Dissecting a photograph

The children's empty classroom!

I've been printing off photos from our trip to Nepal - to send back to all the people we met there, particularly the children we met.  There are two photos of a group of child domestic workers standing outside their 'school' (a small room where they have 2 hours of non-formal education each day) that made me smile.   In the first photo they are standing quite formally, in the second I asked them to shout something so they're raising their arms and giggling. I wish I could show you the two photos, but I can't - sorry, I only got verbal, not written consent from the children - so our child protection policy won't allow.   (Hope you like the photo of the empty classroom instead!) However, I'm sure you've seen similar shots where you feel like you have captured a different side to a person - just for a second.   Generally, I don't like taking photographs, it feels intrusive, and posed - it never feels like you capture something 'real'.  But in studying these two photographs I wondered which was the more 'real' picture - the giggling or the formal.  I LIKE the giggling one better but I know that when it comes to children (and particularly in South East Asia) smiles can hide a lot.  My baptism into the 'child labour' field was with street boys in Indonesia (many years ago!) and there was one boy in particular who taught me a lot.  He used to talk about 'senyum murah' - cheap smiles, that children give to adults - particularly 'foreigners', to keep them happy or to stop them asking questions.

But I digress...I don't really know what from but I feel like I should get back to my initial thoughts about the photos.  When I looked at the photos I did feel a sense of connection to the typical 'child domestic worker' that I have read about (mainly through the various articles/handbooks etc. that Jonathan has written!).  In theory, I know that child domestic workers tend to have low self esteem, they are used to being treated as second class by their employer's whole family, they are discriminated against because of their background (for example in Nepal, domestic workers from the 'untouchable' caste, are not able to work in kitchens because they will be touching the same utensils that higher caste members will use to eat from).  In practice, when I met these children they were 'real' children, some were a little bit shy, some more boisterous, some were smiley and some were not.  The photos reminded me that sometimes you can build up a theoretical picture of a child - a child domestic worker, a child with 'multiple needs', a victim of trafficking etc. that is so intimidating you are 'scared' of this child.  But, when you meet one of these 'typical children' they are a human being and although, theoretically, they fit all these categories (just as we all fit into various categories) you are a human being too and as human beings we can connect....through a smile, through taking a photo, a giggle.  In my case, it is often through embarrassing myself.  Before we took the photos I asked the children to teach me Nepalese words for animals - each time I learned a word, I acted it out.  Chicken was the one that made them laugh the most (although personally I was rather pleased with my goat)!

Cambodia: trafficking domestic workers to Malaysia

PHNOM PENH, 17 March 2011 (IRIN) - Investigations by NGOs in Cambodia have found that companies are recruiting girls as young as 13 to work in Malaysian households, confining them in overcrowded and unhygienic “training centres”, forging birth certificates to raise their age, and paying finders’ fees to brokers.


Read more: Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92210

Off the beaten track in Nepal

In my head I’m still in Nepal, in fact, I’m still being thrown around in a jeep making my way on an unsurfaced road to beautiful village in Kabre District.  Although I returned to London on Sunday night I can’t get this particular journey out of my head.  It was beautiful, particularly after the noise and pollution of Kathmandu; rhododendrons in flower, Himalayas in the distance, and at one point we went through a village on a mountain ridge with the most gorgeous, ancient looking, carved wooden houses.  That’s when I felt like an adventurer – we were nowhere near any tourists and I was quizzing my hosts about Nepalese culture.  We were on our way to visit a village in one of the key ‘source’ areas – where children drop out of school and migrate to Kathmandu to work as domestic servants.  CWISH work with the community there to try and prevent this migration.

The whole trip to Nepal was great – CWISH is a very strong and competent organisation and we got on very well with all the staff we met. Jonathan and I are confident we will be able to develop a project together and find funding for it.  But I can’t get this journey out of my head and I want to figure out why it was so important for me.  So, I’m going to use my blog to analyse it OK!?

When I think about the journey my main feeling is excitement – it felt exciting to be driven (yep I was pleased I wasn’t driving!) off the beaten track.  I guess it felt like an adventure but with all the dangerous bits taken away.  I trusted my hosts (and the driver!), the sun was shining, the flowers were out and to use a racist term the ‘natives’ were friendly.  Perhaps that’s the key issue actually – by this point Jonathan and I were very comfortable with the staff at CWISH, everything we had seen had reassured us that we think similarly about our respective work with child domestic workers.  In fact, I’m sure I will learn a lot more from CWISH than they could ever possibly learn from me.  I was humbled by their work.

Going back to the native thing…one of my fears in setting up Children Unite is that our partners overseas who are working directly with child domestic workers will not see us as ‘partners’ but as ‘access to funds’, they’ll see us as the people with the money (ironically, in the UK, my fear is that people think you’ll always be asking them for money!).  So, our aim in visiting CWISH was to figure out how we could work together.  we want to be involved in the work, not just proposal writers or evaluators.  And we certainly didn’t want to feel like or be treated like colonial benefactors. So, by the time I was on my mountaintop journey, we had already discussed how Children Unite and CWISH could work together….and I guess I was excited about this other journey too, knowing it would be off the beaten track but in safe hands.

The other half...

The joys of living in a country that rations electricity.  I couldn’t sleep so got up at 5am to write the second half of my blog (by torchlight – no electricity!) but somehow I wrote it and lost my work  (which may be down to my incompetence at saving my work)..and in the meantime an Australian staying at this guesthouse came down to reception to complain about no hot water, no TV etc. For 2 nights.  Although the staff here are uncharacteristically grumpy it wasn’t actually their fault – electricity is rationed here and last night it was supposed to come on at 11 for a couple of hours but it only came on for 5 minutes!  So, none of our equipment is charged, no hot water, no TV.    

But that was a little traveller’s anecdote.  The blog post I lost was explaining the work of CWISH – our local partner in Nepal (Children, Women in Social Services & Human Rights).  I was just about to use the word ‘synergy’ in explaining the connection Jonathan and I felt when discussing future collaboration between CWISH and Children Unite...so I’ll start from there and work backwards.  I guess what I was looking for in my trip here was a personal and professional connection with the people at CWISH and we found it today. Professionally, Jonathan and I are very impressed with the work of CWISH, they take an honest, learning approach to their work – explaining to us the mistakes they made and how they learned and changed their practice.  CWISH work in partnership with local government and communities – rather than providing completely separate services for child domestic workers as many NGOs do (particularly in countries where the national government is unsupportive of social work).  For example in their work with employers of child domestic workers CWISH staff don’t approach employers themselves (employers are the gatekeepers of child domestic workers – it is almost impossible to work with child domestic workers without working with their employers) they work through the community police (whom they have trained) who approach employers as ‘guardians’ of children.  The police are able to take a dual approach with employers – on the one hand talking to them as guardians about their responsibility towards the children in their care – in particular their responsibility to give children access to schooling of some sort.  On the other hand, the police also remind employers that it is illegal to employ children under 14 in domestic work or to abuse or exploit children in their ‘care’.

On a personal level too, Jonathan and I get on with the husband and wife team running CWISH (they only got married last month and met at CWISH). There is a growing feeling of solidarity between us - perhaps in part and much as I hate to admit it, because of our similarities in being a 'couple' involved in the same organisation. Here, Jonathan and I call each other husband and wife (I cringe to write it I have to admit), in the UK we are 'partners'...but here being a couple seems to be an advantage - we joke about it and it breaks the ice a bit.  In the UK I tend to hide the fact that we're a couple, I like the obscurity of the word 'partner'.

Now we're off to an evaluation meeting for most of the day and are trying to change hotels to try and get a view of the Himalayas - tantalizingly out of sight most of the time (due to the haze of pollution I think).

half a blog from half way around the world

The last 10 days has been frenetic – in between Senegal and Nepal where I am now. Not much time for reflection.  It has been a case of getting as prepared as I can for the next thing. And many of the ‘things’ have been opportunities...I will compare and contrast two of them.  The first was a meeting with the Royal Commonwealth Society – serendipity caused our paths to cross and I found myself with an opportunity to convince the RCS to take up child domestic work as their campaign issue and push for the 54 commonwealth governments to ratify the ILO’s new convention on domestic work. I enjoyed developing my argument for this but as I only know one person in the RCS and none of the other stakeholders who would actually make the decision about their campaign issue – I have no idea if they’ll like it.  The other opportunity was with Comic Relief (a UK funding agency) who organised a stakeholder meeting on child domestic work.  As Children Unite is the only international organisation working exclusively on child domestic work (our ‘Unique Selling Point’) it was exciting for Jonathan and I to finally be in an environment where the issue was at the centre of the discussion rather than on the periphery. The aim of the meeting was to consult with 30 or so organisations working on connected issues (child labour, girls, etc) to help Comic Relief develop a strategy on promoting child domestic work to potential applicant organisations.

One opportunity was quite exciting (well for me anyway) - to think that, in one relatively short move, I could scale-up our campaign on the ILO convention on domestic work to 54 countries.  The other opportunity was more of a slow burn excitement – it was very encouraging that Comic Relief want to work on this issue and that the team put a lot of energy into organising the stakeholder meeting on child domestic work.  It was also quite pleasant (if slightly distracting) to have an enormous picture of Brad Pitt staring at us throughout the workshop!

Well my compare and contrast didn’t last long! I’m afraid I’m in Nepal now and can only think about all the opportunities here (and how it is much colder than I had packed for so I  might need to run out and buy some pashmina jumpers, shawls and possibly even socks and pants...brrrrr).  I’m 5 days late with my blog and now feel uninspired about last week – so can’t write about it, the opportunities feel distant now – but I know that last week I was very inspired, positively jumpin’ around with excitement!

So, as this feels like half a blog with very little ‘learning’ in it – I promise to write a couple of posts this week on everything I’m seeing and hearing here - half way around the world.  It’s cold, but very interesting.