Tuesday we returned three of the kids at the transit home, Sabita, Ragina, and Binti Ram. I had been curious what the return would be like my entire time at the home. I captured some great footage and was sometimes unable to capture footage because it was too painful.

Sabita, the girl I have become closest to, is 8 years old. She is outgoing and bold. She squeals at me and shouts and makes a range of noises to suffice for my lack of Nepali. We growl at each other and she constantly scolds me for not eating enough (we sit next to each other during meals). She demands the most of me—and everyone else (she’s the bossy one). And she’s the one I like to tickle the most.

Sabita has been working since she was 4. Her father died due to his family’s inability to afford medicine when he became ill. Her mother sent her to work shortly thereafter. She started off in a relative’s house and eventually ended up in a lawyer’s house in Nepalganj. She did all of the cooking and cleaning in his large, three-story home. She did not attend school. When he went to work, he would lock her in. When BASE rescued her, her hands and feet were bloodied by constant wet labor.

I interviewed the kids the night before our departure by candlelight during a load sharing period. Everyone was excited to go home to see their families. Sabita was most excited to see her grandmother.

We are returning these children to their parents who are former bonded laborers. Compared to anything you’d see in the US, they all live in squalor. However the degrees of destitution range greatly between settlements. These liberated laborers don’t have any land and often exist as squatters in “camps” rather than “villages.” Arriving in Sabita’s family’s settlement in Bardiya district, it was hard to imagine monsoon in a place so desperately dry and deforested. Cracks appeared in the ground, and I couldn’t wipe my lens enough to keep the constant dust storm from dotting shots.

As we approached her mother’s home, a woman appeared from a hoard of children and accompanied us. Later I was to learn this was Sabita’s aunt. We sat down in the two room home, and Sabita’s grandmother greeted us. She began to cry. Sabita told her not to cry because she would cry. Sabita kept asking where her mother and little brother were. Her grandmother then said that Sabita’s mother was dead. Kushal, the caseworker, told her not to say that in front of Sabita and led Sabita out. During this, Sabita’s aunt decided she could not follow suit in the lie.

We had surprised them with the return evidently. The case study of Sabita’s family situation must have been conducted with her mother, who had left town. Her aunt revealed that Sabita’s mother had taken up with another man and left town with him and Sabita’s little brother. Sabita has an adult brother who went to work in India to support the family. He was present as well but wasn’t speaking. Apparently, he returned to the settlement to find his mother gone and went to find her to bring her back. When he found her, she refused to return. He told her that he would help pay to bring Sabita back and that she was coming with him. When he returned the next day to pick her up, she had left town again.

Sabita’s aunt relayed this story to us and my brain shut off. I kept zooming in and out more out of habit. My mind was numb. What would happen to this girl I had grown to love? I had heard these stories and worse so often and they seemed so normal. When it happened to Sabita, it felt like something altogether different. When something horrible happens to someone you love, the experiential reality of the event is devastating. It made the policy debates I’d been filming seem totally disconnected from reality.

The aunt explained that she had eight children and couldn’t care for Sabita and asked us to take her back. I looked at Sabita and couldn’t quite understand why she wasn’t totally crushed by these developments. It was tough leaving the house as Kushal signaled to me that we had to move, we were hours late. After explaining the support we would provide, Sabita’s aunt reluctantly agreed to take her. But I couldn’t imagine Sabita having a positive future there. Her family had evaporated while she was out working.

I told her to study hard, that I would be back in a few weeks to see her.

Sabita

As promised:
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Yesterday was World Day Against Child Labor. We celebrated in Nepalganj by having a big meeting of local government, NGO, and INGO officials. I have yet to translate the footage but I’m told that we just heard the same calls to action to end child labor and the same critique of not knowing how to address the poverty that keeps the children from going to school after they are removed from child labor.

This is one of the major issues to address in the film. One strange or perhaps telling aspect of my experience in the field is that tons and tons of parents of rescued children decide to put them in school when they return. When I ask them how they pay for it, the answer is always a combination of remittances if they have adult children and local labor jobs like construction. Of the advocates I meet, most seem to believe that education and awareness (social/cultural change) about the importance of school is as or perhaps even more important than raising incomes. Interestingly, based upon the anecdotal evidence I’m collecting, it seems that feeding a child is about ten times as expensive as putting the kid through school. So if your income raises ten percent, all the kids you feed with that income could also go to school. The plan is to discuss this anecdotal experience with some labor economists to get some more ideas about what is going on.

Also, I get the feeling that some people deride the raid and rescue program with the income critique since even rescuing and providing education scholarships to a few kids doesn’t really address the cause of the problem. I’m not sure I understand this line of argument as it seems similar to critiquing the underground railroad as not really addressing the economic basis of slavery in the American South. There’s a moral dimension to this problem–especially since some of the problem lies in social/cultural attitudes, and symbolic gestures can be powerful in telling the story of a people. Yet I can see why some would not see this. Cultural norms aside, when I hear about the issues in these big meetings, the moral component appears relatively soft. When I wake up in the morning to see the kids I live with, the moral issue is sharp and urgent.

Also of note, while I was filming b-roll outside the conference hall of the hotel I saw a kid cleaning dishes in the window of the kitchen. I caught a few seconds of footage of him before someone told him to run and he disappeared. As I tried to go into the kitchen, the hotel owner stopped me and asked for 5-10 minutes for the staff to put on their uniforms. When I went back in the kid was gone and when I tried to go farther back into the kitchen, I was told it was staff only. I mentioned it on the way out and the district women’s welfare minister told the owner that they wouldn’t be doing any more business there if he employed child laborers. He looked pretty scared. And then he asked me to make sure he got a copy of the dvd since he helped me out by letting me film the kitchen. I think that means he was trying to be my friend so I wouldn’t show the footage… not sure. I feel on pretty shaky moral ground myself since the cultural norms here haven’t actually made people feel bad about this thing they’re doing. And since some owners do provide a better livelihood than the parents could provide. Paternalism is a hard thing to internalize for me.

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Okay readers this is an important post! I haven’t actually revealed any of the work I’ve been doing so I’ll do that now and ask for your help.

1. The film.
2. What I’ve been doing for the film.
3. I need your help.

The Film

The documentary is going to follow the stories of a number of rescued abused child laborers who I’ll be living with in Nepalganj. Essentially the government does not enforce their child labor law so this district has supported my NGO’s work to “raid an rescue” the children in the worst situations. They essentially show up with the sheriff and take the kid. This is the “train” of the story. We’ll meet child laborers before they go to work, after they go to work and before they’re rescued, during rescues, as they enter the transit home, as they leave the transit home, and what their lives are like after returning home for a while. Along the way, we’ll explain the complexities of child labor and how it is deeply intertwined with education, development, and discrimination. We’ll talk to advocates, rescuers, parents, employers, economists, NGO/INGO child labor experts, local government officials, national government officials, and of course the kids themselves. We’ll talk about what has been done, what can be done, and what should be done. There are moral and pragmatic complexities that I’ll try to bring out in the film.

What I’ve been doing

For the past week I’ve been in neighboring districts, riding on the back of motorcycles for about 5 hours a day on average to visit places that I can’t believe my local partners can find. Sometimes we just ride through the forest–it is like the return of the jedi chase scene on endor–and there are multiple trails and we just ride and ride into the forest. I also forded a river Oregan Trail style except on an overloaded motorcycle at night. All of this motorcycle riding has been to visit rural schools to talk to children, parents, and educators affected by child labor. One recent highlight was after talking to a group of parents at an ex-bonded labor camp, I was invited to a meal where we drank homebrewed rice beer. I had a little and poured the rest in the two motorcycle drivers cups. We then drove around the forest singing a song about a man who falls in love with his sister-in-law and throws caution to the wind by declaring tht they’ll go off to look for Blackbuck (deer with big black beards).

When I’m in Nepalganj at the Transit home, I hang out with the kids, eat all my meals with them, and try my new vocab out on them. They are an amazingly beautiful and joy-inspiring. Whenever I feel like interviewees are making the problem seem intractable, I think of the kids and instantly regain my inspiration. Pictures coming soon! During the day, I work on the film outline and plan interviews and shoots. When they go to bed, I watch documentaries and take notes on how any of the approaches might be useful in constructing shots, scenes, and sequences for the film.

I drink way more soda than I have since I was 17.

What you can do to help

I need feedback on what audiences might be interetsed in. So I knew jack squat about child labor when I came into this project. What do you know about it? What do you want to know about it? Also if you have any idas for interesting sequences, scenes, or shots, please post a comment! Also, does this sound a little bit too much like Born into Brothels? Does it help that we’ll have Cops-like scenes of scuffles with abusive owners of child laborers?

Sequence: combo of scenes that relate a complete story within the film
Scene: combo of shots of same event
Shot: Continuous piece of video

“The Garuwa can make you stick to your seat.” Sitting among the medicine men, the spiritual keepers of this culture, my mind churned this phrase over. I do feel somewhat stuck to my seat, grounded here in the lushest plot of land in Dang district. Dusk among the bounteous small farming plots comes with a gentle ease—the same ease the farmers exude in tending their plots. They harvest with a sagacious certainty, unperturbed by the stranger with a camera.

The children washing in the stream are framed by cobalt mountains quietly whispering majesty. I walk arm in arm, hand in hand, with my coworker and new friend Birbal. I love holding hands with men I respect and adore. He holds my hand with the same sureness the farmers bring to their toil. When it’s time to release, he simply flicks his wrist. It’s simpler than the sticky release to all my past romantic hand holds. The simple joy of physical affection reminds me of Austin, the only place I’ve lived in America where physical affection among friends is as it should be—normal.

Stars give background to a dusk sky textured with a flow of bats coming out to greet the recent swarm of night insects. As they disappear the fireflies appear. We dine in a triangle on hand-woven mats behind Birbal’s family home. The electricity cuts out and a lamp appears in the center of the triangle. The night is meditative by candlelight. At this ceremonial feast, the men sit together to discuss their cosmology, their happiness, their future plans. The food is the most delicious I’ve had in a long time. It tastes like the end of a good day’s work. The rice wine further plants me firmly to my seat. Birbal holds my hand as he tells the shamans of my purpose here, of my culture. Night flowers bloom, giving the air a sweet, purple fragrance. Piglets scurry in the shadows behind the row of men.

The assembly asks me how people live in America. I take a few breaths pondering whether I can find something positive to say regarding the rule rather than the exceptions. The Tharu keep telling me they’re a backward people. As poor people keep sharing their best and rarest goods with me without hesitation, it becomes more and more apparent every time I am asked about American culture that we are the backward people—despite and perhaps because of our wealth. We have diluted all our relationships that maintain our goodness, distanced ourselves from the rituals that keep us grounded to life. We are alone, anxious, depressed and trying to buy and medicate our way out of a deep dissatisfaction. If that’s cliché to say, all the sadder: we are a people unable to solve what we recognize as our most obvious and fundamental problem.

And the rest of the world seeks to follow in our footsteps, blind leading the blind. During a walk the next morning with my 21 year-old friend Balu, he tells me that they are aware that modernization will dissolve their culture—it already has begun. He says it’s a worthwhile trade-off because they are so poor and backward. The grass is so dewy green and sweet on the other side of the fence. When we return one of the shamans performs a blessing ritual behind the house for a newly born child. I find myself desperately wanting a ritual to tell me that this life will turn out healthy, that I will cultivate a life full of family, friends, and community worth blessing. I realize these are choices I can make. Some of them will require a rejection of the culture I live in. I find myself stuck to my seat.

Departing the plane in Nepalganj, I was first off the plane and had no idea which way to go. The passengers following me were similarly confused. Everything at the airport seemed under construction. After attempting to exit past a few construction crews that waved us to other exits, we found ourselves in a building full of construction materials—perhaps intended to finish the yet to be installed doors and windows.

I picked my bags out of the cart that was driven over and proceeded out into the parking lot. No one to receive me as I had been told. I fished my phone out and turned it on to call my BASE contact, Pinky. She told me she’d call the local office and ring me back. I told her to hurry because my phone was running out of power. My phone ran out of power. Funny, it always seemed to run so long without a charge. Today, at the worst possible time, it ran out. For now on, whenever you have power, you charge the phone, I told myself.

I went into the airport proper—also under construction—and found an outlet to plug the phone into. Pinky informed me that a staff member was on his way with a motorcycle. I explained that I had a suitcase that would not fit on a motorcycle with me on the back. She said that he would help me find my way to a vehicle, or, if it was too late, he’d been instructed to put me up in Nepalganj since the trip could take several hours and it might get dark if I didn’t catch a ride soon.

Several hours. The map of Nepal makes Tulsipur look so close to Nepalgunj. It’s halfway between Nepalgunj and Butwal where the Fordham team was last week. It had never occurred to me that the trip would take several hours. The BASE staff member showed up and put me in a mini-bus (akin to a 12-passenger van), which shuttled me quickly to some stands by the side of the road where other mini-buses were parked. The staff member talked to the driver and his accompanying passenger/luggage managers. He explained my situation, and I was promptly instructed to get in the van. We exchanged a few broken exchanges that didn’t explain much. He asked if I had Nepali rupees. I said yes and asked how much it should cost. Before he could answer, the van took off. Everyone in the van stared at me. I smiled and felt oddly at peace.

I’d been feeling anxious all last week with essentially nothing I had to do and a project I knew little about ahead of me. But now, in this crowded van, I was on my way somewhere, had not mastered any Nepali beyond explaining my name and the fact that I’m a student, and the hot Tarai wind was hitting me in the face. Just that morning I’d read an article in the NYT about how not knowing generates anxiety such that people who know they have a high likelihood for genetic disease will feel less anxious than those that don’t find out. Indeed, I was in the Tarai, had no control over my situation, and felt great.

We stopped a few minutes later at a larger set of stands by the side of the road where hawkers ingrained the word for water in my mind, pani. Some passengers got out to buy some noodles. The scene reminded me of Guatemala and kids that would come on board the chicken buses selling rebottled water and fruit. I realized then that I hadn’t had anything substantial to eat and likely wouldn’t until I arrived. Having no food vocabulary and being unsure how long the van would stay, I stayed put. One man running a stand came up to me and asked if I wanted masala chips and water. One of the passengers must have told him about the foreigner. “Yes! And a mineral water.” No starvation after all. No discussion of prices. He appeared and charged me over the market rate but well below an American price and I happily received the sustenance. The bottle of water opened smoothly without any resistance of plastic breaking. I frowned and waved the man back over to ask for a Pepsi. Not in the mood to argue over fifty cents with the only person who spoke English. As I devoured my Lay’s Magic Masala and guzzled Pepsi, I thought, “How backwards: I refuse the home cooked meal and water and consume as much junk food as possible knowing that its processed homogeneity will ensure me a diarrhea-free ride.”

“Arrrrrrn,” a long, shaky groan of suffering beside me. “Aaarrrrrrrn.” an elderly woman rocks back and forth, emitting this universal sound of suffering. Another passenger takes an empty bottle of fills it with water running at the stop where children are being bathed. I suddenly feel guilty for not drinking the bottle of water I bought. For the next four hours she continues to groan and choke on the water poured in her mouth by her companion (her husband or son… age is so hard to tell here where the sun leatherizes skin rapidly). She doesn’t use any words that I can discern. I wonder if she has dementia having read another NYT article that morning about increasing research on why some very aging individuals avoid dementia. As the hours pass by, I wonder if she will die on our trip.

Nineteen people are crammed into the twelve-passenger van. It’s like a Guatemalan chicken bus with no head room (for me—see last post from Himalayan Times). Also, luggage goes on the roof as do the two passenger/luggage managers. While driving at something like forty or fifty miles an hour, one of these guys crawled out the window to climb up top as we moved—a sight not too unfamiliar. Except this time the bar he stepped on broke off. I’m not even sure how it was connected in the first place. Had his foot not fallen from the rod onto the window ledge, I think he probably would have fall off the van. The man by the window reached his hands out to grasp the leg. The van is falling apart in various places. I put my camera bag behind my head in the back row between the seat and the rear door fearing rain. The back door opens as I placed it back there and I realize the back door doesn’t close. It’s held shut by rope on the outside.

We make one more snack/restroom stop where I see people using an open top well. There’s a pump right next to it yet people are drinking from a plastic jug dipped into the open top well. My humanitarian field studies course really taught me to expect epidemic illness at this sight. Yet, everyone looks relatively healthy. Perhaps natural selection has eliminated the people who are non-resistant to the inevitable flurry of germs that exist over time in an open well.

We leave the paved road and engaged the rocky mountain roads as the sun sets. The darkness brings a strange feeling of being somewhere very different. Despite travel to various developing countries, I have yet to experience a place where there is no electric light in homes by the side of the road at night. It feels like time travel to see the candles in the doorways, the families huddled by fires.

We arrive in Tulsipur and I’m dropped off near the BASE office with the property manager. He leads me down a path in total darkness but for beautiful blasts of lightning from the approaching electrical storm. Shadows of trees and two story structures and walls illuminate every few seconds and return us to total darkness. We phone Pinky by candlelight. She said she hasn’t been able to eat because she’s been so worried about me traveling in the night. There’ve been robberies on the route, she reveals. We walk ten minutes to a guesthouse that looks a little like 18th century rural homes in New England. Candleholders are permanent fixtures in the walls. First meal of the day by candlelight. I have arrived in Tulsipur and feel excited to be.

See Newspaper Clipping

So I just returned from a week of assisting the Fordham Law School fact-finding mission in the Terai. I recorded video of the interviews and gained some insight into the social/political/economic relations of the region. I’m currently living in Kathmandu with my friend Amit who works for UNHCR. Here are some thoughts:

“We don’t have enough to eat.” It’s something that I’m both used to and not used to hearing. I am used to hearing it on television and in classrooms but not from the person in front of me sharing shade and dirt. This I think will be a recurring theme–experiential knowledge.

Subsistence looks totally different on the page of the customary tenure paper I wrote last year than it does in the villages we interviewed in this past week. Subsistence, from an experiential perspective, is a stick and straw hut with a cot inside. It is a level of consumption so far below what American consumption looks like it seems not just quantitatively different but qualitatively different. It felt very odd to feast (very inexpensively by American standards) for many of our meals during the trip considering many of those interviewed said that their food security is interrupted by any shocks.

Gender. The recent rights education campaigns and Maoist advocacy education have really taught people—particularly women—to resist injustice. In many villages we visited, women conduct all the politics. They are the ones who break down caste barriers that have existed for centuries by eating with each other, which forces the men to do the same.

Nepali. In Nepali, each number from 1-100 has its own word you have to memorize. Thank goodness the currency is 1:75. I’m probably only going to memorize 1-10, 50, 100, and 1000.

Community. It’s amazing that people who are unrelated but share a common identity can be so close. Other members of the fact-finding mission found the Tharu community we interviewed particularly close-knit and living up to their reputation as kind and honest. It makes me wonder about the lack of community in the life choices I’m making. I’ve pigeon-holed myself into nomadic lifestyle, and I have the hypocrisy to condemn places like Cambridge that are just a collection of ephemeral professional culture resulting in a thinness of experience and a dearth of vivacity.

Cultural Softness. My father once commented that he didn’t think I’d be comfortable living outside the developed world. One reason he chose to stay in America was that I had grown up there and would have a tough time returning to China. Maybe his hypthosis is grounded in his experience growing up in a socially and politically turbulent China. I’m finding this is not the case. Wealth and stability isn’t necessary to smile, to look into someone’s eyes with understanding when you speak to them. The first thing I noticed here was that I saw more people smiling walking down one street in the middle of town for an hour than I had my entire two years in Boston. Amit speaks of a softness to this whole country—the people are kind despite harsh circumstances. Some places are polite and others are not. I guess we can chalk it up to the ineffable cause of culture.