6/9/14
The past week
has been a difficult one.
First: the
upsides: Om, my community counterpart,
and I introduced our hand-washing program to the community. We had a meeting with many of the important
people from the area to discuss why we need improved sanitation, how we will
run the program, and what the benefits will be.
The meeting went very well and I’m optimistic about actually getting a
project off of the ground.
The first
horror: But first, some background: In Nepal, particularly in this area, wealthy
landowners, generally of the Chhetri or Brahmin castes, own most of the land. These landowners then have poorer people, typically
ethnic minorities, like Tharu, work them.
These workers get 50% of the products from the land. It is an antiquated, unfair system that only
works to reinforce economic and caste subjugation.
Last week, I
went to visit a friend at his site. His
family are wealthy landowners who have Tharu peope working their land and doing
work around the house. My friend has
become close to a Tharu woman that does work around his house. The evening of the visit, after dinner, I was
watching the fireflies nest in a nearby tree when I overheard my friend asking
this woman about kamalari. Kamalari, as
I think I’ve mentioned before, are slaves, in Nepal. Poor families would send their young children
(typically girls, of course), to another family to be an unpaid worker, for a
period of years. These girls generally
do not go to school and are not treated well.
They do backbreaking work cooking, cleaning, and looking after
children. My host grandmother was a
kamalari from the age of 8-11 before she got married, at the age of 13. Several minutes later I return to sit down
next to my friend and found him very, very upset. Apparently, this woman had just told him that
she doesn’t get a salary, as she’d previously told him, but has been a kamalari
for his family for 8 years. He was
devastated, as was I.
We spent many
hours discussing the situation and decided that some investigating was in order
but that, regardless, this was a hideous situation. The following day, he talked to his family,
who claimed that they did pay her and, in addition, very generously (sarcasm),
gave her one new outfit and a pair of shoes/per year. In reflection, this woman had asked my friend
for money, in the past, so there was a possibility that she had been lying
about a complete lack of salary. There
is no question, however, that she and her family are very poor. We were not sure whom to believe, so, at this
point, we are going to find out the legal amount that his family has to pay her
and make sure that is being done. After
her contract is up, we will put her into contact with many of the organization
in the area that can help kamalari. I
have no doubt that his family used to have real, completely unpaid, kamalari. I
think that his family is paying her, now, only because the police have begun
cracking down on the practice of kamalari in the past two or three years.
In discussions
with my family, I also found out that there is a history of my family being
kamalari for his family, which adds an interesting dynamic to my relationship
with him and his family. The whole
situation is horrible and something that I never even considered that I would
experience in my life-being witness to a person who may or may not be a slave. Heart breaking. My only consolation is that, as a very wise
woman told me, we now are in a position to help this woman, that we can be a
blessing to her.
The second
horror: On Wednesday, the day of my
meeting with community leaders about my hand washing training, I arrived at the
health post at 1:00. Om was, of course,
an hour late. As I sat there with the
other health post staff, we heard a commotion out on the porch. I went to look and saw, lying on the cement,
an old, thin man in only a dirty pair of underwear. He was having spasms and foaming at the mouth. I horrified, asked what had happened. One of the doctors said that he had taken
poison to commit suicide. The people
that had found him had been trying to call the ambulance for hours, but
couldn’t reach anyone. (An aside: one of
my projects is getting an ambulance for my health post, and for Western Dang,
as our nearest one is in a neighboring VDC (county) and is often unreachable,
as was the case on this day). I asked
the doctors what they were going to do and they said “nothing.” I asked if they could give him something to
make him throw up and they said, “we don’t have anything.” A headmaster of a
school, there for the meeting, suggested soap and water. The doctors said, “We can’t do anything.” I felt the panic and shock rising up in me; I
had to get out of there. The only way
out of the health post was walking right by the old man. At the exact moment that I walked past him
and, not being able to help myself, looked down into his face, he died. I will never forget his face: head thrown back,
mouth open, as if to scream, eyes wide. After
I had passed him, I looked back and saw one of the doctors shaking his body,
violently, trying to see if he was still alive.
After I had collected myself, I returned to the health post to have my
meeting. Not a single person was
upset. An hour later, the police came to
pick up the body and take it into town for an autopsy. I wondered why, if the police were able to
transport a dead body into town, they weren’t able, an hour before, to
transport a dying one.
Besides the obvious trauma of seeing someone
die such a painful death, I am still very shaken by two things: One, the fact
that the doctors failed to do anything to help the old man. Granted, I’m not a doctor, so maybe they
could see that he was beyond help, but they didn’t even do anything to comfort
him, didn’t even go near enough to examine him.
I told one of my friends about this and she, in turn, talked to her host
father about it. He runs a health post
and claimed that there was, definitely, something the doctors could have done,
or at least tried, as I suspected. Two,
the lack of any reaction on the part of the witnesses and of the community was
shocking to me. In general, Nepalis are
not an emotional people. I think I’ve
seen one adult Nepali cry, in all of my time here. After something like that, all I wanted was
recognition that something sad had happened and a hug (way too much to
expect!), instead, I got no reaction past disbelief at how upset I was. I spent many hours that afternoon and
evening, crying alone, in my room. A few
days have past and the trauma isn’t so fresh.
I can close my eyes without seeing his face, but I know that my life
will never be the same and, honestly, the little faith I had in the rural
health services that I work with, in Nepal, is gone.
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