Afternoon

 

Eid Mubarak to those who are celebrating today and to those who already did yesterday, how’s the stomach?

Mine was, as always another family, samosa and syrup coated almond flaked affair and quiet nice at that too.

There was a lot of food, my mum made pilau, lamb chops, the meat cooked from the q’urbani (religious sacrificial meat), a big salad, small fritters, sweet shondesh (a traditional Bengali sweet made from flour and sugar etc), the savory version of the sweet shondesh (with salt ofcorse) and coconut pastries. I made two types of halva (traditional south Asian sweet made from semolina and almond flour), one with raisins and one with pistachios. In addition to this, I always made spicy sesame seed coated chicken and other small pockets of sweet and savory edible mouthfuls.

The food was in mountains on the table and as the day drew, the volumes didn’t seem to be vanishing. I woke this morning to a kitchen that was still brimming with food that would have be disposed if not eaten by the end of today or food that would be re-prepared so it could be stuck in sandwiches or salads. Just made me realise how luck we are, at this bitterly cold time of the year, to have our bellies and pantries full of all that is necessary and all that is desirable. I just hope the glutton and ‘extra’ reduces over the years in my house so we too can feel a little less guilty when children crawl the floor looking for a grub to eat.

 

heres an organisation that seems to have found one of the keys to diminishing hunger ahead of time.. http://www.wfp.org/english/

 

 

Happy holidays

 

Mushroom

Afternoon all merry holly mistletoe reindeer red nose Santa loving people, tis the season to give, eat and give

and for everyone not celebrating Christmas or Yule or Eid or anything, there’s always buy one get one free festive chocolates to devour whilst watching trash tv and the fireworks well into the new year.

What a perfect way to start the new year ey, fat, a hole in your bank account, severely diabetic and well… very merry, lol.

 

Anyways, I haven’t written for a while, two reasons, and sheer laziness and number two, I was recovering from hat horrible bacterial colonisation in my body otherwise known as the great cold.

Today, I spent a chunk of my day protesting for cleaners at my work place, SOAS. I don’t know if everyone is aware, but SOAS cleaners and some at Birkbeck and other academic institutions get paid the minimum wage and do not get paid when they are sick or on annual leave. This is absolutely disgusting. Many are Spanish men in their thirties, who have moved to London with hopes of providing more for their families, but instead, they are faced with poor wages and absolute inequality in terms of how they are seen alongside other staff and their wage band is a reflection of that. Its disgusting. These cleaners deserve a London living wage at least which is realistic to what is required for these men with families. The protests have been occurring throughout the year with an overall intention to overthrow the ludicrous current pay that the governing bodies have applied and replace them with wages that are fairer to these cleaners who work longer hours then the admin staff and yet get paid more, and on top, are not even given basic staff privileges that are offered to everyone else across the board. It’s disgraceful and I think, SOAS as a place of equality, egalitarianism and diversity needs to fix up and brush before these things let their image down.

 

The cleaning service is contracted out to a private company called Ocean Contract Cleaning that employs workers on the minimum wage so its isn’t all SOAS’s fault/ Many of the cleaners had not received a contract and some of them had been told that their hours would be reduced.

Following the protest, the company has now agreed to SOME of the cleaners’ demands. Activists (us) are celebrating this victory and plan to increase the pressure in the new year for SOAS to guarantee cleaners £7.05 per hour, sick pay, holiday entitlement and union rights. Just as they deserve. J

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=9989 (background information on the approach the government is taking)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSPl9n792jw (the you tube demo of the one that took place earlier in the year)

 

 

Post by Mushroom

I’m just about to leave work. Its Saturday tomorrow and I am working from 7 in the morning till 10pm and again on Sunday. The joys of events management and the not so much -joys of bags under my eyes, stress lines, clinical exhaustion and an undying desire to OD on Prozac.

 

Why do we all work so much?

I know we need the money to eat and enjoy the lifestyle that is oh so ‘necessary’, but surely, there must be more than working working and well…working (??!!!)

I guess the groan of my day is one that I’m sure many, if not all, feel at least once a week, month or year (the latter is for fat cats who are workaholics and earn more then a country does in ten years)….

Wouldn’t life be so much nicer if we returned to the hunter gatherer days, grunting, hunting, eating, grunting and some more grunting…..

Or at least…a testimony to them…..

Sometimes, I wake up, surrounded by my cosmopolitan polish and wish that I could just go out and hunt for my days food and then return to wonder in selfish idle walking and talking… that would be bliss… instead, I rush my way through a sleepy headed morning, rugby wrestle onto the overhead so that I can smell armpits and last nights breath and stale coffee on the central line, run to work because it was (the central line) inevitably delayed and look frustrated and apologetic to my manager as if to justify my poor punctuality for the rest of the year….. We all do this…. why?

 

I just don’t get it (in the whinging voice of Nicky from last years big brother…don’t ask… I was once a loyal voyeur of that pesky programme)

Sigh

 

Sigh

Posted by Mushroom

Update of the Week!  

 

Wednesday, 5^th December, Idea Store, Whitechapel, London, 7pm-8pm

 

We held our first meeting on Wednesday, and as one of the founders of the organisation, I felt it was an absolute success.

 

We started our meeting shortly after 7pm and firstly introduced ourselves (the founders) and talked briefly about why we wanted to embark on this journey.  We asked all of our attendees to introduce themselves too.  With all the formalities out of the way, the vision, in terms of strategy was discussed.  We shared with our guests our passion for why we felt we should be giving voices to pockets of marginalised communities across the globe, across creeds, across races, and across religions.

 

Shortly afterwards, a short video was played (you can find this on our website) and hence the introduction to our first project; Dhaka Street Children.  After sharing a few facts and shedding some light on our partner organisation, we launched into our plans for our first event, in February, an Art Exhibition and Auction, titled ‘Lost In (kn)Own Spaces’.

 

We took a few questions from the guests and these included, talking more in detail about the role of members and board officers, to discussing the role of our partner NGO.  A very valid question was posed with regards to the longevity of each project.  Fair to say, I think all of our attendees were positively excited with our response, that we will see each and every project through to not only completion, but also keeping strong links with the community we work with.

 

Thereafter, we formalised our board officers.  The organisation structure is now as follows:

 

Mabrur Ahmed & Rahima Begum, Founders and Directors

 

Rabina Khan, Board Officer

Yousuf Goni, Board Officer

Nancy Kamal, Board Officer

Md Abdul Kadir, Board Officer

Sima Khatun, Board Officer

Abu Talha, Board Officer

Muneer & Sukina (Poetic Pilgrimage), Board Officer.

 

Our board is an open circle, whereby those who feel that they can commit their extra time, effort and passion and who share our vision can join.  Roles are not set in stone, in the sense that we want to promote fully, lucid flexibility matched by personal expertise.  Our vision is that in time, we will be able to develop this board so that each officer is project managing individual aspects of a project with constant support form the directors.  If you would like to join this board, get in touch with us and we will advise you accordingly.

Love, Light and Lollipops,

 The restlessbeings Team.

I am ill today. I have caught the head munching, nose clogging, throat scraping cold bug and it’s now having a rave in my body. Mother Nature was cruel to me on Friday as I made my way home from work, soaked to the bone in rain water infused with acid from the London fumes.

To deviate, productively… I don’t understand poverty…. I mean, some measure it through the economic fluctuations of a country, whilst others take a social and historical stance at it. I personally couldn’t care less what it’s measured in, I just do not understand why it still exists in such severe volumes. Why are there still children in the world picking food and scraps from garbage bins or dumps?? Why there are young girls in Thailand selling their body or Indian boys working for over fifteen hours on a weaving machine making rugs when they should be at school??? Or.. why there are mothers feeding their children the non existent milk in their breasts while cars drive by and fumes are also inhaled?? I just understand why countries can say that they don’t have enough shopping centres or cafes or gyms when there are homeless people. It may sound like such a silly statement or expression of fury, a naive scream and shout at the world but I just don’t understand why the world can gather together and our taxes can pay the building of something like a stadium for the Olympics and yet we cannot build a measly one bedroom flat for a family who have no home and move from street to street… I don’t understand why, as a city, London would rather invest in a new super plush mall then a homeless centre??? Why does the greater mass find it so goddamn difficult to roll up their sleeves and give?? Why is it that every small act of charity that is done has to be such an effort? I just do not understand, and never will.

Sigh.

Mushroom

I look at the balance in my account and moan and groan and join the poor student brigade even though i am fully employes. I complain about Lodnon being expensive but completely look past the three pairs of shoes and bolero jacket i baught this month without a cause. I guess we all, well, most of us, have this way of living. We are never satisfied. its the ienevitability of our cycles of life. But lets just, for a few minutes read about those that dont have much. we might not feel luckier afterwards, but at least we’ll know… and when you know and dont do something about it… the guilt kicks in and like every director of a charity as restlessbeings, i will make this plea and ask us all, to do something… spare a penny, a bit of time, do some field work, some reserach, go to a country where our skills would be useful and apply them, or look at the needs in our own country and community and do the same.

Below is just a little update on whats happening in bangladesh. Which is the sevneties was the basket case in the world. it was in cry for help as it lacked many sources of food and health services. This may be the basket case once again with recent situation - cyclone etc - but we have to also realise, that quietly, many villages have been doing well. By educating their women (mainly), and learning sustaible farming, these pockets of people are surviving, quite happily. But the cylcone has diminished much of that. I am digressing from the topic, this can be discussed later, but what i just wanted to re-iterate from all of the above and the below, is that, those things these villagers have learnt, are skills that people like us have offered them. Thats what we need to do. Our lives are busy, but time is in abundant, we sleep for 8 hours!!! (some more or less) In addition, in the light of the recent crisis in bangaldesh, in particular the south, i just want us to remember, that as important as it is for us to do what ever it is that we can to bring some form of relief to those in need, we also have to keep in the back of our minds, that there are others, in particularly children, who had nothing to start with…. what happens to them? where do they go? who helps them? who will make a home for a child who had no home?

.. just something to think about.

If you have some time, read below: Thank you

There has been an alarming rise in the number of street children in the major cities of Bangladesh. The increase is linked to recent figures released by the government which show that the urban population of Bangladesh continues to grow by around nine percent a year. The plight of the street children has given domestic and international aid agencies serious cause for concern. It is possible to smell the Demra dump on the east of Dhaka from over a mile away.

One of the biggest rubbish dumps in the city, it is a vast area the size of several football pitches. The stench as you walk closer is so over-whelming it is hard for the uninitiated to resist vomiting. This huge wasteland in some respects resembles the a scene after the bombs have been dropped in the movie Apocalypse Now.

It is difficult to believe that anybody can survive in such an environment.

But every morning as the sun rises a host of children walk across this vast mound of rotting rubbish scavenging for used plastic water bottles or similar rubbish. They can sell these items for a paltry fee to a second-hand shop that operates on the outskirts of the dump.

Grinding poverty

There are least 20 children who live in the dump. Some are orphans and some live with their parents. They spend their days with a sack over their shoulders, ceaselessly scouring through the rubbish . "We find all sorts of things, from old bottles and containers to cans and plastic containers," says eight-year-old Saber. "On a good day we can earn as much as Tk 100 (roughly two dollars) a day. " The best way to find valuable things is to follow the mechanical digger as it unearths the rubbish. "It can go quite deep and some of the best things are buried beneath the surface."

The children of the dump have no visible support from the numerous aid agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that operate in Bangladesh. But these agencies face an increasingly difficult job as the number of street children grows significantly on an annual basis.

I was and am extremely restless

I wonder if my parents, having moved to the UK and started life here ( a life which, I cant complain, is comfortable and mosquito and humidity free), did the best thing for me, or my generation.

Now, I have had the privilege to a degree and an MA and lead the last 23 years in quite a cosy manner. I am now a lover of all things Japanese in the western mainstream, love skinny jeans and voluminous dresses, read books about the trials and tribulations of the yummy mummy or the afghani woman’s pain, watch US TV, moan about the British government yet love my cafe breakfasts and earl grey and have a passion for asparagus and ice-cream. This is juggled with my love of cotton sari’s in the summer, Hindi music, all that idyllic landscape that is mustered up when south Asia springs to mind, the tabla, cow skin satchels with rangoli patterns and henna and baul music and modern bangla pop….and to frame this all, my religious values which inevitably brings with it the beauty I see in Islam (I love having god in my life), the books and prayer mats, all things mosaic and arabesque, mughal paintings, minarets and the call of the adhan in the chaos of cosmopolitan life in London.

For me, these facets are my part of my day to day existence. A marriage of culture, religion, habit, location and my biological makeup which screams in delight at the sight of peep toes heels and goes weak at the knees when digesting a great khutba.

But what I do wonder sometimes is, am I sell out? Are we just lovers of so much because we are exposed but do not solely belong to any? Am I the jack of all trades in culture and lifestyle?

By bringing me here, I feel my parents may have jeopardised my ability to belong to something solely. Or maybe not. Sometimes I wake up patriotic and wishing to be in the land of monsoon rain and street food and fans and rickshaws whilst at other times, I am grateful to have London to surround me in all its cardboard city, coffee and free newspaper glory. I said to a friend this morning ‘wouldn’t it be nice to wake up and be in a country where I spoke the language, wore the national/cultural dress, worked for the community and alongside the same’. But at the same time, where would the fun of diversity, the beauty of cultural richness and the excitement of difference be? I guess, my parents have been the catalyst to my state of dis-location but at the same time, despite my presence in the whirlwind of diaspora, I shouldn’t complain.

Home may be, tangibly in London, but mentally, for me, it is somewhere else…not sure where, maybe a concoction of all those differences above to create a whole new difference. I guess spirituality just blurs all this even more.

Just another thought – babble, whatever.

Posted by Mushroom

Mushroom’s thought of the day:

He who saves one life, saves the world entire.

–Talmud

A traveler was walking along a beach when he saw a woman scooping up starfish off the sand and tossing them into the waves. Curious, he asked her what she was doing.

The woman replied:

‘When the tide goes out, it leaves these starfish stranded on the beach. They will dry up and die before the tide comes back in, so I am throwing them back into the sea where they can live.’

The traveler then asked her:

‘But this beach is miles long and there are hundreds of stranded starfish, many will die before you reach them — do you really think throwing back a few starfish is really going to make a difference?’
The woman picked up a starfish and looked at it, then she threw it into the waves and said: ‘It makes a difference to this one.’

–Popular fable

Afternoon all.

I spent the weekend at my brother’s place. This equates to my sister-in-laws smothering via food and banter peppered with her bouts of OCD and complaints of pregnancy (she is 8.5 months pregnant). It also consisted of sleeping in my ten year old niece’s bedroom and having to be the biggest, correction, second biggest fan of Hanna Montana (a US kids programme) and Power Rangers (need I say more) for my 6 year old nephew Abid.

Saima, my niece, has a passion, like many children her age, with the colour pink, shiny surfaces, all things fluffy and stationary in the most colourfully wacky shapes and sizes. I woke up Sunday morning, in the centre of a four poster bed with pink fabric peonies and daisy’s hanging from one side, a soft pink warm glow of Sunday morning light and frilly lacy stuff with a princess printed over it hanging from her light fitting. For a 23 year old, it was a heady return to an unfamiliar youth (I was a bit of tomboy). Saima’s room was brimming with all the comforts of her likes and dreams and necessities. From her day to day clothes of jeans and sweaters and converse trainers in as many colours as one can afford to the delicate chiffons and satins of her south asian outfits, bought by mum for eid and many other occasions. This is surrounded by books, pencils, jewellery, shoes, bags, toys and so on. Saima, like any human being, was accustomed to these objects which for her, were now necessities and facets of her normality. Her expectations were big, and dreams were set in places exotic and careers fantastic. For Saima, the roof above her head, the food being prepared for dinner, the shoes and socks on the washing line and her soft warm linen and pillow, are her rights.

I couldn’t help but wonder what a child like Saima would be doing on the streets in a cold cardboard city night in Dhaka. Such thoughts had roamed on my mind for many years now. I would frequently conjur up this parallel location of opposition against my norm and wonder. Saima, is a warm, generous and compassionate child who was aware that what she has she is lucky to have and yet, simultaneously, expectant of more as all children are her age. This unfortunately is non existent for all those children, in Dhaka or any other city, on the streets around the world.

For these children, natural distaters, state economy busts, city development, city corruption etc etc are all irrelevant specs in their lives. Their concern is to find and eat food. To find and sleep somewhere where they wont wake up to a looming police officer or a dog licking their face or a kick in the stomach.

For these children, all things fluffy, shiny, pink and warm are just figments of an imgianation which too is decaying and becoming a distant memory. Waking up in Saima’s bed on Sunday made me grateful of what my brother and his wife were able to provide her with. It made me grateful that she was downstairs having breakfast and watching another US teen drama and not waking up on the cold marble floor of a middle aged man’s abode who may have payed her a few pennies for a nights sex. Saima, like all our nephews, nieces, daughters, sisters, brothers, and sons, is lucky to be in the location of ipods and in the climate of comfort and not caught up in the cycle of hunger and money and money and hunger.

Saima unlike the many Nilofer’s, Milly’s, Fatema’s, Priti’s, Selina’s, Zahras’ and Luthfa’s can come home everyday to a house where food is accessible and in bounty in the kitchen and the bed is always clean and the water drinkable. While she sits and chews her way through her sandwich and gets ready for her evening Arabic tutorial, the other girls are gathering their rags to go to another part of the city where apparently there may be more food on the streets and more sex to be sold. Unlike my niece, these girls have made the dirty platforms of the railway stations, the grubby alleyways of the backstreet malls and the entrances and exits of the district shanty towns, their abode.

My niece will grow up and into a world of careers, good skin, gyms, mosques, churches, malls, tv, university and monthly pay cheques. Whereas these girls still have to find the next meal before they can contemplate a life of adulthood, which, inevitable, would either be that of a prostitute, a woman with aids laying in an infected bed in a forgotten hospital, or beaten to a pulp and sitting isolated on the floor of a kitchen to which she is shackled.

The likelihood of any of the above is miniscule. Most of these girls don’t even make it past 13.

And so, I wake up, brush my teeth with my new toothbrush, apply my face cream and clean clothes and join Saima in the living room with bowl of cereal and carry on with the monotonies of my expected comfort… while at the back of my mind, thrives a growing sense of guilt and despair.

Posted by Mushroom

Hey all, just a quick update of the strategic decisions of the Restless Beings. It has been decided that we were to go for a not-for-profit status, and Restless Beings has now been registered with Companies House England and Wales. I am happy to announce that they were thrilled with our proposal and we were granted this status as of immeadiate effect.

Futhermore, we have been in touch with a number of different NGO’s and charities doing some great work with children in street situations in Bangladesh and in particular Dhaka. We have discussed, digressed and discussed some more, and I am pleased to announce that Shishu Tori, a local NGO working with children on the streets of Dhaka have been selected to be our chosen working partner in Bangladesh. Currently we are discussing two projects which are of particular interest. Firstly, we have the ‘Schools Under The Sky’ project, which is held six days per week in two outdoor locations in Dhaka. Staff, hold lessons in english, bangla, math and hygiene. Typical attendance is around 25 per session. The second project is still in proposal stage. They have proposed to build a shelter for girls who have fallen victim to domestic and sexual violence. These girls are having sex with upto 12 men per day in return for a total of 50 Taka (about 40p). Their ages range from as young as 8 to 16.

Currently Shishu Tori, are funded by local donors i.e friends and family of the founders. Their resources are minimal yet their reach to kids is massive. We hope not only to raise funds from our proposed event but also to raise awareness and set up a long term collaboration with Shishu Tori. Watch This Space for more updates!!!!

Finally, we now have a group created on Facebook, so please do invite your friends to Restless Beings, the more beings that we have and the more restless that we are, the more people we can help!