Hey All!

I haven’t blogged on here for a while now, so firstly i would like to extend my apologies I know all of you must have missed me so much, lol.

Ok so where to start…. so much has happened over the past 8 weeks or so.  We had our first meeting which was open to all at the Idea Store in Whitechapel and it went really well. We discussed the ideas of the first event and also of project 1, Dhaka street children.

From there onwards, we formalized a board.  The make up of the board is alarmingly diverse which is fantastic.  we have appointed two non executive directors, Saleh Ahmed and Mohammed Abdul Alim who are in advisory positions for Restless Beings.  We also have a co-coordinator in Bangladesh who is leading our efforts there.  In the UK we have a bunch of board members who are full of energy, raring to get on with our first project.

I visited Bangladesh over the Xmas period…what an experience; I met some of the street children that are in Shishu Tori care.  Shishu Tori are really doing a fantastic job there and we hope to form a long lasting partnership with them.  Also while I was there, I visited some slum areas and I honestly cannot describe in words the conditions which they are living in.  Thankfully, I have filmed everything and so the good news is that we shall soon have a short docu that everyone can watch to truly understand the scale of problems that these hapless children are facing.

On my return, we have held another board meeting where our strategy for project one has been discussed.  We will be meeting again in the next week or so to finalize these plans, so watch this space.  Unfortunately, one of the directors has also gone through a very distressing time, having lost one of her parents.  I hope we will all sincerely pray for the deceased and also for the family.

We shall be back very shortly, and more than ever before, we will have an action plan which includes all of us, including you the reader.  we may not be able to eradicate child abuse and poverty, but we most definitely will have positive impact on some lives.  The success depends upon how active we chose to be!

posted by Mabrur

Good afternoon

 

Apologies, I have been very busy with work and have not had the chance to blog away.

I was wondering if everyone has noticed the sudden (once again) emergence of food and health related programmes on terrestrial television? Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver alongside a handful of other chefs seem to have gone on this passionate journey of the great organic and free range (Food Fight, Channel 4) and others are discovering ways in which we can lose weight or change our life by starting at the gut… its all quite timely considering the creeping obesity epidemic in the UK.

 

I watched a programme last night called ‘Fast food Junkies’ which was both light entertainment as well as quite worthy in its message.

It gathered a group of four very overweight and unfit members of the British public who were either loyal fans of their nearest curry house or lived on microwave food and didn’t know what parts of the body to use when and if they had to actually run for the bus. Basically, they were very unfit.

Anyways, the producers shipped these lardy beings off to the northern parts of Pakistan and dumped them in the mountain villages where the Shin Shao people resided. This Pakistani community is known for having one of the healthiest diets in the world. One which was varied in its choices ranging from fresh grown veg, to yak meat and cheese, inevitable enhanced by cooking methods which were not ones that resembled the British fry up and a physical lifestyle that revolved around the gathering, cooking and working off of that food (aah the life, no London tubes or traffic wardens).

The fatty four inevitably benefited from their exposure to this community and left with a pink glow in their cheeks, a less saturated nature about them and a general sense of optimism about their life expectancy. Watching their ‘difficult trials’ (of which most of it was learning to walk for more than five minutes without falling to the floor in exasperation) was entertaining but what I gathered from it was the loss of basic common sense and respect of and for our bodies that many countries in both the east, south, west and north have accumulated.

I am guilty of many a time when I happily eat through a huge packet of crisps and a diet coke whilst watching TV and knowing that it will clog up something or convert into fatty globules in my body. Our appreciation of physical activity and good food has gone down the drain because of companies filling their pockets with ‘cheaper’, ‘easier’ and ‘quicker’ ways to eat and live. Oliver’s ranting and raving about better school meals etc has done a world of good but how effective is it for the greater picture… do we really need to fuss so much about where to buy our food and what brand is better and which percentage of what is healthier than what..?!!!

Surely if we all started to get rid of the junk, realise our bodies need movement and started to grow and cook our own food, things would start to change?!!

I agree that a free range egg and chicken would make more sense then one that has been cooped up in a warehouse where space is non existent. But, organic olive oil, non imported aubergines in favour of farmers markets… etc etc… that’s going too far, people still haven’t got round to the idea of eliminating fatty foods from their diet let alone reaching for the organic hemp seed cereal on the top shelf of their local health food store..  

I think we need to realise that ’living of the fat of the land’ isn’t such an archaic agency of survival as our modern, fast paced way of life likes to believe and assert.

 

Peace and Peas

 

Mushroom

Hey all and a happy new year

 

Hope everybody’s holidays and festivities went well and we are all ready to get back to the normality of taxes and tubes and way too many cups of coffee !!??

 

Firstly, I need a detox. I need to find myself a machine that will wake me up with a prune juice and remind me to drink lemon water before bedtime and drink three litres of water during the day and get rid of all chocolate, caffeine and cake from my diet…

I took the easy root and graced my nearest health store with my ‘in need of a new health plan’ self and bought it bottled – thanks to Solgar’s Detox complex and top ups on a good multivitamin and multi-mineral.. I see the silver lining… no new years  resolutions this year, just a desire to actually remember to not take my body for granted.

 

Right, before I indulge in a large bowl of green leafy stuff and more fruit fruit fruit tea, I thought I will give you all an update on restlessbeings. Mabrur, one of the directors is currently in Bangladesh and will return some time next week. Last week he made a trip to Shishu Tori offices in Dhaka and met the friendly staff and also went to do a spot of filming around the city. My last conversation with him consisted of - 

 

Mabrur: I can’t describe it, Rahima, we must all do something for these guys, honestly, you have to be here, and they are so young and so helpless. Some have given up and are just lost in their state of helplessness but others still have that spark to want to do something. We have to help them…. As I filmed them and talked to the class that sat in Kamalpur station in the Schools under the sky project (one shishutori runs).. I could see their abusers only a few metres away from them…standing and watching me and the children. They wait until the class is over before using the children for their own needs…sex, stealing, violence or sheer mental abuse….its disgusting…. I felt really useless that I spent such little time with them and had to return to the rest of my trip there without actually giving them, there and then, an escape route… “

 

And on that note… I shall wait for Mabrur to return and tell you all, the rest fo what he did, saw, heard and felt.

 

Until then,

 

Ciao Ciao

 

Mushroom