Musing on India - Part 3: Four sisters

I ended my previous post with the phrase "False beauty is only skin deep..."
Likewise, true beauty is endless...

For any country I travel thru,
no mountain view can take my breath away,
no river descent leaves me gasping,
no dew-dripping leaves can grab my heart,
as does the glister in a child's eyes,
the curl of a child's smile,
and endless echoing sound
of its laughter
and song.

Children are the true joy,
the true future.
The only purity we have left.

Here are four sisters, daughters of Mohammed, a dairy farmer in Punjab. He has forty buffaloes. But he would sell them all, he said, if that could give his daughters a good education, and a job in the city.

But luck was not with him. Nor with his girls. They did not get the opportunity to go to school, limiting their options in the future.

How the crib in which you were born, decides what you can become in life.

Maybe one of these girls could have been a doctor. Maybe one would have become a famous poet or a singer, or a politician, or a peacemaker. Maybe one would have invented a new drug that eradicated malaria. If only they'd have the chance to go to school.


(to be continued...)

PS: While I was publishing this post, Latika's theme played through my mind. (mp3 - 4 Mb)

Read the full post...

Kids in Ghana - Smiles worth a thousand words

Two weeks ago, we were driving in a remote ares, near Jirapa, on Ghana's North-East border with Burkina Faso. As we slowed down to negotiate a series of mudholes, I saw a car coming from the other side with a familiar emblem on the side. I waved them to stop.

They were a WFP team on their way to check one of their school feeding programmes. I guess they were as surprised to see me there, as I was to meet them, in the middle of nowhere.

We followed them to the school, and took the opportunity to shoot some pictures and do a video interview with the school in the background.

Some of the pictures. I just loved their smiles...

Read the full post...

Kids in Kenya

During the interview tour in Kenya, I had little time to take pictures from the people other than the interviewees, but I could not resist some of the kids.

We were in pretty remote places, so three muzungus with all kinds of equipment talking to their mum, grandma or neighbour stirred up quite some interest amongst the youngsters. And in turn, the youngsters stirred up my interest.

A girl minding her baby sister.

This little girl was too shy to come from behind the tree,
but still wanted to see every bit of what was going on.


Two sisters.


These two boys were fascinated by the video camera.


Not sure of those muzungus!


Serious face

Read the full post...

British children's authors considered potential child sex offenders

How weird a well-intended legislation sometimes goes...

The UK Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) is managed by the Independent Safeguarding Authority, set up after the 2002 murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by Ian Huntley, a janitor at their school.

All individuals working with children will be required to register with a national database for a fee of £64. And that includes authors of children's books who give presentations at schools.

The new scheme has every individual working in a field that requires more than a tiny amount of contact with children and/or vulnerable adults to be vetted. If they are passed, they will be placed on a register that says they are allowed to work in a regulated field. If they are barred, they will go on a separate register and it will be a criminal offence for them to try and obtain work in a regulated field, carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison. It will also be illegal for anyone to employ them. (Full)

Picture courtesy Matt's Notepad

Read the full post...

Children in the US are worse off than 30 years ago

The FCD Child Well-Being Index (CWI) is an annual comprehensive measure of how children are faring in the United States. It is based on 28 key indicators of well-being.

This year's CWI is an updated measure of trends over the 32-year period from 1975 to 2007, with projections for 2008. Progress in American children's quality of life has fluctuated since 2002, and began to decline in 2008.

A recent report, "Anticipating the Impacts of a 2008-2010 Recession", measures the impact of the current recession on the overall health, well-being and quality of life of America's children. It finds that the downturn will virtually undo all progress made in children's economic well-being since 1975. The significant decrease in this domain will also drag down the other domains of the CWI. The impact will be especially severe for low-income children of color.

Other key findings from the report show a decline in social connectedness, declines in health, safety, education and family income, and a rise in poverty. (Full)

Picture courtesy Old Picture of the Day

Read the full post...

Happy Mother's Day !

A post dedicated to my wife Tine, knowing it is much easier to be a nutcase (me) than to live with one...

Flowers would have lasted a week. Instead, thought of a present that will last. This picture from our girls is uploaded to WFP's Wall against Hunger.

Happy mother's day, honey!

Read the full post...

News: Paint for the Planet: Children paint global warming

Last weekend, 26 children's paintings with the theme of climate change were auctioned in New York. The event raised money for children most adversely affected by global warming. The "Paint for the Planet" auction, sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), spotlights the work of young artists across the globe.

The paintings are the best of some 200,000 entries received during the past 17 years of the UNEP's annual International Children's Painting Competition.

Entries came from as far as Burundi, Armenia, Thailand and Colombia. (Full

More posts on the The Road about global warming.

Picture courtesy CNN

Read the full post...

News: Africa's children chores made lighter means a better life.

People queueing up for water are a familiar site for anyone who has been in Africa:. A chore often left to women and children.

According to a study in rural areas in South Africa surveying 1,052 children in 366 households, water carrying ranked as the most time-consuming of household chores for children.

In average, a child spent just under 16 hours a week hauling water from the nearest water source to their homes.

The study shows the impact of fetching water on children’s school attendance, sense of well-being and general health. All three factors relate to how much time the kids spend on the chore. This in turn is dependent on the distance of the water source and how many trips they make daily to get water.

For example, 62% of children who make two or more trips a day to collect water report that they miss school. The proportion of children who miss school among those who fetch water once a day was considerably lower, at 44%.

Similarly, children fetching water two or more times a day are four times more likely to develop health problems than those doing a single trip a day.


Q-Drum came up with this solution: A 50 liter Linear Low Density Polyethylene drum that can be pulled or rolled by kids. The drum is tough, surviving 3 metre drop-test filled with water, resisting a load test up to 3,7 tons.


More articles on The Road about poverty, development and children.

Picture courtesy Q-Drum. Article inspiration: Green Upgrader

Read the full post...

News: North Uganda - The Worst Place To Be a Child

The remote Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda has such poor health indicators that up to 100 children younger than five die each week, many of preventable illnesses.

UNICEF said the region was "off-track in meeting health and nutrition-related Millennium Development Goals. Karamoja is the worst place to be a child, with highly elevated levels of early childhood mortality and morbidity." (Full)

More posts on The Road about Uganda

Picture courtesy Glenna Gordon/IRIN

Read the full post...

News: UK's Supernanny Not That "Super" (UN)

Britain faces severe international criticism for imprisoning children as young as 10, tolerating corporal punishment and broadcasting "invasive" reality television shows such as Supernanny.

The UN's committee on the rights of the child (CRC) is due to release its latest assessment of the UK's record of looking after its 13.1 million people aged 17 and under. Areas of concern are likely to include Britain's record on eradicating child poverty, its relatively low age of criminal responsibility, the use of asbos on children and the provision of health services for adolescents.

The UN noted that more children aged between 10 and 14 are being locked up in England and Wales - increasingly for more minor offences - than in any western European country.

One rapporteur, Lucy Smith, queried "the invasion of children's privacy as a result of reality television shows such as Supernanny, which showed children behaving terribly and portrayed them in a terrible light". The use of "ultrasound devices to disperse groups of children ... further infringed on children's right to association". (Full)

More posts on The Road about children

Picture courtesy Channel 4.

Read the full post...

Picture of the day: Child malnutrition - old news in new India

Deep Kumar and Vishal are fed eggs by caretaker Nirmala Devi at the UNICEF-sponsored nutrition rehabilitation center in Saraiya in the impoverished eastern Indian state of Bihar. Half of young Indians are malnourished. In a nation seen as a rising power, combating the problem 'has not been a policy priority . . . for the last 40 years,' a U.N. expert says. (Full)

More Pictures of the Day on The Road.

Picture courtesy Anita Khemka (LA Times)

Read the full post...

Picture of the day: Onise (8), one of 300,000 slaves in Haiti.

Eight-year-old Onise is one of an estimated 300,000 child slaves living in Haiti. Her parents, who live in the countryside, are so poor they simply gave her away to a slightly less poor family who lives in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and who use her as a slave. (More)


More Pictures of the Day on The Road.

Picture courtesy ABC

Read the full post...

Rumble: My Angels

I am back home, enjoying the company of Tine and my two angels Lana and Hannah for the next 6 weeks. We only spent three weeks together since New Year...

Read the full post...

News: Where do children sell themselves ten times a day for one loaf of bread?

Zimbabwe goes to the polls on March 29th. Will it be more of the same, or is something really going to change?

The horror stories keep on coming up from a country that used to be the breadbasket of the region:

The Aids crisis, and the creaking health system it has overwhelmed, has left hundreds of thousands of children orphans, struggling to fend for themselves. As once-prime farmland fell back into bush, thousands picked up their few belongings and headed for the cities in search of a better life.

Lina, then 14, had no money for her fare, so the driver took her virginity as payment. Princess, then 13, sold hers for a loaf of bread after the police stole the peanuts she was selling and chased her off the streets. Precious, at 14, followed the others into prostitution, selling herself to strangers on the streets of Harare merely to survive.

The money Princess got for her first client could buy her a loaf of bread. Now it can barely do that. Sex with one of Mbare's street girls costs Z$10 million (25p) — when the customers actually pay. “I'll have about four or five a day,” Princess said. “Out of that, maybe two will pay.” The police do not chase her any more, but they still steal, demanding sex in return for leaving her alone.

Amine, one of the girls who works the streets with Princess, showed a fresh scar on her hand where a customer had stabbed her, forcing her to drop the notes that he had just paid her.

Precious, a tiny 16-year-old, stunning beneath the grime, sees as many as ten men a day. (Full)

More posts about Zimbabwe.

Picture courtesy Times Online. Source: The Road Daily

Read the full post...

News: Current price of a slave? $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti.

With $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti, one can buy a slave.
That is one of the findings of Benjamin Skinner while researching his book, "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery."

As the definition of "slave" is still "a human being forced to work under threat of violence for no pay beyond sustenance", Skinner concluded there are more slaves on the planet today than at any time in human history... Even though slavery is now illegal throughout the world.

There is one difference, though: slaves got cheaper. After adjusting for inflation, Skinner found that, "A slave sold in 1850, would now roughly cost $30,000 to $40,000. Today you can go to Haiti and buy a 9-year-old girl as a sex slave for $50. The devaluation of human life is incredibly pronounced."

In the fall of 2005, he visited Haiti, which has one of the highest concentrations of slaves anywhere in the world. "I pulled up in a car and rolled down the window," he recalls. "Someone said, 'Do you want to get a person?'".
Though the country was in a time of political chaos, the street where he met the trafficker was clean and relatively quiet. A tape of the conversation reveals a calm, concise transaction. He was initially told he could get a 9-year-old sex and house slave for $100, but he bargained it down to $50.
"The thing that struck me more than anything afterwards was how incredibly banal the transaction was. As if I was negotiating on the street for a used stereo." (Full)

Update: This post was picked up in different forums. People ask 'how can we help?'.. I would suggest to check out Plan International, who allows you to 'virtually' adopt a child from a developing country.
Plan International has a program in Haiti.. Try it.. Our family "adopted" a child from the rural areas in Pakistan years ago. For a modest monthly amount, we secure the child's education, clothing and basic well being.. Every year, we get a letter from her, with pictures and testimonies...
Education and basic care keeps children out of harms way, and brings them a future.

Update: See also this article on modern day slavery.

More recommended books from The Road.

Pictures courtesy In These Times and NPR.org. Source: The Road Daily

Read the full post...

Rumble: PlayPumps: Play for Clean Water

Access to clean drinking water is critical for human survival and is an essential ingredient for improving the lives of those living in poverty in developing countries. And yet:

• More than one billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.
• Water-related diseases are the leading cause of death in the world, taking the lives of 6,000 people a day, and are responsible for 80 percent of all sickness in the world.
• 40 billion hours are lost annually to hauling water, a chore primarily undertaken by women and girls.

All this can change: An innovative PlayPump® water system, provides easy access to clean drinking water while bringing joy to children leading to improvements in health, education, gender equality, and economic development.

The PlayPump systems are innovative, sustainable, patented water pumps powered by a children at play: Installed near schools, the PlayPump system doubles as a water pump and a merry-go-round for children. (Learn more)


PS: March 22 is World Water Day, don't forget!

Source: How to Change the World and International Aid Workers Today. Picture courtesy PlayPumps.org.

Read the full post...

News: Child Soldiers

What have Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Myanmar, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Colombia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Uganda in common? These are all countries where children are used as soldiers in armed conflicts.

The UN security council this week expressed "concern at the widespread and systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, in particular girls, in situations of armed conflict" and "called on all parties to take special measures to protect girls and boys from sexual and gender-based violence." A council statement read at the end of a daylong meeting on children and armed conflict expressed "readiness to review the provisions of its resolutions on the issue" — but it made no mention of concrete and targeted measures against violators, nor of expanding the monitoring group's activities to compiling data on rape and sexual violence.

You know, and THIS is what beats me. Children are our future. If children are part of a war machine, then war will be our future. We don't need "expressions of sympathy", we need concrete action, and a more forceful language to condemn this crime! That not only goes for the UN. I searched the web for any concrete action. I found little. There is one from Human Rights Watch stimulating the ratification of the "Child Soldier Protocol".. But that is as far as it goes.

Maybe the political pressure is the way to go. Check here for more. At least it helped in Ivory Coast, it seems:

Have a look at this site dedicated to stop the use of child soldiers. childsoldiers.net by the Belgian ex-journalist Els De Temmerman works on re-integrating Ugandese ex-child soldiers. Check out also this gallery of pictures drawn by ex-child soldiers

Update March 5: Have a look also at: What responsibility does the world bear for rehabilitating child soldiers from the horror of serving in armed conflict?, a Pulitzer Center's Global Issues/Citizens Voices Contest which gives individuals the opportunity to speak out on the most pressing issues of the day. Child soldiers is one of them.


Picture courtesy mofa.go.jp, They're our children and Amnesty International. Video courtesy UNICEF.
News source: International Aid Workers Today

Read the full post...

Rumble: Pictures from Kenya

Stuart, a friend and colleague just came back from his Kenya mission where he supported the aid surge after the election trouble. When he told me he brought some pictures back, I thought it would be about crowds fighting with riot police, burning houses and charred cars.
But most of his pictures were about children. And they touched me. I don't know why. Maybe because of the innocence they radiate, amidst violence and hatred. Maybe because while their country threatened to go up in flames, these children continued to smile.

Pictures courtesy Stuart Zimble (WHO/WFP)

Read the full post...

News: "Click to Feed a Child" fed 1.8 million kids

In the past year, we have been promoting Fighthunger.org quite a bit. Their icon was on this blog (and the others I run) since we started. Fighthunger.org has been organising the yearly Walk-the-World event, and has a well moderated website. One of the main features on their site was 'Click to Feed a Child', where sponsors contributed each time an icon was clicked by a visitor.

The campaign "Click to Feed" has ended now, and I am happy to announce we all contributed to feed 1,850,963 children for a day, in the past three years. A humble feat in the battle against hunger, but a proof it can be done. Thank you all for contributing!

Read the full post...

Rumble: The Things that Are Important to Us

I was writing in the living room last Sunday when Hannah, our youngest, came to show me a story and a drawing she made:

Little Rumble and her hamster. Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She was called Little Rumble. She had a hamster who had the name ‘Rock’, because the hamster liked rock music. It was not a normal hamster, as it spoke Dutch too! One day, Little Rumble did not find her hamster anymore. Because ‘Rock’ liked music, the girl sung in a soft sweet little voice: “Oh my sweet little hamster, Where are you now, where are you now? Oh my sweet little hamster..” And what did she see? “Look”, she cried out, “There comes Rock!”. And from that day, Little Rumble called her hamster: ‘Classical’.

She is nine.. They keep on surprising me, my girls. It made me think. Within seven weeks, my sabbatical is over. I don't know yet where I will be posted for my next assignment. We change duty stations every two to four years. My assignment in Dubai is over, so up for the next one.
It does not worry me where I will be posted. Timbuktu, Darfur, Bogota, Dushanbe... It does not matter. Don't get me wrong: work does matter a lot to me, but where is not important.

You know, often people write to me, saying they envy my way of life, the travelling, the adventure... It is not all gold that glitters though. One aspect is a continuing challenge. And it is not the hardship of a duty station, not the fact that every two to four years we have to start up a new life again at the other side of the world. No matter the fact that often 'life in the field' can pretty rough and often has an aspect of danger to it. What is important and a continuous challenge for many of us, though, is how our family copes with all of that.

So many people in 'our line of work' have problems finding and keeping a partner. And later on, building and keeping a family. Either the family stays at home (like mine does most of the time), or they travel along from duty station to duty station. For some of us, our partner has the same kind of job. Him working somewhere in South America and her somewhere in South-East Asia. The kids shuttling in between, or in a boarding school.
So many families, marriages, relationships break up over this 'remoteness'. That is the biggest challenge.

And my biggest happiness is to have found a way to balance my crazy lifestyle with that of having a family.

Read the full post...