A Tale from a Northwest Russian orphanage

I visited Russia for the first time in late July this year, part of a charity’s work in and around orphanages.  What did I have in mind as we began to see the outskirts of Saint Petersburg out of the window? I can’t quite remember exactly, but I know that being handed the entry/departure card was one of those things that fit in with my views of how things worked. Lose your departure card and it’ll be that little bit harder to get out of the country.

Paperwork. Queues to be looked at by stony faced officials who stamp. Getting questioned by suspicious officials in their broken English about why I had so much luggage with me (I’m part of a group, I wanted to shout, look at who is around me!). Then there was old cars, dilapidated roads and some crazy driving from the natives. Russia conformed to some stereotypes that I already had before arrival.

The week was to be spent near a small industrial town a few hours from St Petersburg, during the day helping a day centre care for a large group of disabled children, some orphans, some not. A few weeks before setting off we had arranged what we were to do each day to keep the kids entertained, to keep them active. We realised the importance of this later in the week, perhaps the Thursday or Friday. Usually our time with the kids would end in the afternoon, when some of the younger ones would have a nap, and the more experienced of our group would give some seminars to any interested/available carers and parents #learning English, improving care for the kids, etc#. Those who weren’t giving seminars wandered around the centre, a plain but big building, far better than a lot of similar institutions across the country. We found the kids in the groups they were naturally divided into by age, sat in their rooms not doing anything, perhaps the radio on in the background.

So, perhaps, we knew that we were making an influence, no matter how minor or fleeting, on these kids lives, because we were doing things with them that wouldn’t have happened if our group had not have come in. They need mental stimulation, like any child does, and that maybe something that is lacking, especially during the hot afternoons of the Russian summer.

Each afternoon, just before lunch, was an outside period. The small grassy area would be covered in children, from a few years old to 17,running around, playing with balls or in the small sand pit, with a few adults looking over them. We managed to get a few of the older boys who liked football (and who all supported Zenit) to play a game at a nearby field with goal posts. Games only lasted twenty minutes but were immensely fun, if very tiring. It might feel horrible at the end of each game to have sweat running down your back, 30-5 degrees heat still scorching your back, but it’s made better by the fact these kids  have managed to play a sport with a group of guys, something they can’t do very often.

I remember during one of these play-times I gave one of them a piggy-back for a few minutes, he enjoyed it. Naturally, the other boys who had seen it wanted to join in. I was able to carry two of them at a time on my arms, running around for a few minutes at a time. Eventually though, in the same heat as I had played football in, this gets physically tiring. It’s quite hard to tell some kids, over-active, Russian kids, that I want, nay, need, a rest. I would end up having to jog around trying to find my girlfriend, inevitably with another bunch of kids #younger girls with no interest in being lifted up endlessly#, who can speak Russian to tell them to desist. That only last a few minutes, moments maybe.

This week opened my eyes, as I was told it was numerous times. I mentioned in a post a while back (here) that the charity was Christian based. Very Christian. Each morning was punctuated with a prayer, which I was sat at the table for but abstained. Aside from this it wasn’t obvious that this was a Christian endeavour, not that I don’t think it would’ve bothered me. This trip boiled down to trying our best to help these children in the limited amount of time we had.

I left feeling I had done something positive, found out how anotherpart of the world lives, considered the differences between twocountries. I left feeling that I’d been through an experience,something that has changed me and will change me in ways I won’tinstantly see. I had this thought and realised that for those kids,the carers and parents, it’s not an experience, it’s life, but it’s nice to think that, even if only for a week, we helped them out.

 

(This trip was part of a Love Russia summer camp. Check them out)

Half of the Man Booker Long-list ‘reviewed’

Communion Town, Sam Thompson
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Teleportation Accident, Ned Beauman
Skios, Michael Frayn
The Lighthouse, Alison Moore
Swimming Home, Deborah Levy

I tried to read the Man Booker Prize long-list last year, and only managed to get seven done, and even that was after the prize had been awarded to The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (one which I had read, and enjoyed). So I’m trying again this year, and This year I’ve just got beyond half way mark (having just finished Philida by Andre Brink, now onto The Yips by Nicola Barker), so I thought I’d give a little review of the first six novels that I’ve read from this year’s prize long-list.

It was quite nice that the first four of these novels (as listed in reading order above) were all quickly read in a week whilst on a very relaxing holiday in France. Sam Thompson’s Communion Town began with ten chapters all loosed based on the same city which gradually grew as a sort of whole by the end. I enjoyed reading each story as they all had their own little style and varied in how they explored this one city, its districts and locales and the characters that inhabit it, but I feel that’s what has let it down, that it is 10 short stories, all loosely based on just one place, with only a few minor characters that are mentioned across some of the chapters. Not that it doesn’t work in some ways, and I think the writing is brilliantly descriptive at times, but just as you’re getting into each story it seems to climax and move on.

Rachel Joyce’s Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was next, and this offered something so wildly different. I’d seen this before in Waterstones and had avoided it for some reason, but here it was now, in my hands. And at first I thought I might’ve been justified in my first opinion of avoidance, it’s writing seeming simple and its story a bit… funny. But I carried on reading and thoroughly got into it, changing my mind as the story went on. This is a narrative about a lot of things in modern life: turning old, losing people, finding fame for something out-of-the-ordinary, love. The style suits it perfectly, and I only first found it simple because it wasn’t approaching things in the same way that Communion Town was.

Then came The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman. I hadn’t heard of this before so had no previous opportunity to avoid it, and when I started it and saw it was based in the 1930s (from Germany to the USA) I might’ve pulled a slightly cringing face: I wouldn’t describe myself as a snob but I don’t usually read historical fiction, I don’t know why but it never seems to pull me in as others can (This has all changed, and luckily too, Bring Up the Bodies is also in the long-list). Far from being dull, like how I thought of history in school all those years ago, this was humorous and full of life, with so many little witty bits of dialogue that made me chuckle, and the familiar story-line of a guy chasing a girl, with the chaser being completely oblivious to the wider world’s issues and affairs as he follows her. Not to spoil the rest of this post, but The Teleportation Accident is so far my favourite of the books on the long-list with its blend of great writing whilst exploring what love, or lust, can do, even at time of war.

The final book of my French relaxation-week was Skios by Michael Frayn, and I can find no better way to summarise it up in one word as someone on Twitter did, a delightful ‘romp’. This is perhaps one of the only books on the long-list where I’d read a review of it before the list was announced, where it was described as a farce, and I’m sure the blurb also describes it in the same way. It is, and I found it funny because of that. How such confusion came to play out over a short period of time because of one man’s decision should always be funny. Despite this being one of the shorter novels on offer this year I did feel, come the last quarter of it that it perhaps all could’ve been a wrapped up a bit sooner, and how in this day and age can things go quite as wrong, we’ll never know. Still, a good ‘romp’, and a bloody funny one at that.

Finally home (or should that be unfortunately?), I was able to access the rest of the long-list books, stacked high on the floor. I picked out Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse, and Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home. Moore’s Lighthouse was another debut, along with Thompson’s Communion Town and Joyce’s Unlikely Pilgrimage. I enjoyed it, yes, though it seemed to take longer that the previous four did despite it’s short length. The style at times was nice, moving and vivid in it’s description, and then slower, maybe too descriptive or dragging in narrative. Nevertheless it was a moving book, again about loss and life, and how certain memories come to the fore of our minds and affect us when we seem to be in the strangest places. Swimming Home was another short book, and another which seemed to take me slightly longer to read (over a few days) than it should’ve done, or would have done if I were still on holiday. This was based in France back in the early nineties, on the struggling relationship of a war journalist and an ‘arsehole British poet’, with their daughter stuck in the middle. The catalyst for the story is a girl, Kitty Finch, who rather admires the poet’s work, and may have a screw or two loose, that or that the neighbour has got it out for her. I liked it, each segment in each chapter (based on a day, spanning the course of a week) focusing on the issues on the mind of the main characters, each seeing and considering things differently, with the reader knowing a lot about the issues in the relationship as it comes to it’s conclusion.

So, seven down, six reviewed, five to go. I know some people may ask me why I’m reading through this long-list, and some have issues with the Booker prize itself, but here I am, half way through, having read through some books that span quite a lot of what modern literature can be about, and in varying styles too. I’ve been introduced now to seven writers that (unless they were debut authors), I hadn’t read before but now know of their work and in the future will be more open to reading. It’s not really a challenge to read twelve novels in a set amount of time if you’re enjoying all that you read, and especially if you’re getting something, anything from them.

A late Jubliee message

I realise with the following post I might come off as something of a bore, or as my girlfriend says ‘a Jubilee party pooper.’ I suppose to some respects I am, in the latter simply because I am (or was) beyond sick of all the Jubilee stuff, in the former only by opinion.

There have been many arguments both for and against monarchy, especially over the weekend. A crowd of 1,200 Republic supporters managed to stage an anti-monarchy protest during the celebrations, which is very good. Obviously it didn’t really compare to the people lining the Thames to see the flotilla or those seeing the concert at Buckingham Palace. But support for something will nearly always pull a bigger crowd than support against something, surely? Let’s go see a thousand boats drag through a (mucky) river because it’ll be an experience, or let’s go to Buckingham palace to see a concert full of the biggest names in pop (Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and Madness aside, all nearly awful). Hell, if the Smashing Pumpkins played at the jubilee concert I’d probably lose a bit of respect/love for them but I’d fight to go and see them for free.

Praise flooded in for the queen. It does come quite easy really, and those not saying anything positive generally come off bad. Generally criticising 86 year-olds doesn’t come off good. I heard she’d made 261 international visits over the past 60 years, which is great, and I’m sure most people could’ve done that given the queen’s status. And doesn’t she handle it all well? Yes, for an 86 year-old. It’s a shame all those other 86 year-olds (of those that make it there) don’t handle life quite so well, but then again they are spending a life working to keep her majesty and family in such finery and good care.

Maybe I am starting to come off bitter, angry, maybe a little drunk. It’s true. But I shall stay republican, no matter what is said about the queen or the next monarch. And yes, we could’ve voted in a president Thatcher, or a president Blair, but at least we would have all had a say, and then maybe they wouldn’t have a privy council and private meetings with the Prime Minister.

So! What can be done? I can keep being a member of Republic and trying to slowly, democratically get rid of the monarchy, or I can emigrate. Oh, how I dream of emigrating. I try to learn a few languages (German and French at the moment, working on the poor effort I put in during school) but it could take years, years, for me to get to a level where I would feel comfortable moving to a country without English. United States? Y’know, I’d love it but their health care system is a bit dodgier and costlier than ours (and as much I could criticise, the NHS is a lovely institution made by a democratically elected government). What about Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand? I’d love all those but I’d still be in the same position! Damn!

So to finish off. To the Queen! You were the monarch who saw the downfall of the British Empire (a good thing, I think?), so here’s hoping your heir will see the downfall of the monarchy.

A Weekend Training

or, ‘Christianity and Camp.’

I often quip, each time less funnier than the last, that if I were to step into a church or attend a Christian event one of my friends has invited me to that I’d spontaneously combust. Of course, it never happens, for I am still here and burn free.

I spent that past weekend in a place called the ‘Frontier Centre’, a Christian centre in Northamptonshire, on a training centre for Love Russia, a charity. The charity bases its work in, surprise of surprises, Russia, working with orphanages mainly around the St Petersburg area, and is also Christian. I was introduced to the charity by my girlfriend, and it was her who got me to sign up to this summer camp.

Part of me going on this training weekend was in preparation for a week-long trip I’ll be doing with some other volunteers for the charity at the end of July. We all needed to know what was what, any rules, and mainly some great ideas to make sure we have a positive impact.

Now, I should have come more prepared for the Christian aspect of the charity, but I didn’t really think about it. That was, until we started on the Friday afternoon and began with some Christian songs and prayer. This went on throughout the weekend before meetings with everyone involved, and an occasional prayer in the smaller group I was based in. I didn’t mind the prayers in the little group, I sat with my eyes open and just listened, same in the larger group. It was the songs that bothered me over the weekend, the standing and, for me, just waiting for it to end so I could sit back down and we could get onto something real.

It actually affected my mood, never for too long, because the songs were usually followed by something important and/or funny, and I would get involved into that, whether mentally (as in listening to the rules), or physically (team-work, building the largest free standing structure using rolls of newspaper, which was exceptional fun).  But, on the coach back, sitting in my favourite bar in town discussing the events with my girlfriend, I realised something. I was being a dick! Whilst I didn’t complain to anyone (bar my girlfriend), I didn’t join in and let all their Christian positivity pass me by.

I realised, what did it matter to me if I joined in or not? If I were to do the training weekend over again, I’d try to join in the songs where I could, if only for the feeling of being part of a larger group aiming to do some good, or just because singing can be a great thing, and that way it would’ve positively affected my mood.

Plus, I thought, this is a Christian charity, and I knew that before I signed up. It’s not the state forcing these nice little tunes and people simply giving their thanks, it’s a voluntary organisation I signed up for. I should just join in!

From the weekend I learnt what I’d be doing and learnt a lot more about the charity. It means a lot to a lot of people, especially those that started it. One of the founders gave a presentation about the changes that they’ve made and it really is fantastic, from horrible conditions to something so much better and nicer, and even slowly getting local authorities involved. We in the UK don’t have anything near this bad because we have a welfare system in place, no matter how much stick it gets or cuts it receive.

So, have a look at Love Russia (they’re also on Twitter), see what they do and if you want to get involved. Russia doesn’t have the support system that the UK has, and in the end, it doesn’t matter about religion, as long as the kids involved get the help they need.

(Finally, check out the Ride for Russia, especially if you’re into your bikes, or like or live in Ireland! Funds from that go to the Genesis Project, sponsoring the children once they’re old enough to go on to college with a place to stay)

Concentrate!

Increasingly I keep reading articles and essays on concentration. Is the internet negatively affecting it? Is it possible in the internet age to truly concentrate fully on something for a prolonged period of time, or is it just gradually becoming more difficult. Even if you read long-reads on literary websites, or longer opinion pieces on newspaper sites, for most of thet time to the right or left hand-side will be an image or two, maybe just a text link, inviting you to just look at it. Read me, not when you finish, but now.
Look, even my website does it, not that my posts are exceedingly long, or even long, in length. I don’t even have that manner, but they’re still there. Look at my Twitter feed, or perhaps check out the British Humanist Association or Lend with Care, but at least try to do it when you’ve finished reading the post first!

I was walking into work this morning, freshly awake and fed, which is unusual for me. As I walked down my hill I pulled out my phone and automatically went to check Twitter. Glanced along the new tweets I hadn’t seen before leaving the house, and put the phone back in my pocket. A minute or two later, the phone is out again and the same app quickly opened. Twitter is perhaps one of those internet things which serves to shorten concentration, or at least that’s the feeling I have. What else can it be when every message is condensed into 140 characters?

But also on my phone I have both the Amazon Kindle and Google Books app. I have a few books on each, which I don’t own physically but would like to read one day. I own a physical Kindle but barely use it, it sits at the bottom of the bookshelf, unused simply because I prefer a physical book. I originally got the two reading apps for those times when I find myself somewhere with time to spare without a book, or a magazine or newspaper to read. This spare, literature-free time, doesn’t seem to have materialised, and if it has I have preferred to sit and take in whatever was around me.
So I have these apps, along with an actual Kindle, which remain rarely used. And why? Because I don’t want to read a book on a tiny little screen, because I can’t physically do it for too long. Add to this that I have an extension of the links to elsewhere on websites in the form of other apps, like Twitter, which seems better suited to a smart-phone screen than does trying to read through a novel. It just doesn’t work for me.

What I’m also tiring of is the huge amount of ‘memes’ that litter the internet. Damn it, why am I still looking at these things, I’m 24! And they are almost the image form of Twitter, without the occasional link to an interesting, insightful article somewhere. Just little jokes, inside jokes essentially, which are gradually becoming more and more puerile. Like Twitter, it is almost an addiction, but this is one that I want to kick because it offers me no benefits aside from the occasional chuckle. As I said, at least with Twitter I’m likely to find something to read, something longer than a few lines or a paragraph or two. Something to challenge me or alter my thinking.

But when it comes to concentration it’s all about what we do with our time. If I want to read this article on something or other I’m interested in then I should just do it, just have that tab open and read through it with no distractions. It’s not meme creators’ fault if I keep finding myself typing in their website in a new tab halfway through an essay, despite saying I don’t really find them entertaining much any more. It’s me, and the only way my concentration, or anyone’s, will get better, is if I focus on the issue at hand and get it done.

Human rights in Bahrain.

Or, I don’t really watch F1, I just need to comment.

Is the human rights situation currently better in China than it is in Bahrain? I’m not completely up-to-date but I know there are always issues regarding China and human rights, but the F1 race went ahead there just fine.
Bahrain is a little different, it has had it’s own uprising during the Arab Spring, with issues still to be resolved and violence still occurring. 86 civilians have been killed, with thousands injured and tortured. You cannot look at it and not be disturbed. It’s not in the news as much as Syria because the Bahraini force is a little less severe.

The Bahraini leg of the F1 season last year was called off due to the protests, just growing in their intensity then in March. This year’s will go ahead, despite ongoing trouble in the island nation. But why is it going ahead this year if there has only been progress in Libya and Egypt, and not yet this tiny kingdom?

It seems that protest this year comes from the fact it’s putting the F1 teams in danger, rather than as a protest to what the Bahraini authorities are doing in retaliation to any protesters. But really, if there were worried about their safety, and maybe to show some concern to the citizens who suffer, why not pull your team out? If a driver doesn’t feel right about driving there, why not skip this race? Dent your chances of winning the championship yes, but for good (very good) reason.

Then there is the other side of the coin. F1 race or no, I think, will make no difference to how they treat their unhappy, protesting citizens. It might be worth millions, but can it really be that influential in a nation’s politics?

 

EDIT: Check out tomorrow’s Times (or on the website now, if you’re a subscriber) for a Peter Brookes drawing relevant to the above subject.

Books, and a Walk

I’ve been on a bit of a reading rush recently. See, usually I’ll read a book or two a month, and I’ve never found this to be enough. It seems to be now I have deadlines at university looming I’d much rather be reading fiction than any required reading.

So I’ve read quite a bit more fiction than I usually would, and I’m liking it. I’m not rushing through books, just simply dedicating more of my time to reading. Gradually, naturally, the laptop and the internet are fading out and back to what I really enjoy and find worthwhile.

Right now I’m reading through Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs, and I’m enjoying that so far. Very much. But the past two novels I’ve read are by Muslims (or, of Muslim-origin) and about Muslims in western countries.

The first is Sunjeev Sahota’s Ours are the Streets, about a Muslim guy brought up in Sheffield, who visits Pakistan and gets radicalised, introduced to something like ‘Islamism’, radical Islam. I enjoyed it, and could feel the main character’s internal divide between his English life and his Islamic/Pakistani heritage. Maybe the only problem with the book was the overuse of the word ‘were’ instead of ‘was’. I get Sahota was trying to create a Sheffield raised person, but it just seemed to be used far too much.
Second Muslim book was American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar,  a different take on Muslim’s within a western country, this time the USA. This book got further into the Muslim mindset, less terrorist intentions (none, in fact). As well as going through the relation of Muslims to other American citizens it explores that other contentious relationship between Muslims and Jews. It also goes further into the relationship people of faith can find between themselves and their God/god(s).

Both of those were fantastic reads, different from other stuff I’ve read in that they were written by Asian/Muslim authors and also focused on Muslim issues, and I haven’t exposed myself to enough of that.

Other books recently read with joyous speed were 11.22.63 by Stephen King, a long look at time-travel. Quite philosophical and none of the horror of the other King books I’ve read, it kept me thinking about the changes time travel could make. The story also changed some things that would be usual in time travel stories, and was better for this. Also, finally, I read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the true story of Chris McCandless, who died in an abandoned bus in Alaska. My friend has been getting me to read it for at least a year since we watched the film together, and now I finally have I’m glad I did. It’s better than the book, as it always seems to be, but it puts McCandless, at least in my mind, in a better light, but I’ll always think of him in two lights: one as the young, free spirit who needed to get away and live on his own, something I envy him for (the fact he did it, that he had the confidence in himself to go with it); but similarly, I still see him as a bit of dick for just abandoning everybody he loved. I could go on, I could go on!

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I’ve just begun to get in that popular British pastime of walking, and I decided to kick it off with a few friends in the local wonder of Marsden Moor, doing the Standedge Circuit, a 10-miles walk about the Moors. And I love walking already. Other people are nice, every we passed said hello, and the scenery is amazing. And walking, even in a group, is a great way to just think, because for most of it you’re silent. Simply taking in the landscape, and it’s best when there is not another person, building or road in sight. Lovely stuff!

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Finally, please note the Lend with Care badge I have to the right of this post. It is a fantastic website where you can help micro-finance people’s businesses in developing countries. I’ve only given two loans so far but I will keep giving more in the future. Once again, a fantastic website, and a brilliant idea.