gerburgkamm

Exceptional kids

My friends’ children and the miracle of …

… a lively little boy sitting perfectly still!

… a little girl seeing my gift from Italy exclaiming: “Oh, Pinocchio! I like Pinocchio!”

… growing up: Nasib, twelve years ago the liveliest boy, today the most serious student

… Muskan’s sense of duty: studying in the dark during a blackout

Januka

My host family call her “their daughter”, in Europe we would say a bit less affectionately, she is an au-pair-girl, similar to our sons and daughters going abroad for a while, living in a family, helping with the housework for a couple of hours, studying, learning … Januka comes from a village in the West of Nepal and is the eldest of many siblings. My host family have taken her in about a year ago and Januka does everything she can to recompense them for the chance they have given her. In the morning she goes to school, later she helps with the chores and does her homework. On Fridays school is from 5.15 a. m. to 7. 15 a. m. (yes, a. m.! Think of the teachers!) so the students find enough time to work or help their parents during the week-end, half Friday and Saturday. Januka is also good at cooking and applying Henna.

Januka studying in her room

Making tea for all of us and  … smiling, even though we interrupted her studies …

House cleaning

… helping Muskan do her hair

… applying Henna designs to one of the guests’ hands (face, ears); needless to say: he is going to be a famous anthropologist one day

I’m sure all the other guests will agree when I say: “… miss your smile, Januka.”

Vishwa Shanti Vihara School

When I came back from a month’s stay in Nepal 12 years ago after teaching English in a Buddhist Monastery school I had a real culture shock. I couldn’t understand how youngsters like the ones in Europe could be so restless, continuously moving, chatting, unable to pay attention, cracking stupid jokes, laughing apparently without reason. Now I was curious if anything had changed in the Vihara, too. True, the boys have become a good deal livelier, more open, comunicative but at the same time they are calm during lessons, interested, attentive, respectful …

The monastery is still there, with a few cracks but nothing broken, the abbott of the monastery is the same and the headmaster of the school a former student remembered me for the songs I did in my lessons (Beatles with the elder students, didactic songs with the younger ones). He had liked this techique (as he said) and had continued to improve his English with songs and later with films. We, the abbott, the headmaster and I agreed to try out my little theatre play with the students. The play is about the life of the Buddha. I had started to write the play many years ago when I had the idea of combining two things: teaching to speak English and dealing with the life of the Buddha. The students responded to the play with more enthusiasm than I had expected. As the headmaster told me, in spite of being a bit shy in the beginning they enjoyed acting. In the pictures you see them all being very serious and concentrated but in actual fact, we had a lot of fun and a good many laughs together.

Curious

Learning should be fun; first practice still sitting

Real actors are not just sitting on the floor

Trees and flowers populate the scenes. There is a part for each student.

Siddhartha’s father and mother (the laughs!)

Me, teaching to act

After this boost in motivation I will now finish the play, formatt it and then send it to them.

On one of my last evenings on Durbar Square in Kathmandu I came across these youngsters. They were taking care of an old homeless woman, giving her to eat and to drink and the young chap cleaning her fingernails. As young as they are, they must have realized that being kept clean has something to do with dignity.

Feeding the old lady Momos

Giving her water to drink

And if they go to the discotheque after their good deed, so much the better.

Kumari

Ok, no problem.

The last child I am presenting to you remains without a picture. It is forbidden to take fotos of her, because she is not a child, she is the Kumari, a living goddess, … and who wouldn’t want to be one! Except, when you google her name and read about the life she leads, you can’t help thinking that Dalit street children probably lead a healthier life from the psychological point of view than the poor little goddess that spends her whole childhood until her first menstruation locked away in her special home. She comes out only on festivities or when an earthquake threatens to wreck her house.

A young man in Bhaktapur tells me that their Kumari leads a normal life and gets locked away only for a short period of time together with her parents: a compromise between tradition and a child’s right, because believe it or not, even Kumaris have got one life only.

Different in Kathmandu, where every day tourists gather in the little courtyard at Kumari Marg until she appears at a window and looks down at the people with her big, earnest kajal lined eyes.

Listening to the tourists it seems to me that even Europeans believe in child goddesses and have never heard about a child’s right to play, to have peers around them, to go to school, to have a toy, a favorate dish, to walk with her own feet, to laugh out loud, to throw a fit … all rights that they would claim for their own children at any time.

Still standing amid destruction: at 4 p.m. she appears at the window for just a minute

Let’s hope that Kathmandu one day will find a similar compromise for the life of the little Kumari like in Bhaktapur.

Bye bye

Gerburg

Wishing for …

“Children learn by doing, and Play is their work”

Kindergarten in Kathmandu, Bishalnagar

In the displaced people’s camp in Thali, thanks to private initiative the evacuees’ children lead an almost normal life.

Thali: playing and having a biscuit

Flying kites over Bhaktapur (the kite is difficult to see; below: tents of the Red Cross China)

Improvising ping-pong in Patan (on the right tent of Red Cross China)

Who knows where this guy is gonna lead me?

Reality is …

… begging for money

Still, they were put there with a minimum of care

Having come all the way from the South (Terai) to Kathmandu hoping to find work but ending up in the street begging

At the Pashupatinath temples there was nothing else at hand than the small bananas meant for ritual offerings. I bought them all. It took a few seconds for I don’t know how many kids to appear out of nowhere and to finish them. Who knows where the food offerings in the temples go in the end. The gods will understand that mine go straight to the living humans.

No amount of bananas could ever be enough

Too shy to ask (Patan, Krishna Mandir)

Not too shy to ask but not too needy either. Me: “Do you speak English?” They: “Yes, money, give me money, he he he.” Giggle, giggle. (Thamel, Kathmandu)

Living in poverty, even before being born. Pregnant women do hard physical work, here rebuilding in Sanku (20 km east of Kathmandu), the worst quake-ravaged place in the area.

Thank you for smiling

Home of the baby to be born; a blue plastic sheet for a roof

Dressed up to take the bus from Budhanilkantha to Kathmandu with mum (in the back the child below)

It’s not the money, it’s all the rest that stinks

Finding solace in the sight of school children.

In the Kathmandu Valley and in towns the majority of children go to school at least for some time, a taxi driver from Pokhara tells me. He also says that in the rural areas children must help their parents a lot, and this keeps children, especially girls, from going to school.

Coming home from school on a Sunday afternoon, on the slopes of Kathmandu Valley, near the White Monastery

Mothers wash and iron clothes and polish shoes for school every day (Thali)

Devout youngsters:

They visit their religious sites with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends to perform their rituals and take pictures and selfies while doing so, or they respectfully accompany their parents and grandparents and help them light butter lamps, fire for  worship, and offer flowers and foodstuff.

Wait Mum, another turn of the wheel, another prayer, Om Mani Padme Hum

Boy with tikka on his forehead, the centre of wisdom; no religious function without a tikka!

Krishna Mandir, Patan, young people tending a consecrated fire for prayers and offerings

Daddy, daddy, whose soul? which pigeon? Better feed them all! (Patan, Durbar Square)

Soul or pigeon, I’m gonna get ye!

Got a fresh tikka with daddy

Temple sites, temples, shivalingas, mandirs, everything that is used for rituals can become a playground, a gym, a fair …

Kirtipur, lionback riding

Improvising a band: good rhythm (Kirtipur)

Shivalinga climbing contest, Thamel, Kathmandu

Mini stupa dating with ice-cream; background: two makeshift schoolrooms and behind them in moss green instead of chalk white the big stupa

Under the OM sign: Daddy taking pictures of his daughter and her friend at a temple site especially for women in Pokhara: girls go there to ask for a handsome boyfriend, young women for a good husband, married women to get pregnant, elderly women for long life of their husbands!

Right, it’s a temple for women but the centre of the prayers: men

Praying for a handsome boyfriend

At Pashupatinath: while down at the Bagmati river at the ghats the fires are burning and the grieving are crying, up at the temples young men are working out and young girls are … looking beautiful

Jogging at Pashupatinath: May Lord Shiva help us

Jogging at Pashupatinath, too fast to get the camera ready

Kung fu fighting, fast as lightning, he posed for me because I told him he reminded me of my son (beefy)

push ups, 26, 27, 28 … and the sun is shining, the air is humid …

They took a picture of me, too, but that’s not the same thing

Having fun, in the back further down the burning ghats

Playing soccer between the temples of Durbar Square, Patan

Youngsters working:

Reconstruction in Bhaktapur

Between two heavy loads, still time to great the stranger and form a heart with his fingers

Working at the roadside: shoeshine boys

It was good to have him as a guide. I would have probably found the way myself, but he needed the money and who knows, I could have sprained an ankle … Nice chat, too, school problems are more or less the same all over the world for boys that don’t sit down and study (his sister is at university).

View over Pokhara right after the rain, it didn’t get any better than that

Somewhere in between work and fun: fishing for dinner

He likes his work. You can get anything in his little shop. Study? Homework? In between two customers.

At work with their parents:

Selling souvenirs with mum (Swayambunath)

With mum and dad at the construction site: building an earthquake safe public toilet at Pashupatinath

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a real Kinder Planet?

Bye-bye

Gerburg