Posts Tagged ‘Kathmandu’
Camlari, child-girl slave system in Nepal
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 13, 2014
Camlari, child-girl slave system in Nepal
I watched a documentary on ARTE yesterday.
There is a Taro native tribe in south west of Nepal, by India borders. They acquired immunity against paludism in these wet rice fields.
Since the women are expected to give birth almost every year, there is not enough resources to feed the ever expanding family.
And the girls, barely 6 of age, are sold to well-off families in Kathmandu. The rationale is that the family cannot afford to feed an extra mouth, and a girl to boot it.
The child-girl is supposed to be going to schools, but implicitly, the girl is sent to the fields to work as a slave and sleep in locked containers.
Camlari support groups are forming in order to educate the people and families on how the sold girls are being abused and mistreated. The law prohibit this slave system but the government is not about to apply the law.
The support groups have already freed 18,000 girls in the last decades.
What happens to these child-girls when they are freed? Who is to send them to schools and maintain them as free people?
Urmilla was sold at the age of 6 and returned to her village at the age of 17 and resumed her study. She is a member of the anti-camlari campaign and visit villages to educate the families and participate in stopping buses heading to Kathmandu and retrieving the kid-girls.
Adonis Diaries 
Nepal Earthquake: Stand By Me
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 8, 2021
Stand By Me: Nepal
Posted on May 15, 2015
Claire and I came to Nepal on vacation.
Actually, April 25th was the start of her two-month sabbatical!
We certainly didn’t have the experience we expected, but we’re both grateful that we had this time here, and that we were able to contribute in some small way.
Claire Davidson and I will be leaving Nepal tomorrow after three weeks here that we will never forget. Talk about bittersweet.
We arrived on the afternoon of April 24th.
The next day, as we were exploring the ancient capital of Bakhtapur with Ajay Uprety, the earthquake hit.
We were almost crushed by a falling building, and spent the rest of that day sprinting through Bakhtapur’s narrow streets, running from square to square through the destroyed 800-year-old city, to escape the recurring terror of the aftershocks.
We walked for several hours and eventually made our way back to our hotel, which had partially collapsed, and set up camp.
We immediately started mobilizing International Medical Corps‘ response with the help of a handful of strangers-come-friends who shared our campsite and who wanted to help.
Over the days that followed, more staff and volunteers arrived, and our response scaled up.
We chartered helicopters to reach the most remote villages, and we worked to bring safe water and sanitation facilities to displaced persons living in camps in Kathmandu and in destroyed villages around the epicentre.
Our team and our reach grew before our eyes as the global community generously contributed to our efforts.
On May 12th, we experienced yet another earthquake.
I was in Gorkha District with Ivy Caballes Registered Nurse, Remi Drozd, Lara Phillips and our team running a mobile medical unit when the building we were in partially collapsed and the hills around us started sliding away.
We flew back to Kathmandu with Tara Yip-Bannicq and linked up with Claire and other colleagues to immediately start assessments – going first to Bakhtapur, where Claire, Ajay and I were the day of the first earthquake.
We worked late into that evening, setting up a field post-op unit close to one of the hospitals we are supporting in Kathmandu.
We’re leaving Nepal with heavy hearts, as there is still an enormous amount of work to be done.
But we’re leaving our work in good hands, and we will continue to stand by Nepal from afar. We look forward to coming back under better circumstances, and to once again experiencing the beauty and kindness of this country.
See More
Tracy Chapman: “Stand By Me” – David Letterman Tracy performs the classic Ben E. King song.
Share this:
Like this: