The Innocent Children

Over the last couple of weeks whenever I surf the Internet I kept going back to topics on children to read on things that have been at the back of my mind, often troubling me. The disturbing thoughts surface at unexpected moments. I guess those photos that were sent to me earlier in the month didn't stop haunting me and so every time I wanted to pick a topic to read it had to be about 'misused' and abused children. And from all that reading …..

I cannot believe that we have mega-billion dollar budgets for all kinds of expenditure, from space exploration to meteorology, but children and the issues that threaten them are ignored with shameful zeal. At other times we do seem to show some kind of concern but the commitment seem to be lacking and both the intent and purpose in carrying out any of programmes promised to them during some lofty conference or governmental blue print end up being a sham.

One particular topic that shocked me was how children became involved in armed conflicts throughout the world. I felt incensed that the BIG countries that were supposed to be guardians of the world citizens and responsible to correct the ills of society were the very countries that regularly worsened the plight of children and didn’t seem to give a damn about them. It pains me to realize that even after a good decade later; after meticulous studies have been conducted and reports filed, we haven’t gotten any better in addressing the outrageous treatment of children and shoved aside whatever resolutions had been charted out by specialists or specilaist organisations.

And guess who is pussy-footing around the issues? Yes, it is the BIG countries that have all the bucks in the world but seem more focused than ever in impoverishing others and not ever minding about the children. They are the big spenders, spending billions of dollars on arms and weapons and for all the rhetoric, never a moment’s thought is given to children in the very countries they are messing with. Oh yea, they do seem to formulate several well-meaning programmes to get the children off the streets and all that but what happens to PREVENTING the situation? As in saying NO to war and armed conflict? Doesn’t that make more sense? Why screw up a good thing? Why put innocent children through so much deprivation, waste and disease? The reason as some of us are aware is rather obvious. Big money. The weapons industry is a multi-billion dollar industry feeding the greedy amongst us.

Yes I am incensed.

Millions of children are caught up in conflicts in which they are targets. They suffer all kinds of violence or are exposed to hunger and disease. In the past ten years an estimated two million children have been killed in armed conflict. Three times as many have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. They have been mercilessly slaughtered, raped, maimed, abused and exploited.

While the customs and rules of warfare among people in the past generations made it a taboo to attack woman and children, the picture is different now. In those days soldiers fought amongst soldiers in battlefields, but now armed conflicts are in the open streets and targeting civilians.

According to a study, the proportions of war victims who are civilians has leaped from a mere 5 % to over 90% over the last decade. And children have become targets as well as perpetrators of horrific violence and atrocities. In 1995, 30 major armed conflicts raged in different parts of the world and most of these wars have not stopped completely. Persistent economic, social and political crises have brought about the lack of public order.

The collapse of governments, the power struggles between opposing groups and fights among factions split along ethnic, cultural and religious lines are causing widespread civil unrest. The armed conflicts drag on for years with no beginning or end and they subject successive generations to endless struggles for survival. Children are definite victims.

Child soldiers are recruited in many different ways. Some are conscripted while others are kidnapped and still others are forced to join armed groups to defend their families. Governments in a few countries legally conscript children under 18. (In accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the term ‘child’ is to include everyone under the age of 18.) However, even where the legal minimum age is 18, the law is not necessarily a safeguard because birth registration is not accurate or non-existent.

In addition to being forcibly recruited, youth also present themselves for service. They may be driven by any of several factors including cultural, social, economic or political pressures. One of the most basic reasons that children join armed groups is economic. Children believe that this could be the only way to guarantee regular meals, clothing or medical attention. Also, hunger and poverty drive parents to offer their children for service where armies pay a minor soldier’s wages directly to the family.

In regions where war of conflicts have been going on for a long time, educational opportunities become more limited or even non-existent. The recruits tend to get younger and younger. Armies begin to exhaust the supplies of adult manpower and children may have little option but to join.

Some children become soldiers for their own protection. Faced with violence and chaos all around, they decide they are safer with guns in their own hands. Guns also mean power and the ability to get what they want. Another reason is the lure of ideology. This is particularly strong in early adolescence when young people are developing personal identities and searching for a sense of social meaning. They may also identify with the fight for social causes, religious expression, self-determination or national liberation.

The use of children as soldiers has been made easy by the abundance of weapons that are both light and cheap. Guns nowadays are so light that children can easily carry them about and are so simple that they can be stripped and reassembled by a child of ten. Even the poorest communities now have access to deadly weapons. For example, in Uganda an AK-47 automatic machine gun can be purchased for the cost of a chicken and in northern Kenya it can be bought for the price of a goat.

When not directly involved with handling weapons and killing, children serve in armies as cooks, porters, messengers and spies. Some commanders prefer children because they are more obedient do not question orders and are easier to manipulate than adult soldiers. Children are also used for household and other routine duties. In many regions children have done guard duty, worked in gardens, hunted for wild fruits and vegetables and looted food from granaries. Girls are often used to prepare food, attend to the wounded and wash clothes. They are also used to provide sexual services.

The fearlessness of the children is further exploited by sending them on suicide missions, sometimes by plying them with alcohol or drugs. In many countries children have been forced to commit atrocities against their own families and communities. This is done to deliberately expose them to violence and desensitize them so that acts of violence become natural to them.

Often the uncalled for attacks on civilians in certain regions have caused mass exodus and displacement of huge numbers of people. They flee conflict areas in search of sanctuaries. At the beginning of the 1980s there were 5.7 million refugees worldwide but today the number has increased to 27.4 million. The number of internally displaced people (those who have not crossed borders) has increased tremendously and stand at 30 million.

At least half of all refugees and displaced people are children. At a crucial time in their lives these children are uprooted and exposed to danger and insecurity. Their temporary homes or camps are places that further subject them to violence, uncertainty and fear. There is high mortality and children die of diseases like cholera, malaria, tuberculosis and even malnutrition.

Sexual exploitation continues and sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS continue to affect the health of children. It is estimated that 60 to 70 % of the child victims of prostitution are HIV positive. Many adolescents who have gone through the effects of armed conflict are pessimistic, depressed and even think of suicide.

When the war and armed conflict is over are these children (those who miraculously survive the horrible events) able to go back to a normal life? If, after all that they have been through, they do escape the threats of danger and devastation, do they not need to regain their health, self-respect and dignity. Can they? The children have to reintegrate socially, reunite with their families (if they are lucky), get an education and start life afresh. And most important of all, they must forget or learn to deal with the nightmares of the conflict days that will continue to haunt them.

And now knowing all these are we ever going to force the Uncaring and Abusers out of business?

*SIGH*

A Sad Story

Today we went for a short Christmas gathering at a nursing home in Titiwangsa, Kuala Lumpur. It was a very poignant moment for my friends amd me but we maintained the Christmas cheer. Let me tell you a story.

My alma mater is Father Barre’s Convent, Sungai Petani. It is a wonderful school that brought a group of wonderful girls in the 1960s together. And the girls, having passed through its fields, corridors, and classrooms, have never forgotten the time they spent there.

If ever a school served as a backdrop to start relationships that have come to stand the test of time, it is this special school. And the school is only as special as the people who had passed through it - my batch of girls!

Amazingly after a lapse of almost three decades, where each one of us tried to grab at our individual destinies, we are now back to reconnecting and enjoying each other’s company and relishing every minute of it.

While we were trying to analyse which one of us contributed the most to this reunion, not in any competitive fashion, but in the great spirit of camaraderie that we were all into now, Sheila very generously said it was me, or rather what I had written to all the girls in our group after a very special visit to one of our classmates.

This classmate is none other than Dr Jayaswari or Jaya to us, who today lies in a shocking vegetative state in a nursing home in Kuala Lumpur. On the 27 April 2005, a couple of us classmates decided to visit Jaya. I had heard that she was bedridden but I wasn’t prepared for what was in store. When I came back home I needed therapy and mine had become writing. So I wrote an email to whoever was in the group at that time. (There were not many, maybe just about five of us at that point.) Perhaps this letter highlighted the spirit of Jaya and that’s holding us all together in a bond that defies definition. We are all so separate with our own lives and yet we are so united and close with each other. Maybe that email did bring us together. Our group is now almost twenty wonderful ladies!

This is the email.

Dear Friends,

I am compelled to write on Jaya. What I remember of her is that she was a fairly tall, lanky girl of about 5'6", dusky-complexioned and meticulous in her school work. I don't know if she knew me well enough to remember me after these years, like the way I remember her. But that is surely academic now.

Can she even remember the minute that just left her? Can she remember the day she gained admission into medical school? Surely that must have pleased her enormously. Everyone I knew then wanted to be a doctor if the parents could manage it and I am quite sure she must have been delighted to have been able to start her dream. And five years later when she became a qualified doctor I am certain she must have started in earnest to practice what she had learnt. I have no doubt Jaya must have cured many and took pleasure in doing her job well and thoroughly. Unfortunately I don't know the details because like most of us, I lost touch but I am assuming she did well in her career. She must have for God must have known her cruel fate and allowed her that pleasure at least.

When Jaya married and begot her first darling son, her life must have seemed complete. Isn't that the way with us mothers? From that point most other things become secondary. The children anchor us, make our spirits soar and our hearts happy. We fight their battles subtly and often become proxies, standing up for them when they want to absent from life's difficult patches. We give them the sanctuary they need and embrace them, not so much to pleasure them as much as to please ourselves. And I bet it was that way with Jaya and her son. I hear he is seventeen now - a young man whom she must be proud of.

While Jaya must be suffering in silence for the things she can't say to him or perform for him, he must too in his young heart yearn for the love of his mother. I wonder if there is anything we can do for him.

Jaya looks well-cared for in the nursing home but her cheeks were sunken and her sight lost, or maybe searching. But the size of her body shocked me most. She must be a mere 50 lbs or so and I imagine this wasting must have been slow -five years and still going on.

Yes, the ‘whys’ are not going to find any easy answers, in fact, no answers at all. I wonder if she thinks in circles asking the same questions that are on the lips of all her visitors or if she has accepted her condition and thinks of a far away world where she is doing happy things with her family, particularly her son.

Does a mother’s dream die when she can't attend to her son? When she is not by his side nagging him to finish his breakfast cereal or besieging him to ride his bicycle slower? No, I don't think so. A mother's dreams for her children have no melody or lyrics save the exceptionally sweet flavour of her spiritual chant which hum in her heart and stray into her prayers every time she gets a recess to think of a future - a future where her child is happy, cared for and loved. I am certain that is the case with Jaya. I am so terribly sad for the words she can't say to the world, to her family and especially to her only child, her son.

I am so sad that because she can't say these words, she may have been dismissed from the life of the people who mean most to her. I am so terribly sad that the mother in her must be beating itself so hard that it bleeds, to get out, get up and embrace her son and pour her heart out and wet his cheeks with her tears....

Do you think she feels hopeful now that we are back in her life? Do you think she is willing us to think for her? My eyes mist thinking about all of this. It is very cruel. This helplessness, at what little we can do for her while she may be waging a tremendous battle within her, makes me weep. I know in the vastness of the universe and in the general scheme of things we are nothing. And perhaps that’s the kinder of thoughts because the impotency seems justified, for in all honesty what can we do? Hope. Such a big word and then I feel a certain anger. Hope - it seems the biggest hoax-word of all.

Five years is a long time for Jaya to be stilled in life, and I think physiologically a lot of what has happened may be irreversible. And so with thoughts of what we, I, can actually do for her, I go to bed, with a question or two in my mind for Him. I hope Jaya at least has a good night's rest for tomorrow will tire her again because her day works on her and the endlessness of it all must surely weigh on her mind. Yes, her mind - wherever that is. It is so very sad. – K

After this, many of us re-connected and Jaya seemed to be the common topic of our conversations. Now, after several months, we don’t talk as much about her but we feel her spirit and almost always are making plans to visit her. We can’t seem to do much outwardly for her and we always feel helpless and sad when we leave but we hope that our renewed friendship will crack her silence and by some miracle she recovers. Yes, we are definitely hoping for a miracle. When Loke Yen visited her for the first time with a lovely bouquet she responded by turing her head around and when Poh Aun came to see her all the way from Australia she moved her head and grunted aggressively as if she was trying to say something.

The classmates from Father Barre’s Convent are a rare find and if nothing else comes out of our meetings, where we discover truly amazing things about each other, we at least know that in this vast world there is plenty of room and opportunity for people to renew the love, respect and friendship that was once within our hearts. We just need to make an effort and we are enriched beyond words for that effort.

Dear God, please do bring back our Jaya. We need her to complete the circle which she was hugely responsible to start.

My Cousin and the Engineer

Recently my cousin B was engaged to be married and she called me to express a certain doubt.

“An engineer? What kind of a husband would an engineer make? Remember that first guy I had a MAJOR crush on; he went off to become an engineer. I still remember how ruthlessly he broke my heart, dumped me and married that b*. He was brilliant and sofuckinghandsome then. Rumour has it that he is now going places and still is sofuckinghandsome. Why hasn’t he gone bald and beer-bellied? (My cousin B doesn’t normally use four letter words but I guess she must have been more hurt than she had us believe then - almost eight years ago.) I remember how he took my heart apart, meticulously, like a highly reputed cardio-surgeon; the left auricle, then the right, then the right ventricle followed by the left and finally bled me via the aorta until I was left inches off my dear life….*shudder* (My cousin is also prone to exaggeration). Yes, I hate engineers with a passion and now to marry one? (Her parents have more or less formalized an 'arranged marriage' for her). IS the whole world ganging up on me!”

Of course not. I said, “ No! The whole world has bigger problems than you or proving one way or other your unproven passionate dislike of engineers.”

In fact I told her that engineers make the most faithful husbands. I read this somewhere, in a survey, perhaps even in the definitive journal, Scientific America.

"That’s quite an authority, " I tried to convinced her.

“Look, even I followed their advice. Decades ago it was the very same journal which convinced me that if I wanted to laugh at myself all my life (I was big on laughter then) I should marry a politician. Which, as you know, I eventually did!”

She appeared calm and very collected, like a lull before the storm. I cautiously pushed a little further. “ You are an accountant and bah! look at yourself. Only figures entice you…five, six or seven digits all in a row. If you were a man you would be a disgusting slut, thinking about figures all day. Figures or numbers! You do know that people say accountants don’t read novels because the only numbers in them are the page numbers. Get real B. Accountants are boring people, so if an engineer is interested in making an honest woman of you, be grateful,” I said sweetly.

She was quiet for longer than I had hoped for, like she was contemplating a take-over strategy or a much wanted merger and I was eagerly awaiting a response so that I could continue with the two hundred reasons why she should marry now, and marry an engineer at that too.

“It is not going to work,” she told me shakily. "If I am boring how can I marry an engineer? What kind of life will that be? What will we…er…I mean I be doing for excitement? They aren’t exactly exciting people. Look at Uncle P, for example. He thinks walking into the house with a big bouquet on his wife’s 50th birthday is a manouver worthy of applause. He even hugs her with a technical presision. There is always a method to be followed, a process to be taken step by step as stated in the manual. Can engineers even do IT without referring to a book!” Ah!! the IT word I thought and I took the challenge.

“Well, engineers could possibly do IT better than most other professionals. Consider this - they would worry about angles and thrust, pressure techniques and launching pads, friction and lubrication and after a couple of times would have perfected the best approach. Most other professionals, err generally most men even, think they are born with more than enough skills and wouldn’t even bother to acquire any degree of finesse. Not even after a lifetime!” I replied with as much of a straight face as I could muster.

It was no use. Here I was talking about how great the sex could be and there she was seething, like I am ridiculing her prospective husband already. I should try another approach I had thought.

“Look B, engineers are good people. They are straight thinkers and don’t do the hanky panky stuff that doctors and lawyers are planning even while they are playing heavenly charmers. The bottom line, B - they are faithful. Their brains are wired so very differently that soon it becomes part of their genetic makeup and they start producing little engineers who will grow up to be dependable adults. Don’t you want that?” I asked, becoming confidently authoritative.

I reminded her of a joke I had heard recently.

An engineering student is walking along when a fellow student arrives on a new bicycle. Impressed, he asks, "Where did you get this beautiful bicycle?"

"Well," the second engineering student says, "A couple of days ago I was just walking along when this gorgeous blonde pulls up, hops off the bike, rips off all her clothes, and says 'take what you want'."

The other engineering student nods and says "Good choice. The clothes probably wouldn't have fit."

Imagine the hottie wasn’t even an option. Now tell me how many guys you know would have gone for the bicycle AND have similar-thinking engineer friends who would agree that the bike was a better option than the hottie’s clothes and nary a thought to the hottie herself?!

“B, if that doesn’t convince you, frankly I don’t know what else will,” I added.

B said she was grateful for my convincing but she wasn’t one hundred percent sure. Before we ended the conversation I just thought it was only fair if I cited at least one con factor as against all the pros I had stated. I said there is a mild possibility that being who they are, engineers in general have a fascination for imperfections. Their philosophy in life is very simple – that all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them.

"So he has probably agreed to marry you because he saw the imperfections and thought how much fun he was going to have fixing them," I added, again with a very straight face.

Of course B was aghast. An accountant, imperfect? B had imperfections which needed another person to fix? An engineer at that? She was appalled.

“Look B, at least he didn’t turn away and already feels committed enough to stand by you and make it work. I rest my case."

Personally I have a thing for engineers, a good thing that is. Not the bad kind that could translate into a romp in the hay. No never that. I have the politician husband for that and you do know, that going by rumours alone, what a romp that can be!

Afterall normal people always walk away from most things in life thinking that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it BUT it is only the dear engineers who believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet. :)

Disclaimer: Any engineer (probably only Dena, if she found out abt this entry), who reads this entry kindly note that I am not an authority on engineers. Opinions expressed here are my own parochial views and, sure by all means you can and shall disagree with anything at all that I have said.

My Teary Vision

Early this morning I was doing my usual mailcheck and I received two sets of pictures from someone I don’t know. It touched me so deeply that I sat crying before my computer. It wasn’t the big cry that we give ourselves when things we want didn’t happen or happened in a completely different way, or when the one we love desperately walks away from us or when we face the death of our friends and family.

No, I cried silently, very silently. Drops of tears escaped reluctantly and streamed down my cheeks. Before I knew it was torrents and I was sniffing quietly. I started to type anyway, through the hazy vision of my teary eyes. Tell me, won’t you after you see these…?

We have so much to be thankful for and yet we find so many faults, we mourn and bitch and grumble and say acrimonious things to people who are humble and kind. We celebrate the wrong things and shun the good stuff. We are so busy perfecting ourselves in an image which becomes more irrelevant with each passing day. As Longfellow said - in our march towards death, for thats where we are all headed. Yet why don't we find the time to engage in doing something for a single soul who really and truly needs a single stroke of effort from us...... *sigh*.

Perhaps its the morning hour that makes me all preachy. I am, afterall for all purposes of right and wrong, a part of this world gone blase' ....... insensitive and spoilt.

It is true, I sit in the comfort of my warm study and wish that I could look every inch like Cindy Crawford... that I can spend my time reading the great literary works of all times and become a great writer... that my children will become successful with good careers and better homes and happy families. These are not wrong and wishing and wanting them makes me the average good person. I am sure of it, like I am sure of the mountain ridge which I can see every morning when I go for my walk. That magnificent chipped edge of the mountain which forms the bulwark of the Klang Gates dam.

But I want to champion causes too. Causes that I can be proud of in the quietness of my room, not in the adulation of others. And I want my friends in on it too. It is also true that I don’t have to worry where my next bowl of rice is coming from but if I look at these pictures and something inside me doesn’t resonate than I am more dead than the dead. I am sure of that too.