It was child trafficking that first brought NGN to Humla in 2006 to
search for the families of children taken from their villages by
opportunistic members of their own communities. Their parents paid good
money for an apparent place for their children at a boarding school in
Kathmandu, and a chance to escape being forcibly conscripted into the
Maoist rebel army. But of course in reality there were no boarding
schools, just profit-making abusive orphanages from where many children
were sent overseas for inter-country adoption; destined to grow up as
Europeans or Americans, and lose all contact with their parents still
waiting in their villages for them to come home. In more recent times
the children have been used as poverty commodities, attracting
fee-paying foreign volunteers and charities which believe they are
helping the children, but in reality are just furthering the incentive
for the traffickers to displace more children and increase their
profits. This is the Humla I have heard so much about from colleagues,
and it has taken me until now to see it with my own eyes.
There are no direct flights to Humla from Kathmandu, so my Programme Director, Samjyor, and I had to transit in another Nepali city on the Indian border, called Nepalgunj. In the humidity of the hot and dusty Terai, we waited for two days for a flight because rain, clouds and strong winds made it too dangerous for the pilots to fly directly into the Himalaya. But by the third day the sun was shining and we were given the green signal. Our tiny twin-propeller plane ascended fast and high above the fields, the mid-hills, and into the snowy mountains. From out of my window I felt I could almost reach out and touch the white peaks and fur trees which seemed so perilously close. Then after a moment of thinking we were going to fly directly into the side of a rocky ledge, we instead landed on the tiny airstrip at Simikot.
For a district capital, Simikot is really nothing more than a small mountain town with steep stony alleyways, and donkeys and djopas (half-yaks, half-cows) carrying their loads to distant villages. The town is surrounded by snow-capped mountains from almost all sides, and behind these are more snowy mountains which continue until you reach Tibet. We wasted no time and sorted our rucksacks for a three-day trek through some villages where I could monitor NGN’s work.
Travelling anywhere in Humla necessitates days of walking along narrow and dangerous mountain trails. The trail we took to the village of Thehe should have taken two hours for a local person, but for an unfit foreigner with dodgy ankles like me, it took four. Samjyor was very patient though and kept me entertained with stories of what it was like for him growing up as a boy in this strange isolated world. One of his stories was about the most tantalising of mountains we could see in front of us; a sharp crooked snow-capped point, higher than those around it, and known locally as the ‘Crystal Peak’. The Tibetan mystic, Milarepa, is said to have meditated under the Crystal Peak, and when Samjyor was young he remembers going there at full moon with his Buddhist community to pray and play music. He says the Crystal Peak would open up and from within it holy waters would fall down onto the faithful below. But these days the waters do not flow anymore, and Samjyor thinks this is because the people have “become bad”.
We arrived in Thehe at sunset and were crowded by scores of dirty ragged children. The adults too gathered around us as we rested on the flat roofs of terraced mud housing which stretched up the mountain side. Somewhere within this labyrinth of earth dwellings we ate dinner in a low-roofed darkened room, huddled around a smoky but warm stove. Our poor but friendly Chhetri hosts smoked their chillums and gave us what little food they had to offer. Tired, confused and unable to orient myself in the hazy darkness, I fell into a deep sleep.
We were woken early by the children, and in a slumbering daze I tottered up the mountain side to relieve myself behind a bush. There are no toilets in Thehe and open defecation is the norm. We walked to the next settlement of Pang Pang where Manish lives with his mother and step father. Manish was trafficked to an abusive orphanage by a corrupt and powerful politician, until he was rescued by NGN and brought home again. His family are very poor Dalits, and whilst they were happy that Manish was safe from abuse, they were also concerned about how they could care for him. So NGN supported Manish with a school uniform and text books, and some rice for his mother, to ensure his reunification was sustainable. He attends the local school where resources may not be much, but he is becoming educated, and he will grow up with the love and care of a family in his own culture, which he and indeed every child deserves.
Manish’s family invited us into their mud hut and offered us a small piece of omelette. It tasted delicious, and all the more so to know that as Dalits (the ‘untouchable’ caste) there was a time when this would have been unthinkable for them to offer food to ‘high castes’ like us, for whom it would once have been considered dirty and polluted. But it seems that the times they are a changing.
The cold mist rolled in and it began to rain. Samjyor led the way up the mountain. It will “only be a short walk” he assured me, but for a boy who grew up in the lowlands like me, it was gruelling. Painfully walking on tip-toe to protect my vulnerable achilles tendons and breathless from the altitude, I scrambled over stone walls and through streams. It was as if we were climbing the mountain vertically. And when I thought I could take no more, there appeared in front of me the friendly face of an old Tibetan man minding his donkeys. Out of his bag he pulled a sell-roti and handed it to Samjyor who shared it with me. I think that sell-roti may just have saved my life.
Exhausted, aching and happy we arrived in Samjyor’s village of Todpa. Quivering, I climbed the ladder into the warm safe enclosure of his family home. I collapsed on a rug next to the stove, drank five cups of butter tea and didn’t talk for two hours.
There are broadly two ethnic groups in Humla: the Hindu Chhetris and Dalits of Aryan origin in lower Humla, and the Buddhist Lamas of Tibetan origin in upper Humla. Samjyor is a Lama, and for many complex reasons which I think only an anthropologist could fully explain, the Lamas do not traffick their children. Their villages are also more developed and internally cooperative than the Chhetri and Dalit villages where conflict is common. Samjyor’s house, although simple, felt like luxury compared to the poverty and filth of Thehe.
By nightfall Samjyor’s family arrived home from tending their animals and we ate succulent local rice, potatoes and dhal whilst Samjyor sat cross-legged on the wooden floor spinning his prayer wheel.
We were up early the next morning to see the spectacular Karnali river valley in full view. Before breakfast Samjyor and his niece took me to an old cave near his village where Guru Rinpoche is said to have meditated and Nagarjun banished the evil snakes. Samjyor’s niece burnt sandalwood leaves, and Samjyor lit an oil lamp to pay homage to the great sage who brought Buddhism to Nepal and Tibet. It was just enough spiritual sustenance to give me the strength to walk on for three and a half hours back to Simikot.
On our penultimate day we walked into upper Simikot to another Dalit village where a teenage girl called Amara lives with her family. She had also been trafficked to an orphanage and rescued by NGN, and when we tried to reconnect her with her family we learned that her mother was dead and her father was an unreliable alcoholic unfit to care for her. So NGN reunified her with her grandfather and grandmother, and it is with them that she lives in a mud ‘cave’ of a house not much bigger than a broom cupboard. Yet despite all the obstacles she has faced – and thanks to the monitoring and counselling undertaken by an NGN-funded social worker – she has managed to attend local school regularly, and she may even become the first Dalit girl in her village to reach Class 10 and pass her School Leaving Certificate.
(From Martin's Blog) http://tintininnepal.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/humla-and-the-crystal-peak/
There are no direct flights to Humla from Kathmandu, so my Programme Director, Samjyor, and I had to transit in another Nepali city on the Indian border, called Nepalgunj. In the humidity of the hot and dusty Terai, we waited for two days for a flight because rain, clouds and strong winds made it too dangerous for the pilots to fly directly into the Himalaya. But by the third day the sun was shining and we were given the green signal. Our tiny twin-propeller plane ascended fast and high above the fields, the mid-hills, and into the snowy mountains. From out of my window I felt I could almost reach out and touch the white peaks and fur trees which seemed so perilously close. Then after a moment of thinking we were going to fly directly into the side of a rocky ledge, we instead landed on the tiny airstrip at Simikot.
For a district capital, Simikot is really nothing more than a small mountain town with steep stony alleyways, and donkeys and djopas (half-yaks, half-cows) carrying their loads to distant villages. The town is surrounded by snow-capped mountains from almost all sides, and behind these are more snowy mountains which continue until you reach Tibet. We wasted no time and sorted our rucksacks for a three-day trek through some villages where I could monitor NGN’s work.
Travelling anywhere in Humla necessitates days of walking along narrow and dangerous mountain trails. The trail we took to the village of Thehe should have taken two hours for a local person, but for an unfit foreigner with dodgy ankles like me, it took four. Samjyor was very patient though and kept me entertained with stories of what it was like for him growing up as a boy in this strange isolated world. One of his stories was about the most tantalising of mountains we could see in front of us; a sharp crooked snow-capped point, higher than those around it, and known locally as the ‘Crystal Peak’. The Tibetan mystic, Milarepa, is said to have meditated under the Crystal Peak, and when Samjyor was young he remembers going there at full moon with his Buddhist community to pray and play music. He says the Crystal Peak would open up and from within it holy waters would fall down onto the faithful below. But these days the waters do not flow anymore, and Samjyor thinks this is because the people have “become bad”.
We arrived in Thehe at sunset and were crowded by scores of dirty ragged children. The adults too gathered around us as we rested on the flat roofs of terraced mud housing which stretched up the mountain side. Somewhere within this labyrinth of earth dwellings we ate dinner in a low-roofed darkened room, huddled around a smoky but warm stove. Our poor but friendly Chhetri hosts smoked their chillums and gave us what little food they had to offer. Tired, confused and unable to orient myself in the hazy darkness, I fell into a deep sleep.
We were woken early by the children, and in a slumbering daze I tottered up the mountain side to relieve myself behind a bush. There are no toilets in Thehe and open defecation is the norm. We walked to the next settlement of Pang Pang where Manish lives with his mother and step father. Manish was trafficked to an abusive orphanage by a corrupt and powerful politician, until he was rescued by NGN and brought home again. His family are very poor Dalits, and whilst they were happy that Manish was safe from abuse, they were also concerned about how they could care for him. So NGN supported Manish with a school uniform and text books, and some rice for his mother, to ensure his reunification was sustainable. He attends the local school where resources may not be much, but he is becoming educated, and he will grow up with the love and care of a family in his own culture, which he and indeed every child deserves.
Manish’s family invited us into their mud hut and offered us a small piece of omelette. It tasted delicious, and all the more so to know that as Dalits (the ‘untouchable’ caste) there was a time when this would have been unthinkable for them to offer food to ‘high castes’ like us, for whom it would once have been considered dirty and polluted. But it seems that the times they are a changing.
The cold mist rolled in and it began to rain. Samjyor led the way up the mountain. It will “only be a short walk” he assured me, but for a boy who grew up in the lowlands like me, it was gruelling. Painfully walking on tip-toe to protect my vulnerable achilles tendons and breathless from the altitude, I scrambled over stone walls and through streams. It was as if we were climbing the mountain vertically. And when I thought I could take no more, there appeared in front of me the friendly face of an old Tibetan man minding his donkeys. Out of his bag he pulled a sell-roti and handed it to Samjyor who shared it with me. I think that sell-roti may just have saved my life.
Exhausted, aching and happy we arrived in Samjyor’s village of Todpa. Quivering, I climbed the ladder into the warm safe enclosure of his family home. I collapsed on a rug next to the stove, drank five cups of butter tea and didn’t talk for two hours.
There are broadly two ethnic groups in Humla: the Hindu Chhetris and Dalits of Aryan origin in lower Humla, and the Buddhist Lamas of Tibetan origin in upper Humla. Samjyor is a Lama, and for many complex reasons which I think only an anthropologist could fully explain, the Lamas do not traffick their children. Their villages are also more developed and internally cooperative than the Chhetri and Dalit villages where conflict is common. Samjyor’s house, although simple, felt like luxury compared to the poverty and filth of Thehe.
By nightfall Samjyor’s family arrived home from tending their animals and we ate succulent local rice, potatoes and dhal whilst Samjyor sat cross-legged on the wooden floor spinning his prayer wheel.
We were up early the next morning to see the spectacular Karnali river valley in full view. Before breakfast Samjyor and his niece took me to an old cave near his village where Guru Rinpoche is said to have meditated and Nagarjun banished the evil snakes. Samjyor’s niece burnt sandalwood leaves, and Samjyor lit an oil lamp to pay homage to the great sage who brought Buddhism to Nepal and Tibet. It was just enough spiritual sustenance to give me the strength to walk on for three and a half hours back to Simikot.
On our penultimate day we walked into upper Simikot to another Dalit village where a teenage girl called Amara lives with her family. She had also been trafficked to an orphanage and rescued by NGN, and when we tried to reconnect her with her family we learned that her mother was dead and her father was an unreliable alcoholic unfit to care for her. So NGN reunified her with her grandfather and grandmother, and it is with them that she lives in a mud ‘cave’ of a house not much bigger than a broom cupboard. Yet despite all the obstacles she has faced – and thanks to the monitoring and counselling undertaken by an NGN-funded social worker – she has managed to attend local school regularly, and she may even become the first Dalit girl in her village to reach Class 10 and pass her School Leaving Certificate.
(From Martin's Blog) http://tintininnepal.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/humla-and-the-crystal-peak/
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