for pictures: http://community.webshots.com/user/aytowler
Raajan and I shared a tiny bed while others fit like peas in a pod sleeping on thin cotton mattresses laid on the floor and on what otherwise function as couches. We woke up in the morning and sipped on tea and dipping fried bread for a breakfast. Through the window of the apartment I watched as enormous eagles and hawks circled above the infamous Swayambu monkey temple- a five hundred year old Buddhist stuppa at the top of a nearby hill with giant white pillars daggering toward the sky.
Raajan, Aama and I took a taxi to the other side of town where there is a public hospital. Getting there by about 9 or 10 am the place was already a crowded madhouse. Theoretically Nepal has a very affordable, nearly free, healthcare system. In reality the hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed, under funded and riddled which the problems of corruption and inefficiency which plague most government functions in the country.
We stood in line and paid a 130 rupees (<$2) entrance fee. Then we wound through crowded, stained concrete hallways not unlike winding through the crowded streets of Kathmandu. At the window of the orthopedic department of the hospital we took a ticket, number 152. As we urgently looked around to see what numbers the other people around us were holding we heard the window call “65”. A door opened a just enough for a few people to squeeze inside. We had already been at the hospital for nearly an hour it seemed and how long would this line take?!
Luckily Raajan knew someone. That is how things work here. If you know someone then you can slide through doors and find your way through the ugly system- whether its finding a job, getting out of prison or waiting in a hospital, its always better if you know someone, or have money.
We were without money but Raajan called their family friend. A few minutes later were, before the next ticket number had even been called, we were in that auspicious door we had seen cracked open before. This room was even more crowded than the hallway but somehow we crammed in and I managed to fit my big backpack under a patient bed hidden behind a curtain. I stood next to a giant stack of papers under an open window and watched as one by one people were called to a small wooden table nearby. There were three of these in the room, each with one or two doctors consulting patients. One girl had been thrown off a motorcycle and had a broken shoulder, dozens of people with casts on their arms or the legs, or the wrists, or their chest, or their… The doctors chatted about the recent Dossain festival half in English while they waited for their next patients to be called.
Raajan, Aama and I were shuttled into the next room where Aama was promptly seen by a doctor who checked out her leg which had been hurting for the last several months. He gave her a piece of paper sanctioning some sort of x-ray. We retraced our steps and found ourselves in another line, then with another piece of paper, then in another office, with another piece of paper, in another line, with hundreds of people sick and broken, crying and heartbroken, cared for and recovering, in another room, with a giant machine that looked like a prop from a space movie made in the 70’s, in a chair, in another room, with another piece of paper.
On my way for a breathe of fresh air out of all this hustle and bustle I opened a wrong door and found myself bombarded by the most wretched smell bounding from what looked like piles of rags and mops in what must have been some forgotten janitors closet. Outside I delved back into the bliss of a Saripha (cherimoya) I had brought back from the village the day before (see last two blog entries). I chatted with a few people and made a phone call to my old host family in Kalimpong, India. They told me three things: 1) they did not celebrate Dossain this year because a relative had died; 2) their uncle who I had spent a couple pleasant days with a month ago, who had taught a few songs about the nature of life and love, and showed me his humble government office and seemed so happy to had met me, had died suddenly of food poisoning; 3) my host brothers new wife had given birth to the child I had seen ballooning from her belly when I was there a month before.
My stomach churned first from shock, then from sadness, then from hunger. I took a few minutes to process this life, this death, this life, this empty stomach, and went back inside to find Aama patiently waiting in a chair with a piece of paper. Raajan, she said, had gone out looking for me. A traffic jam of anxious people, creaking stretchers and clanking equipment delayed my exit but I made my way out of the dark, damp, concrete mansion and out of the hospital gate. I met Raajan on the way, he guided me to the same restaurant he had just come from.
Returning from a precarious toilet and washing my hands I sat across from Raajan and could tell that something was not right with him. He was disturbed. I didn’t say anything besides small talk asking how the food here was, what did he have, etc. “Dal, naan, its good.” I ordered ‘khana’ (translated to mean food which includes rice) and was served rice, dal (lentils), three different vegetable dishes, two condiments- one pickled, one fresh, naan and crispy papar bread- all you can eat, $.80.
The sensory joy my mouth was undergoing was coarsely contrasted by the tragedy my ears underwent that afternoon over lunch. Last week Raajan told me that he remembers thinking that day as I started eating whether he should talk, “should I tell him? what should I tell him?” he thought.
I think it started with me simply asking about his mom’s condition. Raajan told me about the misdiagnosis of the previous doctor near their village and how he had not much more hope for this time around.
Then the subject returned to food. He told me about how when he feels ‘tension’ (speaking in Nepali he says the English word) he doesn’t have an appetite. His quickly approaching flight for Dubai, United Arab Emirates is now an unlimited source of tension he says.
Raajan told me about the time when he did not eat or drink for nine days.
He had told me on another occasion about his friend who had stolen some of his money and created a lot of tension, but this time I heard a fully story and began to put together the pieces of his and his family’s story, why he is over 500,000 rupees ($6,500 or over 10 times more than an average annual salary) in debt, why he is headed overseas. I began to understand and to realize that I have no possible means of really understanding.
Raajan has told me many things about his life which I will try to put together as best as I can, but one thing which seems strangest to me is that he has not been able to share these things with other Nepali friends. He says that for many people, unless they are your closest family, or your absolutely best, best friend, sharing the tragedies of ones life, the problems, the tension and the issues is considered insulting. Raajan tells me that most of his friends these days find ways of showing off their new clothes and new cell phones, but rarely share the feelings which have been breaking Raajan apart from the inside out for years. I gave my open ears, mind and heart. I know we are both the better for it.
Instead of trying to recount their family story the way it has been related to me- in scattered bits and pieces over the last 2.5 moths as I spent a great amount of time with the Lama Family, I will now try to tell it as the coherent whole which it is to me now. Obviously I don’t know even a small fraction of the story’s entirety, but I know enough to have been incredibly moved and touched, shocked and disgusted, angered and disturbed, determined and hopeful, amazed and grateful, filled with sadness and tears. I asked them if they would mind me sharing, they only encouraged me to do so.
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Raajan’s Baaba (father) is now in his early-mid sixties. Baaba’s mother died when she gave birth to her first son. Baaba worked and lived in his poor Tamang village with his father until he was eleven years old. At this time Baaba’s father unexpectedly got sick and died leaving Baaba alone. The people in the village blamed the death of his two parents on Baaba saying that the kid was unlucky and the bringer of evil spirits to their village. No one took him in, no one gave him care or love, he was completely alone, eleven years old in a remote village on the steep hillsides of the Himalayan mountains of central Nepal.
At the time when Raajan’s father took the 3 day journey by foot to the capital city of Katmandu, Nepal was undergoing its first ‘experiment with democracy’, a partyless panchaayat system which slighted feudal system but nonetheless aligned seamlessly with the king’s authoritarian power. During the 1950s and 60s is when Nepal opened itself to the outside world for the first time receiving foreign aid and political advice as a tiny, ‘backward’, landlocked country squashed between Tibet (China) and India. Although this is the time when education was given to anyone besides the highest royal and priestly castes, this experiment with democracy was not popular enough, nor successful enough to provide resources for Raajan’s orphaned father. Like now, like then, the government here is famous for taking foreign aid directed for development projects like roads, schools, orphanages and using it to pay salaries and buy fancy homes and cars in the face of some of the worst poverty in the entire world.
Today, walking around the streets of Kathmandu it is impossible to not see orphaned kids wearing clothes as dirty as the streets they sleep on, selling the shoes and biscuits tourists give them to huddled together and get high on shoe glue they buy for a few rupees. I don’t know what it was like 50 years ago here, but Raajan told me that that his father used to be alone on the streets.
Baaba made it to India soon enough where he found work as a load carrier. He probably carried heavier loads all day as a twelve year old kid than you or I could ever imagine carrying for more than 20 minutes. Loads here are strapped to the back with a rope that wraps around the forehead distributing most of the weight on the top of the head. I see old women carrying loads that looks several times their own mass. I see men carrying full size refrigerators, coaches, full sacks of stones and concrete, I see kids carrying 100 lbs sacks of rice, and overflowing baskets filled with ghaas (shrubs/grass/greens for animal feeed) which tower in comparison to their tiny bodies. There is a famous photo of a Nepali man carrying a grand piano up the side of a mountain for a British hill station resort.
Baaba found his next work in India as someone who spent all day in the jungle cutting ghass for animal feed. It was then that he had a caring employer and was taught how to read and write by carving on stones during his tea and lunch break.
In a few years he made enough money to go and visit his mother’s brother in the Darjeeling hills of India (a culturally Nepali region taken from Nepal by Britain in the Anglo-Nepales War which to this day struggles for appropriate political representation and autonomy). There he was taken in for a while by his Uncle and eventually given the promise that he could marry one of his Uncle’s relatives, a 12 year old girl at the time. Baaba joined the Indian Army and slowly made his way to a position as a security guard, the work which he did up until retiring just some 2 years ago. I don’t know all the places he worked, but I do know the man speaks more languages than I have fingers and almost as many children.
Aama and Baaba were married young and spent most of their time living at Baaba’s post. Aama’s first daughter is Basanti, a few years later the first son Bikram, then the second daughter Sharmilla, then the third daughter Urmilla, then the second son Raajan, then the third son Sano, then the fourth and youngest daughter Premilla, seven all together. Basanti was married when she was 15 and soon a her first son, Kunal, who is one year older than Premilla, Basanti’s first daughter, Kanila, is one year younger than Premilla. Sharmilla was also married around the age of 15 and soon had her first daughter Sunita who is one year younger than Basanti’s daughter. One year later came Sharmilla’s son Suraj, and then Basantis youngest son Kusal. Bikram also was married and has two sons, one who is named Beejay. In thirty-five years two people became sixteen.
The family moved around quite a lot. I know they spent a lot of time between the outskirts of Calcutta and the hills of Darjeeling. Baaba was able to save enough money to buy a good amount of land and a house in the village he was born in. Raajan moved to Borjyang village for the first time when he was around 9 years old. Borjyang is a Tamang Village where people mostly speak the Tibeto-Burman Tamang language which was entirely foreign to Raajan at the time. Raajan spoke Hindi, Bengali and Nepali. Slowly, with some ostracizing, and a lot of effort Raajan was able to learn his own ethnic language. Raajan became a vibrant young kid renowned by peers, elders and teachers alike as he excelled in school. (see “Lama Family Series Part 2.a&b Dossain in Borjyang Village” for village descriptions.
Raajan describes the village life to me as one of struggle. While his village is an incredibly beautiful place set among the terraced hillsides of the subtropical Himalayan foothills, his village is extremely poor. Until just a few years ago there was no paved road to the capital Kathmandu city. Even now the village is a two hour walk from the road where Raajan grew up having to walk to everyday for school. School for Raajan was packed to the brim with over ninety students in a small classroom. He would stand in the back and take notes while standing. His teacher would give him a gift of a new pencil or notebook when his wore out because he was always in the top five of his class and those were artifacts his family could not afford at the time.
School, field work, feeding the goats and the cows, cooking, and other house work was a lot for one kid. His Aama and Baaba would only come home once every other year from Calcutta. This would be the happiest times of their lives Raajan says.
His older sisters were home sometimes, but were getting married and moving into other homes with their husbands. Around this time Bikram was married to Bauju (Nepali name for eldest brother’s wife who comes to stay in the husband’s house), who Raajan says was like a mother to him in many ways. Bikram was the first of his siblings to go to Kathmandu, he was not heard from for five years, lost to the city life of alcohol and drugs of which he is still a victim (or an active agent I should say).
Basanti moved to the Darjeeling hills (today, with paved roads many of which were not there 10-15 years ago, an expensive 24 hour bus ride away) with her husband, the son of Baaba’s Uncle who originally took him in. Even when she came back to Borjyang to take care of her (husband’s) house and land, her son and daughter stayed in the Darjeeling area where the schools are good. It was not until this past year that Basanti’s eldest son lived with his mother again and her eldest daughter still goes to school in the Darjeeling hills, separated from her mother.
Recently a high school was built near Borjyang village, but when Raajan was growing up the school only went until 8th grade. When Raajan completed 8th grade he moved to Kathmandu to go to high school (grades 9 &10). At that time Sharmilla was living in the city with her son and daughter who were both studying in city schools, regarded to be far better than those in the village. For Raajan the transition from village to city school was very hard, he could no longer stay at the top of his class, but could still get by with the attention of teachers who he impressed considering his village upbringing. Also shocking was the sight of huge vehicles, TVs and lights.
As is described in the end of “Lama Family Series Part 2.b Dossain in Borjyang Village”, it is nearly impossible to grow enough food in Borjyang, and most of rural Nepal for that matter, to feed a family year round; so people have to buy food. To buy food you need money. Making money in rural Nepal is also something that is nearly impossible. A 15 year long Maoist insurgency and ‘People’s War’ just came to an end in Nepal, a Maoist movement which sprang from the depths of exploited poverty stricken Nepalis seeking justice after hundreds of years of oppression from a caste system, an authoritarian king, feudal and colonial systems, and a corrupt government. One source of income for rural Nepalis in recent generations has been the sale of young girls. This practice has decreased significantly, however today there are still some 12,000 young girls illegally taken to India each year as a part of the child and sex slave trade. People try to grow cash crops but are horribly exploited by middle men and struggle to compete agriculturally with neighboring India and China who are fully equipped with machinery, chemicals, and genetically engineered crops.
I have heard estimates that one quarter to one half of Nepali youth are abroad making money. Remittances are one of the center pillars of Nepal’s semi-colonial, semi-feudal, landlocked economy. The official unemployment rate in Nepal is around 42%. In Kathmandu a good salary for a middle level government worker is 8,000 rupees ($100) per month, a more average salary is 4,000 rupees ($50) per month and a minimum earning made my the lower classes who are the majority is 2,200 rupees ($27) per month- less than a dollar a day. I have yet to understand how people can get by with these low wages considering the increasing food prices and increasing housing prices which are jacked up by the masses which are flocking from the hills to the city in search of money. Abroad it is possible for someone from rural Nepal to make 10,000-20,000 rupees ($125-$250) a month. Providing one can share food, doesn’t get sick and doesn’t drink and gamble away his saving as is common in rural Nepal, there will be some to send back home.
While Raajan lived with his sister Sharmilla, Sharmilla’s husband Benaju, was abroad in an Saudi Arabia driving a car and was able to send home just enough money to pay for school fees, books, food, and the rent on the small single room apartment. When Bena got home after a few years, he wanted more privacy and kicked Raajan out. Raajan had no where to go.
While in high school at that time Raajan had found a job at a music store where he cleaned and maintained the shop making 1,000 rupees ($13) per month. This wasn’t enough to get by on. He was stuck, he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to call his father but it was too expensive (50 rupees ($.60) per minute) and sending a letter would take a month just to get there.
Bikram, Raajan’s older brother, also lived in the city as a taxi driver making a decent share, but was (is) a drunk and wasn’t of any help. Luckily Raajan’s other older sister Urmilla had just made it to Dubai at the time and was a nanny in a European woman’s home. Urmilla was able to send Raajan 10,000 rupees. This lasted him a nearly half a year of living, studying and sharing with a student friend.
When Benaju returned to the Gulf for work, Raajan was able to move back in with Sharmilla and her two kids. At this time Basanti’s husband, Ma, had also gone abroad and was working his first job in Malaysia. Before leaving Ma had been told he would have good working conditions, good accommodations and a great salary. None of it turned out to be true. He worked in a Chinese car factory manufacturing car hoods with heavy machinery and dangerous chemicals outdoors under the relentless sun. He was sick often and any extra money he made either went toward medical bills or alcohol, not much came home to Basanti and her new born son Kusal. Basanti stayed in the Village to take care of the house and the fields, she had to cut ghaas to feed to animals to fertilize the fields which could bring in 2,000 rupees ($25) on a good peanut harvest. She sent Kusal to live with her sister Sharmilla so that he also could go to a good school. Basanti lived alone in her husband’s house, her husband abroad to make money, all three of her kids away at ‘good schools’ and her husband abroad making money.
Raajan changed Kusal’s diapers when he got back from College and helped Sharmilla around the apartment. Raajan is so far the first and only in his family to go to College and he is extremely proud of it. The government College fees, which is supposed to be free but which usually end up costing 15,000-30,000 rupees a year, were paid for by his sister Urmilla who had now been in Dubai for almost 4 years.
Urmilla was dearly missed by her family and finally came home to great them. She came with stories and photos of the white family she was a nanny for. Raajan says “when I saw the little toddlers’ photos, I couldn’t believe that they were real, they looked just like dolls.” Skin color is a very big deal for Raajan and some of his other siblings. A few of them, including Raajan, use a whitening cream called “Fair and Lovely.” It is not uncommon to hear people speak lowly about people with darker skin. One time Raajan said “yes my skin is darker, but my heart is white right?” and “when I am reborn I want to be white like you.” When the topic of dolls came up again, I asked him why he said that those toddlers looked like dolls, “in Nepal all of the dolls are white” he said.
Urmilla went to Dubai fairly plump, the traditional symbol of wealth and beauty. Her white employer encouraged Urmilla to loose weight to be slim, fitting her western conceptions of beauty. Urmilla returned to Nepal thin as a stick and tried her luck at modeling. She wound up marrying a young man involved in the Nepali pop / hip hop music scene. Raajan describes their marriage as such; at first it was great, but love is blind, Urmilla did not see that this guy was just marrying her for the money she had brought back from Dubai. As soon as that money was finished he began to treat her like shit. She stayed at home in the village while he lived in the city. She got pregnant and he induced an abortion by kicking her in the belly and on her back. She still has not recovered fully from this and gets sick often, now she wants a divorce but can’t seem to get away from her manipulative husband.
With Urmilla married funds no longer came to Raajan for his College education. His parents convinced him that he needed to drop out of College and get a job. Raajan says that his professors were very disappointed at the time, but he admits that there was no money to pay the tuition fees or to buy books.
Raajan had been working small jobs since he first moved to the city and now had to find something more substantial. He worked at a clothing and shoe store at the Kathmandu mall where he worked seven days a week, ten hours a day for a monthly salary of 2,200 rupees ($30). Raajan had greater visions than a dollar a day and started scheming with a buddy of his. They planned and thought and pulled together a miracle.
Raajan and his friend Bidur were able to open a clothing store together in Thamel, the tourist district of Kathmandu. To open the store they each had borrow money from friends and merciless banks with deathly high interest rates. To start the shop Raajan had some 300,000 rupees worth of loans and credit to his name, his friend was in the same boat. The shop sold hand made hemp and wool items extremely popular with tourists. He told me how some of the hemp clothes that came from the poorest regions of Nepal were sold by their producers for less than a dozen rupees. The items then take an enormous journey, much of which is by foot through the Himalayas, to reach the city where they are sold for thousands of rupees.
Raajan’s shop was incredibly successful and over the course of a year grossed close to 1,000,000 rupees ($13,000), a fortune. The operation was a partnership however, and everything had been agreed to be split 50/50. After a year, Raajan and Bidur’s wholsale supplier could no longer provide and they decided it would be a good time to close shop and count their profit. When all the math was done, Raajan figured out that after selling the shop Raajan’s half of the money would give him enough to pay back his 300,000 rupees worth of debts and have 140,000 ($1,850) rupees profit. He started making plans.
With Raajan’s new hypothesized 140,000 rupees profit he started to coordinate a trip to Switzerland where he would be able to find employment, save money, and one day continue his studies. The plans for this trip were coming into being extremely well, his 140,000 rupees would pay for half of the visa and airfare costs and he found someone to lend him the rest at a very low interest. He found a great ‘manpower’ organization which arranged a job in Switzerland and was preparing to fix his flight and visa for him. But the shop was yet to be sold, Raajan only had the money on paper, not in his hand.
Raajan and Bidur sold the shop and all of the nearly 1,000,000 rupees went into their joint account. Bidur withdrew all of the money and disappeared without a word.
An unspeakable crime, an unthinkable betrayal by a ‘friend’, a ‘partner.’
Raajan heard that Bidur had stolen the money and ran away to India, Raajan followed suit and stumbled around looking for his long lost friend. No such luck. Raajan returned to Kathmandu and relentlessly tried calling Bidur to no avail. He filed reports with the police, also to no avail. Bidur was gone. Raajan’s debt of 300,000 rupees from the loans to open the shop remained.
That is when Raajan hardly ate or drank for nine days. He cried more than he consumed, and he didn’t cry alone. His family, his sisters, his cousins, his parents, everyone was invested in Raajan- the ambitious, smart and charismatic 21 year old who was leading them all forward into Nepal’s new generation of opportunity and progress. Shattered. Destroyed. Nearly starved by grief, the creation of greed.
By this time the Maoist insurgency in Nepal was at its peak. Demands for the King to step down were higher than ever and an already unstable government was crippled by the violence of the Maoists backed by the popular support of the country’s people who could shut down the entire city of Kathmandu in heartbeat and did so many times. Some strikes would go on for weeks and basic items like food and cooking gas would be unavailable for purchase. Things like food and cooking gas would be unavailable for purchase.
The proof of Bidur’s theft sat in the police station. And sat. Murder cases went and go untried. The proof sits as meaningless pieces of paper, stacked and rotting in neglect. The criminals roam free paying small fares to those who might put them behind bars. The maimed victims remain without money, without a voice, without justice.
Eventually Raajan was able to call Bidur from an anonymous phone and, in a disguised voice, say that he was a different friend who needed to meet up with Bidur as soon as possible. They arranged the time and the place. As soon as Bidur saw Raajan’s face he sprinted away. Raajan chased him all over the city, but Bidur got away.
The police were proving to be worthless. At one point Bidur was caught and put behind bars, but after giving the police a mere 20,000 rupees ($250) he was back out. The police then recommended to Raajan that he should cut off Bidur’s leg so that he wont be able to escape next time. Raajan sought other ways to get his money back, he needed to pay off those loans at the very least. A lawyer would cost something like 5,000 rupees ($70) an hour. The court process, if it would ever happen at all, would take one-two years. I honestly have no idea how much money Raajan would have to give the police to keep Bidur in jail and how much he would have to pay a judge to see his case, one of thousands waiting, waiting.
Besides the police, other people with guns (power) in Nepal include the King’s Royal Army and the Maoists. Who could he trust to try to get his money back? The Maoists had been to Raajan’s village and filled peoples heart’s with false promises that it was the Maoists who would lift up the exploited poor from hundreds of years of oppression. They took land for ‘redistribution’, demanded to be fed, and threatened to kill anyone with associations to the Royal Army. The Royal Army had been to Raajan’s village and told everyone that the Maoist are rotten liars who seek nothing but to tear the country apart and seize self serving power; they demanded to be housed and fed and threatened to kill anyone associated with the Maoists. With the Maoists now elected as the majority, the Nepalese people chose the Maoist despite the costs of thousands killed, thousands displaced, insecurity and political destabilization. The ends seemed worth the means.
Raajan also choose the Maoist as people with guns. The Maoist told Raajan that for 50,000 rupees they would seize all of Bidur’s assets and give half of them to Raajan. Raajan started paying the Maoists by handing over 100 rupees for a cup of tea when it ordinarily cost 5 rupees, buying them fancy cell phones, inflated meals and any number of other money requests. All in the name of uplifting the exploited poor of course. Raajan’s debt only grew as he paid the Maoists off.
However, Raajan realized that Bidur’s only tangible assets were his family’s land. Bidur had invested a lot of the stolen money in the illegal trade of an endangered species of sandalwood and would be very hard to retrieve in this aggressive manner. Bidur’s family’s land is worth 100,000 rupees ($1,300). If Raajan gave the Maoists 50,000 to seize the land and then the Maoists gave him half, the only thing outstanding for Raajan would be more interest on more loans necessary to get the 50,000 rupees to begin with.
In total Raajan ended up giving the Maoists the handsome sum of 25,000 rupees. By a miracle Raajan was able to meet up with Bidur again and get him in the hands of the Maoists. Raajan insisted on going with, but the Maoists got in a separate car and drove away, Raajan did not know what would happen.
Apparently the 25,000 rupees Raajan had given thus far was not enough for Raajan to get any money, or real justice for that matter. It was only enough money for the Maoist to drag Bidur to the jungle, hang him upside-down from a tree branch and beat him silly. This of course helped neither party, but probably only decreased any chance Raajan may have had of Bidur giving him some money in the future.
I can come nowhere close to understanding Raajan’s pain from this situation. For a high school educated young man coming from a poor farming village in Nepal, being 300,000 rupees in debt is a hole so unimaginably and suffocatingly deep, digging oneself out of it is like trying to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen; one in five people die, and only another one in five make it to the top.
Raajan, an extremely bright person with blossoming energy, was able to pull himself out of his slump of helplessness and reflect on his options. Finding a job that would pay more than 3-4,000 rupees per month was just about impossible, and that of course is hardly enough to pay the room rent let alone eat, pay for siblings’ tuition and book fees, or pay back 300,000 rupees worth of loans for that matter.
One opportunity arose which he capitalized on. Another Tamang family from Borjyang, Raajan’s village, owned a couple of store fronts in a well to do neighborhood called Bhatbhateni. A few months now having passed since Bidur stole his money, Raajan was somehow able to take out more loans and buy one of the storefronts for 70,000. Over the course of the next couple months Raajan ambitiously outfitted the store with a rack to display the fruit and vegetables that he was selling with the help of his family. A juice machine was included in the initial 70,000 rupees payment, but as his credit racked up, slowly but surely as he outfitted the shop with packaged juices, a scale, and fruit which he bought regularly.
Raajan found the enterprise unsteady, but profitable nonetheless. After the costs of buying fruits and vegetables, paying the 10,000 rupee per month rent fee, transportation costs back and forth between Swayambu and Bhatbateni (on the opposite side of town), the total monthly profit would range anywhere from 3-12 thousand rupees. Enough to help pay rent, gas, food, and to slowly start paying off debt created by starting the new fruit shop. The hope of course being that one day enough income would be generated to start paying off the his older loans whose snowballing interest rates’ weight was being felt like iron balls and chains tying Raajan to the karmic greed of his Bidur.
Whenever his other family members had a chance they’d come by and help Raajan out sitting in the shop. With his incredible hospitality, flamboyant personality, and unending personal energy and commitment, Raajan built a great costumer base and the fruit shop did fairly well. To buy produce from the wholesale, which has to be done a couple times per week, they have to wake up around 4:30 or 5 am, every evening they stay in Bhatbateni untill sundown and then it takes them an hour to get home, another hour to cook, feed the arge family and find some sleep by 10 or 11 pm.
After several months the fruit shop had hardly begun to pay off its initial creditors, and it was becoming clear another source of income would be needed. Jems (pronounced kind of like ‘James’) is a family friend with distant relation that makes him like family. What exactly his job is, I am still not sure, but I know that he is involved with a ‘mainpower’ office. Mainpower offices are those which send Nepali abroad to work or study.
Jems showed Raajan a newspaper advertisement and encouraged him to apply for an opportunity to go abroad to make money. Raajan went and stood in a line for countless hours and was one of 1,400 Nepalis to be interviewed for this competition which would award 11 Nepali with above-standard work opportunities in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
His interviewees loved Raajan and told him he would be perfectly suited for the work in a five-star hotel which he had now been awarded. Raajan of course was also ecstatic. A five star hotel in Dubai! He was promised three years of work with a salary of 24,000 Nepali rupees ($320) per month, good accommodations, and two meals per day given by his work. A great opportunity.
Then Raajan and the other ten competition winners were handled by the mainpower office that Jems works for. The mainpower office took care of making their visas and airplane tickets, for a charge of course. Everything was coming together for Raajan it seemed, with that salary he could start pay back his loans in a couple years, maybe save enough to go to a Western country or go to college again.
One late summer day, about 7 months after Raajan had opened the fruit shop, a very strange thing happened. A peculiar man came to Raajan’s shop hoping to buy some fruit. The man was incredibly tall and skinny, but more than either of those two things his was a white man that spoke Nepali. That day Raajan only had one Asian pear left, an expensive fruit, and Raajan gave it to Jon for free after they had chatted for a few minutes. Jon of course is my roommate here in Bhaatbateni. It wouldn’t be long before I bought a couple of blood red, deadly delicious pomegranates from Raajan’s sisters and eventually met the man himself. They graciously invited Jon and I to their apartment for dinner (see Lama family series part 1) and the rest is history.
The night I went to their room for the first time, now over two months ago, was supposed to be Raajan’s last night before leaving for Dubai. The next day we found out that actually not everyone in the group had gotten together the handsome sum to pay for the visa and airplane ticket (120,000 rupees total - $1,600). At that time it was the festival of Ramadan in Dubai, and the Nepali festival of Dassain was quickly approaching; it would be best to wait and leave after Dassain.
Dassain came and Dassain went (see Lama Family Series part 2.a and 2.b). I returned from Borjyang village, I sat in an opened air restaurant across the street from the Hospital where Raajan’s mom waited for us with a piece of paper as Raajan opened his heart to me and told me how he tries not to feel hopeless about his situation. He is so incredibly sad to be leaving his family, his friends, his country, but he must, there is no other option. At that time the main power office had said Raajan would be leaving in three days, and so he seemed ready to go.
Three days came and the departure date was postponed again. I soon learned that Raajan was one of the people who was yet to pay fully for his ticket and visa. He and his sisters had been searching desperately for a source of money, but with so many outstanding loans, it was impossible. To pay off one of his first loans, Rajan had taken out another loan, the most extreme type. If Raajan did not pay the steep interest on this loan his family’s house and land would be seized. The first payment had already been missed. Raajan absolutely needed to go to Dubai.
Without Raajan asking me I offered to give him a loan of 50,000 rupees, enough to pay for the rest of his ticket and visa fees. He accepted saying he would pay me back in one year. I ended up giving him closer to 70,000 rupees, only a little bit more than my monthly Fulbright stipend which pays me more than professors and high ranking government officials in Nepal.
With Dassain passed the Festival of Tihar approaching and Raajan was deeply saddened that he would not be able to celebrate with his family, receiving the blessings of his sisters during the auspicious ceremony of ‘bai tikka’ (brother’s receiving of tikka- Tikka is a colorful decoration worn on the forehead during puja (religious worship ceremony)). We didn’t know why, but Raajan’s departure date was once more postponed, he was happy that he would be home for bai tikka.
I was invited to the bai tikka ceremony at the Lama Family house. I wore the tikka and received blessings and best wishes from the sisters in a beautiful ceremony of exchange, a whole story in and of itself. If I wasn’t already, this made me a ‘bai’ (brother) in a deeper and fuller way. It was a beautiful day, Baaba and Aama had come from the village to celebrate and everyone had a good time feasting and dancing. Baaba and Bikrim dai were both drunk as usual, but fun none the less. The next day I learned that Baaba had drank so much he hardly remembered the day before. After enquiring why, he told me he drank because he had so much tension. That is when I learned about the loan Baaba had taken out for his son and that was now threatening the future of his own home and land.
Baaba returned to Borjyang, but Aama would stay until her son left, now just a few days away. I stayed over again, ‘Raajan’s last night’, to find out that the flight had been postponed again, we still didn’t really know why. The mainpower office told him it was because the flights had become too expensive. He said he had been told he had the option to pay for his own travel to New Delhi where the flights were cheaper. Raajan turned down the offer while a few in the group took it up. That’s when I learned that everyday 600 Nepalis leave for the Gulf States to make money. Too much time had passed and there was too much work to waiting in the village, so Aama left as well, not sure what would become of her son.
Like the family that they are for me now, I continued hanging out with them, sharing laughs to ease the hard times which I continued to learn more and more about. One day sitting at the fruit shop Besanti told that Bikrim had come over the night before drunk and threw her smallest ten year old son Kusal across the room, injuring his back. That’s when I learned about the extent to which Bikrim makes a good amount of money driving his taxi, and how he wastes it all on alcohol, fancy restaurants, and his new girlfriend instead of using his money to help to pay for the food he eats, his two sons’ education, his brother’s debt, his wife’s loneliness.
Finally it was official, Raajan was leaving Sunday November 9th. By this time many of my other Fulbright friends had also been spending time hanging out at the fruit shop and getting close with the family. We were all deeply saddened to know he was finally leaving and accepted the invitation to their apartment to make momos (Nepali style dumpling) Raajan’s last evenning in Kathmandu. Myself, Jon, Waverly (Jon’s newly arrived girlfriend), Sarah Zellwegger (my friend from Pitzer now working for child’s rights through UNISEF), and couple other Fulbrighters Danni and Danielle all went over there for a fabulously fun and delicious evening of momo making. While we were all sloppy and slow to learn, the quickness, dexterity, and perfection with which Raajan and his family made momos shows a lot about who they are.
I slept over again for the last night, left early in the morning as Raajan packed up his bag, to go to a class on Ayurvedic medicine hosted by Jon. I would return before everyone left together for the airport, his flight was at 5pm. After the class I called and said I was on my way back, when were they leaving? Hearing the sadness in Raajan’s voice really made me stop in my tracks and try to walk in his shoes. I walked quickly back to their apartment thinking I would be late. When I came in the room, the sadness I had been trying to empathize with was struck by a reality of ambiguity. What was going on, I was not sure.
I arrived at 3:30pm, “if your flight is at five, we need to leave now” I said. After a long pause I finally received the answer which settled me into the feelings of the room, of the moment. “We don’t have the ticket, and we still haven’t heard from Jems, you call him.” I called Jems: “Hallo?” “Where’s the ticket? Doesn’t Raajan’s flight leave at five, what is going to happen?” I asked. “No, his flight doesn’t leave until nine, he needs to be at the airport by five” Jems replied, “I am at the office now, the mam (boss) just left to get the ticket, I’ll call you when she returns.”
No call ever came from Jems that night, we called over and over again, no answer.
Frustration, confusion, disgust and anger. The amount of tension in the room was almost unbearable. I finally took out a board game and started playing with Basanti’s son Kusal. Then Sharmilla’s son Suraj got jealous, I let them try to play with each other. This did not work out so well. Within no time the two young boys were yelling at each other and starting to throw punches as well.
In that moment, all of this was too much for me to handle. I walked into the other room, myself close to tears. For the majority of both of these boys’ lives, their fathers have been abroad making money, money for the basic needs of food and shelter, education, and to move upward through society via material consumption. Now, these boys’ greatest and most present male role model in their lives was also on his way out, in a slow, painful process. What could these young boys possibly be feeling? Sure, it was an argument over the board game that started the fight, but I was sensing much deeper causes of emotional disruption.
As the sun set, we were able to free ourselves from the idea that Raajan would be leaving. We Prepared a wonderful meal and enjoyed each others company as always.
The next morning when I had had my fill of watching glamorous half naked Hindi beauty queens shaking their asses to technofied Hindi songs filled with the traditional sounds of tablas and sitar, by going downstairs to fill up buckets of water for the kitchen and bathroom from the well I escaped trying to think about how the music videos might affect the people here struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis -(twelve mouths to feed, ten months behind on a school tuition fees, being robbed by business partners and having the proof sit in the police office where they demand 50,000 rupees to start doing anything about it, on the way to the gulf to join hundreds of thousands of fellow Nepali fathers, sons, and husbands to bring a little bit of money into a frozen, landlocked economy, , "stress makes my skin so black, but my heart is white isnt it?" I heard Raajan say once)-
There was something very calming and timeless about throwing a metal bucket down a narrow black shoot, seeing nothing but faint indistinguishable silver ripples intangibly below and hearing a splash, thunk and kerplunk; then drawing the bucket up with a knotty synthetic cord in a way as to not allow it to hit against the walls of the well which would certainly send splashes straight back down. Pouring the bucket into another container and repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating until a bead of sweat falls to meet the surreal surface somewhere below.
Life moves on. While everyone was overflowing with tension about Raajan’s departure, there was a new excitement in the air. Benaju, Sharmilla’s husband would soon be returning from Saudi Arabia. The word was that he had recently gotten a raise for his car driving work and everyone was very excited to see what he would come home with.
Other happenings becoming mixed emotions were the return of the school report cards. Sunita was literally ranked first in her class. She is an incredibly bright student. Premilla on the other hand failed in two subjects. After studying most of her life in the village, the transition to city private school for Premilla has been very hard, she is two years behind, but is persevering and doing ok. Sunita, Suraj, Kusal and Premilla all study at the same English Medium School. When four kids from a family all go to the same school, one studies for free, that is Kusal. Sunita also studies for free because of her outstanding marks. The school fees are about 1,200 rupees per month. Premilla’s school fees have not been able to be paid for the last 11 months. The only reason she has not been expelled is because the school administrators sympathize with Raajan situation, Raajan being the one who pays for his youngest sister. With the return of report cards, I heard debates about sending Premilla back to the village which resolved in keeping her here to study harder than ever.
Sharmilla’s glowing face was evidence that her husband had returned. I came over to the apartment after spending the day with my Nepali friend who is a wealthy twenty one year old living almost like a middle class American, computer, ipod, Maxim magazine, nights out with friends, the passion and ability to attend every show of the two week long Kathmandu International Theatre Festival, a guy who told me he would show me the other side of Nepali culture.
Arriving at the Lama family house that evening tore at my insides in an undescribable way. Benaju, a short, overweight man to shy to say anything more than hello to me, was at the two room apartment. In one room sat his wife and two kids Sunita and Suraj playing with their gifts a laptop computer he had won in a lottery, a camcorder he had bought, mini electronic organizers, top of the line cell phone, and a tall box of sweets and the promise of a new bicycle.
In the other room sat Raajan and Besanti. When I asked if they were happy that their brother in law was back they didn’t show much enthusiasm. Besanti jabbered on about how her sister Sharmilla had just gotten 75,000 rupees ($1,000) worth of gold, she explained how her husband works in the same country but further away from the city. Basanti’s husband asked Benaju to bring home a couple scientific calculators for his kids and niece Premilla and he would pay him back the next time they met. Instead Benaju returned with only two things that was not only for his wife or kids, the box of candies and some powdered milk.
Sano bai came in the room watching a video on the new cell phone. Raajan says “who needs a fancy cell phone? Simple is good enough for me.” “I agree, in the states, my cell phone is the old black and white kind” I concurred. I watched as Premilla watched her brother mesmerized by the tiny screen, earphones plugging his ears. I tried to imagine how she felt, that 15,000 rupee cell phone was enough to pay for a year of her jeopardized education. “I don’t like cell phones” she said walking away.
I slept over again that night and chatted with Raajan. I explained to him that I had been thinking about sponsoring Premilla’s education costs, but that this whole situation made me hesitate. Sharmilla’s husband just bought a 15,000 refrigerator, a 25,000 rupees worth of cell phones, a 5,000 rupees bicycle for his son, 75,000 rupees worth of gold for his wife; with that sort of wealth in the family why should I pay? Premilla’s own older brother Bikrim spends wastes away his money on alcohol, why should I pay?
“If my family had cooperated from the beginning do you think I would be in the problem I am in right now? I wouldn’t have to pay for Bikrim’s sons’ clothes and school books, I would have been able to pay off my loans and find another job to pay back my relatives more slowly, I wouldn’t need to leave the country. It may seem like we all get along great, but this is only on the surface. With Sharmilla’s husband back we are going to have to live separately, we will have to buy a new stove, we won’t be able to split the cost of gas and food, how can Basanti and I afford that? Sharmilla wants to stay together, her husband will soon be abroad again and she doesn’t want to be lonely with the rest of her family, but Benaju wants to live separate. He is another kind of person, he has always been like that” Raajan said. I remembered what Raajan had told me about Benaju kicking him out of the apartment when he was a college student.
Raajan had also explained to me earlier that one problem with Nepali society is that when people go abroad to make money it is seen as having climbed higher up the ladder of progress. They usually return with a complete lack of humility showing off their new found wealth with no shame. They insult their friends and families as they bask in their self-perceived superiority which often splits families apart, sons forgetting to repay even those who gave them the milk that nourished them into this world. Now Raajan said “do you remember what I told you before about people who come back after making money abroad? That is happening in my family right here, right now.”
This is when I learned that there is another issue adding tension to the family dynamic. When Raajan was in a really tough spot and being pressured extremely hard by one of his money lenders, his sister Sharmilla gave him 100,000 rupees ($1,300). Of course for Sharmilla herself, her only source of income being her fields and cow back in the village. The 100,000 rupees that she given away had been sent home by her husband abroad. At the time she lied to Benaju about where that money had gone. Recently, however, Sharmilla told Raajan that she had told her husband the truth. Raajan knew that it would only be a short time before Benaju would the demand the money back. “But he wont be able to ask me for the money himself, Sharmilla will have to beg for the money on his behalf. Why does he think I am trying to go abroad? I cant give it to him now, he knows that but he will demand it anyhow, by any means whatsoever” Raajan said pausing, the angst in his voice swelling the meaning of his words with incomprehensible emotions, “I think he is trying to buy some land.” A long silence. “Good night, sleep well, sweet dreams.”
I fell asleep pondering the relationships in my own family. ‘How do my inlaws relate with one another? What sort of tensions are there? What are our financial and emotional histories, hidden from me as a child and adolescent? Should I sponsor Premilla? Its only $15 a month and it would have such an impact… Of course, the rich American sponsors the poor Nepali; these people should help themselves. Nepal’s history is both blessed and plagued by foreign aid. But have they not made me just like family? Am I really family though? If I give the money will they think they that materialistic greed can always be offset by rich white people? Enough of the country is already dependent on aid. But is much of this country’s poverty not directly attributable to the West’s imperial domination of the global economy and resources?’ And on and on, the mind finds no answers. And so we call upon our hearts.
The next morning over breakfast we settled on the fact that the we all needed to go to the mainpower office and scold them for delaying Raajan’s trip so many damn times. A group of five of us left but only Raajan and I made it to the office. We waited until Jems showed up and then went up stairs to meet the mam (boss). At first they were only expecting Raajan and Jems, but when I showed up the guard had to make us wait as he went upstairs to clear things up with the mam.
We walked through an enormous carpeted room and came to a small office furnished with an exquisite wood desk with a glass cover, and a very nice bench and chair for guests. It was much nicer than most government offices in Nepal I have been to.
After waiting a few minutes the mam came in. We asked her in Nepali why Raajan hadn’t left yet. “Well we have been having some problems” she started saying in English, directed at me until Raajan interrupted saying it would be better for her to speak in Nepali so everyone could understand, I concurred in a way that displayed my fluency in the Nepali language.
It took I while to get it all out, but at the meeting Raajan heard for the first time why his trip had been delayed for the past 1.5 months. Raajan had been to the office countless times before and was told white lies. Jems, his own family relative, had never told him the truth either (and Jems claims he also didn’t know until then although that’s clearly a lie as he had been working closely with the mam for his commission). Both Raajan and Jems agree that it was me that was the cause of the unveiling. It took the presence of a white man to let Raajan be told the truth.
Originally the trip was delayed because all the funds where not there for the visas plane tickets. Soon after the original delay, Raajan’s visa to leave the country had expired. Because he had only seen his visa once, briefly when it was issued three months earlier, he did not realize this. And so every time the office told him he was about to leave, even though this was physically impossible, Raajan had no reason not to believe them.
Nepali’s who go abroad to Gulf states typically live in overcrowded, dirty hostels and do the low wage physical labor in these countries. In the meeting, the mam told us that the Nepali Ministry of Labor inspected the hostel where Raajan was arranged to stay at and found the conditions too poor to allow their citizens to live there; eight people living in rooms meant for four, that sort of thing. Those destined for the Gulf States must have written on paper where they will be working and where they will be staying. The Nepali government would not allow anyone to leave Nepal that was destined for certain hostels until these places cleaned up there act.
The mam said that telling the truth about the situation would have been too discouraging for Raajan and the others, so instead they said that the tickets were too expensive. This lie covered up the fact that the office had illegally sent a few people in his group through India to avoid the Nepal Labor Ministry’s emigration restriction on those destined for the hostel this group was destined for.
I made it very clear how horrible I thought it was that they had been lying to my friend this whole time, “Why did you tell Raajan to pack his bags last week if he did not even have a valid visa? Do you have any idea what you have put Raajan and his family through the last two months as you tell them so many lies?” Raajan was clearly upset and repeated to the mam what he had told me before. Raajan was thinking about taking back his money and looking for other options. Immediately Jems and the mam said “No, its ok, you will you go to anyways? You have our promise this time, we will have everything ready in one week.”
We clarified everything, we set the date and said we would come to the office in six days for the ticket which would then prove his departure for the next day. The issue with the hostel was cleared up, they would renew his visa, get the ticket, everything would be fine.
Six days went by and Raajan and I went to the office. The mam was not there. By this time Raajan was used to this sort of treatment and felt like he would never go. His friends and family felt the same way. By this time Raajan would say he did not know when people asked him when he was leaving. We had no other option but to wait another week.
On our walk back to my neighborhood that afternoon is when Raajan told me some of the most disturbing news I had heard so far. Raajan told me that he had been trying to contact me the last day, I said “sorry, I was busy, why did you need to talk so bad?”
“Someone is threatening to kidnap me or people from my family” Raajan said.
I was shocked and made him repeat himself to make sure I understood. Raajan told me that he was walking through town the other day when he ran into an old friend of his. They were chatting and the guy said that Raajan better not show his face around here. The friend told him that one of the guys Raajan owes money to was planning to kidnap Raajan or someone from his family. For the last two days since Raajan had heard this news he was too scared to leave his apartment and ended up sleeping at mine that evening.
“Do you think it is a real threat?” I asked.
“Of course, there are so many people that this has happened to” he replied, so many.”
This guy Raajan owes money to was the wholesaler of the hemp clothing Raajan sold in the shop with Bidur. Raajan would take the clothes on credit and the store accumulated a 130,000 credit which was split 50/50 between Bidur and Raajan. Of course Raajan had the money to pay off his share of the credit until Bidur stole everything. Now the creditor was chasing after Raajan for the entire sum and not Bidur at all, I wandered why. “I am so incredibly saddened” Raajan said, “I makes me feel so horrible to know that my family is physically threatened by this, and it makes me not want to leave, what if someone is taken while I am out of the country? I would want to die.”
I thought of all of the tension the Lama family was under- their land and house being threatened, their education, their daily life and struggle to make ends meet while simultaneous striving to move ahead and away from their starting place as poor farmers, fathers abroad making money, the rifts in the family, and now threats of kidnapping. To think that the majority of these issues stemmed from the greed and theft of one man, and the lack of a legal system to bring justice to Raajan and his family… I remember asking Raajan a few weeks before “whay didn’t you just take him to court, why didn’t he stay in jail, why didn’t you just take him to court?” Things don’t work like that here.
Went I got home Sarah Zellwegger came over and shared a cup of tea. She asked how things were going and I told her how the office had been lying to him the whole time and how fucked up it was that Raajan had been kept in the dark this whole time about the entire process. The way that mainpower offices are paid to take care of everything creates a very strange dynamic where the client (Raajan) is forced into the position of a clueless and helpless sheep who is at the mercy of the well educated and powerful mam who takes care of everything behind closed curtains. And why the hell was Jems not seeming to be of much help? Was it true what all the kids in the Lama family say, that he is a horrible guy?
Sarah related the situation to her own. She had come to Nepal on a grant to document oral histories of students at a particular school. On the internet the school advertised that their students where not charged tuition fees and that most of them where either from poor village families or from families displaced by the Maoist’s ‘People’s War’. The whole thing ended up being a lie. The owner of the school ended up being not only sexually threatening but an untrustworthy thief that was pocketing donations made to the school. To me that story sounds a lot like a microcosm of the enormous problem of corruption in Nepal.
In a few days a Pitzer college friend’s friends where passing through Nepal and I hosted them for a couple of days. We had a great time together. Their last day we spent in the small ancient city of Buktapur. On the way back to Kathmandu we hitched a ride on a small bus on its way back from the China border. Everyone was singing songs and jolly as their full day journey approached its end. The bus was packed with packages- blankets, pressure cookers, DVD players. People got off at their stops, some had gone on the journey to outfit their store with cheap goods, others took the 10 hour bus ride just to buy themselves a blanket at a lower price than they could get here in crowded Kathmandu. On the bus ride back I got a text message from Raajan that he was leaving tomorrow. No joke this time.
The next morning, Monday Novemeber 24th I believe, 2.5 months after Raajan’s first supposed date of departure, I was kneading dough in my kitchen, making breakfast with Jon when Raajan showed up, dressed to impress. Jon said his goodbye and wished Raajan all the best. I wasn’t sure to smile with pride or cry with sorrow. Raajan was in a hurry so without eating we left and headed to his apartment.
On the taxi drive to his place Raajan received a phone call. The mood which was already unbearable reached a tipping point when broke into tears on the phone. He was speaking in mostly Tamang (his ethnic mother tongue which I do not understand) but there was some Nepali in there, enough Nepali for me to understand that his sister Sharmilla was begging for the 100,000 rupees Raajan owed Benaju. Demanding it no matter what, anyhow, any way. But how could he possibly pay?
When we got to the house, it seemed as though it were the day of a funeral. The skies were bright and the sun was shining but inside it was grey and gloomy. Everyone was crying. I had never seen this family like this before, rivers of tears. Everyone was crying, except for me, that would come later.
Two taxis went to the airport, I was in the one with Raajan, Benaju and Sharmilla. Sharmilla released the excruciatingly awkward tension in the car with the beautiful humor she is blessed with.
We all stood together said goodbyes. Raajan pulled me aside. He told me an enormous thanks, that he would have not been able to do this without me. I told him what a blessing it was that we had all met and become like family. He told me I was like a god to him. I told him, no you are like a god to me. I told him he must remember to eat well, even if his stress kills his appetite. We hugged, not a very Nepali thing to do, but something that had to be done.
Raajan walked away from us all with a big smile and his chin high. Basanti sobbed as she watched her brother leave just like her own husband two times before. Raajan boarded Jem’s motorcycle and waved a final goodbye as he slowly disappeared behind a passing bus and its following plume of black smoke.
Sharmilla and her husband were off to the village to prepare for their son’s upcoming coming of age ceremony. Basanti, sano bai and I took I taxi back home. Basanti slowly dried her tears and we rode in silence for most of the trip. Finally we started thinking how Raajan would be having a very unique and special experience, he had never been on a plane before or further away from home than northern India, now Dubai! Maybe we could be a bit happy for him, or at least send him our most positive thoughts and imagination of what would become in his near future.
Positive thoughts were hard to maintain for long. Basanti was soon crying again as she told me how all of Raajan’s tension would now fall on her. Besanti is the oldest in the family and is the one who cooks the most, cleans the most, now she will have to be the one to work in the fruit shop the most. Sharmilla’s husband wont allow her to go to the shop anymore she explained. Basanti was also faced with trying to find a new place to live now that they were being kicked out of their current apartment by the landlord and Benaju wants to be separate for the two months he is home. Basanti’s husband has only sent home enough money to pay for her eldest son’s college tuition, how will she pay for the rent, food, gas, there is not even money to buy produce from the wholesaler for the shop. The shop was making way less than it used to these days she explained. Now that it is cold people don’t want to by as much fruit or fresh juice. It definitely does not help that one of the most popular and largest department stores in the city is right across the street form the shop.
The Bhaatbateni supermarket could be thought of as the Wal-Mart of Nepal, except there are only two stores, and the prices are actually more expensive because there is no bargaining. For many Nepalis however, the modern shopping experience the place brings is enough to neutralize the slightly higher prices.
Two nights after Raajan left I got a phone call from Lalita, Raajan’s 16 year old cousin from the Borjyang Village. She told me she would no longer be able to study because her father cannot afford the books and the absence of her labor around the house and fields. She felt like dying and crying she said. I told her Raajan had finally left. Raajan’s Aama had gone back to the clinic she said, her leg was still hurting even after the medicine. “Ok well you still have your family, the most important thing, so don’t even think about dying” I said over the phone now loosing its connection, “Ill be coming to the village in a couple weeks, I’ll see you soon.”
We didn’t hear anything from Raajan for several days. I had mentioned to Raajan and Besanti previously that I would pay them to help me out in my apartment cooking and cleaning. Up until this point I had been washing my clothes by hand, cooking, cleaning, and everything. A lot for a student living with a roomate. Basanti started coming over to help me out, it was very hard to have her accept any payment, but I try to pay her well for her work.
One time when she was over we received our first word from Raajan in the form of an email that read something like this: hello I have arrived well and I will start work tomorrow. Things are not how I was told they would be. They said I would have a 24,000 nepali rupees monthly salary but it is only 15,000; they said I would have two meals given by my work for free each day, but they do not give this. If I want my work to give me food it costs 7,000 rupees per month. Instead of keeping the books at a gym at a five star hotel I will be a bus boy for a restaurant. I am staying in a very crowded and dirty room.
I have been crying a lot. Maybe I will try to return in 8 months. There is no place for me to cook and since I have arrived here I have had no substantial food, only packet food. Please say hello to everyone for me and tell Jems that it is not a good situation.
While I read this out loud, Basanti cried. She told me about how it was the same for her husband. They were told one thing and something completely different came when he arrived.
One evening I was hanging out in Swayambu at the Lama family’s house. Complaints about Jems were no new thing for me. Since the beginning I had heard, especially from the younger kids, that he was no good. Raajan complained about his dirty mouth and improper habits. I noticed on one occasion Jems draping his arms over Sharmilla, a married woman; although he did so in a seemingly brotherly way, that is absolutely intolerable in this cultural context.
As a gift of exchange during bai tikka I had given a precious bottle of honey from my mother’s hives in the USA. Premilla, who I gave it to, only had one spoonful before Jems had raided their refrigerator and downed the whole bottle in one go. The kids complained about this and how he just eats all of their food. Sunita told me how she scolded Jems telling him to never come back to her home, he was not welcome. They talked about how just the other day Jems had bought a new pair of 5,000 rupee shoes and exchanged his motorcycle for a fancier version, probably with the commission he made from sending Raajan away.
Sharmilla broke up all of the Jems bashing by saying “come on, he is not that bad, he helps out, he takes people around on his motorcyle, he helped Raajan.” Then her own daughter Sunita said “No, you only defend him because he helps you. He only takes you on the motorcycle because you have the nicest saris, he wont take others because they don’t look as good.” Basanti told me about the time she was sick and needed a ride across town but Jems didn’t offer, instead she had to walk, she never been on the bike once.
Later that evening Jems came in. He was offered tea and peanuts. He flaunted around in his fancy suit and new shoes as he chatted and threw peanut shells on the freshly cleaned floor. Someone commented on how he ate like a pig. Then Jems looked at me and said “Hey Phursang…” (Phursang is the name I am sometimes called with this family literally meaning ‘fair one’)… “don’t listen to these fools. Why would you believe her…” (pointing to Basanti) “she looks like a monkey, why would you even take food from her. These people don’t even know how to shit in a civilized manner. They wipe their ass with a rock, they don’t even know how to wipe their ass with a leaf…”
“What are you talking about we have a toilet at our house in the village” Sunita says. (They are the only family in their village with a toilet, most other families use the woods.)
“You have only had that toilet for two years. Alden, come over to my house sometime and I show you something nice, we have a toilet, we have electricity, I’ll take out one my motorcycle sometime” Jems said.
I was speechless and could only ignore the man’s gaze trying to imply that I thought what he had just said was meaningless to me.
A few days later, Raajan’s second email read something like this:
I miss everyone very much, reading your last email I cried so much because I feel so lonely here. I complained to my boss saying that I was lied to but no one listened to me. Nothing is how I was told it would be, but my luck is this way isn’t it.
I am working as a ‘busser’ at a Chilly’s Restaurant in Dubai city center. I have to work 84 hours per week, 3 days 12 hours/day and 3 days 16 hours/week with only one day off. The work is so horrible, I have to clean all day, every hour, every minute, every second. I neither live nor work with any other Nepalis, I haven’t seen anyone from my ‘group’. I live with black Egyptian men who only speak Arabic so we cannot communicate. I had some money in my room which is now lost. My work gives me one burger a day and soft drinks are free (Eating cow meat is not only illegal but also a sin in Nepal). Everything here is so expensive and there is no place to cook even if I wanted to.
I do not want to stay here at all, but I have no other option. I have so many loans that I must stay and work. I love you and miss you all so much!
I did the calculations. After one year of work and paying for food Raajan would not even be able to make enough money to pay for the plane ticket that got him to Dubai in the first place. Maybe I wasn’t a blessing after all, the guy who paid for half of that ticket. Basanti and I tried to think of ways to help. I have told Raajan to fax me his forms, that I have personally read, saying which hotel he was supposed to work for and so on. We could take to forms to the mainpower mam and demand the truth, demand change for Raajan.
Just a couple of days ago I got a phone call while I was in the middle of eating. I was in a small café just above a busy noisy street so I took the call and walked upstairs walking as far away as I could until I found myself in a tiny Kitchen. I was barely able to hear Raajan but could tell that his voice did not sound good. He told me the following: I am so sad, the work here is horrible and Jems has cheated us so horribly, he is a bad person. I have not eaten for two days, I have no time to eat, I have to work all of the time. I would try to complain more but I have found out that my passport and visa are not under my own name. I could be arrested and put in jail if any authorities here found out. Please go to Jems and the mainpower office to get my real passport and hold onto it safely for me. Maybe this is a way I can get a better situation here. Please, when you go to my village tell my parents to not have any worries, tell them that everything is fine and that I am making lots of money. Then we lost the connection in a loud beep. I turned around with tears in my eyes to face the two men waiting outside the kitchen, one of them looking like he was in his sixties. I walked past and wondered if they hadn’t gone through a similar situation.
The next day I sat down at the local tea shop we a regular I often see there. My friend works at the American Embassy and has been studying hard for an English language test which will determine whether he gets to go to Australia or the USA. He makes an incredibly high salary of 18,000 rupees ($230) a month. But it not enough he says, he wants security for his children, something his country is missing. One other friend was on his way to a chef training at a fancy hotel where he is hoping to get hired at 5,000 rupees ($64) per month. Another friend talks about his life. He drinks a lot of whiskey with his father, rides his motorcycle, hangs out and has a good time with his friends and searches for a job that will pay over 6,000 rupees ($75) per month.
On my way to the fruit shop I road my bike past a line ¾ of a mile long of cars waiting in line for the petrol pump. The price of gas had dropped by 5 rupees/liter (4 cents/gallon) and people were willing to wait two hours in line because of it.
I sat in the Lama family fruit shop with Basanti, she told me how jelous he son is of his cousins new bicycle. She told me about how one of the daughters of the drunk woman who wonders around the neighborhood had mysteriously disappeared. The young girl “had been taken to China to help as a wife.”
Sarah Zellwegger, who interns for UNISEF of children’ rights (the trafficking of tens of thousands of children per year being one of the main issues), came over and brought an amazing ray of sunshine to the shop as we sat and passed time. Basanti talks about how she can’t run the shop like Raajan did, its impossible, its too much for one person with a family she cannot leave unattended. She wants to sell it.
Soon a loud noise and bustle caught my attention. We stood up and tried to figure out what the commotion was all about, what was that crowd standing just outside the temple there at the intersection? Why do all the men have suitcase? A few minutes later I found out that the line of 30 or so men were on their way to the airport. They would also soon join the superior ranks of men in Gulf making money… Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and your O.K.
Money it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team
Money get back
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off my stack.
Money it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the hi-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet
Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away… away…away…away….
