The beauty of a well laid table

We woke up to the big secret - a fantastic view of the Himalayas from the grassy knoll, floating at first like crystallised clouds.  Then, as the sun rose their mass beneath being revealed crevice by crevice.  Dad and I spent three hours in wonder and delight looking at the changing panorama. Everything took on a magical feel.  Gugung, the waitress served us breakfast with such care and beauty.  It was positively ceremonial.  She slowly and carefully named and placed each item down 'black tea, milk tea, sugar, spoon'. We played with the little boy Dallan again but after some group photos had to drag ourselves away.

It was just a short walk (one and a half hours) to to Damphus where we were meeting Mum and Ann (my parent's friend who had been keeping mum company while dad and I were trekking ).   Dad and I could easily have trekked longer, it felt like we were moving back into civilisation and the 'real' world.  Although the hotel (it had ensuite facilities!!) had a lovely view of the foothills and the roofs of the village.  It was good to see mum and Ann although they didn't seem to have done much in Pokhara.  We went for a walk around the village - dad explained how the trek went and I stayed quiet for the most part.  We did a bit of star gazing at night.  I liked the fact that dad and I had already developed our little routines - our tea, 'bon-bons' (Bourbon biscuits) at elevenses and apple slices for our 'pudding'.  We showed off about these to mum and Ann I guess and went to bed praying for rain so that the view would be clear in the morning.

Annapurna South

The beauty of a well laid table

Prem and Dallon playing

The group at Puthara

The Big Down

The big down was thousands of steps, winding down past terracing and small stone houses and ended at a beautiful tea house covered in flowers by a watermill.  Across the river was a small dark cliff that had bee hives hanging from its crevices.  We were told that they have a honey hunting festival where people scale down the cliff to pick up the honey combs – there was a huge comb hanging from the rafters of the tea house about half a metre in length.

After crossing the river, which comes straight from Annapurna we then wound our way up more terracing to the village of Landruk and were able to look across the valley to the route we’d done the previous day – to Gandruk (notice a theme!).  I spend a large part of the day thinking about how I could organise a fundraising trek for Children Unite, who would be interested in doing one.  After Landruk we lost Kailash – he had rather a long break we think, smoking and resting!  Prem drew a big arrow on the path at a point where it forked and eventually caught up with us at the next tea stop.  The afternoon walk was beautiful, through forest teaming with birds, rhododendron trees (yes trees  not bushes), all sorts of gorgeous ferns and moss filled crevices.  Of course it reminded dad and I of Scotland (a regular haunt) – but on a grand scale.  As we walked up and you had to concentrate on each step you noticed tiny blue flowers, pink ball shaped flowers and white daisies – all miniature, like little gems in between the stone pavement. 

We reached Puthara in the afternoon and in the shower after our walk, I could hear a guitar and flute playing.  It was Prem and Kailash!  They were sitting on a kind of grassy knoll surrounded by pines and rhododendron trees with prayer flags strung up in between.  It had a lovely panorama of the foothills and villages.  At the time we didn’t know the secret beauty of this place.  It was enough to be sitting listening to Kailash and Prem play Nepali love songs.

Dad and I had had a physically tough day so we were tired in the evening.  Over dinner we spoke to a Malaysian man who had been trekking solo for 22 days.  The restaurant we were eating in had only been open 6 days.  The son of the owner had recently returned to take over managing the place, he’d installed a full drum kit, Nepali and African drums, a guitar and flutes.  He told us he’s been learning guitar and during the meal, in the kitchen, he started playing ‘Heaven’s Door’ and ‘Hotel California’, two songs that always remind me of Indonesia and my time with the street boys of Yogyakarta.  The boys all seem to know how to play those two songs and I could never remember the lyrics! 

The kitchen had two big glass windows separating it from the dining hall which meant we could see the porters and family chatting and eating. Prem told us that guides and porters usually want nothing to do with the trekkers once the reach the tea house but he likes talking too much so ends up spending more time with trekkers.  While walking during the day Prem, dad and I had a long chat about the holocaust, Israel and US motivation for joining WWII.  He remembers so many facts I’m astounded.  He’s studying cultural trauma, which I’ve never heard of before – not your typical guide that’s for sure!  I do like the way Prem talks to the people we meet at our tea stops.  At one place, we could hear a shrill American voice for about five minutes before we saw a couple of young women walking along, their porter on his mobile, who passed us without acknowledgement and were deep in conversation about which books and films they’d seen.  Prem seemed to make a snap judgment about them being the kind of people who don’t really appreciate where they are and he made some disparaging remarks them to dad and I.  But then he appeared to say the same thing to the tea stop woman as she made a face and laughed at his remarks – just as dad and I had done.  I liked this equal treatment. It has helped dad and I to feel part of these little conversations that take place between Prem, Kailash and all the people we’ve met along the way.  Sometimes they’ve been about the farming techniques or plants and trees in the vicinity.  I love the fact that dad knows about farming – it’s broken the ice with a number of people and brings a small part of their world (actually a large and important part) to life for me.

Realising a boyhood dream...trekking the Himalayas

Extracts from my journal...from a trek in the Himalayas earlier this month...with my dad!

I’ve been preparing for this trek for 3 years and first spoke to our guide in 2010 about the idea taking my dad on a trek to realise his boyhood dream – walking amongst the Himalayas.  Dad first became obsessed with the Himalayas when Everest was conquered in the 1950s and he was a teenager.  Now, aged 73 he had so far spent a good part of his seventies discussing the best time to go (it had to fit in with a research project I was running in Kathmandu), our fitness levels, equipment, length of trek, location of trek (Everest or Annapurna?) whether we could eat local food, at what height altitude sickness kicks in...  Over the past 6 months dad had also been in training, taking on longer and longer walks and carrying 20kg packs.  Although I’d managed one or two walks recently my knees had suffered for days when we climbed Ben Nevis two years ago (and dad was fine!!) which had made me nervous about a Himalayan trek…we were both a bit anxious about whether we could cope, and hoped we wouldn’t get injured or sick and ruin it for each other.

We started our trek at Nyapul, a scrappy place by the river about an hour's jeep ride from Pokhara, the path was lined with small shacks selling everything from rucksacks to digestive biscuits.  Our guide is Prem, recommended by a friend of a friend. He’s a lithe, slight man with a ponytail and gravelly voice.  He talked politics for the first hour or so, enthusiastically critiquing democracy in Nepal, the influence of China and India, the cultural devastation caused by road building in the foothills, the uselessness of most Nepali men (drinking and playing cards) – in fact the whole day was punctuated with political discussion.  Not your average guide I think (well he is studying for a PhD in cultural trauma)!  We walked up all day, first along a road (or 'motor' way as Prem called it) that snaked through villages rather choked with tea houses, then after we stopped for lunch at the ‘Don’t Pass Us’ tea shop and I bought this diary, and we started going seriously up along a stepped path.

We saw a snake before lunch – a tiny worm-like creature with an inflated yellow head – venomous apparently.  As for other wildlife we saw red headed vulture, step eagles, black kites and pack ponies along the trail (not really wild animals though!).  The funniest was seeing pack ponies with their heavy loads and antiquated harnesses like something out of the 13^th century alongside their driver on his 21^st century mobile phone nonchalantly chatting away. At our lunch stop there was a sign saying 4525 steps to Gandruk – our final destination for the night, just a little daunting!  It started to cool down a bit through cloud cover after lunch which was a relief for dad – I found out later he’d had a bit of a dicky tummy all morning (such an English phrase!) and he’s never been a huge fan of the heat so I think he found the morning hard. We stopped quite regularly - Kailash our porter usually determining when.  Kailash is in training to be a guide, we aren’t able to talk much as his English isn’t great yet and he’s a shy, quiet lad. He sings as he walks though which is lovely and, for me, gives him a depth somehow that doesn’t require intellectual conversation.  

We reached Gandruk at 3pm, quite exhausted.  We’d been buoyed on by the increasingly rural and beautiful surroundings, the path in shadow from moss covered cliffs, the rubbish strewn at the side of the ‘motor’ way replaced with ferns and small shrubs.  We are staying in a beautiful old traditional tea house with wobbly clay walls.  Dad soon struck up conversation with a number of the guests – one of whom met his wife in Nepal in the ‘70s and couldn’t believe how much it had changed in terms of pollution, urban sprawl and general ugliness.  I saw a step eagle when dad was having a shower and he was miffed so I teased him about missing it and he teased me about my eyesight but we watched the sky and chatted until it was too cold to sit out.  After dinner (lasagna for dad, the local ‘dal baht’ for me) we went to bed at 9.00 in preparation for the big, worrysome ‘down’ tomorrow.

Day 1 The 'motor' way

Dad the Explorer!

Tea House at Gandruk

Back in Nepal....

I'm back in Nepal to finalise Children Unite's research into the resilience of child domestic workers.  I'm here with Amy Barbor from Living Lens - a fantastic company that produces participatory films with communities. Amy will be helping children to produce a film that explores some of the findings that 'resonate' most with the children...well that's the plan at the moment anyway. Today is a planning day for the film so things may be different by this evening!  I met the CWISH team yesterday, caught up on their news and had another good planning meeting on the research.  I've been working at a distance with CWISH since November (on analysis) and I have to say nothing beats being together face-to-face - we all admitted that it was very hard to have a cross continent 'discussion' - even with skype.  All my little anxieties that had built up over the months dissipated as soon as I met up with the team again and we were able to communicate properly!

Will try to post regularly while I'm here!

Fly like a butterfly sting like a bee

Children Unite is re-structuring even though we don't have much of a structure in the first place?! Maybe it’s re-thinking I mean?  To be honest, it feels more like soul searching to me.

Over the past two months I’ve been developing a plan for this year’s activities – a plan that will ensure our sustainability.  Or do I mean viability (?) as sometimes it’s felt like a survival plan. That’s when the soul searching has come in.  It’s forced me to ‘let go’ of the idea (dream) of Children Unite – the charity that started from nothing and is now having such a big impact you wouldn’t believe it!  It’s been hard but important to realise that, actually, I’m an activist not a manager so setting up a big impressive organisation that can co-ordinate large, multi-country projects is not something I’d enjoy or be particularly good at. 

I like the idea of being a light, flexible and creative organisation that can take up opportunities.  ‘Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ – I don’t know where that phrase is from (a boxer I think) but I like to think if you're an activist based organisation you're like this.  That you’re small and flexible enough to move around but when you take action - people notice!  So, how does this fit with Children Unite?  Well, we’re scaling down our ideas for big multi-country projects (as above) and instead we're setting up a ‘technical advice service’ that will offer our expertise on how to work with child domestic workers to other charities.  Ultimately, we want more child domestic workers to receive the support they need and we know we can’t actually do this ourselves, we’re much too small.  But we can encourage (advise) other organisations to work with this hidden group of children.

Maybe I should change our strapline to ‘fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee’?  

Maybe not, I might get a powerful right hook from an angry (famous) boxer!!

A happy, healthy and prosperous New Year

To be honest 2012 was a bit rubbish - I'm glad it's 2013.  I've debated about how honest to be in my blog but I'm not very good at lying or 'spinning' so here goes. Children Unite is facing challenging financial times - a phrase somewhat overused I imagine given the current economic climate. I've heard that 1 in 4 charities are closing down.  Jonathan's illness this year has had quite a big impact on Children Unite, it meant that, in addition to projects we were committed to working on, I only had time to work on developing one new grant funded project; and we found out in early December that this was rejected (albeit with a recommendation to re-apply in 2013). So, austerity measures are in place: we've moved out of the office and I'm working from the dining room table again (Jonathan's in the shed!), and I've said to trustees I can work voluntarily for the next 4 months if needs be...and needs probably will be.

Despite this, we're not really in such a bad position. From talking to others running similar small charities all of them seem to have gone through a 'challenging financial time' at some point and, it's forced us (staff and trustees) to re-evaluate our strategic plan, ask some difficult questions and be open to creative solutions. And I'm asking for help left, right and centre! And finally, when I opened two cheques this morning (from Rayleigh Methodist Church and Darlington District of Methodist Women in Britain) I was almost moved to tears by their generosity and support of our work (much better than the two letters from Revenue and Customs who were confused about our change of address!).

So it's good to have 2012 behind us and a fresh start for 2013 and it is with much feeling that I wish a happy, healthy and PROSPEROUS  New Year to you all!

Donate Button Blues

Back in London with loads of admin jobs! But I thought I should keep up the blog - I've been a bit lax over the last year, changing from weekly to monthly posts and then none at all over the summer (but I had a good excuse).  So, partly because of the fallow summer, Children Unite is in a fundraising drive... damn it I knew I'd eventually have to do this!  This means I'm trawling through loads of foundations and trusts trying to figure out if Children Unite fits their criteria - as SO OFTEN we don't.  Nobody funds advocacy work - there my little moan over...going to have to put that DONATE button on the blog after all (see first ever post!).