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The following article appeared in the The Scotsman
newspaper

Actors depend on technique. These kids are naturals

/CLAIRE SMITH/

In an empty dining hall in Dumfriesshire an eight-year old Nepali girl
with eyes as big as saucers peers from a cardboard box. A procession of
children, from eight years to 18, dance around her, presenting her with
gifts of food, toys and blankets.

As the child accepts each gift she beams with thanks until finally all
the children dance in a circle, throwing their arms wide in a joyful arc.

The dance to soaring Nepali pop music conveys how it feels to be offered
kindness when you are homeless and afraid and live on the streets. What
is remarkable is that every single child in this group has experienced
this journey from hunger and destitution to the heart of a loving family.

All these young people were once Kathmandu street children who now live
in the children's home funded by Rokpa, the charity established by Akong
Rinpoche, director of the Samye Ling Tibetan Centre.

They have come to Europe for the first time on a dance tour which will
see them perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in Switzerland
alongside composer Andreas Vollenweider, who is Rokpa's first
international ambassador. Hundreds of Scottish school pupils will also
see their performance, which combines traditional Himalayan dance with a
dramatic recreation of how it feels to live on the streets in one of the
poorest countries of the world.

Watching closely is acclaimed Polish theatre director Grzegorz Bral,
whose company Teatr Piesn Kozla performed to sell-out audiences at
London's Barbican in May. Bral was invited to work with the former
street children by Lea Wyler, the Swiss actress who is known as "Mum" to
all the children here, and has taken in 70 children in the last 15
years. Wyler approached Bral after seeing the award-winning Chronicles -
A Lamentation at last year's Edinburgh Fringe.

"There was such imagination, power and intensity in that performance. I
was on the edge of my seat and I knew I wanted him to work with the
children," says Wyler. They have performed traditional Nepali dances at
festivals and on Nepali TV but using their own experience as material is
something new.

In their first rehearsals at the Samye Ling Tibetan Centre in
Dumfriesshire, the co-directors are shaping their repertoire into a
dance cycle. For Bral, working with the children was an experiment which
has proved a revelation.

"I have never been to Nepal, but it seems they have an instinctive
understanding of the way the body uses language. Some of them move in
such a way I have never seen before," he says. "It's always a gamble
with a performance, but we try to encourage them to follow their
feelings. There is something about these children. They work with such
an open heart. When I work in the theatre with actors you have to use
techniques to uncover that strength of feeling - but these kids have it
straight away. From the very beginning when I met them my heart was
completely broken. I think my life will change far more than their lives
will change after this meeting."

For Wyler, watching them dance brings back memories of how the children
came to her. "I have picked up every single child who is here. Seeing
them perform makes me think of the soup kitchen, watching mothers
carrying babies appearing in all the alleyways in the early morning,
coming for food."

Wyler - whose grandfather, Felix Salten, wrote the children's classic
Bambi - first travelled to Kathmandu in 1990 to set up a soup kitchen
for the poverty-stricken Nepali and Tibetan people of Bhouda, one of the
Buddhist world's most important places of pilgrimage. In her tent at the
side of the great stupa she gathered first one, then a family of ragged
street children, finding herself unable to turn her back on those who
were sick or needed help.

In Nepal, thousands of children whose families have broken up, or are
too poor to care for them, end up on the streets, where they lead a
perilous existence, at threat from violence, disease and child traffickers.

Wyler's young family grew, and she had to rent a four-storey house where
they all could live. In March this year the first purpose built Rokpa
children's home opened, with room for 80 children.

Fourteen-year-old Anju, now a graceful young woman, remembers waiting
for breakfast of bread and sweet tea on freezing mornings in Bhouda.

Anju, whose mother cannot hear or speak, and whose violent father
abandoned them, remembers the day she was picked up as she sat on the
long benches of the soup kitchen, eating rice from a plastic bag.

"For so long Mum didn't notice me. Then one day, suddenly she picked me
up. She gave me new clothes and a hot bath and I was so happy. That
night I had the most delicious food I have ever had in my life."

Her own mother, Radhika, who was struggling to feed her children by
washing clothes for others, has become one of the great successes of the
Rokpa Women's Workshop. After training as a seamstress she now trains
others, using sign language to communicate.

Anju explains the dance routine the children are rehearsing. "This is
picking up new kids from the street and welcoming them to our Rokpa
house. We are giving them a bath, giving them a hot meal and they are
happy to get new brothers and sisters."

Many of the Rokpa children have one or more parent, but all have ended
up destitute, through poverty and ill fortune. Some, like 15-year-old
Naresh, eked a living finding and selling rubbish from the streets.
"Nobody was on my side. It was so cold. So difficult."

With the current state of political instability and economic crisis in
Nepal, opportunity is scarcer than ever. Democracy and freedom of the
press has been suspended and the tourist industry has faltered since the
assassination of Nepal's royal family in June 2001, and the 9/11 attacks
in the US later that year. The subsequent collapse of tourism has meant
a third of businesses are now closed, while the dominance of Maoist
rebels in the countryside makes travel extremely difficult.

Against such a backdrop the Rokpa children relish their chance for
education. Pema, who wants to become a computer programmer, is bursting
to tell his life story. "Would you like to hear my story, my past, my
future, my hopes?" he asks brightly. Born in a village in the Tibetan
region of Dolpo in Nepal, where there is no electricity, no public
transport and no health care, he almost died of measles as a child.

"It takes one month to go from the village to Kathmandu and I was about
to die. I was so thin. My parents carried me on a yak. Mum gave me
treatment, vitamins, new clothes. I used to go to the soup kitchen with
my parents."

His older sister, Dorje Dolma, had already been helped by Rokpa.
Suffering from severe scoliosis of the spine she had been helped to go
to America for life-saving treatment. "Finally Mum took me to live with
the Rokpa children. I have so many friends there. I am so lucky. I have
everything."

Pema's buoyancy and optimism are typical of the children, who seem to
have an extraordinary talent for appreciating life.

Families who have taken in the children during their stay in Scotland
have been amazed by their warmth, adaptability and diligence. Marilyn
Harris, who is looking after 14-year-old Pema and 13-year-old Kedar
during their stay in Dumfriesshire, says: "On the first morning Pema got
up at six o'clock to study. It is really quite humbling. These children
really appreciate their education. And they don't have to be asked to
help around the house. I've tried to stop Kedar from doing the washing
up but it didn't work."

Pema doesn't want to fall behind at school: "The political situation is
not good in Nepal," he says. "Sometimes we are not able to go to school
and there are bombs. It's very different here, beautiful scenery. People
are very friendly."

So far the changeability of the weather in Scotland is the biggest
surprise and the children have all learnt a new joke: "If you don't like
the weather, just wait for ten minutes."

"We never know when it's going to rain," says 15-year-old Naresh. Among
other new experiences for the children have been bathtubs. "They had
never seen a bath before. They only have showers. They didn't have a
word for it. They called it 'lying down in water'," says Harris.

The Rokpa children haven't travelled a lot yet but on a day off they
were taken to the Dumfriesshire coast, and got their first ever glimpse
of the sea.

Seventeen-year-old Smaila put into words how it felt for children from a
landlocked country of mountains: "We have never seen that in our
lifetime. I loved the way the sea looked on the horizon. It was full of
water and then there was a line and it disappeared. It was amazing."

Smaila was one of the first children to be given a home by Lea. He is a
talented singer and wants to become a professional entertainer - but his
dream is fuelled by the notion of helping the thousands of children who
still live on the streets.

It is hard to equate this dignified young man with the unruly beggar
children familiar to travellers to Nepal. But by chance we come across a
picture of Smaila as he once was, in an album of photographs from the
Rokpa office at Samye Ling. There he is, aged six, sitting on the ground
with bare feet, surrounded by a gang of tiny toughs with battered,
smeary faces.

"Wow. That's me. I can't believe it."

Smaila has never seen the photograph, but his memory of those times is
crystal clear. "There is nobody to look after you. You are like a burden
to other people. Nobody cares about you. Even if you go and sleep in
another person's shelter they will throw water over you. People don't
show pity.

"I don't care if someone is rich or poor if they are kind and help you.
In every one hundred people there will be one kind person who will care
enough to give you something."

The recollection of constant rejection and of being shunned lies just
below the surface with these children. Wyler hopes their journey through
Europe will help heal some of these deep wounds.

"The word for street kid - kat-e - is one of the worst things you can be
called in Nepali," she says. "I sympathise. Growing up Jewish in
Switzerland I had to deal with terrible prejudice, being called names
like dirty Jew. I was taught you should not feel bad about who you are
and where you come from. It's not your fault."

Wyler believes the experience of sharing their stories will encourage
the children to feel proud of who they are today and of what they have
overcome.

"As we have been working here memories have been coming up that we
haven't counted on. Their bodies have the memory of the abandonment, of
being hurt. My dearest hope is that we can transform these feelings,
that there will be a kind of catharsis and they will know their real
worth."

She is confident it will be a positive experience for everyone. "It is
unreal and extremely wonderful that they are here. There is no better
ambassador for our work than them. My first hope is that it will not
spoil them, that they will keep their heads together and not fall for
consumer goods.

"I'm hoping they will open their minds to how other people live, try
different foods, experience different things and they will come back
with more confidence.

"They have only just arrived, but I think by the end they will also
realise many people here have everything and are not happy."

For many, like Bral, meeting the children or watching their performance
will be a vivid introduction to the realities of life in one of the
world's poorest countries. "These children are so innocent, open and
honest. They know what they are doing and they retain their incredible
dignity," he says.

"Maybe I'm wrong, but I think making theatre like this with the events
of their lives will help them understand there is nothing wrong with
what they have been through. And we can show the audience, 'Look, there
are more children like this in the world and we need to help them.'"

• The Rokpa dance troupe will perform 'Himalayan Celebration' at the
Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh from 15 to 20 August. To book tickets,
phone: 0131-226 5425.

• The performers will be touring schools in the Edinburgh area from 22
August.