A Hard Truth to Learn

by Timmia Hearn Feldman

We people with a sense of “Western guilt” generally feel it is necessary to volunteer in the “developing” world, believing that such generosity will clear our consciences. So many before me have wanted to travel to parts of the world where they feel as though they can actually do some good. There is a self- sacrificial allure in abandoning all the hard won comforts of the West and roughing it in countries where poverty is normal and accepted, where we imagine starving children on the streets. We romanticize the idea of facing the horror and reality that we know exists in the developing world. Years of reading tales of poverty that we have never personally known weigh on our minds, and so we venture abroad.

When we step off planes in those fabled countries of poverty and natural beauty, we expect something to happen. We expect to find excitement. Perhaps children reaching out to us with scraggy arms, whose lives we can change with a smile, or a gift of clothing, or an English lesson. We hope to see parts of life we’ve never imagined. We think the poverty will shock us. We expect every moment of our stay to confirm our beliefs that the West has got life right. Children begging on the streets with bones sticking out of their skin, lost children needing love. But, perhaps, what ends up surprising us most, is how normal life seems, even within the context of such poverty.

Yes, some of the things we see strike horror into our hearts, but somehow it isn’t what we imagined. It’s not romantic. It’s just there.

I didn’t know what to expect when I came here to the Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation (EBMF) refuge for street children, children whose parents are in jail and children who have been trafficked. But it wasn’t 103 relatively well-fed happy children in quite nice clothes. It wasn’t children who decidedly don’t need me, who play football (soccer) and cricket on their afternoons off and get pocket money. Here, I have met girls who are vain about their appearance and boys who are cheeky and make jokes about me behind their hands and smiles. I won’t lie that I expected to be able to make a lasting impact. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that life is just never going to be that simple, and that, alone, I do not have the kind of power to reap change in my wake.

A few weeks ago I went to the house where two of the EBMF children lived before coming here: a shack on the side of the road; a shack made of wood and mud and tin. Nirmaya and Rajkumar were both terrified on their journey to see their families, though they said nothing. When we arrived a scattering of people stood and squatted around the hut. A number of skinny children with unkempt hair, an old couple, the man with only two teeth and legs that looked like gnarled trees, and the woman without a shirt, but with a torso so withered and wrinkled that is somehow didn’t look revealing. A few young women stood around the edge. At the very center of the group sat their older sister’s uncle. The only one who looked well fed looked up only momentarily as our party approached. Nirmaya burst into the tears when we got out and stood in front of what was once her home. Her family just stared at her and her little brother, the two of them dressed in clean western clothes. Their mother wasn’t there. Their older sister went to fetch her. She came, an old looking woman with a withered face, bare feet and a belly extended by age or malnutrition. She didn’t even look at her son, but stared at Nirmaya. Silence. Then Nirmaya started yelling at her. I don’t know what she said, it was in Nepali, but it was clearly an accusation. I know that one of their older sisters was trafficked once, then reunited with her family, and trafficked a second time. No one knows where she is now. I also know that their father had died since they had last been home.

That kind of scene, the one that tears at your heart and makes you want to pull these children into your arms is what we expect when we go to volunteer for abandoned children. But that was one painful moment among so many mundane ones. When I first met Nirmaya, I thought she was a bully, and, to be honest, she is. She has no qualms pushing and bossing around children many years her junior. She grows furious if she isn’t the best at sports (which, as she storms off, instead of practicing, is generally true). There is a hardness in her eyes which knows the meaning of hatred and revenge. And who can blame her? She is stunning, with hard features, and glittering eyes out of which real intelligence and knowledge shines. About thirteen or fourteen, she hasn’t been willing to take life lying down like most of the girls here. I admire her for her spunk, but at the same time, I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know how to show her to trust, to love, to care. She has all the essentials in life: food, a warm safe bed, clothes and an education. What else can I give her? It is here, at the point where children are no longer holding out dirty skinny arms for food and clothing that the real work, the real ability to help a child do more than merely survival, exists. And it is here that there is no obvious solution.

In Nirmaya’s particular story, there has been a change since we visited her family. There is something subtly different in the way she smiles. She no longer plasters a hard smile on her face when she sees me, instead, actual happiness creases the corners of those eyes. Something changed back in front of her mother’s hut. Something changed in the moment she burst into tears and I, instead of trying to shush her like the other EBMF staff, pulled her close to me and held her, even as her shoulders remained stiff against me. Something changed as we rode back in the rickety car, as she stared out the window with hot tears in her eyes, and I reached over and squeezed her shoulder. Behind the fake, hard smile she flashed, there was something else. Gratefulness? I don’t know, but it was something. I don’t know how to gain more of Nirmaya’s trust, except to be especially kind to her and hug her as often as possible.

The thing about poverty, about terrible situations and past suffering, is that people have a streak of optimism that keeps them going. No matter how much the kids here at EBMF have suffered, they are, after all children, and children just want to laugh and have fun and be loved. Yes, we have children here who’ve been in jail, who’ve been sexually abused by fathers and strangers, and children who were found begging on streets, but one wouldn’t guess it by looking at them. A surprising number of them do have scars, but that is hardly noticeable. What shows more is their smiles, their laughter, their cheek, and their independence. Here, I am not needed. They already have a full staff, and do their own cleaning and help with cooking. I came to EBMF to help, to make an impact, to change lives. I arrived with a bravado common of Westerners in their power to right poverty and give to those less privileged. And now, every night I teach a lesson. I play with the younger children sometimes during the day. I try to give as much love as possible. Here, I’m learning the hardest lesson I’ve ever had to learn, and the most essential: that to help is never easy. That trying to fight for human rights is more than having good intentions. Far far far more. Time moves differently in the developing world. Things always happen late, even lessons in school begin slowly. Punctuality and accuracy are not common. For all the good will and desire of the children to not be lazy, and for the fact that they never complain when given extra classes, their motivation for swift learning is low. Their openness to new ideas is limited.

Of course it is. Any child would be like that. But because I came here to help, I feel like it should be different. Now that I have set aside my tarnished romantic images of poverty and aid work, I have to settle for making less of an impact than I’d hoped: for working according to the slow time here, not battling with it. Like any person who cares about human rights, I have to learn that I cannot save the world. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying my hardest to help the individual.

It's Something

by Timmia Hearn Feldman

“Marco.... Polo.... was ..... born....” Jaya begins giggling before she can finish reading the sentence. I’m helping her with her English homework, and like most of the girls here, she dissolves into embarrassed giggles at every inadequacy she finds in herself. Particularly when it comes to lessons. This is the first time I’ve worked privately with Jaya. She’s in class eight, one of the girls who is so shy and embarrassed to speak before the large class, that, were we in a western culture, I would grow most impatient with. However, here, where most women are married by their early twenties and never question the physical abuse of their husbands, I have nothing but worry and patience for this behavior. And though women’s rights are taken serious here at the Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation (EBMF), the directress and assistant directress both being virtual feminists, there is still Nepali culture at large, not to mention the girls pasts, to contend with.

Jaya might be as intelligent as she is sweet, but I have no way of telling as I help her pronounce words and understand what the sentences mean. Although I have a shrewd suspicion that she could understand if only she would stop dissolving into embarrassed giggles, we make incredibly slow progress. Like most of the students here, she wants me to tell her exactly what to say, and doesn’t really understand the concept of writing a sentence of her own creation. All the students have that problem, but it is exacerbated in the girls by their tendency to doubt themselves. Teaching Jaya at this point feels like banging my head against a wall. Nevertheless, convinced that we’ll get somewhere eventually, I read the little excerpt with her for what must be the fourth time, trying, still trying, to show her how she can find the answers to the study guide questions within the text. In congruence with the mission of EBMF, I am determined to help Jaya and the other girls here gain confidence in themselves, and fully understand that submitting to abuse and second class treatment is never right.

Still, despite the decidedly modernist and progressive stand taken here on the rights of women, a full 45 out of the 65 girls here (and hence almost all the girls above the age of ten) were rescued from circuses. Now, to say that they were trafficked into circuses and were rescued sounds something like a joke. In fact, before coming here, when I explained to friends where many of the children were rescued from, they thought it was funny, and tended to assume it was some bleeding heart nonsense about rescuing kids from “bad” situations. However, in the circuses which these girls were trafficked into they were literally slaves. Woken at the crack of dawn, they would work cleaning the circus and trained for hours before being fed a small amount of food. Performing in generally three shows a day, with virtually no safety measures, the girls were never even skilled at their acts, and frequently suffered injury and illness, with no treatment. Their young bodies were displayed more as sexual objects than anything else, sometimes performing at the dead of night for an all male audience of drunken businessmen. Additionally, an unstated number were sexually abused by the circus managers. I say unstated here because their files give nothing away. Those who have been abused have only ever said it in secret. Having been sexually abused is a mark of shame in a society where a girl's purity and modesty are prized so highly. A society where marriage is a girl's purpose in life and the shame of sexual abuse would jeopardize her forever. Many of those girls came from backgrounds of sexual abuse by their own fathers and uncles. Again, stories that will never be told. It is no wonder these girls laugh behind their hands. No wonder they are always embarrassed to speak up in front of teachers. No wonder they tell me they are fine even when obviously crying.

Jaya was once a circus girl. I don’t know how many years ago she was rescued, but I don’t need to look at her file to know that the memories still affect her. Once girls come to an EBMF refuge site (there are three different sites) they are provided with safety, and at least some degree of encouragement. But they are still dealing with teachers who call them stupid in front of their peers, with memories buried deep and painful, and with the constant pressure to always act politely and pretend to be happy. I went to Jaya’s school a few weeks ago, to see the quality of English education, and though what I found didn’t surprise me, it saddened me.

Their teachers hardly know more English than the students. They teach from text books which ramble on about the average weight of camels and the various steps to reviving a person by mouth to mouth resuscitation, but scarcely bother to teach new vocabulary or to mention grammar. To make matters worse, though the students are far better behaved in class than average American students, they are so thoroughly disrespected by their teachers that my first impulse was to shove the teacher out of the room and take over myself. In the second lesson we sat in on, the teacher spent several prolonged minutes asking us how it was possible that we were teaching English to the EBMF students when they were so, “hopeless and stupid.” I responded coldly that they were certainly far from hopeless, and made sure to tell my two students in her class that she didn’t know what she was talking about and that they were both quite good at English, which, as a mater of fact, was true. But one cannot expect a student to perform well in the face of such discouragement. Now, as I work with Jaya, she keeps apologizing to me, between giggles, for being so poor at English. I tell her, rather sternly, that she should stop doubting herself and simply concentrate on her studies.

It isn’t just in the realm of the classroom that these girls find room for feeling inferior. Though it is true that they are friends with the boys, and speak to them face to face without flinching, it is also true that many of them, particularly the circus rescue girls, have none of the self confidence or self possession that all the boys and the girls who come from other backgrounds have. I went on a trek with eight students a few days ago, and as night fell on our one night away from the refuge one of the girls began to cry, another, who was sharing my tent, begged me to come to sleep early, because she was too afraid to go alone. Ghosts, they said, might attack them. The boys, though they, too, believe in ghosts, are not afraid. To them, life is still under their control. In fact, in all the boys over twelve, there is an arrogance that comes with knowing that, no mater what, they are dominant in this culture. Though they don’t exactly talk down to the girls, and are generally respectful to me during class, there is something in their manner that is not simply the cockiness of any boy, but instead a feeling of definite superiority. Though, like the girls' insecurity, instead of being infuriating individually, it is maddening on the whole. The five boys who come from circuses are proud of the gymnastic abilities they picked up. Two of them have gone on to win medals in gymnastic competitions in Kathmandu. They are not embarrassed to talk about their time in the circus. Their stories are ones that can be told. But the stories of Jaya can never be told. No matter how much I believe that truth is preferable to lies, nor how passionately I want stories of human rights abuses to be told so that the causes can be found and eradicated, the mouths of these girls, most of them young women by now, are sealed forever by a culture that teaches them to look pretty and be polite. Here all my western convictions that talking through painful truths and being allowed to cry is healing and necessary for true recovery from trauma, are of no more use than my knowledge of the Boston Tea Party. I’m learning, slowly, and certainly painfully, what so many have learned before me: that I will never really know the impact of my work here, never know if the genuine love I feel for some of the children who I’ve developed personal relationships with, will effect them in any real way. Never know if my English lessons will do more than frustrate them for a few evenings. Never know if all our talk and laughter and comparisons of culture will do more than make them shake their heads at the strangeness of the west. Never know if my love of being here is anything more than a selfish amazement of the beauty of the east, an infatuation born in so many westerners before me. But, without any certainty, I will keep trying. I bend over the little text book with Jaya, reassuring her that she isn’t “very bad” at English. Encouraging her. Pushing her to think for herself. Refusing to feed her answers. Over an hour later, snack time arrives. I usher a mentally tired Jaya from the room, drained myself. It may not be a success story, but it’s something, I tell myself as I drink my over-sweetened tea.