Alison Stuart - historical fiction author

Last night I dreamed of lions

Last night I dreamed of lions. Not the proud, languid beasts of the African plains but beasts of a nightmare, lurking in a darkened world beyond the house, savage eyes reflecting light from torches. I woke in a sweat. The dream had taken me back to the Africa of my childhood and it awakened in the adult, the one overwhelming emotion of the first nine years of my life – fear.

A Kenyan childhood, conjures up images of endless savannahs and a child running free among the animals, as in a sort of Disney movie or Discovery Channel documentary. In reality my childhood was far more suburban. We lived in comfortable company bungalows in respectable suburbs of Nairobi. The chance of a real lion straying into our garden was remote, so what were the lions of my nightmares?

A child accepts their childhood for what it is. There is no world beyond that of the immediate family and as long as they are secure within that family they do not stop to analyse the world beyond or consider for a moment that they may be, as the Chinese curse says, living in interesting times.

In the early 1960s Kenya experienced all the pangs of birth as an independent nation making it a volatile and a frightening place. My father, pursuing an army career based on the decline and fall of the British Empire had come to Kenya to subdue the Mau Mau rebellion. My mother had been born in Kenya and dragged kicking and screaming to England at the age of fifteen. As soon as she could she had returned to Kenya with her social workers qualification to work with children. Both of them loved the country with a deep and abiding passion that attached itself to the red "muram" dust of the very earth.

Caught in the cross fire of an uncertain world I was too young to understand, my fears began to take root. They began at home. The primary concern of all householders was burglary. Audacious thieves would think nothing of slipping into the house, even while the householders were at home and stealing what they could lay their hands on. All our windows were fitted with “burglar proof” wire, riveted steel mesh. However even that did not deter the burglars.

There were “pole fishers”, thieves equipped with long poles with hooks on the end who would slide their poles through the part of the mesh cut out to allow for the window to be opened and closed. They would hook anything portable that could be pulled through that gap. My mother woke one morning to the sound of my brother, then a baby, crying pitifully. She found his cot had been pulled over to the window and all his blankets and sheets, top and bottom, hooked off him. Although rather cold, he was lucky to be uninjured. On another occasion thieves managed to scale a twelve foot wall to enter my parent's bedroom while my parents watched television in the lounge room. It had not been considered necessary to "burglar proof" that one window.

Normal social interaction with other children was limited. I could not go by myself to visit a friend, even if they lived a couple of doors away. I had to be taken and brought back. I don’t think it was ever said to my face but I must have gleaned the reason, the potential risk of kidnap from somewhere. Small wonder I began to see “bogey men” everywhere. As I grew older, they no longer existed in the world outside my bedroom window but they lurked under my bed. I added the fear of being stabbed through the mattress to my steadily mounting list of risk areas.

As I lay in my bed at night, watching the shadows of the trees dancing on the curtains, my over active imagination would make out shadowy figures moving outside my window, eyes appearing in the gaps in the curtain. Our garden would be peopled with these dark, shadowy figures full of evil intent with glowing eyes, the lions of my nightmare. I would lie perfectly still in my bed, hardly breathing in the hope that the watching eyes at the window would not detect me.

There were real threats. A threatened mutiny in the army meant children had to be taken to school under armed protection. In reality my mother took me as normal but I do remember that day. Maybe the other children boasted of it at lunchtime and I was disappointed that I wasn’t accorded armed escort. There were the rifles turned on our car by the palace guards of the newly “elected” President of Uganda, Idi Amin on a tour of Uganda. Then there was a charging elephant in Tsavo National Park. All exciting stuff but not to me. In my nine short years I was accumulating a fair inventory of fears.

Added to the list was school. Education was based on the English "Eleven Plus" after which you were expected to attend Boarding School in England. I attended both my schools in a state of complete misery as I endured archaic teaching methods and discipline which made Jane Eyre's Lowood School look progressive.

First there was Kestrel Manor, presided over by a woman by the name of “Mrs. Westerhuis”. She was a red headed dragon of a woman who ruled by terror. If you did not have the requisite handkerchief in your pocket you were kept in at playtime, forced to sit on the floor with your back against the wall, in silence. I was a very conforming child and the day this happened to me, I spent the entire time in tears of mortification. But worse and far more serious was the day I got into trouble for talking in class. My fellow miscreant and I were hauled away to the bathroom of Mrs. W.'s attached house and beaten over the knuckles with her wooden ruler. It is a ruler I remember to this day, the inches marked off in alternating blue and cream paint. No one had ever hit me before. The shame and the shock rather than the pain terrified me.

My second school was the newly established “Hillcrest School” (which I believe still exists today as a thriving school). Its origins were modest, a couple of hundred students crowded into a building a few hundred yards from the Presidential Palace.

Being in such close proximity to the country's leader, Jomo Kenyatta had its disadvantages. When the President had been away and was due home, the entire school turned out to greet him. This entailed long hours of sitting on the side of the road in the hot sun in utter boredom picking at the gravel on the road. His open topped car would finally appear, inevitably at least an hour later than expected. The “Mzee” (old man) would be sitting in state in the back seat, waving his trade mark fly whisk. “Harambi” we would dutifully cry before being returned to lessons.

It was a hateful time. Placed in a class a year above my social age group, I struggled pitifully, particularly in Maths and I am ashamed to say I developed a penchant for cheating during Maths (a habit that was literally beaten out of me at my first shool in Australia by the straight talking Australian girls!). If Mrs. Westerhuis was a bully, I now had a new flame haired bete noir, Mrs. Noad, the deputy principal. One of the boys claimed to have secured one of her hairs and established under a microscope that it was, in fact, dyed. They had a chant about her "Mrs. Noad ate a toad in the middle of the road". My other tormentor was an odious young man called Mr Riley who drove an antique red sports car an affectation which sat oddly with his prematurely bald head and sticking-out ears. He seemed to have a particular dislike of me, once making me recreate an entire terms' work in “Scripture” because I had misplaced my exercise book.

School lunches were my particular misery. I can still smell them – the meat was unidentifiable, usually boiled and mostly gristle. I once refused to eat the revolting offering on my plate and thus ensued a Mexican stand off between myself and the poor teacher on duty who declared I was not leaving the dining room until I had eaten it. I missed the entire lunch hour while she sat glaring at me and I sat doggedly staring at my plate through the tears of humiliation. I think I won, in that the plate went back with the gelatinous mess still on it but the price was the loss of the lunch hour for both of us.

I was never physically abused at Hillcrest but I was never happy there, trying desperately to avoid trouble from "Noad the Toad" and the awful Riley and battling a growing dislike and terror of mathematics. The only bright spot was the establishment of one close friendship that has endured to this day. Faced with the prospect of being exiled to boarding school in England at the age of eleven, it was little wonder I suffered from continual minor (and some major) illnesses.

After a reconnaissance visit to Australia (in true army style), my father announced we were emigrating, leaving the country he and my mother loved so deeply because they saw no future there for my brother and I. I cannot recall my initial feelings on that announcement but in geography I had studied Australia. A recently completed project on the Ord River scheme (an odd choice of assignment you would think) may not have prepared me from life in Australia but the text book we used was full of pictures of happy children playing together in complete freedom. I could see in their eyes that they had nothing to be frightened of and I knew that if I went to live in Australia I would no longer be afraid. There were no lions lurking in the dark in the gardens in Australia.

Letter From Malaysia

Singapore, 17th April 2001

Dear Mum and Dad,

Today marks the anniversary of our arrival in Singapore. For all its highs and lows the year does seem to have vanished. We will probably get together with our fellow exiles sometime over the weekend and marvel at the changes in all of us since we arrived.

Well we did survive our Malaysian safari although David wrenched his back, our friend got a bad cold with associated asthma and I got stung by an anonymous insect. More importantly the car survived with all its tyres and windscreen wipers.

So as promised the narrative of our trip:

Day 1 - 9th April: Malacca

Each time I go back to Malacca it seems to have lost a little bit of its individuality. The decrepit monuments from its past have always been part of its charm. Unfortunately the value of these monuments as tourist drawcards has been acknowledged and they are being sanitised (“Singaporised”). This time it was the old Portugese church of St. Pauls which sits on the hill which once formed the Fort de Santiago. The rough gravel goat paths winding up the hill towards it have been replaced with neat (and no doubt horrendously slippery) tiles. The massive Dutch gravestones bearing dates of the 1650s which used to rest haphazardly on the broken floor of the ruined church now sit on neat concrete plinths, the floor neatly laid with stone. The resting place of St. Xavier was inaccessible, surrounded by the scaffolding used for doing up the only intact part of the church, the sanctuary. The English Graves outside have been painted white or roped off so it is no longer possible to poke about among them, marvelling at the fragility of life in the Far East in the last century where a whole family of mother and four children could die within weeks of each other. Only the marble statue of St. Francis Xavier himself still provides a quirky note to the newly presented tourist attraction. His left hand reaching out down the hill to draw us towards the church is missing. In the old town itself there seems to be more cafes and trendy boutique art shops replacing the broken shophouses where the old craftsmen once plied their trades (or conducted motor cycle repairs). The shophouses too, are being renovated and painted in job lot bright hues which their original builders (with their preference for pastels) would never have envisaged. Oddly though, these bright birds do not look out of place.

Day 2 and 3 - 10th-11th April: Cameron Highlands

I am afraid we came to the Cameron Highlands twenty years too late to see it as a pleasant rural, village but just in time to catch a glimpse of what it might have been before rampant development completely swamps it. Huge towering hotels and apartments, more at home in KL or Singapore, are creeping across the Highlands like a blight, casting an ugly, angry, discordant note among the soft green hills. Occasionally there are glimpses of the old, English style houses among the trees but I doubt that Dad would recognise much of the main towns of Ringlet, Tanah Rata and Brinchang. Oddly they reminded us of the alpine towns you find in the High Country (Mt. Hotham or Falls Creek) with that same sense of not quite belonging you get in the off season when all the snow has melted.

That is not to say it was not still beautiful. Misty blue jungle covered hills still fall away to the distance with whisps of clouds rising from the trees. The old tea plantations still scatter the closer hills like a bright green chenille bed spread. The air is cool and clear and the farms grow the best strawberries I have ever tasted. In the garden of the pretentiously English guest house we stayed in there are roses, pelargoniums and a lemon tree.

We were served tea and scones in the dark beamed lounge room, seated beside an open fire (which was not quite necessary!) in huge, comfortable winged chairs looking out through diamond paned windows. For all its English veneer, this was not England, more a sort of Indian inspired Fawlty Towers. The smiling dark skinned Tamil boy with the name “Trainee” on his shirt appeared to take our breakfast order and in seconds was thoroughly confused when we leaped to the middle of the breakfast menu instead of following the order set down. Eggs appeared before cereal as a consequence. However he had such a nice smile it was hard to be cross. He was born in Ringlet and raised in the Highlands. To him the big, wide world did not extend beyond Kuala Lumpur.

We had an excellent banana leaf curry lunch at a small restaurant in Tanah Rata where the mangy cats wound around our feet. The Indian taxi driver who returned us to our hotel after the “countryside tour” did so at speed with one hand on the wheel, the other conducting a heated conversation on his hand phone in Tamil. Given the winding roads between Tanah Rata and the Lakehouse, we were somewhat concerned for our lives!

Day 4 and 5 - 12th-13th April: Taman Negara

It was touch and go whether we would make the 2.00 boat from Kuala Tembeling. The distance on the map would have indicated this would not be a problem but the narrow, winding roads down from the Cameron Highlands and up to the central plateau added a couple of hours to the journey. However we made it with half an hour to spare (and the boat was late leaving anyway!).

Trustingly we left our car at the jetty and got into the narrow wooden boat where you sat on thin cushions on the deck with little leg space, guaranteed to make you lose the feeling in all parts of your body after an hour. It was a two and a half hour trip upstream to the Park Headquarters and accommodation (somewhat misnamed a “Resort”!). On our boat was a party of high powered tourism officials from around the world who were travelling as guests of Tourism Malaysia. Would it come as no surprise to say that they found no bookings had been made for them?

The verandah of our “chalets” opened out on to the jungle which on the damp evenings resounded with the chatter of hundreds of insects and frogs and howl of monkeys. Visits from nocturnal beasts seemed a regular occurrence with what I am sure was a rat actually sharing our accomodation with us! Monkeys in jack boots jumped on the roofs while something rooted for ants outside our verandah. However despite the evidence of their existence we did not see any of these visitors (even the rat – thank goodness!).

We were talked out of continuing up river to Trenggan Lodge which was probably a good decision as it was definitely more basic in accommodation and it meant we could do more activities at the resort. The first of these was a trip to Lata Berkoh, rapids about 35 mins boat trip up the Tanah River from where we were staying. Booking provided our first bemusement. If we wanted a packed lunch to take with us it would be RM15 extra but because there was 3 of us we had to pay for a mythical 4th person to not only accompany us but also eat lunch. Lunch apparently could only be provided in multiples of 2! Work that one out. Instead we scavenged bread and muffins from breakfast which was just as satisfactory.

The Sungei Tahan is a shallow river, its water tannin stained and surpisingly cold. The long boat (smaller version of the one which had borne us upriver the day before) needed a sentry perched precariously on the prow to steer us through the rapids. The jungle came down to the river with massive trees leaning over, almost meeting overhead. Occasional sandy beaches with animal tracks and fishermen in their little boats broke the green intensity. Occasionally the engine would cut and the presence of the jungle closed in around us. There is no “silence of the jungle”. It is very much alive and throbbing with insects and birds. However again there were no animals to be seen.

The boat beached and we had a further 15 minute walk upstream along the bank to reach the rock pools and eddies of Lata Berkoh. This was touted as a swimming experience so we were puzzled to be met by a large notice advising us not to swim because of currents and eddies (and “whilpools” sic) and furthermore to wear life jackets when we did. Of course we were by now in the middle of the jungle – no lifejackets to hand – just two rather sad lifebuoys hanging off the notice. We decided to defy management and swim in the dark waters. However one dip was enough for David and I – we left it to our friend to cavort in the swirling waters.

That evening it rained as I sat on our balcony (obligatory G&T in hand). Across the buzz of the jungle and the drip of the foliage came the prayerful chant of the mulah from the mosque across the river in the little town of Kuala Tahan. The ancient ritual of calling the faithful to prayer seemed as much part of the jungle as the tangle of vines and the croak of the frogs. I closed my eyes and realised it was Good Friday. No mulah to call me to prayer. My Christian God seemed a long way from this ancient place.

For 50c an assortment of ancient river craft would convey you across the river to Kuala Tahan where an odd assortment of cheap backpacker accomodation, jostled with the odd sight of internet cafes in broken down huts. We selected one of the number of floating restaurants along the river front.. Quite which restaurant you ended up at depended entirely on the relationship between the ferry operator and the restaurant owner.

“The Family Restaurant” was presided over by George (although his name tag said “Wan”). He was obviously something of an entrepreneur running rival (and no doubt cheaper) activities to those offered by the resort. He was greatly saddened to hear we were already organised on that count! His name tag proudly declared in hand written fluorescent texta that he was the “Tour Desk”. The other patrons of the FR were an intriguing mix of backpackers staying in the budget accommodation of the town and the slightly more well heeled travellers staying at the Resort. One statuesque blonde of, no doubt, Scandinavian origin, arrived wearing the smallest, tightest pair of beige shorts which looked as if they had been sprayed on to her pert curves! This attire, topped with a skin tight singlet top demonstrated not only a complete disregard for her own safety (if not comfort) but also the cultural sensitivities of this muslim country!

The night jungle walk was worth every Rinngit. Our knowledgeable guide (from the Orang Asli – Bekat people) seemed to have night vision. At the end of the night he was apologetic for not producing any large wildlife beyond the distant bright eyes of a mouse deer. He needn’t have apologised. The absence of glamour wildlife was compensated for by the luminous fungi, the glow worms, praying mantis and leaf hoppers and the 3 horn frog. None of which any of us would have noticed. The experience of walking in the jungle at night can only be described as magical. The two English boys with us were curious to know what the deep roaring sound they had heard the night before had been. Tigers perhaps? More likely wild boar, the guide thought.

Not so magical was the “Hide” we were directed to a couple of hundred metres from the resort. No self respecting wildlife would be seen any where near such a press of people all peering earnestly into the dark and commentating in loud voices on the absence of tigers!

The next morning our friend went off to ride rapids and David and I settled for the “Canopy Walk”. This high ropes course was not for the faint hearted. Unfortunately we found ourselves behind one such. She froze on a rope walkway 30m above the ground. With some considerable encouragement, she made it to the half way point where she wisely debunked! Any enjoyment of peace (or hope of seeing animals) was quickly dispelled by the arrival of a large group of chattering tourists who seemed to regard the whole experience as some sort of theme park ride to be enjoyed with as much whooping and hollering as could be managed. Did I mention I don’t like heights either? However with Nepal firmly in mind I completed the course. In terms of a nature experience it was probably rather a waste of time. Between the noise from the other participants and the concentration required to propel yourself across a span on a swaying rope bridge 45m above the ground there was little time for enjoyment of nature! Fortunately we had seen a troupe of monkeys on the walk in. I did also see a bright green chameleon scampering up a tree. The walk there and back was amusing. As David and I slogged through jungle mud in our sensible boots, we watched others in inadequate sandals or even thongs tripping and stumbling up the path.

Day 6 – 14th April: Kuantan

We only went to Kuantan because it was a place to lay our heads for the night. After the boat trip out and our busy morning, I didn’t intend for us to drive far. As it was it took nearly 3 hours to reach Kuantan. We arrived on the opening night of the Water Festival so the place was buzzing. The King was to be in attendance and our hotel was full of elegant men and women in traditional dress. It was also occupied by a Lutheran fellowship group. Fawlty Towers at work again and our room had no light so we were moved down the corridor. We had the best Tandoori chicken and Naan I have ever tasted, baked in ovens on the side of the road, for our dinner. David and I then sat in bed watching the live telecast of the Water Festival. The King (a position shared around the sultans of the various states who each occupy it for a 3 year term) and his retinue arriving in splendour on a brightly lit barge shaped like the traditional head dress. Long winded speeches of welcome and thanks (in Malay of course) followed. There were elephants and dancers and a parade of brightly lit police boats to add colour and movement and to stop the King falling asleep (which his son appeared to do at one point!).

Day 7 – 15th April: East Coast – home

The East coast scenery was quite different to that of the west coast – flat and sandy with occasional beaches glimpsed through the trees. We stopped for a swim at a beach which was obviously a popular family spot with Malay families dabbling in the shallows. Surprisingly clean change rooms and toilet of a rustic nature. our friend and I plunged into the warm, murky water while David (whose back was killing him) kept guard. Wonderful fried bananas for a snack before a seafood lunch in Mersing. The Esso station at Tuas was packed but it was a good opportunity to stock up with milk, the famous roast chicken for tea and some fruit and vegies from a little market there.

All for now

Love, Al

"Teacher - do not forget me"

“Teacher, when you go back to Australia, do not forget me!” The speaker was a young Karen woman, one of the students at the Karen Young Womens’ Leadership School (KYWLS), based at Mae Ra Moe Refugee Camp in northern Thailand. Desleigh and I looked at each other. How could we forget her or any one of the eighteen young girls who had taken us to their hearts in the two short days we had spent with them?

The KYWLS had first come to our attention when Desleigh and I had visited the Karen Womens Organisation (KWO) in Mae Sot the previous year, as part of Ron Browning’s study tour. The KWO is a formidable organisation both within Burma and in the refugee camps. Formed in 1949 its aim is to empower women through offering various capacity building trainings to teach skills, build confidence and create new opportunities so that women will be better able to solve their own problems.

In 2001 the KWO founded the KYWLS. The aim of the school is to allow young women to have a voice, to realize their potential leadership ability and move towards women's participation, as equal partners with men, in decision-making processes at all levels. Since it was founded 67 graduates of the school are currently actively working for their communities.

The girls are selected from all the camps up and down the border, after a rigorous selection process. They were aged between 19 and 24. The course runs for two years and is presently funded (until 2008) by the International Women’s Development Agency. The curriculum includes English, Burmese, Karen History, Women’s Rights, Office Management, Accounting, Documentation, Leadership Skills, Public Speaking, Report Writing, Communication Skills, Health. Part of the curriculum includes a 3 month “field trip” where the students either return to their communities or go into Karen State to gather data for the documentation of Human Rights abuses.

The girls had just returned from their field trip. Some of them had gone deep into Karen State to gather evidence. Disguised as locals and carrying cameras and notebooks concealed under vegetables in baskets, these girls braved SPDC road blocks, knowing that if they were discovered they would, in their own words “be raped until we died”. One girl had found herself trapped behind enemy lines and had only just managed to return to the school, three weeks after her colleagues, after a tortuous journey over the mountains by foot, escorted by Karen Army troops.

As members of the newly formed Australian Karen Foundation, the aims and imperatives of the school spoke strongly to Desleigh and I, and with no knowledge of what to expect we packed our bags and took ourselves off to the School to see for ourselves how the school worked and what support it needed.

Mae Ra Moe camp is one of the more isolated camps of about 12,000 people, situated south of Mae Sariang, only about a kilometre from the border. To reach it took us three days, Bangkok to Chiang Mai, a three hour drive from Chiang Mai to Mae Sariang and then a three hour drive over the roughest roads to reach the camp.

The camp itself, is spread down a long, steep, river valley. The section of the camp where the school is situated is a 20 minute drive from the front gate. Along the road, feverish building activity was going on. In the three months since Christmas, 800 new arrivals had come to the camp, with another 400 rumoured to be on the way. This new wave of refugees brought stories of villages destroyed and villagers shot as they fled. On the day we arrived in Mae Sariang, 25 new arrivals were being processed. They included an 8 month old baby whose mother had been shot and killed as they fled.

As a nurse educator, Desleigh Kent went well equipped with a wealth of first aid experience and individually packed first aid kits for all the girls. My brief from the KWO was to speak to the girls on the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Myanmar is a signatory to this convention but has to date, paid no more than lip service to its obligations. The obligatory first report to the CEDAW Committee is comparatively short and generalised. It makes no reference to the plight of the women of its ethnic minorities, to the appalling lack of access to basic education and health care and the ongoing violence perpetrated against women by the SPDC troops, some of which is documented in the KWO publication “Shattering Silences” and the Shan Womens Association publication “Licence to Rape”.

The school is situated on the side of a steep hill, slightly above the camp. It consists of a rough three sided classroom, the floor of which must be a quagmire in the wet season, a communal kitchen and a dormitory block.

Desleigh and I were accommodated in a comfortable “guest house” at the bottom of the hill in the heart of the camp. As we had a few hours of electric light in the evenings, Desleigh conducted her practical classes in CPR and bandaging with all the girls crowded into the living space of the guest house.

We asked the girls what topics they wanted covered and Desleigh was a little taken aback to find the topics for her ranged from “nosebleeds” to “land mine victims”. To my surprise I was asked about the Australian legal system, the role of lawyers and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In short we were kept very busy!

On our last morning the girls treated us to a traditional dance, all dressed in their school uniform of dark green, woven sarongs and embroidered white shirts. My enduring memory is of the girls gathered at the “bus stop” to wave us off as we returned to a life that is not contained within the fences of a refugee camp, where we take our human rights for granted and where we have the freedom to travel where we choose.

What is the future for these extraordinary young women? As refugees, access to achieving their full potential is limited. Three of them yearned to do nursing training. The best they can hope for is the limited training offered at Dr. Cynthia’s clinic in Mae Sot. For the others, they will return to their communities and continue to work with the KWO in providing a voice for their people.

The AKF hopes to continue to support the school and if you would like to become a member of the AKF and be kept informed about support for this project and other AKF projects, please do not hesitate to email me.

For more information on the KWO please see IWDA.

Nepal: October 2001

“Namaste” is the first word you learn in Nepal. It is an all purpose word meaning both “greetings, farewell and thank you”. It was a word we used a hundred times a day as we trekked the beautiful and unspoiled Rolwaling Valley, an area north east of Kathmandu just touching on the Tibetan border.

The party of 26 staff, students and parents from the Australian International School Singapore left behind an uncertain world for the first two weeks of October to spend two weeks cut off from outside contact on a trekking expedition. The Rolwaling Valley is an area that is just beginning to open up to trekking parties and although we had been warned that it was not a “tea house” trek, we were not quite prepared for how rugged it would be in places.

We got our first taste on the first day which was a comparatively short afternoon stroll, 1000 metres straight up. As we gathered at our first camp site, with stunned expressions on our faces and aching legs it was clear that no amount of scaling the summit of Bukit Timah Hill or climbing the stairs of the condo was going to be adequate training for what lay ahead.

For the first few days we trekked across to the Valley keeping to an altitude of about 2000 metres (give or take 1000 metres or so). Unfortunately these first days were quite wet and the narrow, twisting paths were turned into running streams or ice-like clay surfaces which required every step to be watched. We passed through small, rural communities clinging to the sides of the hills, the inhabitants eking a subsistence existence from terraces of rice and millet. It is not possible for anything mechanical to reach this area so they use centuries old technology such as wooden ploughs hitched to buffalo. Harvesting was done with sickles.

I don't think I was prepared for what a "soft" country it was - the fields were a gentle green fringed with wild flowers and chrysanthemum or stone walls. The hillsides were dotted with neat white houses with small flower gardens of dahlia and geraniums, corn cobs drying beneath the eves.

The rain dampened spirits and on a couple of occasions local people took us in, generously allowing 19 damp, dejected teenagers to drip water, leeches and blood on to their well swept dirt floors. Leeches, whatever their use in medicine, are never pleasant. One boy sustained a record twenty one leech bites in one day.

Everywhere we were greeted with loud cries of "Namaste" from the local people. The women wore brightly coloured sarongs and tight fitting bodices and shawls (the original pashminas?) of brilliant green or pink. The children wore a school uniform of blue pants and trousers and would besiege us asking for "pen, pen". They loved it when our kids stopped to play with them. We saw few children over the age of 10, and I suspect they are sent away to the towns to finish their education. It was interesting that as we got into the more populous areas the children became more worldly demanding "rupee" or "chocolate".

Everywhere there was an underlying odour of dung - animal and human (it is used to fertilise the fields) but we did get adjusted to that after a while. There were no doctors, no clinics or medical services of any description (the "porter guide" developed an infected leech bite so I ended up dressing his wound and giving him my supply of antibiotics as there was no chance he would see a doctor). I was surprised how many of the children went to schools, which were literally no more than stone buildings perched precariously on the side of a hill - no desks, chairs or blackboards and dirt baked floors. A few impromptu English lessons were held in the middle of narrow paths as the children were keen to show off their learning.

On Day 5 we descended down into the Valley, a narrow, glacial valley carved by the waters of the river, the colour of green/blue ice, which thundered through the chasms, fed by hundreds of waterfalls hurtling over the walls of the surrounding ridges. This was a well established trading route with reasonable paths and small villages selling soft drink and dried noodles. They did a roaring trade with the teenagers.

The relative flatness of this path was not to last as we crossed the river and headed up – straight up to the village of Simagoan with the distant, beguiling view of the mountain, Gaurisanker which at 7500m was the largest peak in our view. From Simagoan we continued up a further 1000m camping in a clearing in the forest (reputed to be a refuge for tigers). Unfortunately the rain had slowed us so we were unable to reach our planned destination of Beding and Na. Here we took a day, for some us for rest and recuperation and for a more intrepid group, a day walk up along the ridge of the Daldun Danda for some spectacular views of Gaurishankar.

Now it was all down hill, literally 2500 metres of descent in one day (the equivalent of going from the top of Kosiosko to the sea!). With concentration required for every step it was a long hard day. The next two days we followed the river downstream to our final destination of Dolakha where the bus would collect us for the long drive back to Kathmandu. Here we were back on the main path and as the river valley widened, we passed through neat little villages with paved streets. I imagine it looking very like medieval towns with the crooked wooden houses and peddlars selling spices, dyes and trinkets. The paths were so narrow and treacherous that there were not even horses or mules - the only animals you saw were buffalo or goats (and leeches, lots of leeches!)

To support our party of 26 we had 26 porters carrying our bags and equipment in triangular baskets carried on their heads weighing between 30-40kg, 7 walking sherpas (who walked with us and kept us supplied with water) and 11 kitchen sherpas who miraculously produced 3, 3 course fully cooked meals a day. We camped every night and for some of the young people it was their first experience of camping.

Apart from a few colds, cuts, bruises, sunburn and leech bites everyone kept in good health. Despite the hard going and the long days there were very few complaints (apart from bedtime being 7.30 pm!) and for a group of young people used to the soft life of Singapore their eyes were widened by many of the things they saw, poverty and disease are never pleasant.