It is rather hard to refuse,” she said.Recently the programme was extended to children in an adolescents’ detention centre.It proved a huge success “The children were so excited,” said Ms Jamsran. “Each has a difficult experience behind them, and with no family to praise them.” She speaks of one girl who appeared very lively but became tense whenever anyone approached her “I began to work with her and learnt that she was raped. So I did many exercises with her that required co-operation [and] physical contact with others.”At the end she overcame her fears and relaxed,” she said. “Working with street kids is very different,” said Erdene-Tsetseg Jamsran, 44, a retired circus performer.”It requires a lot of sensitivity and patience These children have grown up without family support.

They are very independent and do not accept orders,” she adds. Failure of the centralised welfare system left half of the population on the brink of subsistence.Among those hardest hit were the children. “Child welfare support is seen to have been seriously compromised since the collapse of the socialist systems; child neglect, unsupervised children, school drop-outs and working children are examples,” said a recent United Nations report.In addition to the Cirque du Soleil staff, two Mongolian circus artists have joined the project with funding from Save the Children. It uses regular circus training as an alternative educational system. Cecile Trufaut, a former busker from Quebec who has worked on the programme since its outset said: “Teaching circus arts is a natural way to connect with street kids who have been on the bottom rung of society.” Some 200,000 children have dropped out of school in recent years, with their parents unable to pay for textbooks and uniforms since the collapse of the Mongolian economy after the former Soviet Union imploded in 1991. The scheme is run by the Canadian theatre company Cirque du Soleil in conjunction with Save the Children UK, one of the three charities in this year’s Independent Christmas Appeal.

It also runs seven shelters and day-care centres offering washing facilities and food for more than 200 street children.It is now five years since the circus project was launched. An aid project teaching circus skills to orphans may sound odd, but the children know that the alternative faced by Mongolia’s 3,000 street children is a life of begging and pick-pocketing. Previously they lived in the sewers and heating pipes systems beneath the streets of Ulan Bator where temperatures are routinely minus 25C Today they know that the circus offers life-saving skills. They looked bemused as Young stepped out, plugged his keyboard into the train and once again burst into song. “This is weird,” said a heavily tattooed ringer [station hand], batting away flies in the shade.”All together now,” said Young A cattle dog howled.. To children attending Boxing Day circuses across the world, juggling balls or balancing a spinning plate may not seem essential for success.

MONGOLIA By Lutaa Badamkhand
To children attending Boxing Day circuses across the world, juggling balls or balancing a spinning plate may not seem essential for success.But 40 children in Outer Mongolia know differently. Then there’s no one to talk to and nothing to do.” Further west, at Rawlinna, another dot in the landscape, workers from surrounding cattle ranches had gathered to welcome the Indian Pacific. It was here, according to a possibly apocryphal tale, that dozens of thirsty camels were hit by trains while licking dew off the tracks during last year’s severe drought.If the Holbertons fancy a jaunt into town, they have the choice of Kalgoorlie, a 14-hour drive to the west, and Port Augusta, nine hours east “It gets a bit lonely,” said Mrs Holberton “It’s hard if Ivor and I have an argument. He angered militants at home by withdrawing support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and, working closely with the FBI and CIA, arrested hundreds of suspected supporters of terrorist groups.In September, Arabic television broadcast an audio tape purportedly from the deputy leader of al-Qa’ida, Ayman al-Zawahri, urging Pakistanis to overthrow him for supporting the Americans.Hostility to him has grown recently as the result of an official investigation into the activities of leading nuclear scientists who are suspected by western intelligence agencies of selling nuclear technologies to Iran, Libya and North Korea.