Family reunion

In August 2009 Vittoria V. joined a volunteer project in Nepal.

It was a life changing experience and it set up the base of Human Traction.

 

Originally I came to Nepal to be involved in a volunteer project sponsored by the EU and was assigned to a Kathmandu city orphanage. My duties as a volunteer were to assist the staff in the daily management of the children, including bringing the children to and from school and helping them with their homework. Soon I discovered that the reality of what was going on behind the scenes of the orphanage was far from the façade that was visible on the surface.

 

The hidden truth: child trafficking

 

To my shock, I discovered that most of the children in the orphanage were not really orphans and worse; the director of the orphanage had been using the children for personal profit.

Due to the nature of Nepal as a poor, developing country, very few laws are obeyed and even fewer are enforced.

Corruption is the norm and it works on a daily basis, poisoning and polluting itself deep into both society and government. This lawless society the “children business”, or child trafficking has been able to grow exponentially since the civil war.

In a typical scenario, child traffickers go to rural villagers and prey on poor families, playing their concern for the welfare of (and lack of future opportunities) for their children. Traffickers deceive families with false promises of safety and stability for their children, and gurantees  of attendance at top boarding schools in the Kathmandu Valley, and convince the parents to hand the children over with assurances of such an opportunistic future. Thanks to the complicity of corrupted policemen, fake documents are produced for the children -on the basis of them being found “homeless” and on the streets- making them adoptable. They are then held at fake orphanages, such as the one where I initially volunteered, and put on the market for sale.

 

 

Connecting dots

 

One day one of the children confessed to me that he was not an orphan. In fact, he had a brother, Hari, in the same orphanage and a sister who had been adopted in Spain. That day a switch flipped within me and I decided to do anything to work for the protection and care of those little children. Bidur at that time was just eight years old, he was living in the “orphanage” for three years, but remarkably, he explained that he clearly remembered the way to his home-village at the very end of the Kathmandu Valley. After great contemplation, we decided to trust the boy and so on an early autumn morning we left the city following him in the hopes of finding his family. Bidur did remember his way home and the meeting with the mother was such a touching moment that I cannot find the words to explain it. The mother then understood that she had given her children to the orphanage to benefit their future, and had no clue of the situation they had been living.

 

 

The Spanish adventure

 

Shakti and Bidur asked for help to finding their sister Sita, who had been illegally adopted to Spain in 2007. With a bit of luck and a enforced commitment, finally she was found and her adoptive mother, who was totally unaware about the real situation. After an understanding shock, she decided to open up her heart to this wide family. 

 

 

Finally together

After 7 years of being apart, this summer the dream turned real: Sita came to visit us here in Nepal and was finally reunited with her own family.

 

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