There's no denying it, these bloggers are bound to make you jealous. Whether it's their guts, their energy or their tan you admire, overseas volunteers have got plenty to share with you about their remarkable work in fascinating countries. Read on to find out what you could be missing.

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Thursday Aug 17, 2006

Back in the UK

(Firstly I appologise for not posting a great deal and I will do more entries on Nepal. It actually surprised me how  hard it is to get to an internet connection if you're outside a city centre or tourist area. The internet is crazy slow and keeps on cutting out, it often wouldn't allow me to log in to do-it.org... And on those times that it did, it logged me out and I lost work. Crazy Nepali internet damnit!!!)

The Nine o'clock News is always full of the bad things that people have done to others. Whether it's a murder, a bomb on a plane, a city being blown to pieces where hospitals and schools topple like playing cards and families cry at the top of their lungs for the loss of their loved ones amongst rubble and gunfire. Sometimes it seems as if the media forgets the virtues of human nature. Tears sell papers, despair presents itself as a bank cheque and fear is the icing on what often appears to be a big fat nihilistic cake. Yet the news is something you can switch off, you can put a paper down after breakfast, finish your coffee and go out in to the world of Converse shoes, Pop Idol and big red London buses.

Things are different however, when you step off an aeroplane with a rucksack over your shoulders and a belly full of tasteless airline food (or at least the vegetarian option isn't too hot). You find yourself ripped away from the comfort of double glazing and smoky pubs and public transport that doesn't appear to be falling apart. You're in a different world; you can't change the channel, no matter how many street children beg you for money to eat, no matter how many sad stories you hear. You are forced to look for the good things in the terrible events happening around you; otherwise you might just go crazy. 

            "It changed my life", it was incredible. And I can't speak for everybody else in our group –after all, we don't share the same brain-, but being unable to flick over to Jerry Springer or Only Fools and Horses did me a world of good, not because I ever enjoy hearing bad news but because there is no better way to recognise a good person than to see how they put the effort in to being a candle for somebody who at the time is experiencing a period of darkness. So many individuals go through ordeals in their life that you and I sat in our comfortable computer chairs behind a glowing screen cannot imagine.

It's something you have to try not to dwell on and sometimes it can be hard not to lie awake at night wondering how the world can be so cruel to these beautiful children  and how somebody will sell out every moral fibre in human existence to exploit these innocent and vulnerable individuals to make money. None of us know the background stories of the ring masters from whom the children were rescued. Perhaps they have hungry families to feed, maybe they lie awake at night haunted by the cries of the little people whose childhood they have stolen. It's not something any of us will know; we can only be happy that knights in shining armour such as the rescue workers are willing to go on such dangerous missions and that wonderful organisations such as the Esther Benjamin Trust and the Nepal Child Welfare Foundation exist to try and rehabilitate these children and that they have incredible individuals working both to build a future for circus children and also to bring these ringmasters to justice for their barbarity

When you meet people like those I've mentioned above it changes you. The ordeals of others put your own worries in to perspective. The warmth and affection of the girls in Hetauda who seem to have so little by our own Western standards can teach you more than a million self-help books. How somebody can go through hell, yet still retain a degree of faith in human nature. Maybe the world doesn't revolve around the sun, maybe it revolves around hope and friendship and family and on building new beginnings. That sounds a bit cheesy doesn't it? If so, I apologise.

 I could write a million things about what we experienced in Nepal. Sitting on the floor and eating rice with our hands, Danni's beautiful open-air concert in Durbar Square, the elephants who's bristly thick skin made them appear a bit like giant long-nosed pigs, Paul's little fan club who he carried about, one on each arm... The football club, playing games with the little ones in Kathmandu, being fooled in to believing we have lice by the girls in Hetauda. Nepal was an experience none of us will ever forget and being back home in grey England is something that we will all take time to adjust to.

Posted by Selina ( 10:34 AM )
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