Stichting Veldwerk at Nepal

Secretariaat: Stichting Veldwerk Postbus 163 1850 AD Heiloo The Netherlands

Tel:+31 (0)72-5339585 veldwerk@wlink.com.np IBAN nr. NL51ABNA0543703266 Attn. Stichting Veldwerk, p/a Egmond Binnen Bank: ABN-Amro 543703266

Samjana…

After we decided to take care of Puja and Sandip we had 29 children in total and no more room of taking in more. But then you are suddenly face-to-face with two social workers, who tell you a horrible story about a little girl, six years old and named Samjana.

Samjana lived in The Terrai, in the Eastern part of Nepal, close to the Indian border, she belonged to a Taru family. These are the natives of that area and they really don't speak any Nepalese, it is almost impossible to communicate with them if you are an outsider.

Samjana's father died 2 years ago, due to an electrical shock, leaving the mother with a 4 year old daughter and a 7 year old son. The stress, the grief and the lack of income caused her to go slowly insane, this is not something you can get help for because there are only two mental institutions in Nepal and they are not affordable for most of the Nepalese people.

The mother started hearing strange voices in her head, telling her that she should sacrifice her daughter because of the death of her husband. She became violent towards her children and the boy decided to run away. He ended up performing hard labour on a farm in exchange for a daily bed and meal. In her madness the mother started cutting the little child with a knife and ripped out one of the child's eyes. At that moment the neighbours entered the house and they took the child away and handed her over to the two social workers. These two social workers travelled to Kathmandu and went to a goverment childrens' house, named Bhal Mandir, which means “childrens' temple”.


The board of the childrens' house did not show interest in Samjana's story because, so they said, this child didn't have a good chance of being adopted in the future, nobody wants a child with one eye so no thanks! Horrible concidering that the first priority of this place is to take in children in need, and that one of the lower priorities is putting children up for adoption. But since adoption is something that can generate money it became condition number one in their choice whether to take a child in or not. It is maybe harder to see the situation of the girl when you have big dollar signs printed in your eyes!

It doesn't make it better if you remember an article in one of the big newspapers last year, reporting that the whole board went on a very expensive trip to Europe to see if the adopted children were doing well, the trip was payed with money from the adoptions while the “childrens' temple” itself was decorated very poorly. The paper concluded that this was a case in which goverment money was abused and spent on private luxuries, but that is nothing new in Nepal.

Anyway, this is how the social workers ended up at our gate, and although we had no more room, we didn't feel like we had a choice, this girl needed our help. We covered the empty eye before the children came back from school, and told them that Samjana was in an accident, where she lost her eye, (her real story was not the kind of truth children can cope with). After that we introduced the new girl in the group. For the first few hours Samjana completely blocked us out, she threw away her doll, didn't eat her food and crawled away into a corner. Our girls took it really well, one of them started combing her hair, and a few clips and tails caused the ice to brake surprisingly quickly.
The next problem was communicating with the girl, she didn't speak Nepalese, only the Taru dialect. However, because she had lived so close to the Indian border, she was able to understand some Hindi. So now the children and the Didi's are speaking a little Hindi to her, and slowly teaching her a little Nepali. We gave Samjana a medical check up and made an appointment for next week in the eye hospital where she will receive a fake eye. Today Samjana had her first day of school (despite protests of the teacher who seemed to have a problem with it).