ODDS AND ENDS

Friday, November 25^th, 2011

At Higher Grounds Cafe in Jawalakhel section of Kathmandu, at 2:05PM

As my time here slowly begins to wind down (I have well under a month), I am trying to do as much as I can for the organization, tour a bit, and make connections with other organizations, even while finishing up all my classwork.

Brian wants me to write out case studies of some of the slum children I interviewed the other day. I also still have to finish the documents for the clients of Agape, the at-risk women and children.

I have been to Everest and Pokhara, and hopefully, in a week or so, I will get to travel all the way to the Tibet border to visit some Christian ministers that Brian knows. Yesterday I got to see Bhaktapur, a historic palace town just outside of Kathmandu, with a friend of a friend – an American – on Thanksgiving. She works in the field of international development. And so, when I wasn't hammering our tour guide with questions about Nepal's history, I was questioning her, about her work.

Just the other day I visited the offices of Next Generation Nepal, an organization that works to reunite trafficked children with their families. There is a book out now about how this organization was started and I am currently reading it. It was interesting to be reading about a character in the book one day, and then the next actually getting to meet him. The woman from the organization who I talked with is currently working there for almost a year. She was very friendly and we had a lot to discuss. I offered to help them with some of the crucial paperwork necessary for raising funds. We'll see what opens up.

Something fascinating and disturbing had happened earlier that day, at the restaurant where Rahul and I were eating breakfast. Rahul went outside and to the back to find a bathroom, but before he found the bathroom, a man came up from behind him and asked him if he wanted a girl. Rahul said no (correct answer!), but the man told him to come back on Saturday if he changed his mind. So, on the way to a meeting to discuss human trafficking, we were solicited to participate in the prostitution of girls who had most likely been trafficked themselves.

Before I leave Nepal, Brian wants me and several others to go to a “dance bar” to participate in outreach to women at risk who had been trafficked. I am not sure what this will look like, if I will have to play it undercover or what. Brian says that this kind of outreach actually works better when foreigners help because the owners think the foreigners have money (Well I know that's not the case for me, anyway, but I will try to help out to the best of my abilities!). I will remain in prayer about this.