Hot and sweaty from the 12km journey through dusty chaos in sweltering monsoon humidity, I’ve just arrived back to just-one‘s humble HQ in Kushibu having cycled across the city and back to collect the authorisation letter I need to get every 4 months from the Dept. of Information so that I can get my visa renewed and was very happily surprised at how uncharacteristically hassle-free it was this time ’round. Here’s hoping Sunday’s bureaucratic hoop-jumping at the Dept. of Immigration will go in a similar manner for me. I saw something just as I started my journey back and figured it’s worthy of sharing here as it relates somewhat to the bigger picture of Nepal’s general situation and where the work of organisations like just-one tie into it all…

Chaotic traffic-clogged streets & monsoon clouds gathering overhead

Having crossed the bridge by Tilganga Eye Hospital and started pedalling up the hill towards the traffic mayhem of Gaushala Chowk, I noticed a battered old Mahindra 4×4 flat-bed truck chugging along beside me. As it slowly overtook me and left me taste the carcinogens in the haze of diesel fumes left in its wake, I had enough time to contemplate the most likely sad and morbid reality of the large metal trunk it carried as cargo. Our proximity to the airport at the time and the white bar-coded “KTM” label I saw stuck on one end by a carrying handle had me surmise that the 2 men crouched either side of the trunk, holding a white sheet over it as best they could, were most probably close family of the deceased migrant worker who, by now, will have already been cremated at Pashupatinath Temple – towards which the truck had turned right by the top of the hill, leaving me cycle on with a sense of sadness for someone I never knew.

Any time I’ve ever departed Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport I’ve witnessed just a fraction of the seemingly unending exodus of young Nepal workers being shipped out by the various local manpower agencies who fill the foreign demand for migrant labourers. On my numerous returns too, I’ve shared boarding queues and gulf flights with many of these workers flying home. Today though was the first time I’ve seen someone coming back to Nepal in such a stark and conclusive manner.

A photo of cargo coffins taken by Peter Pattison for this recent article

I’ll have to admit that I have no recollection of where I heard or read the statistic that 4 migrant workers return to Nepal like this each day and can only wonder whether or not any of the 1,000 or so Nepali folks who migrate daily ever ponder the possibility that “going outside” might not be all that they have hoped for… High-profile cases like the Qatar World Cup have seen the slave-like conditions occasionally featuring in mainstream media, along with the inhuman exploitation suffered (often initially at the hands of their own less scrupulous countrymen who charge handsomely for their questionable brokerage services) by so many unskilled manual labourers whose collective absence from Nepal currently leaves their native country facing a somewhat ironic labour-shortage of its own as it struggles to rebuild after all the recent devastation it endured.

What I also couldn’t help but wonder about though was the safety and well-being of the half-dozen or so now young adults who’ve unfortunately slipped through the cracks of what just-one generally offers to those we work with and, having invariably succumbed to family pressures to choose the short-term gain of foreign employment over the longer-term benefit of our educational support, are all currently working somewhere or other across the gulf. While the couple I’ve got occasional contact with on social media seem generally upbeat about their situations, one 19 year old now working in Saudi-Arabia did recently express regret at not taking his education more seriously when he had the opportunity.

Such is life, I guess, and we can only ever help those willing to accept our help. Seeing what I saw earlier though has me recommitted to notion that we have to constantly give it our absolute all to better ensure that we succeed with as many of those we work with as possible and help them achieve all that they’re capable of rather than risk becoming a much sadder statistic. If you’ve helped our work in any way, shape or form over the last 11 years then please accept my most sincere and heartfelt thanks on behalf of all here I work with and for. If you’d like to make a contribution and help our important work here to continue in the way it must, then you’ll find all the details you need here and can rest assured that your support will be very much appreciated and put to the very best of use.

You might not have known it but yesterday, June 12th, was actually World Day Against Child Labour. You know, the kind of day organised to highlight some specific cause or another (in this case child labour) and help some of the various issues relating to it vie for space in an ever-crowded public conciousness. I only realised myself later in the day when I came across this article while looking through the Kathmandu Post. I’ve never really been sure and do occasionally wonder just how effective these ‘world day’ initiatives actually are but, to be fair, I guess they’re better than nothing. That I’ve been spurred into writing these here lines is a case in point – even if it is a day late!

An estimated 1.7 million 5 – 17 year old children work in Nepal today.

While just-one didn’t do anything in particular to mark this year’s World Day Against Child Labour, I am happy to share that within the last week alone we have managed to successfully remove another two young labourers from the sad statistics and are currently in early stages of helping them to reclaim what remains of their respective childhoods. I’d like to briefly share the story of how they came to our attention here, as I feel it will help highlight the stark reality of the situation of child labour here in Nepal.

It was last Friday afternoon that a foreign friend of mine phoned and asked if just-one might be able to help a 12 year-old tea-shop boy from the restaurant under the Nepali human rights office where my friend currently works. Explaining that many in the office were uncomfortable with the irony of a child delivering tea-break snacks and lunches to a human rights office, we were requested to provide urgent intervention as it seemed that steps were being taken to have the boy transferred to the private residence of a local political figure, where he was work as a domestic servant in return for being sent to school.

That this far-from-ideal arrangement was being made between the head of a human rights organisation and a respected political figure, both of whom would, most probably, argue that they had the boy’s best interests at heart, helps highlight the somewhat skewed perception of what’s actually regarded as acceptable by so many here – people who one might expect to know better. While I can understand how the boy’s impoverished parents, struggling to provide for their seven children in a remote village, and their own lack of education may well have contributed to a situation like this arising in the first place, I’m not so sure that I’ll ever fathom the seemingly blind acceptance of such situations by some of the better educated and apparently civilised members of society.

Tea-shops and local restaurants often use young children as helpers.

Thankfully, having intervened upon request, the staff of just-one were able to skilfully mediate an alternative solution that saw us agreeing to facilitate the boy’s eventual return to his family and support his education from there. It was only having arranged for his 18 year old sister to make the 100km journey to Kathmandu to help us arrive at this solution and secure the boy’s rescue, that we discovered that they also had a 15 year old sister working as a domestic servant elsewhere in the city. A few more days of phone-calls and sensitive enquiries meant that by last Tuesday we’d also managed to secure custody of the girl from the woman whose house she’d been working in and offer to support her return to education too. That this woman was the founder of an NGO working to protect the rights children, women and senior citizens, again, speaks volumes on the depth of societal introspection that’s needed here if the issue of child labour is ever to be properly addressed to the point of eradication.

So, while we may not have marked yesterday for the day that it was with any kind of fanfare, our ongoing efforts here helping disadvantaged children access educational opportunities they’d otherwise be denied, do see us addressing the reality of child labour as best we can. Yes, it’s a small-scale, grass-roots effort that’s never going to have a huge impact on the overall situation (it’s quite likely the positions made vacant through our interventions over the last seven days may well already be filled again by other less fortunate children), but today is testament to the huge impact our work can and does have on the individuals involved… You might not have known it but today, June 13th, is actually SLC Results Day here in Nepal and it just so happens that two of the four students just-one supported through their School Leaving Cert examinations earlier this year were also working children when they came to our attention some six or seven years ago.

So, as our two new recruits become accustomed to the sense of security that comes with being part of just-one‘s ever-growing family (security we’re able to provide them with thanks only to the generous support of kind-hearted folks like you), four past graduates also anxiously await the on-line publication of their long awaited results… In closing, I’d like to ask you to join with us in wishing them all the very best for their respective futures. Huge thanks too to all those who’ve contributed in whatever way to empowering us to make these brighter futures possible.