Hazel Roy

from Three Months in Nepal

A story of travel, teaching and

child labour

ISBN978-0-9559451-0-6

‘An immensely enjoyable read’

  Dervla Murphy

All material here is extracted from

the above title

Hazel Roy © 2009

Foreword

At the age of 55, Hazel Roy went on a charity trek in the Himalayas and stayed on to teach and travel in Nepal.

  Asked to research write and co-direct a bi-lingual production on Child Labour by the International Labour Organisation between pupils from a select school in Patan, and street children rescued by CWIN (Child workers in Nepal), she came up against many unpalatable truths about the wide scale exploitation of children that lie beneath the surface of this troubled country.

  For alongside the inspirational scenery and spiritual harmony of Nepal, coexists grinding poverty and significant abuse in the treatment of children and young women.

  This is a moving disturbing and engagingly frank personal account of one woman’s experience of living alone in an unknown community, tackling demanding new challenges and learning to thrive on them. Written with warmth, affection and a real desire to make a difference, however small, in this country of amazing contrasts she has grown to love.

The price of bricks

This is a description of a visit to a brick factory as part of the research for a performance on child labour prepared and presented by children from Shuvatara School in partnership with street children rescued by CWIN (Child workers in Nepal).

I organised the visit for both groups of children- this is from the third and final section of my book. HR

[1998 Minister of Labour figures estimated nearly 2,000 child brick workers working the brick kilns of the Kathmandu valley alone. The figures are a vast underestimation. The industry has been growing rapidly since then children as young as six

carry heavy weights which increase with their age and size. Respiratory illness and spinal deformities are common].

Surprisingly almost everyone is on time except the CWIN kids, who swing onto the bus just as we are leaving. The brick factory we are going to is in a place called Lobo, Sanagou and the company is called The Karnamay Chimney Bhata. I understand it is owned by one of the parents. This makes the visit a little awkward.

  We climb up a hill off the ring road into a semi-rural landscape and then it is there to the left – an extraordinary sight – acres of the valley cut into grey islands of clay, each one surrounded by water-filled trenches and a sea of raw grey bricks laid out to dry in the sun in endless rows. In the middle are two chimneys belching out grey smoke.

  The sight that meets me as I get off the bus, is like something out of the Dark Ages. A cluster of small children, mainly girls, the oldest can be no more than five, watch us curiously. They are filthy, their clothes are encrusted with clay, their hair is matted. Many have small nose rings. One child, who is about two, is encrusted all over and her head is shaved. Behind her stands a boy with a cloth on his head. I would guess he is between twelve and fourteen (making allowances for the fact that working children are much smaller), and covered from head to toe in brick dust. He is carrying eight rows of bricks on his head. His bare legs are skeletal and he is wearing only flip-flops on his feet. Another small child with a doca (porter’s basket) attached to his forehead is down in a trench having the basket filled with

bricks. Two young women pass us and I count thirty-six bricks strapped to their backs on ropes attached by a band to their forehead.

  The manager, who does not speak English, takes the students across the site to where a young woman is kneading damp clay into a wooden mould – just as you might knead bread. Several of the jokers in the pack decide to have a go at making bricks, but somehow I cannot share their enthusiasm for ‘mud pie making.’ They don’t seem to have got the message that this is someone’s living and that we are disrupting their work. Later, I ask the pupils to find out the daily rate – estimates vary from 80 rupees (80p) to 225 rupees (£2.25) – the amount I have paid for a drink in a tourist hotel.

These workers turn out up to 1,200 bricks in a day for that amount.

  I want to break through the school kids’ frivolity by making them do a calculation to underline the seriousness of the situation:-‘You have just made 4 bricks in 20 minutes – three of them are unusable. That’s a rate of 3 useable bricks in an hour. Assuming an average rate of 150 rupees for 1,200 bricks, how long would you have to work to earn this much?’

  I think I make that 400 hours. The workers here produce that many in a day. I ask how long it takes for the bricks to dry completely. The answer is five days and the manager confirms that, if it rains in that time, the bricks are ruined. The ILO reports suggest that when this happens it is the workforce that bears the loss in their wages. Can you imagine? Seeing 5 days backbreaking work for which you have earned the princely sum of £7.50 disappear in front of your eyes, no compensation – no retainer.

  I watch a young woman with the wrinkles of an old lady shovel dry dust into a sack. A tiny child, wearing only a small vest clings to her. I ask if I may photograph him. I feel self-conscious and awkward asking, but have a need to document what I am seeing, in case, later, I think I only imagined it.

  In the distance are some huts made of raw bricks and covered with straw. The top of the thatched roof comes only to my shoulder. Two tiny grubby children stand by the entrance, which is just an uncovered opening. I take their photograph. There is a smell of cooking inside. Apart from the doorway, the shelter is unventilated. The atmosphere is thick with dust and smoke. The children all seem to have coughs and snot running down their noses. One or two have half-closed, infected eyes. There appears to be no proper sanitation on site. I look around in vain for even a water tap.

There is none. Water for cooking must come from the trenches.

  We walk over and climb up the crumbling embankment by the chimneys. The area in front of the chimneys is very hot and there are rows of small, metal lids set into the ground with smoke coming out of them. The heat is piped underground to small ovens where the bricks are baked. I understand this work is allocated to the Indian workers because the

Nepalis cannot cope with the heat. There seems to be a subtle hierarchy between the two workforces.

  I climb down the other embankment because I want to photograph some young boys carrying bricks, but they turn away. A woman worker approaches me talking very rapidly and aggressively. It is obvious she wants money. I feel terrible. I would happily give her money, but what about all the others?

  A man, seeing my interest in children, picks up a tiny baby who starts to cry. He forces the baby’s head round so that I can photograph it, presumably because he is expecting a payment, and the boys who have been walking away now pose in a line balancing the bricks on their heads.

  One stands on one leg as if he was a circus performer. I put the camera away. I feel ashamed, embarrassed and deeply upset that I have raised their expectations unfairly. How can I possibly explain my motives - what would I say even if I could speak their language? I find Anju and ask her to come back and act as translator but she cannot understand the woman – ‘she is Indian,’ she says.

  The Shuvatara pupils are back by the bus. ‘Can we go now miss’, asks Arniko the mud pie maker. I look at him. Tall, good looking, expensively and casually dressed, the over confident child of rich parents, who has come here, had a few laughs with his mates and now wants to go back because he is bored. I am having trouble controlling my feelings. I try

and distract myself by asking the manager the significance of the small rubber discs in a metal bucket being carried by one of the workers. I am told these are tokens that are later changed into cash when a quota of bricks is finished.

  As we are getting ready to leave, the owner says something to the bus driver who seems to know him well. I understand that he has called for a crate of drinks for the visitors. I watch two labourers carrying down crates

of drinks into the site. I cannot bear it. In front of the disbelieving stares of dozens of tiny filthy children lined

up to watch, these healthy, clean, well-dressed children, this man passes up bottles of Fanta, Sprite and Coke to the kids in the bus. I have asked myself a million times since, why I did not intervene before the bottles entered the bus and ask for the drinks to be given instead to the child workers. It would have been the correct thing to do. I can only conclude

I was in a state of shock and shame and certain in the knowledge that this request would be refused. Instead I ask to pay for them. The manager declines. I do not accept a drink, I think it will choke me. How can they drink in front of these other children?

  We are like visitors from another planet so vast is the divide. When did those dirty little illiterate children who make such a disproportionate contribution to the prosperity of this business ever get offered a crate of drinks by their boss, who spends the fruits of their labour sending his child to a private school far away from their wildest dreams and

expectations. I am also conscious of the fact that, though they may assist their parents, most of these little children will not even be included in the statistics of child labourers because they are not directly employed.

  As the children finish their drinks, a large traditionally dressed lady boards the bus together with another, tiny, elderly woman. I understand they want a lift to Sanepa.As the bus pulls out, I askAnju once more to translate for

me and I find that this woman lives opposite the brick factory, is concerned about the condition of the children on the site and wants to start a school for them. She is retired but used to work for an NGO. She gives me her telephone number. Perhaps there is something we can do to help.

  The school she proposes would be for young children and I try and find out from her at what age the children on the site are considered part of the workforce and given heavy weights to carry. I am told, and the pupils later confirm this, that no one will talk about the age factor but will only say that it depends on the size of the child. I doubt any ILO convention rules and regulations determines what is appropriate. I ask the woman how many children there are on site. I am told 36. When I query the low number, I am told the rest are Indians and have not been counted.

  I ask Anju about the distinction between the Indians and the Nepalis and whether this is just due to a language barrier. She says no because there is no one language among the Indians anyway – they come from many different regions and they have to understand Nepali to understand the supervisors. I recognise I am getting into the intricacies of the caste system.

  I look around the bus. Apart from Anju and one or two of the more thoughtful girls, the rest are in high spirits and making a hell of a racket. The CWIN group are significantly detached and very, very silent. I ask Anju to ask Raju what he thought of the visit. He says he was very depressed seeing children living like that and that something should be

done about it. Raju is 14. He has had his own troubles, he is the same age as Arniko but he could not be more different in his reactions. I convey how much I agree with him.

  On our return from school I accost Arniko as he is about to cycle off on his mountain bike to ask what he thought of the visit. ‘It was great, Miss,’ he says. I am dumbfounded. ‘Great?’ I don’t know what distresses me more, what I have seen today, or the reactions of these wealthy kids to the visit. For they will be the next generation with power in this country.

All material here is extracted from Three Months in Nepal by Hazel Roy © 2009