Those sane and rational amongst you (which I believe to be all 5 of you) would be so easily forgiven for thinking that just-one had simply ceased to exist or that my three typing fingers had been horribly mangled in an unfortunate encounter with a rusty juicing machine… Thankfully, I can report that neither are, in fact, the case! It will, however, be somewhat more difficult for me to explain the utterly shameful 50-week silence that’s seen an embarrassing layer of Kathmandu’s finest dust settle on this here sad excuse for a blog… Even taking account of my poor blogging record thus far, such an extended breakdown in regular communication with our valued donors and all others interested in our on-going work, is nothing short of indefensible… As honest and all as it may well be, I don’t feel my often used “not enough hours in the day, nor days in the week” tag-line fits the bill here and hope that a sincere “Sorry!” will be sufficient for now, as I try to pick up where I left off all that time ago…
Wow! Where does one start? So much has happened… So much has changed… And strangely so much is still the same… The biggest change we’ve gone through since I last wrote was what I think we should refer to as “The Great Move of 2010″ which, thanks partially to a newly arrived (but both persistent and persuasive, with regard to our landlord) not-in-my-backyard neighbour, saw just-one‘s entire humble operation loaded onto the back of a couple of battered old pick-up trucks late last October and relocated from our leafy suburban home of three years to our new home on the dusty streets of Khusibu just in time to celebrate the festival of light. Proximity to the endless combination of smells from the nearby river, cremation ghat and buffalo abattoir aside, our new base is, in fact, far more homely and much better suited to the actual needs of our Transit Home. I imagine if we manage to persuade to our lovely landlord (a somewhat rare breed of property owner who recognised the value of our work and kindly agreed to a more than fair rental price) to help us address our current water problems (a frustrating combination of hidden leaks, stubborn damp-patches and an on-going chronic shortages), we may well have found a place to call home for many years to come!
just-one's new residential transit home located in Khusibu, Kathmandu.
Though not officially marked by any means (and yet to be declared a national holiday in any country of the world ;o) the 7th anniversary of our existence was appropriately celebrated with the wonderful news that each of the four students we supported through their School Leaving Certificate at the beginning of the year passed through, what is referred to in Nepal as, the Iron Gate with flying colours – one with Distinction and the other three in the 1st Division! Perhaps somewhat indicative of just some of the problems facing Nepal’s education system that one of these young scholars has already managed to secure a full-time teaching job at a primary school in his locality! We are proud too to be supporting the remaining three students to further their studies in their individual areas of interest – Education, Science and Humanities. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s instances such as this which makes much of the incredible hardship, stress and sadness we face day after day seem so absolutely worthwhile. The proud smile on the face of the once 11 year old domestic servant boy, when he dropped by the office to say hello after his first day at college a few weeks ago, is something that each and every individual who has ever supported our work, has every right to enjoy the glowing warmth of.
Though the midnight oil is burning low here and load-shedding threatens to see the electricity go off at the stroke of the hour, I feel after such a long absence of news I should also include brief updates on a couple of the kids I wrote about in some of the previous blog entries last year.
Surya Limbu is now happily living at home with his family and is so dramatically changed from the strung-out and gaunt figure who stumbled into our office last year, that it’s his own strength of character which must take a bow for the transformation he’s gone through, over any particular aspect of our intervention and assistance. He’s still not too keen on returning to formal education (although facebook chat has been surprisingly useful in at least sparking his interest in becoming more literate) and currently working as a cycle delivery boy while we await a hair-stylist training course he’s signed up for to start after the Hindu festivals of Dashain and Tihar end in a couple of months. While Surya certainly still has ‘his moments‘ (which, at ’15 going on 36′, are not to be unexpected), he does seem to have made the important realisation that the making or breaking of his future lies primarily with him – something which we try (with varying levels of success) to help all of the children we support to understand – and, thankfully, he’s currently operating mostly in ‘making’ mode!
We also managed to make some progress with Bijay over last monsoon but, sadly, it wasn’t to last and, with his brothel buddies caring for him about as much as you’d expect, he was back on a downward spiral on the streets by the time Winter kicked in and apparently surviving on a diet consisting mostly of chemical cocktails. We had lost all contact with him until about 6 weeks ago, when one of the staff got an unexpected phone call from him asking if he could come to visit… He came by our office with his brother-in-law, his young rehab-mentor and the updated story that, thankfully, by the time Spring was setting in, his exasperated family had forcefully admitted him to a secure rehabilitation centre in the hills north of the city where he has remained since. Aside from a completely characteristic jail-break at the end of his first month there (which reminded us of the night he locked himself into a toilet at just-one and made a daring exit via a scarily flimsy 3rd floor drain pipe…), which he returned from with two new tattoos that “he needed to get before he became good”, he is now over 4 months into a 1 year programme and had come to ask if just-one could help him once he’d completed that. It’s certainly early days in Bijay’s story too, but we did allow ourselves to take a certain amount of pride in the fact that, of all the organisations he could have asked for this future support, he chose to ask us. Perhaps it was simply that our senior field-working social worker’s phone number was the only one he knew off by heart; or maybe he just foolishly dreams of the freedom offered by our toilet window (though, even with a pickaxe and goggles, at our new place he’d be escaping into our neighbour’s living room ;o); but there’s a chance too that he’s recognised our sincerity in offering to help him in whatever way we can to be the beautiful person that he is… Let’s see, eh?
Anyway, it’s already past silly o’clock here and Kathmandu’s dawn chorus will be keeping me from my required sanity-sleep if I don’t head in that direction sometime soon… Apologies again for such a ridiculously long silence here – I think the cascade of words above probably show that it’s certainly not from want of things to write about! How about I promise to work on my time-management and prioritisation skills and, in return, you take a quick look at this page and consider becoming one of the unsung heroes who occasionally get to drop by here and know that (despite my failure so far to make this website as good as it should be…) they are an absolutely crucial part of something very, very special.
