated art workshop in Bhairahawa and helping with design input. He'll also be helping us to prepare for a photographic/mosaic exhibition that we'll be running at several venues later on this year to mark the Trust's 10th birthday.

One of Martin's other students is leading British journalist Libby Purves who has shown some interest in following up his visit and our work. And I discovered last week that one of the charity's Trustees, Sue Duncan, has also been on a Cheek weekend course. Small world!

Burning bright

For the past few months our students at the Bhairahawa art workshop - a mixed group of deaf school leavers and girl trafficking survivors from the Indian circuses - have been working on a large mosaic of a jungle scene with a sinister tiger. It measures 5 feet by 8 feet and the original design was by our volunteer art teacher from this time last year, Rebecca Hawkins. The work has just been completed and now it is on its way to an appreciative wall in Kathmandu. We hope this beautiful piece with spark some orders from discerning customers in Nepal.

Disastrous education

So much attention, both nationally and internationally, is paid to the importance of education in Nepal. Yet even the most superficial analysis reveals what a raw deal the children are receiving in reality. I have written previously about the flaws of the chronically under-resourced government school system that sees so very few pupils (who are drawn from the lowest social classes) lasting the course to age 16 to take successfully the School Leaver's Certificate (SLC) examination. I have commented on the rote learning that bedevils both the government and private school methods of instruction, with examinations serving as tests of inculcation and memory rather than of education. I could write about the corporal punishment which is endemic in the schools and is just as vicious and sadistic as that which I knew as a boy in Ireland. However today I write about the latest news of the Ministry of Education deciding to close all government schools until the 10th of June. This is as a result of a lack of text books that over the weekend led to street disturbances at several locations across the country. The shortage is entirely due to the recent election when the national printing effort was directed towards producing ballot papers instead of the books that were necessary for the start of the academic year (April). So today's politicians have been elected to the disadvantage of tomorrow's citizens, who already have the cards so stacked against them. And those most disadvantaged kids whom we are trying to help will spend the next couple of weeks at the refuge providing a recreational and educational challenge to our already over-stretched staff. Brilliant.

Yesterday I visited our Arts Rehabilitation Centre in Godawari. It was lovely to witness our new art tutor, Jolanda Aucott, at work teaching the girls the basics of colour. The girls seem to thrive not just on the artistic input but on the attention that they receive from our enthusiastic volunteers. And the standard of mosaic work is soaring, with these becoming all the time smaller and more intricate, reducing shipping costs and making them more desirable to the tourist who might be limited by luggage space. The bee eater mosaic (published right) was designed by my wife Bev and based upon a photo I took at Bardia National Park (see my post of 4th April). It is just 12 cm by 16 cm and takes a girl around one week to make. Not bad for £60.

This morning's ornithological treat in my garden was a hoopoe which I spotted grazing on the lawn. It was a little distance away so please excuse the quality of the image. There's a mosaic in there somewhere...

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 Nepali Times

On my post of 15th March I mentioned a visit by Nepali Times reporter, Pranaya Rana, to the Trust's mosaic course for deaf school leavers in Bhairahawa. Here is what Pranaya wrote in this week's edition:

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/392/Nation/14617

Happy birthday to me

48 today. That comes as quite a shock to the system when you still feel half that age, even after three and a half wearing years of living in Nepal.

Why so wearing? Well so many things you see here can really depress. This morning I took Alisha to the zoo where I spotted a middle aged woman throwing a stone at a caged deer in a bid to get it to stand up. I reprimanded her and then reported her to a passing member of the zoo staff, who didn't seem unduly concerned by her misbehaviour. The general public attitudes to everything here seems to be cruel and primitive - to animals, children and the most vulnerable within society. And no one seems to give two hoots about the environment. Since moving into central Kathmandu I have really started to feel the effects of the pollution with a chronic sore throat and night coughs that are suggestive of latent asthma coming to the fore. When I leave Nepal for good I feel it will be this pollution that drives me out more than anything else. In fact it's the other things that justify my very presence here in the first place.

I have been very pleased by a new mosaic that has just been produced at the Godawari studio. It is a translation of the naive Mithili art style that is native to south Nepal/north India into a different medium. Mithili fish in mosaic are pictured right.

Film of our art workshop in Kathmandu

Yesterday I went to visit our art workshop for child trafficking victims here in Kathmandu. I was delighted with the progress as I watched our UK volunteer ceramicist, Alex Hunter, teach the girls press moulding and pot throwing. In a classroom next door other girls were learning mosaic techniques.

When the course is over at the end of February I expect about half of the students to become employees at my new not-for-profit company "Himalayan Mosaics". The remaining girls will commence an advanced workshop. Ultimately all should enter good employment through jobs that we create and never again be vulnerable to poverty and the criminal intent of others.

There's a challenge!

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.

Resurrection

In my 16th November post "Rural Education in Nepal" I showed a photograph of a Lime Swallowtail butterfly that I had found dead outside my house. Laxmi, whom we rescued from an Indian circus in April 2004, has brought it back to life in mosaic. I wonder if she sees a parallel with her own situation, the resurrection she has experienced in becoming a mosaic artist after the living death she must have endured inside the circus?

Rural education in Nepal

I am about to host a visit from one of our UK funders, Mr Richard Carss, whose Foundation has been funding some of our work with rural schools in Makwanpur and adjacent districts. While we have been providing scholarships, his Foundation has been funding capital enhancements - classroom builds, toilet blocks, classroom furniture and the like. I intend to be totally frank with him in that I am increasingly of the opinion that we have been misguided in propping up a flawed system. And those who purport to support the existing system are often kidding themselves and others.


In previous posts I have mentioned the problems in village schools with huge classes, chronic under-resourcing and the routine rote form of learning that burdens children's memories pointlessly while stifling their creativity. Therein lie some of the intrinsic flaws. However, as part of a pursuit of the Holy Grail of increasing attendance and reducing drop out rates (especially for girls) incentives are used to motivate the children and their families that can totally backfire. I am currently refusing to fund any kind of a feeding programme in village schools in Rupendehi district as that fosters dependency (which once started is hard to break away from) and provides the wrong motivation to attend classes. I point to an example of how well-intentioned NGOs can get it wrong in an item that appeared in yesterday's Himalayan newspaper. It was reported that in one rural district an NGO has offered the incentive of two litres of cooking oil per month provided per child that attends classes. It seems that this has now become the only pathetic reason that families send their children to school. Children can keep repeating the same year at school over and over again, failing exams and without making any educational progress while continuing to receive oil. One mother said:


"If my daughter fails this year, we could get the oil for one more year. If she passes she will go to a distant school and there will be no one to do the household chores too. I will ask the teachers to fail my daughter this year."


So at the end of this programme (if the NGO can ever detach itself from it) the statistics will point to increased attendance of pupils and everyone, as I stated above, is fooled, including themselves. Indeed the "success" may become a paradigm for managing this endemic problem. Meantime the children will have achieved nothing, exploited by parents who seem to value them only in terms of a few paltry gallons of oil. This is why I believe we need to engage in something different and I will elaborate upon this in a later post.

It appears that the word is getting out internationally about progress on the international adoption situation in Nepal. Over the last day or two I have been obtaining more hits on this site from overseas couples who are suddenly - and understandably - researching the subject. So for those who haven't heard the news, the 440 pending cases are now going to be processed with the case files re-opened last Sunday for the first time in months. Maybe within six months they will all have been cleared, but this latter statement is a guess on my part.

This morning I found the butterfly pictured right lying dead by the roadside. This beautiful creature is a Lime Swallowtail, apparently quite common in this part of the country. In fact, interestingly Nepal has an estimated 850 species of butterflies and over half of them can be found here in Godawari. The aim now is for us to perform an act of resurrection, converting this butterfly into a vital mosaic and presenting it our mosaic exhibition in Skipton, U.K. on the 4th December. How rewarding that will be!

Birthday mosaics

The Kathmandu mosaic studio re-opened yesterday. Two other girls haven't returned after the Dashain break. One, Bipana, who had been struggling somewhat, has stayed behind with her family. Another, Bishnu, has got engaged. I doubt if either of them will come back to us.

It is quite a challenge to keep the studio girls' interest going, especially if one is working to favourite designs that can become repetitive (sadly a business requirement). So I work hard to give them some variety. Yesterday we held a special children's lunchtime birthday party for the daughter of one of my expatriate friends in Kathmandu. Six children spent about four hours with us making their own individual mosaic pieces to keep. As children's hands tend to be a bit too small to hold the cutters and too weak to cut the tiles the studio girls ended up doing most of the work. Although this is fun it is also a source of income to the organisation. There's no such thing as a free lunch....

Dashain difficulties

Each October we reunite children who are in our refuge care in Kathmandu with their families for the main Hindu festival of Dashain. We see this as being the bare minimum that we can do to maintain the family contacts that are so important in Nepalese society. It´s always a nerve wracking time for us though, for in doing so we expose the children and teenagers to family agendas that may not necessarily be in their best interests. Village families have little comprehension of the progress that their youngsters are making with us and they can spoil that success by pushing children in other disastrous directions. Last year we only just managed to stop a father sending his very talented son back to the exploitation of the circus, no doubt for a few dollars in return. Under our care that boy is now not only doing really well at school but also has become one of the top gymnasts in the country. I wouldn´t be surprised to see him in a future Nepal Olympic team.

This year we had a mini crisis over Priya. She was one of the two girls that I started training in mosaic art this time last year - an initiative that has now been extended to 16 others in my Kathmandu studio. She quickly became a top artist, having the perfect combination of skill and speed at her work. But her vulnerability is a case in point. She had returned from the circus to find both of her parents had committed suicide. Her aunt duly packed her off to another kind of slave labour inside a Kathmandu carpet factory and we rescued her from there in July last year. Last month she, like many other kids, wanted to go "home" for Dashain and of course we couldn´t stop her as she´s a free person. Then we received the news that she´d got married (she´s barely sixteen) to a boy that she knew from the carpet factory. That seemed to be the end of her short career and this otherwise totally uneducated girl appeared to be rejoining the cycle of poverty from which she had so briefly emerged. However it seems that all is not lost as we have since heard that she is very happy to be married and will set up home in Kathmandu. She also wants to continue with her mosaic work and I am very glad to agree to that wish. Hopefully having a good income - no doubt better than her husband´s - will help with the stability of the marriage. In the harsh reality of daily life in Nepal a wife who has economic value will be valued all the more.

This is the last day of my holiday in Spain. It has provided a break from the chaos of living in Nepal and allowed me to find some time to relax. I have also found the creative space to plan the future of my new company "Himalayan Mosaics" and develop some fresh directions for the Trust. It´s really been just what the doctor ordered - or more correctly what my wife Bev ordered. I am now ready for the fray once again.

Qualified support

The suitcases are packed and I leave at 5.30 a.m. tomorrow for the return journey to Kathmandu. The last two days have seen very useful meetings. The first one yesterday was with a supporter who's helping us to establish our presence on Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/). This is a virtual world which I found rather chilling on first encounter. But actually it is very exciting and clearly has massive potential, offering another way to connect with supporters; this medium is already being used by some of the larger charities. The second meeting of the day was more conventional and I had a really useful chat with the Trustees of another charity that is prepared to fund the medication and clinical care required to manage HIV/AIDS. This isn't an issue for us at all at present but I expect that when we get to grips with the problem of trafficking of children into the Kathmandu sex trade it will be inevitably - and tragically - be very high on our agenda.

During this visit I also picked up some supporters' letters from my London office. One lady sent us a donation for our art workshops for circus returnees but wrote:

"Can you not bring them to do things through the schools to lead them all lots of jobs (sic) in our country - a more realistic life style?

I feel that you will fail in the attempt you are making and should help them by concentrating on training that will lead to jobs.

Please try to think of another way."

Some initiatives do indeed fail, others enjoy a degree of success (and even that is a huge achievement in Nepal) while others really take off. It's quite hard to predict which particular outcome one will experience and the only option is to keep trying. But for our art and mosaic training I am very confident of great results. This is already bearing early fruit. For example see the response to our online mosaic auction as of today:

http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/auction.php

Fantasy dog

Last evening's Inner Wheel District meeting in Stockport went very well indeed. I was privileged to speak to over 150 ladies drawn from 25 clubs within the region and the talk was received very well. It was hard to draw a line under question time at the end. But a firm line had to be drawn at 10 p.m. as I faced a three and a half hour journey back to my pied a terre in Welwyn Garden City. Or so I thought. At one in the morning I found myself sitting stationary in a traffic jam on the M1 for an hour, meaning that I stumbled through the door at 2.30 a.m. with 400 miles on the clock of the car. Today I felt quite drugged by it all but still glad that I'd gone.

In my post last month "Hearing Dogs" I mentioned how a supporter had commissioned a mosaic of a "fantasy dog" - a multi coloured interpretation of a four legged friend. I gave the task to Sunita, one of the girls that we freed from the terrible New Raj Kamal circus in January. The result isn't necessarily to my taste but the exercise still served its purpose in that she responded to my encouragement to be ambitious with her use of colour. This should not turn out to be just a boring brown and white dog. She's learned a lesson in art and this will have been further therapy for her as she expressed herself with flair after years of suppression inside the circus.