5 Fantas.
1 Nepalese 16 year-old.
Her name is Saru.
Too much make-up and not enough life behind her smile.
A cabin restaurant.
Rows of wooden benches and tables tucked behind crowded makeshift dividing walls for privacy.
Sitting with our knees and bags all crammed under a small table. Hardly enough room for 2 people, let alone 5.
1 flickering light bulb.
Of course the space is meant not so much for eating and drinking comfortably.
It is taking all my will power to not let my mind imagine what was occurring on this very bench some time before we arrived.
If I let my mind go there I can’t swallow my Fanta without the overwhelming feeling that I’ll be sick.
Just a kid.
We bought her for the hour and a half.
She came with the Fantas.
Bonding over Justin Bieber and watching Tangled, the Disney movie. Painting each other’s nails and laughing.
She is asking why we are here? Why would we want to be her friend?
The initial confusion melting into selfies on her coworker’s iPhone and cheers for Fantas in glass bottles.
The owners tried to scare us off by saying to Roshney, “sister, this place is too expensive, sister this is not the place for your American friends, you know what we really do here.”
Sweet Roshney, our fearless Nepalese friend, responds, “it’s no problem, it’s no problem, we will just stay because my friends want a cold drink and they are tired from walking.”
In a booth behind us a cabin girl is crying on the phone. Her mom is very sick and is desperate for money. This is the only job she can work. She has nothing left to give.
Girls in this country, with this social status, are not given a chance at education.
Why waste money on her education? You already have to waste money on her dowry.
At least she is useful now.
Who cares if they ship her off to India never to be seen again.
To the left a girl is explaining that she works because her husband is paralyzed and her 1 and a half year old son is very sick. She has no choice.
In the evenings she entertains her husbands’ friends.
A small two-year old boy stays in the restaurant while his mom works. When she refuses to give him the leftover sips of her Fanta he slaps her across the face.
She gives him the drink.
He has already learned from someone how to get the things he wants.
Saru says she works because she can’t go to school due to family problems.
Her brother owns the cabin restaurant, but she doesn’t like him very much.
She lives in a house across the way with the other cabin girls.
Maybe she will go back and live with her family.
She has already been working at the cabin restaurant for a year.
What are your dreams? we ask.
“I want to do good things one day,” she says.
7 days a week. 9 hours a day.
When Khathmandu was hit with the earthquake thousands of missing husbands were found in this very neighborhood.
All their money gone.
Spent at cabin restaurants.
These are the things we learn over broken translations and Fantas.
**Kathmandu has the highest rate per capita of women and children in the human trafficking trade**
This month we are working with a ministry that rescues women and equips them with opportunities for education and skills to enter into trade jobs such as candle making, sewing, and cooking. The only ones who are rescued are the ones who willingly choose to trust the ministry, and walk away from their chains. This is where the power of Jesus steps in.
**This is Saru. She invited us to come visit her again on Monday so keep her in your prayers!
