Continuing off of my last blog post –
After exiting the restaurant on the corner, we still had time in the day so we began to make a plan. At this point the girl who was on our team joined up with another team of ours so our team turned into the translator, Jacob, and me.
“There’s this stairwell I found that I am pretty sure leads to the back room from that restaurant. It was kind of dark, but going up it leads to a dance bar, and going down I heard women voices before I went to that restaurant to meet Mikayla.” Jacob offered.
“Lets go check it out!” The translator exclaimed, as he started walking forward not knowing exactly where to go. Jacob took off and pointed the way while the translator and I followed up a staircase two shops over from the restaurant. From there we walked forward into the building complex toward a stairwell that was quite dark going down. Jacob paused for a second at the stairs, and pointed saying, “this is it!”
“Do you guys want to check it out?” The translator pleaded.
“Yes!” Jacob replied, as I nodded. So we headed down the stairs, now following our translator. The stairs curved to the left and I stopped on the landing as the translator went down to the basement floor and peaked into all the windows he could. We were probably only down there for 20 seconds, and then the translator turned around and we all started walking up the stairs.
“That was definitely the back rooms! There are a couple restaurants right here.” The translator explained. “I saw three women in one room, all talking to each other, one of them smoking.”
Again we were at a stand still. We knew there were cabin restaurants right in front of us, but there was nothing we could do. We wanted to talk to the women, ask if they wanted out, get their contact information, and send in a team to get her. However, we couldn’t find a way to talk to the girls. Then, a Nepali woman ascended the stairs from a restaurant that was positioned beneath the stairs we had just walked down. She came up the four stairs from the restaurant/basement level circled around and walk up the stairs to the first floor. There were more shops on that level facing the street and she walked along them until she stopped at a liquor store that appeared to be closed. She held her phone as if to be writing a message on it, and glanced toward a sign on the liquor store door. Looking down at her phone, then lifting her head to read the sign, back and forth her head lifted and lowered all the while her fingers typed on her phone.
“What do you guys want to do?” our translator asked again.
“Lets go talk to her!” I offered.
“Okay,” the translator hesitated, as he started to walk toward the stairs to the right of the liquor store. “What should we say?” he asked. Jacob and I both shrugged as we approached the stairs with no plan. “I’m going to tell her my friend wants to talk to you, and translate for you.” the translator explained. Jacob heard that and stayed behind a few paces to not intimidate the woman. As we approached her our translator began speaking in Nepali, and the woman turned to look at us as she crossed her arms locking her phone.
“I told her that you are visiting Nepal and want to get to know the culture, what should we ask her?” our translator switched to English as he turned his head to look at me. I half froze, not knowing where to start.
“Ask her if she grew up in Kathmandu…” I half questioned if that is where we should start. The translator switched to Nepali and looked at the woman in front of him. Jacob walked up behind me and joined in on the conversation. We offered some questions, it helped that she didn’t speak English and we could say what should we say next? With her thinking we knew what we were doing. We talked for a good five minutes, she showed us photos of her two daughters, and told us that she had been married for 16 years. She met her husband while she was working in this restaurant (and pointed toward the restaurant she ascended from) when she was 14, she also explained that she was 26 so the math doesn’t add up. I don’t know the actual dates of her relationship but I do know that she met her husband when she was very young working in this cabin restaurant. She explained that it used to be a cabin restaurant, but the police shut it down. She owns it now, and then she motioned for us to follow her. We let her lead the way down to the restaurant and she yelled something in Nepali as we descended the stairs into a restaurant that is hidden by the stairs that go up toward the rest of the building.
This restaurant mimicked the first one, with a counter on the left, tables on the right -although this one fit three table booths, a bench on the left, and a back room closed off with a door. There was a man in camouflage sitting in the way back of the restaurant facing us as we entered, a man in a business casual sweater sitting at the middle table, rotating so that he back rested against the wall, and a younger Nepali woman who had just stood up and was grabbing a stool to sit on. There was another older woman standing by the counter on the right, who greeted us with a smile. The woman who led us into the restaurant had us sit down on the bench to the left and as we took our seats the translator explained that the shouting in Nepali we heard was “foreigners are coming, stop touching her like that.”
Jacob and I nodded showing to expression while we both cried on the inside. We chatted with the two women in bar, as the well dressed man interrupted angrily a few times. He was clearly drunk, having three open beers in front of him that may have been a full 40oz. The translator explained that the older woman who greeted us was the mother of the woman who had brought us here. The younger woman was the daughter of the sister of the woman who lead us there. We learned that the women in the restaurant all kind of owned / ran the restaurant and I was kind of thrown off. I knew these restaurants existed and never once had I thought about the possibility of women running the restaurant themselves. It was easy to be angry at the guy from the first restaurant, but I was at a loss of emotion for the women running this one.
The man in camouflage we found out was a Christian, our translator told us he was a good guy, but we are not sure on his intentions in being in the restaurant. The sweater man told us that he had his own guest house, and told us many times over that he wanted to take us there for drinks and dinner. We continued to converse with the women of the restaurant, and learned that the oldest one started the restaurant with her husband who passed away two years ago. The translator explained that this is all the women have known, and when the husband passed away they needed a way to make money so they kept the restaurant running.
We heard a quick pitter patter from the opening at the front of the restaurant and as I looked over I saw the two daughters who we had seen photos of earlier come running down the stairs in school uniforms. My heart broke for them. I don’t know if they are used in the restaurant, but I do know that it is all that the adult women in their lives know. I wanted desperately to scoop them up and run away, but I know that wouldn’t have ended well for anybody.
The sister of the woman we talked to earlier took the hands of the two young girls (her nieces) and walked them back out of the restaurant to a place I will never know. We continued to get to know this family, and found out that the grandmother of the sweet girls who I only saw for a moment had swelling in her arm. She took off her sweater and showed us that it was swollen in some places and explained that she broke her arm when she was little, and now it swells unless she keeps it above her head.
“Can we pray for her?” Jacob asked the translator as the woman quickly put her sweater back on.
After more Nepali conversation our translator said we could pray for her, and then we should probably go. I stood up to lay hands on the woman, and Jacob asked if it was appropriate for him to lay hands.
“Just her,” the translator explained pointing to me. So I set my hand on her arm, and began to pray for healing of her arm, and pray for light to shine on the restaurant, pray for the women of the family that they would know that the restaurant doesn’t have to be their lives. As we were getting ready to leave the sweater man tried to get us to leave with him, he stumbled up the stairs and headed to the right, so I veered left as we ascended the stairs. The rest of our group had congregated across the road to the right so we tried to go toward them without looking like we were following the stumbling sweater man. Our translator walked quickly to our group and adamantly said, “we need to go now.” The group understood that there was a reason for the rush and followed Jacob and I as we walked back to the bus stop. The men in our group recognize that there was something about the sweater man who at this point was wobbling towards our group (which was mostly women) and made their way to the left side of the group to stand between us and the sweater man.
We walked towards the bus stop and headed home, with heavy hearts we debriefed our afternoon. Some teams never walked into a restaurant, while one group talked to a woman who wanted to be rescued and got her contact information! We rejoiced in that, and are thankful for the fact that our translator now has two restaurant that his group can return to.
