Life in a Thali

Time to resurrect this blog! I can’t believe that it’s been 6 months since I last updated it, but to my defence a lot has been going on what with exams, reports, moves, weddings… But I’m now settled in again, with a new flat and a job till end of November, so it’s time to get back on track.

However I’m still in a reading mojo slump, and even the few books I do finish aren’t necessarily about cultures, so I’ve decided to widen this blog’s focus. It will now be a space for any cultures related tidbit I want to share: book reviews but also movies, past or present anecdotes, exhibitions… Whatever might come up! Hopefully that will make the blog more interesting and enable me to update more often than once every 2 months when I finish a book.

SO… to launch this new version of the blog, let me share with you the fascinating evening I had yesterday. I ‘noticed’ a few days ago that my new flat is walking distance from my favorite museum in Paris, or rather the only museum I really appreciate (I’m not really a fan of museums or pictorial art…), because it’s dedicated to ‘primitive arts’ from all over the world and what they tell us about the different cultures involved and interactions between them: right up my street then, even if looking at the past rather than the present. What I didn’t realize until 2 days ago is that the museum also has a contemporary and larger approach of these themes, through temporary exhibitions, film viewings, conferences, debates, themed visits of the collections and particular areas of Paris…  a full program of cultures related activities and debates, happening nearly every day, 20 mn away from my flat, and most of them free of charge. Of course, I had to try it out.

So yesterday I hurried out of work to watch 3 short documentary films by Afghani directors, on the theme of ‘Children in Kabul’, followed by a q&a session with one of the directors and a couple of people involved in the project. It was beautiful, and great food for thought. Each of the 3 films focused on particular children:

The first showed 2 child musicians, who attend one of the music schools which have appeared after the departure of the Taliban, to teach children about the music which had been banned for years. We see them as they learn how to play their instruments, following the teachings of ‘masters’, but also as they perform in small events to help out their family financially and face the mistrust of neighbors who have come to see music as evil.

The second delved into a brick factory and the kids who work there for weeks at a time, far from their homes and families.

Finally, the third followed young boys who live from washing cars at road crossings and in parking lots. It struck me particularly because one of the boys looked uncannily like one I met as I was volunteering in a Mexican program for street children a few years ago. Rodolfo was his name, and he and his brothers would perform fire-eating tricks at streetlights to earn their upkeep, and their mother’s booze. Bulbul, the afghani boy in the film, washes cars rather than performs tricks, but other than that it could have been the same boy.

Opposite sides of the earth, radically different cultures and political/ economical situations, and yet similar children, hardships but also appetite for life. Because those kids, in the films as in my Mexican experience, are still kids. Despite the hard labor, the contempt from most people, the absence of adults to protect them and send them to school… they still fool around like kids and bring much needed comic relief moments with their highly politically incorrect come-backs.

During the Q&A the director said that he wasn’t trying to pass along any message in his film, just to show things as they are. But questions, difficult ones, certainly abound for the viewer. What should we think of these kids’ lives? Of them having to work? Of their parents who seem strangely inactive? Of the people who refuse to pay the kids for washing their cars?

The program I volunteered for in Mexico advocated strongly against giving money to child beggars/ workers, as it only anchors them more in the street and a few coins given out of pity for their situation at such a young age won’t give them a future. But seeing the kids in the film hard at work till late at night, despairing because a client had only given them 10 cents or another refused to have his car washed, and they were still far from the minimum they needed for the day, I felt a twinge of guilt for all those times I passed child beggars and refused to give them anything. Of course if I went back I’d do the same thing, because there is no way I’m paying for the child’s parents’ booze, or encouraging him to stay in the street rather than returning to school. But there are different ways of seeing things, and unless we offer a viable alternative (school without monetary compensation to help the family unfortunately isn’t one of them), who are we to judge?

A couple of years ago I participated, through my student solidarity organization, in workshops led by an NGO activist to raise awareness about development issues and intercultural relationships. He was brilliant and gave us a real understanding of how complicated development issues are, and how messy things can get when one tries to ‘help’ someone from another culture, without really understanding the situation. But he was very extreme in his opinions. Amongst other things, I learned one day that he advocated children’s ‘right to work’.

Yes, that was and still is a real shocker. But as I discussed it with him I came to understand his point of view: in some countries, in some situations, children NEED to work. If they don’t, nobody can provide food for them. They don’t have an alternative, they have to work. But child labor being illegal, all they can do is clandestine work, or beg. If it was legal, perhaps they could have a safer, legally supervised work environment, which would also leave them time to attend school a few hours a day. But as it is they are completely vulnerable. And in some cultures, supervised work is a form of education: a way of transmitting a trade through apprenticeship from a young age, or a way of teaching responsibility.

Is that a good enough reasoning? Should the ideal of work free childhoods be dropped for darker but more realistic alternatives? I don’t know. But it certainly shows that there are more ways than one to view even those things which seem fundamentally obvious to us. Sort of like the Camel Bookmobile dilemma isn’t it?

The films were made as part of the Varan Workshops: film-making trainings which were created by Jean Rouch, when In 1978, the young Mozambican Republic asked him and other famous directors to film the changes occurring in the country. He preferred to train Mozambicans and empower them to film the reality of their country, which they knew better than any foreigner, themselves. It is this work which he has continued ever since, and I am grateful as it offers us windows in other realities.