Olga’s Girls: Indentured servitude in Nepal
For over twenty years, Olga Murray of Sausalito, Calif., has dedicated her life to helping the children of Nepal, providing them with educations, meals, and health care they would otherwise never be able to get. She formed her nonprofit, the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, to do just that with the help of caring donors.
Her love for these children has made this 83-year-old grandmother fight one of the saddest measures of poverty in western Nepal, the selling of young girls to be domestic slaves, or Kamlaris, by parents too poor to feed their children. Some of these girls are as young as 6-years-old, and many are sold year after year until they reach adulthood when they marry and start their own families. For many of these Kamlaris, the lives they lead in their employers homes are filled with abuse, both physical and mental. Worse, some of the girls are raped by employers who feel emboldened by the girls’ inability to communicate with their families because they are so far away.
Murray found that the way to end this Kamlari system was to help the families out financially, treating the cause of the problem directly. Her innovative approach was to provide the family with a piglet or goat, which they could raise and sell or slaughter for food. She also tells the parents that she will provide school for the girls. She pours her efforts into stopping the transactions during the Maghe Sankranti festival when the girls return home and parents make new deals or renew contracts.
Since her projects inception, Murray and her charity have saved over 4000 girls from slavery, many of whom have gone on to receive educations and become successful businesswomen after being trained in vocational programs. Many more have become advocates and volunteers to end the practice that once enslaved them.
Video: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle
Reporter: Meredith May / San Francisco Chronicle
Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
See the article as it ran at The San Francisco Chronicle
For more about this story, visit Olga’s Girls
Tags: aid groups, Children, Civil War, Economy, indentured servants, Nepal, Poverty, Trafficking
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Nepal: Meet the Kamlaris
I can not understand how so many parents all over the world can sell thier children to slavery. This probelm is happening in many, many countries. My question is how many countries are having this problem? Is there any possible way we could stop this on a bigger scale instead of different outreach programs?
Anywhere you find grinding poverty, you will find parents who are making desperate choices to try to feed their families. While hard for us to understand, in some cultures girls are considered “open mouths to feed” because they don’t contribute to the family farm, leaving once they get married and becoming part of their new husband’s family. There is no “best way” to solve such a complex problem, and one agency couldn’t do it all, so every little effort helps, including yours, which is to educate yourself and tell others.
Is there any way this problem could be stopped on a larger scale?
Do you know if Olga has ever receieved threats from parents/brokers/or “clients” as she tries to help the kamlaris?
Dear Taylor:
Olga’s nonprofit, the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, has received threatening phone calls in the office, but not many. She takes precautions, however, and has a guard and a housekeeper/chef/handyman stay with her at her home in Kathmandu.
How would kamlaris like Anita care for their children if the charity does not get involved?
Dear Steve:
Kamlaris like Anita would be in a terrible way without charity, because she has been shunned by her community. She sleeps in the store with her baby, because her family considers her “tainted,” even though she was raped and is the victim. She would probably not have much success in court either, if not for the nonprofit lawyers fighting for her cause.
How does Olga ensure that once the deal is brokered with the parents to keep their children that they don’t go back on the deal? Also, does this guarantee that all of the sisters will be safe from this practice?
Dear Aja:
Olga relies on Nepalese speaking social workers who are employed by her nonprofit to go door to door to make sure the parents are living up to their end of the bargain. While this does not guarantee 100% success, Olga says that only a handful of girls in her 10 years working on this, have gone back to servitude.
How deeply ingrained is the kamlairi practice in Nepal? If it is stopped comletely what might be the social and economic repercussions of this?
Dear Hunter:
It is fairly deeply ingrained - when police officers, politicians and even social workers for the Children’s Defense Fund in Nepal have kamlaris. However, the Nepali Supreme Court for the first time, in mid-2009, set aside $1.6 million to help pay for the education of former kamlaris. So things are slowly starting to change.
Well in a way i can understand.. but then i can’t people are desperate families are starve no money so they go to last resorts.. ell their daughter to slavery to get money for the rest of the children or to keep themselves from starving… This problem can be stopped if people would only stop thinking abut themsekves and start thinking about the wrld around us… if this is happening around the world how long will it take it to come to us?
Dear Jai:
You’re astute - the problem is poverty - not poor morals. Obviously, we need better food programs in the short-term to eliminate the need to sell daughters, then the Tharu families need to be given back their land, which, for historical reasons was taken from them by Nepal.
How entrenched is this problem in society? Is there any sort of viable solution you can see?
Are there any other programs like Olga’s that are being run by Nepalese organizations? How do these programs sustain themselves and how many people are they impacting?
This is such a sad situation. It really shows the desperate poverty in the area that are causing parents to have to sell their children in order to have enough food to eat. How long do these girls have to work? When the reach a certain age do they marry and are no longer a kalmari?
Typically, the girls start work around 7-8, and work until they are 17-18-19. When I asked why a family would release them, and not just keep them working forever, the answer I got was that once the kamlari begins to mature to marrying age, the wives get uncomfortable with another female in the house with their husbands, so typically they let the teen girl go and get another younger one to replace her. The problem with this is that the older kamlari has lost her childhood, her education, and has no network to get back on her feet. Often she has lost touch with her family, and no longer speaks her village dialect. So often when she does come home, she’s out of place and can’t reconnect with her family. Sadly, many of them go back to the city and turn to things such as prostitution to make money.